WanWizard 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇳🇱

@Geri@veganism.social Given the percentage of people voting for Restore or Reform, I take that "collective wisdom" with quite a shovel of salt. But a sole judge is a bad idea too. It should be a minimum of 3, and a larger odd number for bigger cases. Having said that, the root cause of this issue is the fact that the judiciary is not independent of the government, and therefore for the influence of politics in applying the law. Not to use a jury in an attempt to right the wrong.

@Geri@veganism.social I doubt that, as none of those 12 have any clue about the law, they only have their personal opinion, which can be based on who knows what. Only legally trained professionals should be in a position to judge. The only reason you are in favour of a jury is because you don't trust the judge. And if that is the problem, that issue should be addressed, and not use a jury as a band-aid.

@Geri@veganism.social Judges should, nee must, be impartial, and only apply the law, without being influenced by anything, including personal opinion. If (people feel) jury's are needed to keep judges honest, then there is something seriously wrong in the system that needs fixing, and having a jury is a workaround (and a biased one, as public opinion is entirely different fromknowledge of the law).

@ScottishGreens@mastodon.scot Even Labours 2024 manifesto says that drilling won't lower prices. If this is true, Burnham has lost the plot and given in the Blue Labour before he even started. The oil and gas pumped up doesn't belong to us, it belongs to the companies who have the license and are pumping it up. The oil and gas pumped up won't lower UK prices as it will be sold at global market prices. The oil and gas pumped up isn't going to the UK, it is going to whoever wants to buy it.

@Geri@veganism.social Which begs the question why M&S is buying Maris Pipers from Israel, and not from British farmers? This is not new: https://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2022/09/05/ms-slammed-for-importing-potatoes-from-israel/

@PeterGray@mastodon.green @gbargoud@masto.nyc @t3rcermillenium@mastodon.social @ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk You have to wonder if, after being found instituationally racist twice, the police may also be institutionally facist?

@timmipetit@mstdn.social Grappig initiatief. Daar zouden scholen iets mee moeten doen.

@IndyRichard@mastodon.scot It also indicates he doesn't understand nationalism. Reform are inward looking nationalists, while the nationalist parties in the devolved nations are outward looking, and want to end being ruled over by said inward looking nationalists and conservatives.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social And all of them harder than the limp prick organizing it.

@RussCheshire@mastodon.scot Indeed. Streeting is even bluer than Starmer is. If that is going to happen, then Labour has really lost the plot.

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us Read yesterday that ABP, the Dutch pension fund for civil servants, and the largest in The Netherlands, has announced it is pulling its investments in Palantir.

@alantperry @ChrisMayLA6 The largest Dutch pension fund., ABP (mainly company pensions of civil servants) holds over 500 billion euro in investments. Over 2025, they had a -1.8% return on investments. Imagine what your own investments would have done. This is what stops people gambling with their pensions. Dutch pension funds are heavily regulated and controlled, as bankrupcy for pension funds is not an option.

@alantperry @ChrisMayLA6 The UK system isn't fair for a lot of people. I became 100% "unfit for work" in 2014 due to a work related incident. My employer was insured for it, so I got an insurance payout, and haven't claimed benefits because of it. As a result, I'm missing out on 11 years of state pension due to missing work contributions, and no way to claim them back as I wasn't on benefits but "of independent means". I'm being punished for my employer doing the right thing for its employees.

@ChrisMayLA6 I was responding to the govt pressure on individuals to invest. That is because the entire private pension system is wrong to begin with. If it was a real pension, the pension fund would do the investing. It would be more efficient, as it will be one pot to invest, every contributor would invest implicitly, and investment funds have specialists so less risk for the pensioners, and a higher return.

@ColinHaynes @adhd_coffee Now that brings back memories. This and a TRS-80 Model III.

@TallSimon @sheddi @bjn @BashStKid @ChrisMayLA6 @stekopf The UK night unit price for people with an EV tariff is 4 times that, with the regular unit rate is around $0.46 CAD at the moment, so a very different story.

@bloor The "If" is doing the lifting here. It is an abbreviation, therefore it is S.Q.L. No matter what Americans make of it...

@peterbrown@mastodon.scot @IndyRichard@mastodon.scot The first ones are called "colonists". Which is ingrained in the psyche of the English, and something especially the right seem to have trouble letting go off, the "tragic" loss of empire.

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us Sort of, but not necessarily that scale. It depends a bit, railways for example (like Scotrail) should be ok, NHS, maybe too big, so need to be organized differently. The way the Belgians do it, they have a central service organisation which does buildings, IT, procurement, etc so it has the advantage of scale, which is then an internal service provider to government entities that can buy in cheaply. These entities in turn run their own P&L but are essentially non-profit orgs.

@ChrisMayLA6 After a health-scare last year I decided to ban everything ultra-processed from my diet. It is very, very hard, and I have all the time in the world to cook my own food. It must be even harder for hard working people on a low income.

@ChrisMayLA6 @alantperry For the state pension it is the same as for everyone else (both in the UK as in NL), it is set on the date of payment, not related to the last contribution. For my NL private pension, the monthly payment amount will be calculated on my pension start date, as it depends on the value of the pension pot (which in turn depends on investment results). There are also pensions schemes that provide a fixed / set monthly income, less risk, higher premiums for a lower income.

@ChrisMayLA6 @alantperry It all leads back to the British system treating employees as a liability and a cost centre, instead of as an asset, combined with the long held conservative believe that all employees and benefit claimants only live to cheat the rich out of their wealth.

@ChrisMayLA6 The UK should stop calling it a pension. A pension is a shared pot you pay into, and get a monthly payment in return when you reach pension age. The pot or your contributions are not yours, Also, because of that, lump sums don't exist, The UK system is just a personal savings account with tax benefits, which favours people with money.

@crow But anyway, I think Fedora is one of the most user friendly Distro's out there. It is Redhat based (where Ubuntu is Debian based) but for a beginner that doesn't really matter. One possible downside: Fedora is pure open source, so by default you find nothing that doesn't have an open source license in it. Like for example Nvidia's own binary video drivers. But that depends on your hardware, I don't have any heavy graphics requirements, so the standard Intel chipset works fine for me.

@augieray@mastodon.social It is the usual "God is on our side" kind of thing...

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us You have to be a bit careful with the "headcount" figure, as sometimes very creative bookkeeping is used. I used to work for GE in the '90's, every quarter we got idiotic headcount limits from the States. In Europe they had a deal with a local IT company (owned by an ex-GE manager), every time the headcount went down, people were transferred from the payroll to that IT company (so costs moved from Payroll to IT budget, but effective headcount didn't change).

@jascha I've noticed it changes with age: currently it is more "nothing done" and never "40 hours in 4" anymore... 😏

@bodil Just one more thing on the "why I will never use Ubuntu" list...

@crow I've been using RH since '97, and Fedora for as long as I can remember, at least since 2012 when I dumped WIndows. And I have no clue what this is about, as long as you're not using closed source Nvidia drivers (which have the same issue on any Linux). Which is why I'm asking as I don't understand the percieved problem (apart from personal preferences, like "I hate Gnome"). I don't see why you would need to configure more that what you expect. It isn't Debian 😏.

@tragivictoria @bodil @crow The first 😏. i.e. what are objective reasons against using Fedora, and/or suggesting it to newbies?

@ChrisMayLA6 my point exactly. A private pension isn't a pension, it is a personal savings account. Which benefits everyone with spare cash due to the tax breaks. A pension should be a real pension, with the pension fund doing the investing, not the individual. Pensions should be about giving a steady and predicable income.

@alantperry @ChrisMayLA6 If I had moved back to the The Netherlands instead of staying in the UK, I would not have had the gap. Still in dicussion with HMRC to see if we can resolve this, if needed by buying additional years. As it stands now, I will only receive 70% of the state pension due to the missing contributing years. And I don't even want to start about missing growth in earnings, one of my friends and former co-workers is currently on 3 times what he earned in 2014...

Bump, it case you thought this was an April Fools joke...

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us And like for example railways, they need to be regulated to make sure they are run properly, and to avoid debacles like HS2, where a big chunk of money went into pockets it wasn't meant to go. And regulation means consequences, not like the current regulators (like Ofwat, Ofcom, etc) which are currently politically appointed money pits without any use whatsoever. And that is the main issue: as long as politicians don't want to put public services first, nothing is going to change.

@mihamarkic@mastodon.social @codeofamor@social.codeofamor.net @Elizafox@social.treehouse.systems They have the same problem as many other countries: what to do in the meantime, as coal, gas and nuclear all are bad idea's, but until there is enough and cheap enough storage to deal with dips in solar and wind, there aren't many options...

@tragivictoria @bodil @crow Because?

@alantperry @ChrisMayLA6 insurance payout: I was effectlively send on early retirement with the insurance company covering my last-paid salary until my pension start date.

@paka@mastodon.scot Neither. It is not up to the NHS to apply anything. Politics has no place in the workplace, any workplace. If a staff member breaks the law, the law can deal with that.

@crow I replied to the person that made that remark, to which you responded, in my timeline your responses are part of that thread, hence my replies...

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us The problem is in part in the way most public organisations are run. Lots of political meddling, current-term planning or no planning at all, no empowerment of staff, no appreciation of staff, poor payment, it is a very long list. The point here is that these services are mainly for the political benefit of the politicians involved, not for the public who use them. The solution is quite simple: create private companies, in public ownership, regulated but not politically managed.

@fribbledom@mastodon.social I wrote code for a Honeywell Bull DPS, which had a maximum binary size of 32KB. We had to write the code modularly, so we could swap out binaries in order to make bigger apps. After that for an IBM S/36 which had 256KB of RAM, followed by an IBM 4341 which was absolute luxury, which no direct limits anymore.

@crow I personally find Mac even worse than Windows, in that the manufacturers decide what is good for you. I understand that for the average "user", that comes across as "it just works", which is true, as long as you want to use what the vendor is pushing to you. I also understand that things are different for long term / experienced users, ths issue I had was it being called a "slop jackfest" without any elaboration whatsoever. And that smells like personal pet peeves to me...

@ocramius possible, but i can't reproduce it (i.e. I dont know what in the app triggers it), it happens in all PHP versions this app is compatible with.

@ocramius@mastodon.social In the UK quick charging is in the range of 1.00-1.20 euro per kWh, making EV's not very economical for long distance, unless you've got someone else picking up the bill...

@OndrejMirtes@phpc.social "Best" is subjective. I personally find it very annoying that Gnome has gone heavily into "touch enabled", forcing me to install the old Nautilus to replace "Files" because working with files has become near to impossible without having a tree-view.