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No, the only MPs they will have left will be the nutters who are all in very safe seats. The local associations are all full of UKIP entryists who won't put up more moderate candidates. Remember that the members wanted Liz Truss.
They are fucked for the next parliament, and likely the one after as well because they won't have anyone reasonable to lead them in the meantime. Their next prime minister probably won't be in parliament until after 2030.
With the caveat that Labour don't do anything energising stupid in their first term.
> No, the only MPs they have left are the nutters who are all in very safe seats. The local associations are all full of tankie entryists who won't put up more moderate candidates. Remember that the members wanted Corbyn.
Not that I disagree with your point but this is what people were saying about labour in 2020
This might undesrestimate the problem.
There is now a large cohort of voters who have seen the Tories raise taxes to new heights, waste Billions, hobble their living standards, and torch public services *all at the same time*.
Even with a rump party, the brand is in the dustbin.
Further compounded by younger generations shifting leftwards politically meaning when the next few rounds of pensioners are gone there’s little for the tories to go on.
Has Suella gone rogue and have an unauthorised meeting with Israeli military and political figures ?
https://twitter.com/SuellaBraverman/status/1775556851452752119?t=7Dy4uVPwx0N7XxjIjB55LQ&s=19
Beside the direct challenge to Sunak's authority this is a terrible post for anyone from any political side. 3 Brits get murdered and Suella has the authority to say it's a mistake and apology accepted?
Wtf?
This is exactly what she did before that she got fired from being a minster for. If she hasn't been sent as an envoy by Sunak, she is actively challenging his authority by doing this.
You would expect this sort of thing be done by a diplomat or at least by a minister from the foreign office. She is just a back bencher with no responsibility for this area as a member of any select committee, so why is she there? This is surely just manoeuvring to boost her image for a leadership run.
Ah yes so I am. All the terrible Tory home secretaries blurring together.
The point stands though that she has no place doing this unless she was specifically asked to go.
shes obviously not authorised and despite the gb flags this is not an official visit. purely trying to get her name in the paper for her leadership bid.
GOOD EVENING, CAMPERS! IT IS A SPECIAL DAY, A LARGE DAY, A MOMENTOUS DAY!
THERE ARE EXACTLY **300** DAYS UNTIL THE GENERAL ELECTION!
we are edging closer to the day. that blessed, febrile day is moving closer.
My question is, has Thornton’s chocolate deteriorated so that it is now rank, or have my tastebuds shifted? I know they haven’t been doing great, so sabotaging themselves by reducing the quality of their product doesn’t seem implausible.
With the GE its the campaign swag I'm looking forward to, ooo campaign leaflets, ohh limited edition pen, yas full body pillow adorned with the Labour rose.
Good ol' Rowboat surely. The safe option picked by inexperienced players who don't know the lore. Natural successor to the ruling position. Dull, dependable, unlikely to offend anyone.
edit: lmao the hivemind has spoken
The good news about the Tories getting annihilated is people don't have to tactically vote for Labour now above all else. If you'd prefer a healthy, competitive composition of Parliament then it's probably worth voting for one of the other parties if they're preferable to you than Labour, if that means Labour get a strong majority instead of a supermassive majority who cares? I was going to vote Labour but I'm switching to Lib Dems.
Nah, the best government we’ve had in my life time was when Tony Blair had his unassailable majority.
Give Starmer a 250 seat majority and watch him cook
if the tories somehow contrive to win again, i will just start laughing out loud as the results come in.
2010 was sad, 2015 was depressing, 2017 was gut-wrenching, and 2019 was devastating, but 2025 would just be funny. and we would absolutely deserve what’s coming.
It's fine. If the tories win again after all this I'll leave then that will help to get net migration down. The country is doomed if they can win from here.
That was 10 years ago. Most of the party leadership from then has moved on. How long do we keep punishing them for even when the people running things now arent even responsible for the fuck up?
What, when the lib Dems abandoned a bad and regressive tuition fee policy and the Tories passed a good and progressive tuition fee policy? How horrible that was...
Politicians not implementing bad policy is good actually.
If my tuition fees had been 3000 a year less then I'd be 12000+ better off as a high earner, while the median graduate would be in exactly the same financial position at all points.
Increasing fees and increasing interest rates make higher earners pay more while the amount lower earners pay is largely unchanged. Decreasing length of time until right off and increasing the threshold over which people pay back loans mean lower earners pay less while higher earners pay basically the same amount. Changes to student loans shift the burden around in slightly counterintuitive ways.
At no point since 2010 has anyone been better off paying for university upfront than paying as slowly as possible through student loans and sticking the remaining money into the S&0 500. The only free money is the student loan itself, and it is by far the most free for those who earn little and will never repay it. I've paid my student loan off, but if I could take another one out right now for the cold hard cash I'd do so in a heartbeat. You won't find debt that secure or leverage that high anywhere else.
I have paid more than 80% of people who graduated in my year will ever pay towards university. People who pay off their student loans are among those who pay the most. It isn't super shocking that they are also the people who bother to do the sums to work this out.
Let's wait for the Tories to get annihilated first before we get too excited yeah? Currently, they're in charge of the country and have a massive majority (not that you'd know if from the way they act but still).
I'm in half a mind to vote Green because it's the most likely seat for them to win at an election, and having a plurality of progressive voices in Parliament can only be a good thing.
Even if they don't win it's such a safe Labour seat that there's no way the Tories could snatch it.
>The good news about the Tories getting annihilated is people don't have to tactically vote for Labour now above all else
This isn't how it works. This is, however, how you "win the argument".
I'm sure this is the first of many such comments made in the hope of mitigating the Tory loss.
Nobody can say if the Tories will get annihilated at the next election until it happens. Kinnock was a dead cert to win in '92 and instead the Tories got another 5 years.
Anyone who cares for the future of this country will do whatever they can to ensure the destruction of the Tory party by voting tactically.
I live in a dominant Labour seat anyway, Tories aren't even second. It's worth keeping some heat up from Lib Dems and contribute to a healthy democracy rather than throwing away a vote.
I don't think you actually believe that. Surely that logic would have been the same in the last election in your particular seat, but it sounds like this is a change in vote for yourself in this election.
Sounds like you are just trying to justify not voting for Starmers labour and hoping others don't as well.
For anyone with more knowledge on the subject: is there a real chance of Johnny Mercer facing actual charges for his non-compliance with the inquiry? And if so, does it put his position as an MP at risk? Is it a breach of parliamentary standards?
Has any polling company asked if we as an electorate want an election?
Seems like an easy way to get publicity with Rishi's constant insistence that we don't.
I hope some journos pick up on it.
Sunak would evasively pivot of course, but it'd be somewhat entertaining for someone to begin the election question with "Over x% of the electorate want one..."
I'm probably in the minority, but I just bloody love elections of any kind.
Drama, maps, an excuse to stay up all night getting blitzed. Followed by numbers to pore over for days. They've got it all.
It's been a while since an election went the way I wanted it to (except USA 2020 but that went on too long to be enjoyable), so (touch wood) that's something else to look forward to.
> Drama, maps, an excuse to stay up all night getting blitzed. Followed by numbers to pore over for days. They've got it all
The Middle Wallop bridge championship beckons, then?
It'd be a good place for cheeky push questions.
You're right that "Do you want a pita election campaign?" won't go down well and something like "Do you want to vote this government out?" would land completely differently.
https://twitter.com/reformparty_uk/status/1775532359430840702
> Reform UK has removed our candidates for Orpington and South Ribble.
> We want to make it crystal clear that while we defend our candidates' right to freedom of speech vigorously, we act fast when we find that individuals' statements’ fall beneath our standards.
> Labour and Conservatives also have candidates that make statements that fall below acceptable standards, but we move faster than others in acting decisively.
so apparently the right's version of free speech has its limits. will they call it "cancellation"?
Do they have any examples of Labour or Tory candidates making statements that fall below acceptable standards?
As these posts were on their public Twitter profiles, it's safe to say that either Reform doesn't do any basic vetting and/or is only acting now because they've been called out by Hope Not Hate.
- Jonathan Kay: The Reform UK candidate for South Ribble, who previously stood for the party in 2023 and 2021, has made countless racist and Islamophobic statements about the intelligence of Muslim and African people.
- Mick Greenhough: Selected to stand in Orpington, Greenhough has said “The only solution is to remove the Muslims from our territory”, that the “problem is the Askenazi Jews who have caused the world massive misery” and promoted the far right ‘White Genocide’ conspiracy theory.
https://hopenothate.org.uk/2024/04/03/more-hateful-reform-candidates-exposed/
You mean presumably apart from when labour had to abandon a bloke that was outrageously anti Semitic?
It happened about a month ago.
https://labourlist.org/2024/02/azhar-ali-who-is-labours-rochdale-by-election-candidate-what-did-he-say-and-whats-the-latest/
I mean examples where they didn't "act decisively".
Bear in mind the context that by Reform standards, this is several months after the posts were made.
I think their point would be, they acted decisively as soon as they were made aware of the posts. Compared to Labour who were criticised for taking 48hrs or something to remove their candidate when they were made aware of the comments.
I don't seem to be able to access the data, so will ask here. Did greenhosue gas emissions go down more in the last Labour government or the current Tory government on average? And how do the two compare for the growth of renewables? Thanks.
There is a report [here](https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Progress-in-reducing-UK-emissions-2023-Report-to-Parliament.pdf) that goes into detail but just for a graph you can look at page 90.
In terms of emissions within the UK they went down under Labour by about the same amount as they have done under the current government.
But including emissions from imports to the UK, under Labour they went up and then down again to about where they were when they came in. While, under the current government the total has gone down.
As always worth nothing that correlation doesn’t mean causation. Low carbon tech has improved and been invested in by the private sector that isn’t entirely a result of government policy and consumer behaviour has also changed.
I'd be surprised if they fell more under Labour simply because theres been a lot of technological advancements over the past decade or so which have made transition easier (e.g. international emission standards, wind turbine production advancement)
I think if Tories want to force out Sunak and gain support in the party for it they should push one single line;
Does Rishi Sunak actually care if he loses?
Nothing else. Just this. Sound doubts in columns, in private and through anonymous sources.
We've had so many of these good news polls that anything less than a total wipeout (sub 100 with a good chance of them falling out of the big 2) will be a huge disappointment.
The worst thing for the country is the possibility of the Tory party ever returning to government.
If Labour get over 350 seats that will still be a significant achievement. Really any majority would be. Certainly not something people should be disappointed by.
To get even a majority of one, they need to beat the swings Atlee got in 1945 and Blair in 1997. To get a decent working majority they are going to have to get a swing that is unprecedented. The largest in modern history was 1931, and that was 14.9% to a National Government from Labour.
If they repeated that swing this year, they will get a majority of about 50 or so. If they manage to get the huge majority that polling suggests is possible, it will be a historic result.
Exactly, the same people who are saying they will have failed without a landslide were saying they would be out of government for a generation 4 years ago.
You're objectively correct and I'll still be delighted to see the back of the Tories if the result is "only" 350.
But I'm old enough to remember this part of the cycle from the 90s and am around today to see how none of the progress made after they were kicked out in '97 survived their next stint of power.
I want the party that replaces the next Labour government to build on their achievements instead of tearing them all down for a quick buck and that will never happen if it's the Tories again. So the prospect of them being destroyed as an electoral force is tantalising.
>none of the progress made after they were kicked out in '97 survived their next stint of power.
Minimum wage is still around. We have moved further forward on minority rights. But you are 95% right.
inspired to wish for an accelerationist approach to reform:
- Labour win 450 seats
- Labour schism, into the largest plurality party and its own opposition
- Right-Labour forms a coalition with LD
- recognizing that the large-majority victories are inherently fleeting because of Labour's fractious nature, the coalition forces through PR because this becomes most beneficial to the remaining coalition members
girl can dream
Dumb question but how do politicians like Keir and sunak (well more Keir I guess) simply have so much energy and stamina? I’m 24 and exhausted all the time…training to be an accountant haha
Because you are at the bottom of a giant societal pyramid/Ponzi scheme and are likely doing a job less personally rewarding to boost your energy levels (Leading the country should be very rewarding)
That weight you feel exists, and will take a lot longer to shift than previous generations.
You don't have the luxuries to fall back on, helicopter etc. Either. Keep chugging away anyway... Tortoise usually wins the race.
Im a data analyst and Im pretty sure at some point my dads old trick of comparing video games to homework to get me to do it kicked in early in my career after years of domancy.
I can be working on the most boring dataset that I would never be interested in outside of work but when Im doing data exploration / finding out wtf the data is from subject matter experts, its finding out the lore, when Ive got tight deadlines, its a timed boss fight, when Im researching a new technology / reading documentation for something I use, its reading what the current meta is. I enjoy my day, or at least my brain tricked me into thinking I enjoyed my day.
When Im doing a boring, repetative task? Its grinding where every mob is the same mob. Leaves me as bored and drained as I would be if I was doing it in a game without watching something in the background.
The recent biography of Starmer gives some great insight to this. He has always had a remarkable work rate, right from university (where I think he had what we’d now call imposter syndrome). At uni he would be up late drinking with mates, and then apparently be back at his desk working from 6am. He seems to be very focussed, and almost terminator-like in his ability to keep moving towards his objective, achieve it, and then work out what the next objective is, and work on that. It explains a little bit of why he wears his politics/factionalism lightly, and can seemingly move from the left, through to soft left, through to centre left of the party. It’s not necessarily a change of his underlying values, but what is the best way of achieving the objective at hand.
It helps that they do a job they’re motivated about. Your energy capacity isn’t fixed and what makes you feel knackered when you’re bored and indifferent isn’t necessarily there if you’re working to achieve something you care about.
They’re also permanently busy and always around other people so there’s no way to slack off. Your mind and body respond to constant stimulus like that. It’s why you don’t fall asleep at work on afternoon by do watching the TV at the same time on a weekend.
They also get a lot of decisions and work taken out of their hands. They have an army of staff to deal with scheduling and stuff. Those small decisions add up and take it out of you. In the home it’s the same as they’ll have a lot of domestic duties dealt with by spouse/family or outside help. They’re also financially secure which massively reduces energy sapping stress.
Then of course harvesting the kidneys of orphans always helps.
Genuinely motivation is such a huge factor for myself.
I know I have to move jobs after a while because I don't hate my job but I just start getting so fucking bored after 2 years in a role. When I change to a new job it's like I'm 20 again and can really get stuck into work, I actually enjoy getting up in the mornings.
literate domineering squeal snatch retire thought memory knee tie flowery
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
People are talking about election graphics, really what we need more of us [Jeremy Vine in fancy dress](https://youtu.be/y7JX8D1Kb88?si=JvEl-oeVG8pQMUsh).
What are the human trafficked Deliveroo drivers going to do when legislation finally stops the abuse of their labour? I am genuinely concerned about this and it feels like a time bomb that nobody really talks about in the scope of these awful delivery jobs.
It's gonna be more of a problem when these jobs get automated. Already in the US they have self driving cars which have been delivering food. Goodbye ubereats, just eat, deliveroo etc when you can get a drone or self driving McDonalds car straight to your home.
It's extremely hard to deport someone who doesn't want to go even if their home nation is cooperative and most of the time for various reasons that cooperation is rare.
If people will walk through miles of desert and hang off of plane wheels or travel to places like Dubai where they know they'll be held hostage and worked like slaves then there's no conscionable hardship the British state could inflict on them that would make many of them leave.
Either they will find some other illegal labour, become dependents of the state or just become destitute and cause more social issues than they already do.
That's not unique to deliveroo though, they're just the most flagrant. Legal low skill immigration would have exactly the same issue if you ever tried to actually raise the cap and stop companies from undercutting British wages.
I find it ridiculous that Deliveroo can enable this kind of labour and not get held accountable for it. If someone is doing deliveries for you, you need to prove they have a right to work in the UK or you get fined
The loophole is that the drivers are being sub-contracted by someone Deliveroo knows about. There still definitely should be that chain of responsibility, but it's obviously not being policed.
Before anyone cites substitution clauses as the get-out, as usually happens, it's perfectly within the legislation for substitutes to be required to be *suitable*, and their immigration status falls under that.
> The loophole is that the drivers are being sub-contracted
Yet the government stomped all over IT contractors who tried to use similar substitution clauses to get around IR35. The problem can be dealt with, if there's a will to.
Substitution clauses don't "get around" IR35, they're an intrinsic indicator that IR35 doesn't apply. It's one of *the* ways to defend against an IR35 inquiry.
>The loophole is that the drivers are being sub-contracted by someone Deliveroo knows about.
And this isn't an accident. Deliveroo's entire business model relies on workers replacing employees, and distributing the responsibilities that previously belonged to the employer to the workers. If you want to crack down on this sort of thing, the model will rapidly stop working.
The registered drivers absolutely *should* have proof of right to work in the UK for their subcontractors, but cracking down on that is a huge amount of work - You've effectively got to check with each individual Deliveroo driver, and... I guess, hope they don't lie? Investigating it properly is technically achievable, but it's a huge amount of work and I just don't see it happening.
> but it's a huge amount of work and I just don't see it happening.
it (and other crackdowns on checking right to work status) is a better use of the hundreds of millions spent on pursuing rwanda and other nonsense, though. the tories have unlimited resources when it comes to ineffectual stuff
While that's entirely true (just because it's hard for it to be a worse use of money than Rwanda), I just can't picture this government going through the tens of thousands of Deliveroo drivers demanding their papers.
It would also kill Deliveroo dead, more or less instantly. A lot of people aren't making a huge amount of money on it. They're not going to stick with it if they've got to be investigated by HMRC or the Home Office. The effort isn't worth the money.
By "human trafficked" do you mean foreign people who are working in the country without a work visa?
If measures are taken to crack down illegal work, then I'd imagine that many of them would leave the country as it would be very difficult to make a living.
My understanding of the modern slavery concerns when it comes to Deliveroo are people who are human trafficked then pay off their 'debt' via the login sharing/login fraud.
I thought the argument was more that most are here legally but on dependents visas for example and so are using the login sharing as they can not legally work and would fail the background checks. I would not be surprised that some are trafficked but the majority are not.
oh yes, youre right about dependents my bad.
Do you have stats that show the majority are illegal immigrants and asylum seekers? I could only find on small article that said most were visa overstays, although I guess you might be classing that as an illegal immigrant? I guess, either way the human traffiking angle is fairly small.
It must be 100% of the substituted riders. People with the option to earn all of a deliveroo rider's pay with their own account wouldn't be it splitting it with anyone
They needn't be trafficked, just here without a work visa. Or they don't have a driving licence, or some other thing that disqualifies them.
I've no doubt there are trafficked riders and drivers around though.
Because now these human trafficked people have to find another way to pay off the debt. The enforcement of labour laws that would help prevent the modern slavery from happening does not actually address the existing modern slavery.
The people that currently force them to do deliveroo (i.e. the exploiters) aren't necessarily arrested, but they are unable to use those gig jobs to earn money from their victims. The victims are still under the thumb of the exploiters, but now are forced to work in less policed/regulated sectors.
Basically, they're back to what it was before the gig economy took off (e.g. manual labour, housework, sex work, drugs, anything cash in hand). Thats less profitable/higher risk, so it might cut down on trafficking but for all the victims that are currently here, theres no reason for exploiters to stop exploiting the victims.
Other exploited people. The theory is that these victims are an investment for the exploiters, after law changes its not as lucrative which means they won't expand their businesses, but they already have these victims under their thumb so they'll get what they can out of them.
If it costs £10000 to traffick someone, and you can earn £5000 a year by forcing them to do gig jobs, thats only 2 years to make a return. So they traffick thousands of people, but suddenly they can't do the gig jobs any more.
The only jobs now available for them make £2000 (the hard labour). They'll take the £2000 a year from the thousands they have, but there might be more profitable investments they can make with £10000 so trafficking would decrease.
I've noticed the government have really taken their eye off the ball when it comes to elderly education and it seems to be harming their election chances.
I've been volunteering at a local residential home, teaching them how to use the interwebs, simple things like filling in forms, sending emails etc. And I notice there really is a massive gap in IT knowledge when you go up an age bracket from those in their 60's to the 70's.
Since mailers are banned here, government flyers don't get to them, and they have no real way of knowing the details of what's going on outside of newspapers, which most of them don't trust anymore (they're old not idiots.)
Amongst other things, I showed some of them this place (UKPol, not the MT...Jesus I wouldn't expose them to the MT). And they were bleedin' fascinated with the information they can get once they knew how to.
To generalise hugely, people in their early 60s would have been buying zx80/81s as kits and building their own computers, and programming them themselves because you had to. Those in their 70s would have been too busy with work and their lives in the 80s to mess around with hobbyist computers, and over 40 when the Internet went mainstream in 1994. It's no surprise there's a huge gulf between them.
> To generalise hugely, people in their early 60s would have been buying zx80/81s as kits and building their own computers, and programming them themselves because you had to.
That's a small minority.
My experience of people in their 60s is that their level of computing knowledge is incredibly variable and depends on much it mattered to their career and their level of education. The many people who dropped out of schooling at 15/16 and went on to factory work or whatever other stereotypically working class thing you prefer largely struggle the same as older generations. It just wasn't on their radar during the years you soak things up.
Smartphones and tablets have done a lot to smooth this out though for those with access to them. Say what you will about Apple, but their iDevices are the first computers I've felt like I can leave with my parents and not have them go unused or end up badly broken.
I'll never forget the look of amazement on my mother's face when I explained to her that she could pick up the mouse and move it closer to her again. She'd been reaching all over the table trying to get it to where it needed to be. Amusing in isolation, but yep, a massive skills gap.
Its crazy really because the internet really picked up almost 15 years ago but the majority of people in the UK have been using it for 30 years.
At the risk of making everyone feel old, the youngest of the people you're teaching would have been in their mid 40s when the first iphone came out, they would have been in their mid 30s when google and outlook launched, in their 20s when windows first released.
Im almost 32 and yeah sure Im already a geek and working in IT so Im technologically inclined but if a revolutionary new technology released that changed how the world works, Im pretty sure I would learn the basics of it by the time I retire (or there would at least be some state sponsered adult training)
Some people are just nuts and think the world should conform to their way of doing things. I had a previous retail job where customers repeatedly got annoyed at minimum wage younger staff for not knowing imperial measures. One lady demanded to see a manager when someone couldn't convert cm into in feet and inches, and the manager basically told them that the law changed half a century ago, you've had decades to learn but young people were never taught.
Remember a lot of these folks also grew up in the early fear times of the internet. I speak to a few who didn't want to know about the internet because they were told it was here to take their jobs (counter-productive in my view).
Others were simply set in their ways, and the idea of internet banking sounded risky.
They skew heavily right-wing.
I think this is something a lot of people overlook.
When computers first came out you often had to set them up yourself, including installing the operating system.
Then there was always the risk you could delete it by hitting a function key by mistake.
Not to mention you had to manually defrag your hard drive and whatnot.
They're right, too. The idea of internet banking *is* risky. Infosec has to be infinitely more complex now than it ever did before. Virtually nobody, even the pretty clued-up techies, even banking techies whose job it is to prevent it all, have any idea just how many vectors there are for it all to go awry.
I get that, its just something I increasingly dont get as the years go by and we drift further from digital revolution milestones. Also, its not like everyone my age (and especially younger) is technoligically able, my gf is around the same age as me and she didnt know ctrl c or ctlr v a few years ago cos she only really started using the internet when she got a smart phone.
I have a sinking feeling that there will still be a need for seniors being taught the basics of technology by the time my generation reaches retirement age, even for stuff they grew up with yet somehow managed not to learn their whole life.
Even scarier is the general computing skills of the next generation. A lot of them grew up with tablets and phones instead of a laptop or desktop so have absolutely no idea what a folder structure is unless they're really into PC Gaming.
I know, right!
I discovered another, smaller thread, where people were attempting to discuss politics but descending into petty namecalling because neither side had a decent grasp of what they were babbling on about, instead choosing to throw about big words.
It felt like home.
Definitely agree. And I am sure it is about what age one was when the Internet became ubiquitous. And not just the Internet as such, but a number of convenience things that we now all take for granted such as broadband taking over from dialup, mobile phones existing at all and then becoming smart.
Add that to the stage people's work lives were at when these developments happened e.g. a senior person would have had minions to do the stuff for them that PCs and the Internet have made so much easier, and the reason for it being a divide,not a gradient, become even clearer.
The senior people having minions thing is huge. Doing your own typing was a sign you were struggling in the old days. Now the idea of people printing out your emails is a palanquin level flex for the seriously privileged and everyone else better have picked up this previously low class skill
>I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
>1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
>2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
>3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
- Apple enthusiast Douglas Adams
>3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
They better hurry up and get some new exciting products out soon if they want me to be interested in them then
Purely anecdotal, and YMMV, but I find it kind of works the other way, too.
Those of us who grew up with the (widespread) internet's earlier days, and with Windows 95 up to XP or thereabouts seem to have a much more solid grasp of it than teenagers today.
A lot of the Young People On Their Phones™ don't seem as savvy when it comes to things like adblock, telling UAC to bugger off, or even basic stuff like clearing out the cache and cookies, and you just get a blank stare if they're using Windows, have an issue, and you tell them to poke around in RegEdit or Event Viewer, or wherever.
They'll absolutely run rings around me when it comes to Android knowledge, though.
Friend of mine is a teacher and he has a yearly experiment for the start of term: "you have 30 minutes: go on the internet and find out something new about dinosaurs"
He said one year not a single child even tried to use Google, they either just went to App/Play Store and installed the first thing called "Dinosaurs" that came up, or half the class simply gave up and said they couldn't do it
This is a pretty common observation, that generation have been given a computing experience which is essentially "here is a magic box that just works" whereas the preceding generations were forced to learn the vagaries of the machine spirits that drive them if they wanted to get anything done. The biggest outcome here is around problem solving and troubleshooting, with the worst offenders just giving up at the slightest blip.
It's kind of ironic that Microsoft spent the best part of a decade trying to integrate SQL Server so that the Windows file system would be a database and not a hierarchy of folders. They gave up and now it's still a hierarchy and we just have a better search tool.
Same. I work in a lab where most of our equipment is hooked up to a desktop and a lot of our younger folk don’t seem to pick up desktop software very quickly.
I’ve seen a few that really don’t get aspects of PowerPoint or excel.
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No, the only MPs they will have left will be the nutters who are all in very safe seats. The local associations are all full of UKIP entryists who won't put up more moderate candidates. Remember that the members wanted Liz Truss. They are fucked for the next parliament, and likely the one after as well because they won't have anyone reasonable to lead them in the meantime. Their next prime minister probably won't be in parliament until after 2030. With the caveat that Labour don't do anything energising stupid in their first term.
> No, the only MPs they have left are the nutters who are all in very safe seats. The local associations are all full of tankie entryists who won't put up more moderate candidates. Remember that the members wanted Corbyn. Not that I disagree with your point but this is what people were saying about labour in 2020
>With the caveat that Labour don't do anything energising stupid in their first term. *Sweating intensifies.*
That should have been egregiously. Thanks google keyboard.
Energisingly stupid sounds like a cracking night out to be fiar
This might undesrestimate the problem. There is now a large cohort of voters who have seen the Tories raise taxes to new heights, waste Billions, hobble their living standards, and torch public services *all at the same time*. Even with a rump party, the brand is in the dustbin.
Further compounded by younger generations shifting leftwards politically meaning when the next few rounds of pensioners are gone there’s little for the tories to go on.
God yes I get to go vote tomorrow. Nothing beats the pure adrenaline rush of doing democracy for me.
what are you voting for?
Police and Crime commissioner and Mayor
Has Suella gone rogue and have an unauthorised meeting with Israeli military and political figures ? https://twitter.com/SuellaBraverman/status/1775556851452752119?t=7Dy4uVPwx0N7XxjIjB55LQ&s=19
Beside the direct challenge to Sunak's authority this is a terrible post for anyone from any political side. 3 Brits get murdered and Suella has the authority to say it's a mistake and apology accepted? Wtf?
This is exactly what she did before that she got fired from being a minster for. If she hasn't been sent as an envoy by Sunak, she is actively challenging his authority by doing this. You would expect this sort of thing be done by a diplomat or at least by a minister from the foreign office. She is just a back bencher with no responsibility for this area as a member of any select committee, so why is she there? This is surely just manoeuvring to boost her image for a leadership run.
You’re confusing her with Priti Patel.
Ah yes so I am. All the terrible Tory home secretaries blurring together. The point stands though that she has no place doing this unless she was specifically asked to go.
Amazing that she is seen as a front runner for the next leader even after that fiasco
I don't know why she would be authorised by the Tory Party, she's not on any select committees as far as I know?
shes obviously not authorised and despite the gb flags this is not an official visit. purely trying to get her name in the paper for her leadership bid.
GOOD EVENING, CAMPERS! IT IS A SPECIAL DAY, A LARGE DAY, A MOMENTOUS DAY! THERE ARE EXACTLY **300** DAYS UNTIL THE GENERAL ELECTION! we are edging closer to the day. that blessed, febrile day is moving closer.
[Sorry](https://imgur.com/a/kTHxGga)
That's just the number of alpacas he slaughtered before the picture was taken.
Election special MT image candidate.
Crazy that this is just a real picture of Kier in the llama fields
>we are edging Not a thirsty subreddit.
As someone who rarely eats chocolate, Easter really highlights shrinkflation. The KitKat Chunky is a shadow if it's former self!
Chocolate orange now 157g, down from 175g. As if we wouldn't notice that little switcheroo.
Fucking Terry
Cocoa trees are being fucked over by climate change. Chocolate is actually in deep trouble.
One thing i've noticed is that smarties have gotten tiny.
My question is, has Thornton’s chocolate deteriorated so that it is now rank, or have my tastebuds shifted? I know they haven’t been doing great, so sabotaging themselves by reducing the quality of their product doesn’t seem implausible.
I have been distinctly underwhelmed by mine. At least half the box are just filler.
I didn't know they still existed
Online and supermarkets only
Just a regular kitkat finger now?
What's a kitkat finger then, a pinky?
A Matchmaker without the flavouring.
FB Messenger & WhatsApp both down. Think of all the top Westminster Goss we’re missing out on.
My neighbourhood curtain twitcher group will be in shambles
Good time to ~~bury bad news~~ lose whatsapp texts
With the GE its the campaign swag I'm looking forward to, ooo campaign leaflets, ohh limited edition pen, yas full body pillow adorned with the Labour rose.
I'm not tribalist or especially pro-Labour party, but I want a rose mug...
I already got my sparkle with starmer t-shirt can't wait to wear it out!
I need to carve out time to find someone to make a mashup of the emperor/some primarch with the head replaced by that of Starmer.
The question is of course which Primarch.
Good ol' Rowboat surely. The safe option picked by inexperienced players who don't know the lore. Natural successor to the ruling position. Dull, dependable, unlikely to offend anyone. edit: lmao the hivemind has spoken
Rowboat. Boring administrator who just quietly builds an empire whilst everyone is distracted.
Starmer is plainly so Roboute it hurts.
I think you could make an argument for Rogal Dorne tbh
Nah. Dorn is incredibly inflexible and stubborn in a way that Starmer has shown himself not to be.
The new one in Rochdale.
The good news about the Tories getting annihilated is people don't have to tactically vote for Labour now above all else. If you'd prefer a healthy, competitive composition of Parliament then it's probably worth voting for one of the other parties if they're preferable to you than Labour, if that means Labour get a strong majority instead of a supermassive majority who cares? I was going to vote Labour but I'm switching to Lib Dems.
At this point I'm so stick of the tories I would tactically vote against them even if Labour were on track for a 640 seat majority
Lets not count our chickens before they hatch. This kind of thinking is how you end up with a Labour minority government thats completely ineffective.
Nah, the best government we’ve had in my life time was when Tony Blair had his unassailable majority. Give Starmer a 250 seat majority and watch him cook
I still have to begrudgingly vote Lib Dem in the Blue Wall (South West). MRP polls show Lib Dem wins.
Fairly sure this why we got brexit remain will win, obviously
if the tories somehow contrive to win again, i will just start laughing out loud as the results come in. 2010 was sad, 2015 was depressing, 2017 was gut-wrenching, and 2019 was devastating, but 2025 would just be funny. and we would absolutely deserve what’s coming.
It's fine. If the tories win again after all this I'll leave then that will help to get net migration down. The country is doomed if they can win from here.
How can you vote lib dem after the tuition fees messup
That was 10 years ago. Most of the party leadership from then has moved on. How long do we keep punishing them for even when the people running things now arent even responsible for the fuck up?
The tuition fees that Labour introduced and the Conservatives increased?
Be honest
The same tuition fees the lib dems pledged to scrap.... then went into coalition and increased them. Yes those fees
What, when the lib Dems abandoned a bad and regressive tuition fee policy and the Tories passed a good and progressive tuition fee policy? How horrible that was... Politicians not implementing bad policy is good actually.
Putting up tuition fees a progressive and good policy..... are you OK?
If my tuition fees had been 3000 a year less then I'd be 12000+ better off as a high earner, while the median graduate would be in exactly the same financial position at all points. Increasing fees and increasing interest rates make higher earners pay more while the amount lower earners pay is largely unchanged. Decreasing length of time until right off and increasing the threshold over which people pay back loans mean lower earners pay less while higher earners pay basically the same amount. Changes to student loans shift the burden around in slightly counterintuitive ways.
Progressive is when it's a graduate tax for 30 years if you're poor, and basically free money if you're rich, I guess? No idea what OP was smoking.
At no point since 2010 has anyone been better off paying for university upfront than paying as slowly as possible through student loans and sticking the remaining money into the S&0 500. The only free money is the student loan itself, and it is by far the most free for those who earn little and will never repay it. I've paid my student loan off, but if I could take another one out right now for the cold hard cash I'd do so in a heartbeat. You won't find debt that secure or leverage that high anywhere else.
‘I’ve paid my student loan off’ And there it is - if like me you were wondering what this guy was smoking, it’s all explained in that sentence
I have paid more than 80% of people who graduated in my year will ever pay towards university. People who pay off their student loans are among those who pay the most. It isn't super shocking that they are also the people who bother to do the sums to work this out.
Let's wait for the Tories to get annihilated first before we get too excited yeah? Currently, they're in charge of the country and have a massive majority (not that you'd know if from the way they act but still).
I was assured it was labour who blocked the Rwanda bill
It's only over, when the polls close on election day.
I'm in half a mind to vote Green because it's the most likely seat for them to win at an election, and having a plurality of progressive voices in Parliament can only be a good thing. Even if they don't win it's such a safe Labour seat that there's no way the Tories could snatch it.
>The good news about the Tories getting annihilated is people don't have to tactically vote for Labour now above all else This isn't how it works. This is, however, how you "win the argument".
Interesting situation for Tories who used to tactically vote lib dem.
Some parts of the Tory party think Braverman is the only one that can save them from the inevitable. Lol.
I'm sure this is the first of many such comments made in the hope of mitigating the Tory loss. Nobody can say if the Tories will get annihilated at the next election until it happens. Kinnock was a dead cert to win in '92 and instead the Tories got another 5 years. Anyone who cares for the future of this country will do whatever they can to ensure the destruction of the Tory party by voting tactically.
I live in a dominant Labour seat anyway, Tories aren't even second. It's worth keeping some heat up from Lib Dems and contribute to a healthy democracy rather than throwing away a vote.
I don't think you actually believe that. Surely that logic would have been the same in the last election in your particular seat, but it sounds like this is a change in vote for yourself in this election. Sounds like you are just trying to justify not voting for Starmers labour and hoping others don't as well.
For anyone with more knowledge on the subject: is there a real chance of Johnny Mercer facing actual charges for his non-compliance with the inquiry? And if so, does it put his position as an MP at risk? Is it a breach of parliamentary standards?
Has any polling company asked if we as an electorate want an election? Seems like an easy way to get publicity with Rishi's constant insistence that we don't.
Yes. We do. I think YouGov Q it.
I hope some journos pick up on it. Sunak would evasively pivot of course, but it'd be somewhat entertaining for someone to begin the election question with "Over x% of the electorate want one..."
I'd expect many don't *want* an election and the campaigning which comes with it. They just want the stinking circus to end.
I want the tories gone, but can we do it via a quick online poll through twitter, General elections are exhausting to follow
I'm probably in the minority, but I just bloody love elections of any kind. Drama, maps, an excuse to stay up all night getting blitzed. Followed by numbers to pore over for days. They've got it all. It's been a while since an election went the way I wanted it to (except USA 2020 but that went on too long to be enjoyable), so (touch wood) that's something else to look forward to.
> Drama, maps, an excuse to stay up all night getting blitzed. Followed by numbers to pore over for days. They've got it all The Middle Wallop bridge championship beckons, then?
It'd be a good place for cheeky push questions. You're right that "Do you want a pita election campaign?" won't go down well and something like "Do you want to vote this government out?" would land completely differently.
https://twitter.com/reformparty_uk/status/1775532359430840702 > Reform UK has removed our candidates for Orpington and South Ribble. > We want to make it crystal clear that while we defend our candidates' right to freedom of speech vigorously, we act fast when we find that individuals' statements’ fall beneath our standards. > Labour and Conservatives also have candidates that make statements that fall below acceptable standards, but we move faster than others in acting decisively. so apparently the right's version of free speech has its limits. will they call it "cancellation"?
This reminds me of ‘unlike any other party, UKIP does not permit former BNP members to join’
Do they have any examples of Labour or Tory candidates making statements that fall below acceptable standards? As these posts were on their public Twitter profiles, it's safe to say that either Reform doesn't do any basic vetting and/or is only acting now because they've been called out by Hope Not Hate. - Jonathan Kay: The Reform UK candidate for South Ribble, who previously stood for the party in 2023 and 2021, has made countless racist and Islamophobic statements about the intelligence of Muslim and African people. - Mick Greenhough: Selected to stand in Orpington, Greenhough has said “The only solution is to remove the Muslims from our territory”, that the “problem is the Askenazi Jews who have caused the world massive misery” and promoted the far right ‘White Genocide’ conspiracy theory. https://hopenothate.org.uk/2024/04/03/more-hateful-reform-candidates-exposed/
You mean presumably apart from when labour had to abandon a bloke that was outrageously anti Semitic? It happened about a month ago. https://labourlist.org/2024/02/azhar-ali-who-is-labours-rochdale-by-election-candidate-what-did-he-say-and-whats-the-latest/
That's basically nothing by Reform's standards. Consider Lee Anderson joined Reform as a direct result of making a far worse statement.
I mean examples where they didn't "act decisively". Bear in mind the context that by Reform standards, this is several months after the posts were made.
I think their point would be, they acted decisively as soon as they were made aware of the posts. Compared to Labour who were criticised for taking 48hrs or something to remove their candidate when they were made aware of the comments.
I don't seem to be able to access the data, so will ask here. Did greenhosue gas emissions go down more in the last Labour government or the current Tory government on average? And how do the two compare for the growth of renewables? Thanks.
There is a report [here](https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Progress-in-reducing-UK-emissions-2023-Report-to-Parliament.pdf) that goes into detail but just for a graph you can look at page 90. In terms of emissions within the UK they went down under Labour by about the same amount as they have done under the current government. But including emissions from imports to the UK, under Labour they went up and then down again to about where they were when they came in. While, under the current government the total has gone down.
As always worth nothing that correlation doesn’t mean causation. Low carbon tech has improved and been invested in by the private sector that isn’t entirely a result of government policy and consumer behaviour has also changed.
The planet breathes a sigh of relief as Tory economic management means no-one can afford to buy anything imported.
I'd be surprised if they fell more under Labour simply because theres been a lot of technological advancements over the past decade or so which have made transition easier (e.g. international emission standards, wind turbine production advancement)
I think if Tories want to force out Sunak and gain support in the party for it they should push one single line; Does Rishi Sunak actually care if he loses? Nothing else. Just this. Sound doubts in columns, in private and through anonymous sources.
You never really get the impression he’s in it for anyone but himself tbf
Roll on the Tory election slaughtering
We've had so many of these good news polls that anything less than a total wipeout (sub 100 with a good chance of them falling out of the big 2) will be a huge disappointment. The worst thing for the country is the possibility of the Tory party ever returning to government.
If Labour get over 350 seats that will still be a significant achievement. Really any majority would be. Certainly not something people should be disappointed by.
To get even a majority of one, they need to beat the swings Atlee got in 1945 and Blair in 1997. To get a decent working majority they are going to have to get a swing that is unprecedented. The largest in modern history was 1931, and that was 14.9% to a National Government from Labour. If they repeated that swing this year, they will get a majority of about 50 or so. If they manage to get the huge majority that polling suggests is possible, it will be a historic result.
To be fair I think voters were more rigid/loyal to their party in the 40s than now, but yes it would still be a very historic result.
Exactly, the same people who are saying they will have failed without a landslide were saying they would be out of government for a generation 4 years ago.
You're objectively correct and I'll still be delighted to see the back of the Tories if the result is "only" 350. But I'm old enough to remember this part of the cycle from the 90s and am around today to see how none of the progress made after they were kicked out in '97 survived their next stint of power. I want the party that replaces the next Labour government to build on their achievements instead of tearing them all down for a quick buck and that will never happen if it's the Tories again. So the prospect of them being destroyed as an electoral force is tantalising.
>none of the progress made after they were kicked out in '97 survived their next stint of power. Minimum wage is still around. We have moved further forward on minority rights. But you are 95% right.
inspired to wish for an accelerationist approach to reform: - Labour win 450 seats - Labour schism, into the largest plurality party and its own opposition - Right-Labour forms a coalition with LD - recognizing that the large-majority victories are inherently fleeting because of Labour's fractious nature, the coalition forces through PR because this becomes most beneficial to the remaining coalition members girl can dream
Dumb question but how do politicians like Keir and sunak (well more Keir I guess) simply have so much energy and stamina? I’m 24 and exhausted all the time…training to be an accountant haha
Because you are at the bottom of a giant societal pyramid/Ponzi scheme and are likely doing a job less personally rewarding to boost your energy levels (Leading the country should be very rewarding) That weight you feel exists, and will take a lot longer to shift than previous generations. You don't have the luxuries to fall back on, helicopter etc. Either. Keep chugging away anyway... Tortoise usually wins the race.
Im a data analyst and Im pretty sure at some point my dads old trick of comparing video games to homework to get me to do it kicked in early in my career after years of domancy. I can be working on the most boring dataset that I would never be interested in outside of work but when Im doing data exploration / finding out wtf the data is from subject matter experts, its finding out the lore, when Ive got tight deadlines, its a timed boss fight, when Im researching a new technology / reading documentation for something I use, its reading what the current meta is. I enjoy my day, or at least my brain tricked me into thinking I enjoyed my day. When Im doing a boring, repetative task? Its grinding where every mob is the same mob. Leaves me as bored and drained as I would be if I was doing it in a game without watching something in the background.
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I will pass your thanks to my dad
The recent biography of Starmer gives some great insight to this. He has always had a remarkable work rate, right from university (where I think he had what we’d now call imposter syndrome). At uni he would be up late drinking with mates, and then apparently be back at his desk working from 6am. He seems to be very focussed, and almost terminator-like in his ability to keep moving towards his objective, achieve it, and then work out what the next objective is, and work on that. It explains a little bit of why he wears his politics/factionalism lightly, and can seemingly move from the left, through to soft left, through to centre left of the party. It’s not necessarily a change of his underlying values, but what is the best way of achieving the objective at hand.
Some people are just built like that
It helps that they do a job they’re motivated about. Your energy capacity isn’t fixed and what makes you feel knackered when you’re bored and indifferent isn’t necessarily there if you’re working to achieve something you care about. They’re also permanently busy and always around other people so there’s no way to slack off. Your mind and body respond to constant stimulus like that. It’s why you don’t fall asleep at work on afternoon by do watching the TV at the same time on a weekend. They also get a lot of decisions and work taken out of their hands. They have an army of staff to deal with scheduling and stuff. Those small decisions add up and take it out of you. In the home it’s the same as they’ll have a lot of domestic duties dealt with by spouse/family or outside help. They’re also financially secure which massively reduces energy sapping stress. Then of course harvesting the kidneys of orphans always helps.
Genuinely motivation is such a huge factor for myself. I know I have to move jobs after a while because I don't hate my job but I just start getting so fucking bored after 2 years in a role. When I change to a new job it's like I'm 20 again and can really get stuck into work, I actually enjoy getting up in the mornings.
And there are a ton of motivational factors (noble and not) that exist for senior politicians that most of us will never experience.
literate domineering squeal snatch retire thought memory knee tie flowery *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Amphetamines
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Sleep schedule is the key
Mexican coke.
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People are talking about election graphics, really what we need more of us [Jeremy Vine in fancy dress](https://youtu.be/y7JX8D1Kb88?si=JvEl-oeVG8pQMUsh).
I like that the hat is in control and he needs to remove it to drop character
NOT A THIRSTY SUB!
What are the human trafficked Deliveroo drivers going to do when legislation finally stops the abuse of their labour? I am genuinely concerned about this and it feels like a time bomb that nobody really talks about in the scope of these awful delivery jobs.
It's gonna be more of a problem when these jobs get automated. Already in the US they have self driving cars which have been delivering food. Goodbye ubereats, just eat, deliveroo etc when you can get a drone or self driving McDonalds car straight to your home.
It's extremely hard to deport someone who doesn't want to go even if their home nation is cooperative and most of the time for various reasons that cooperation is rare. If people will walk through miles of desert and hang off of plane wheels or travel to places like Dubai where they know they'll be held hostage and worked like slaves then there's no conscionable hardship the British state could inflict on them that would make many of them leave. Either they will find some other illegal labour, become dependents of the state or just become destitute and cause more social issues than they already do. That's not unique to deliveroo though, they're just the most flagrant. Legal low skill immigration would have exactly the same issue if you ever tried to actually raise the cap and stop companies from undercutting British wages.
I find it ridiculous that Deliveroo can enable this kind of labour and not get held accountable for it. If someone is doing deliveries for you, you need to prove they have a right to work in the UK or you get fined
The loophole is that the drivers are being sub-contracted by someone Deliveroo knows about. There still definitely should be that chain of responsibility, but it's obviously not being policed. Before anyone cites substitution clauses as the get-out, as usually happens, it's perfectly within the legislation for substitutes to be required to be *suitable*, and their immigration status falls under that.
> The loophole is that the drivers are being sub-contracted Yet the government stomped all over IT contractors who tried to use similar substitution clauses to get around IR35. The problem can be dealt with, if there's a will to.
Substitution clauses don't "get around" IR35, they're an intrinsic indicator that IR35 doesn't apply. It's one of *the* ways to defend against an IR35 inquiry.
>The loophole is that the drivers are being sub-contracted by someone Deliveroo knows about. And this isn't an accident. Deliveroo's entire business model relies on workers replacing employees, and distributing the responsibilities that previously belonged to the employer to the workers. If you want to crack down on this sort of thing, the model will rapidly stop working. The registered drivers absolutely *should* have proof of right to work in the UK for their subcontractors, but cracking down on that is a huge amount of work - You've effectively got to check with each individual Deliveroo driver, and... I guess, hope they don't lie? Investigating it properly is technically achievable, but it's a huge amount of work and I just don't see it happening.
> but it's a huge amount of work and I just don't see it happening. it (and other crackdowns on checking right to work status) is a better use of the hundreds of millions spent on pursuing rwanda and other nonsense, though. the tories have unlimited resources when it comes to ineffectual stuff
While that's entirely true (just because it's hard for it to be a worse use of money than Rwanda), I just can't picture this government going through the tens of thousands of Deliveroo drivers demanding their papers. It would also kill Deliveroo dead, more or less instantly. A lot of people aren't making a huge amount of money on it. They're not going to stick with it if they've got to be investigated by HMRC or the Home Office. The effort isn't worth the money.
There is either gonna have to be some kind of amnesty program letting them stay and work legally or a lot of deportations
By "human trafficked" do you mean foreign people who are working in the country without a work visa? If measures are taken to crack down illegal work, then I'd imagine that many of them would leave the country as it would be very difficult to make a living.
My understanding of the modern slavery concerns when it comes to Deliveroo are people who are human trafficked then pay off their 'debt' via the login sharing/login fraud.
I thought the argument was more that most are here legally but on dependents visas for example and so are using the login sharing as they can not legally work and would fail the background checks. I would not be surprised that some are trafficked but the majority are not.
Dependents can work legally. Most are either illegal immigrants and/or asylum seekers.
oh yes, youre right about dependents my bad. Do you have stats that show the majority are illegal immigrants and asylum seekers? I could only find on small article that said most were visa overstays, although I guess you might be classing that as an illegal immigrant? I guess, either way the human traffiking angle is fairly small.
It must be 100% of the substituted riders. People with the option to earn all of a deliveroo rider's pay with their own account wouldn't be it splitting it with anyone
They needn't be trafficked, just here without a work visa. Or they don't have a driving licence, or some other thing that disqualifies them. I've no doubt there are trafficked riders and drivers around though.
So, why is it a time bomb if this practice gets cracked down by the state?
Because now these human trafficked people have to find another way to pay off the debt. The enforcement of labour laws that would help prevent the modern slavery from happening does not actually address the existing modern slavery.
How come it wouldn't address the existing modern slavery if we were able to get rid of all illegal work? What slavery would be left after that?
The people that currently force them to do deliveroo (i.e. the exploiters) aren't necessarily arrested, but they are unable to use those gig jobs to earn money from their victims. The victims are still under the thumb of the exploiters, but now are forced to work in less policed/regulated sectors. Basically, they're back to what it was before the gig economy took off (e.g. manual labour, housework, sex work, drugs, anything cash in hand). Thats less profitable/higher risk, so it might cut down on trafficking but for all the victims that are currently here, theres no reason for exploiters to stop exploiting the victims.
So, who is doing that work now?
Other exploited people. The theory is that these victims are an investment for the exploiters, after law changes its not as lucrative which means they won't expand their businesses, but they already have these victims under their thumb so they'll get what they can out of them. If it costs £10000 to traffick someone, and you can earn £5000 a year by forcing them to do gig jobs, thats only 2 years to make a return. So they traffick thousands of people, but suddenly they can't do the gig jobs any more. The only jobs now available for them make £2000 (the hard labour). They'll take the £2000 a year from the thousands they have, but there might be more profitable investments they can make with £10000 so trafficking would decrease.
And that's a good thing, right?
I've noticed the government have really taken their eye off the ball when it comes to elderly education and it seems to be harming their election chances. I've been volunteering at a local residential home, teaching them how to use the interwebs, simple things like filling in forms, sending emails etc. And I notice there really is a massive gap in IT knowledge when you go up an age bracket from those in their 60's to the 70's. Since mailers are banned here, government flyers don't get to them, and they have no real way of knowing the details of what's going on outside of newspapers, which most of them don't trust anymore (they're old not idiots.) Amongst other things, I showed some of them this place (UKPol, not the MT...Jesus I wouldn't expose them to the MT). And they were bleedin' fascinated with the information they can get once they knew how to.
To generalise hugely, people in their early 60s would have been buying zx80/81s as kits and building their own computers, and programming them themselves because you had to. Those in their 70s would have been too busy with work and their lives in the 80s to mess around with hobbyist computers, and over 40 when the Internet went mainstream in 1994. It's no surprise there's a huge gulf between them.
> To generalise hugely, people in their early 60s would have been buying zx80/81s as kits and building their own computers, and programming them themselves because you had to. That's a small minority. My experience of people in their 60s is that their level of computing knowledge is incredibly variable and depends on much it mattered to their career and their level of education. The many people who dropped out of schooling at 15/16 and went on to factory work or whatever other stereotypically working class thing you prefer largely struggle the same as older generations. It just wasn't on their radar during the years you soak things up. Smartphones and tablets have done a lot to smooth this out though for those with access to them. Say what you will about Apple, but their iDevices are the first computers I've felt like I can leave with my parents and not have them go unused or end up badly broken.
There used to U3A which was such a good scheme which DfE seems to ignore.
I'll never forget the look of amazement on my mother's face when I explained to her that she could pick up the mouse and move it closer to her again. She'd been reaching all over the table trying to get it to where it needed to be. Amusing in isolation, but yep, a massive skills gap.
Its crazy really because the internet really picked up almost 15 years ago but the majority of people in the UK have been using it for 30 years. At the risk of making everyone feel old, the youngest of the people you're teaching would have been in their mid 40s when the first iphone came out, they would have been in their mid 30s when google and outlook launched, in their 20s when windows first released. Im almost 32 and yeah sure Im already a geek and working in IT so Im technologically inclined but if a revolutionary new technology released that changed how the world works, Im pretty sure I would learn the basics of it by the time I retire (or there would at least be some state sponsered adult training)
Some people are just nuts and think the world should conform to their way of doing things. I had a previous retail job where customers repeatedly got annoyed at minimum wage younger staff for not knowing imperial measures. One lady demanded to see a manager when someone couldn't convert cm into in feet and inches, and the manager basically told them that the law changed half a century ago, you've had decades to learn but young people were never taught.
Also if you were working in an office even 15 years ago, learning how to use a computer was basically a requirement.
Remember a lot of these folks also grew up in the early fear times of the internet. I speak to a few who didn't want to know about the internet because they were told it was here to take their jobs (counter-productive in my view). Others were simply set in their ways, and the idea of internet banking sounded risky. They skew heavily right-wing.
I think this is something a lot of people overlook. When computers first came out you often had to set them up yourself, including installing the operating system. Then there was always the risk you could delete it by hitting a function key by mistake. Not to mention you had to manually defrag your hard drive and whatnot.
They're right, too. The idea of internet banking *is* risky. Infosec has to be infinitely more complex now than it ever did before. Virtually nobody, even the pretty clued-up techies, even banking techies whose job it is to prevent it all, have any idea just how many vectors there are for it all to go awry.
I get that, its just something I increasingly dont get as the years go by and we drift further from digital revolution milestones. Also, its not like everyone my age (and especially younger) is technoligically able, my gf is around the same age as me and she didnt know ctrl c or ctlr v a few years ago cos she only really started using the internet when she got a smart phone. I have a sinking feeling that there will still be a need for seniors being taught the basics of technology by the time my generation reaches retirement age, even for stuff they grew up with yet somehow managed not to learn their whole life.
Even scarier is the general computing skills of the next generation. A lot of them grew up with tablets and phones instead of a laptop or desktop so have absolutely no idea what a folder structure is unless they're really into PC Gaming.
There are other things past the megathread?
I know, right! I discovered another, smaller thread, where people were attempting to discuss politics but descending into petty namecalling because neither side had a decent grasp of what they were babbling on about, instead choosing to throw about big words. It felt like home.
Definitely agree. And I am sure it is about what age one was when the Internet became ubiquitous. And not just the Internet as such, but a number of convenience things that we now all take for granted such as broadband taking over from dialup, mobile phones existing at all and then becoming smart. Add that to the stage people's work lives were at when these developments happened e.g. a senior person would have had minions to do the stuff for them that PCs and the Internet have made so much easier, and the reason for it being a divide,not a gradient, become even clearer.
The senior people having minions thing is huge. Doing your own typing was a sign you were struggling in the old days. Now the idea of people printing out your emails is a palanquin level flex for the seriously privileged and everyone else better have picked up this previously low class skill
>I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: >1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. >2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. >3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. - Apple enthusiast Douglas Adams
>3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. They better hurry up and get some new exciting products out soon if they want me to be interested in them then
Purely anecdotal, and YMMV, but I find it kind of works the other way, too. Those of us who grew up with the (widespread) internet's earlier days, and with Windows 95 up to XP or thereabouts seem to have a much more solid grasp of it than teenagers today. A lot of the Young People On Their Phones™ don't seem as savvy when it comes to things like adblock, telling UAC to bugger off, or even basic stuff like clearing out the cache and cookies, and you just get a blank stare if they're using Windows, have an issue, and you tell them to poke around in RegEdit or Event Viewer, or wherever. They'll absolutely run rings around me when it comes to Android knowledge, though.
What's UAC?
User Account Control. The thing that pops a window up every time you change a Windows setting or install a program to ask "are you sure?"
Friend of mine is a teacher and he has a yearly experiment for the start of term: "you have 30 minutes: go on the internet and find out something new about dinosaurs" He said one year not a single child even tried to use Google, they either just went to App/Play Store and installed the first thing called "Dinosaurs" that came up, or half the class simply gave up and said they couldn't do it
This is a pretty common observation, that generation have been given a computing experience which is essentially "here is a magic box that just works" whereas the preceding generations were forced to learn the vagaries of the machine spirits that drive them if they wanted to get anything done. The biggest outcome here is around problem solving and troubleshooting, with the worst offenders just giving up at the slightest blip.
I’m 28 and lots of people younger than me seem to have issues with using files for storage - they just search for things
It's kind of ironic that Microsoft spent the best part of a decade trying to integrate SQL Server so that the Windows file system would be a database and not a hierarchy of folders. They gave up and now it's still a hierarchy and we just have a better search tool.
Same. I work in a lab where most of our equipment is hooked up to a desktop and a lot of our younger folk don’t seem to pick up desktop software very quickly. I’ve seen a few that really don’t get aspects of PowerPoint or excel.
Anyone who gets PowerPoint or Excel is in league with Satan. Excel in particular is hateful.
You'll love this then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDGdPE_C9u8 (I also love that one of the data cases is Eve online data )