Tech firms, come to Blighty! Everything is brill! Brexit schmexit, Galileo schmalileo The UK government has given itself a reassuring cuddle this week, asserting that – even if high-profile projects such as Galileo march overseas – international tech firms still love Blighty. UK Prime Minister Theresa May held a roundtable event yesterday to showcase Britain as the best place in the world to run a tech company …
you're (too) harsh. The problem is, we don't have anything unique or attractive to offer to the world that can't be had elsewhere. Other than being a tax heaven for Russians, but that has recently been (officially) declared undesirable. So, let's be the leaders of AI and hope that this AI takes mercy and makes us dispensable last, as it goes, in due course, through its own "streamlining" and "asset optimisation" process.
They're going to keep bringing Alan Turing into anything vaguely tech-related aren't they? Everyone knows the man was a hero and a genius, so they assume their pet projects will get some reflected glory from Turing's work. Expect any number of PPE ministerial statements along the lines of:
Alan Turing would have loved automated car tracking.
Alan Turing understood the importance of technology in war so he would have worked on our new megadeath 7000 hunter-killer drone project.
Alan Turing's work made biometric ID cards possible.
...
"who will pay you a pittance and then castrate you for your trouble"
And remember, big megacorps, once we're out there will be no pesky EU "rights" telling you how to treat your workforce, so feel free to skimp on protective clothing, put the entire lot on zero hour contacts, change their positions and remuneration from month to month, and to top it off, feel free to dump all the waste in any nearby river.
Isn't Blighty marvelous?! Come, please, for the love of God come, before another high street name goes under...
people asked me what Schmexit meant.
Schmexit means Schmexit. I thought everybody knew that.
But rather than demonstrating against the Tories, why didn't you demonstrate against the clueless twats of the Labour party who have kept the Conservatives in government through a string of utterly dislikeable and incompetent leaders, all with weird, incoherent policies that have made the Labour party unelectable even against the dislikeable, colourless, cloth-eared, lightweights of the Conservatives?
My sympathies are somewhere towards the right wing of the Conservative party, but I'd welcome a good, strong, electable Labour party, simply because as things stand nobody's happy, and still nobody would be happy if that bearded communist idiot were PM. The same situation applied in 2005, when a Labour party that had run out of steam and ideas was re-elected with a dead duck MP, simply because the Tories were led by the unelectable Michael Howard, a shadow cabinet largely composed of talent free nobodies, and no clear ideas or agenda. Considering the past two decades, the political mess we're in can actually be attributed more readily to the failure of opposition parties to up their game than to lacklustre governments who ideally wouldn't even be in post if the opposition were competent.
But rather than demonstrating against the Tories, why didn't you demonstrate against the clueless twats of the Labour party who have kept the Conservatives in government through a string of utterly dislikeable and incompetent leaders, ..... Ledswinger
You could also include the self-righteous bigots of the Democratic Unionist Party leadership in that twat collective, Ledswinger, but whether clueless is appropriate whenever they are reported to have wrangled £1billion from the Conservative government for the continuing support of their ten MPs even as they are disgracefully paid from the public purse and blatantly are allowed to continue drawing their benefits cheques for work they were elected to try and do at Stormont, but which they haven't signed in for for well over a year now, is quite another matter.
And lo and behold, one has to ask why, whenever everything is running just as smoothly as it is ever was, why on Earth does anyone think they are needed. It's all a right royal farce and tragic comedy show, is it not?
It is hard not to imagine them all as being parasites in public office with not a titter of wit or novel intelligence to share and driver everything in a new direction between them.
And there is a certain arrogance and profound ignorance which easily descends into certified madness to think that anyone with anything worthwhile would consider being a supportive party and party to anything such folk might be involved in.
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" What's going on? amanfromMars1 made sense to me!"
He always makes at least as much sense as anyone in any of the parties in Parliament, sometimes much more. He doesn't seem to lie either.
I'd vote for him if he stood for election.
What's going on? amanfromMars1 made sense to me!
That is because it take a 'man from mars' to understand the absolute mess we are in and make sense of the Political Parties and their stances, while we head towards the 'BrickWall' called Brexit, at speed.
The Tories are only concerned about the 'Party' and the Country comes somewhere near the bottom of the list of priorities. Meanwhile infighting in the Labour Party is the norm as there is obviously no reason to change the standard focus on trying to get to the top of the Greasy pole as the country has plenty of time before something important has to be done ....... if I could just remember what that was it would be such a help !!!
The two major parties are so focused on themselves that the country can 'spin & burn' while the EU laughs at the chaos and gets to take free potshots without being noticed by any party.
I am begining to think that the chaos is deliberate to ensure the result is such utter chaos that the people are forced to protest in the streets to force a 'new' focus on fixing the mess. This would make dropping Brexit much much easier and the subsequent protests would be lost in the other Shouting and Screaming taking place.
"are allowed to continue drawing their benefits cheques for work they were elected to try and do at Stormont, but which they haven't signed in for for well over a year now"
That's mostly the fault of the republicans though, with never going to be acceptable policies like insisting on brits having to learn a near dead and close to useless foreign language in schools. And it was the republicans that broke up the assembly in the first place.
Gaelic is hardly dead or useless in Ireland or Scotland, despite 200+ years of draconian politically-driven attempts to eliminate it. The DUP hate the whole idea of Gaelic because it is, in NI, Irish rather than British - but then the DUP version of British no longer exists anywhere else in the UK.
Since every NI person I know has an Irish (so EU) passport as well as a British one, I personally think we'll end up with the UK/EU border in the Irish Sea.
Since every NI person I know has an Irish (so EU) passport as well as a British one,
You have a small & select group of acquaintences. Few of the nationalists that I know would want a British passport, and most NI brits that I know (I'm one) have little interest in having an Irish one. Last year only a little over 82,000 people in NI (out of 1.5 million) applied for an Irish passport, only a 28% increase year-on-year, so the totals with both are small. I live in an EU country & see no point in having an Irish passport as well as my UK one.
Given that a passport is valid for 10 years, and that 82,000 applications is only a 28% increase, that means ~64,000 applications in the previous year.
The most pessimistic assumption (that prior to that there were no applications), would mean over 9% of NI has an Irish passport. If 64,000 is assumed as a baseline, that's over 40% of NI has a non-expired Irish passport.
"Gaelic is hardly dead or useless in Ireland or Scotland, despite 200+ years of draconian politically-driven attempts to eliminate it"
It is versus English. And pretty much anything else is more useful to learn even just inside the UK such as French, Spanish or German. Anyway there is nothing to stop someone choosing to learn Gaelic. The republicans wanted to force it on everyone which is never going to happen.
>But rather than demonstrating against the Tories, why didn't you demonstrate against the clueless twats of the Labour party who have kept the Conservatives in government through a string of utterly dislikeable and incompetent leaders, all with weird, incoherent policies that have made the Labour party unelectable even against the dislikeable, colourless, cloth-eared, lightweights of the Conservatives?<
Well firstly, I'd point out that it's the tories who are actually in control, and demonstrating aginst any other party is completely pointless. Secondly, I think you'll find that the current labour leadership is eminently likeable - and it's only those who are force-fed their opinions by media moguls who don't pay any UK tax or, indeed, reside her, that believe otherwise.
>My sympathies are somewhere towards the right wing of the Conservative party, but I'd welcome a good, strong, electable Labour party,<
No, what you actually want is a return to 'new labour' - the aberration created by Tony Blair that turned the party into a slightly-watered-down clone of the tories. It's not an opposition if they implement the same policies, you know! And no point voting between one or the other, either.
The fact is, the labour party has an ambitious and fully-costed manifesto put together with the aid of nobel-prize-winning economists that offers a completely different path to the one we've been following for the last 40 years, and which has left us in the mess we're in. True opposition, in other words.
The Labour party may or may not be likeable, but they really should have managed to capitalise on the sheer incompetence the tories have been displaying for the past year or so. When you're the opposition to a party with a leader who no one likes and who doesn't really want to be there, while the rest of her cabinet fight with each other, you'd expect the opposition to make a little more headway.
I think you'll find that the current labour leadership is eminently likeable
Theresa May is probably "likeable" over a cup of tea, that doesn't make her a competent politician.
The fact is, the labour party has an ambitious and fully-costed manifesto put together with the aid of nobel-prize-winning economists that offers a completely different path to the one we've been following for the last 40 years
And which has failed every time we've been dumb enough to let them try.
About the only good thing that would come out of letting hard-left Labour in would be to remind the new generation why we've always thrown them out again as soon as we could.
Really? I think you've got that very wrong. Without the welfare state Thatcher wouldn't have been able to sell off the council houses, rail network and all the other infrastructure that went to start the "boom" of the eighties.
Of course they've run out of stuff to sell now and are left trying to blame immigrants and the poor for the state we find ourselves in. Nevertheless if Labour's approach had "failed every time" the tories of the 80s wouldn't have had anything to plunder and would've been kicked out after a single term.
And which has failed every time we've been dumb enough to let them try.
Although for some reason the party which most consistently gets trashed in the media for its supposed economic incompetence actually has the better record on reducing debt. It also has the better record on not lowering the social safety net to a mere two inches above the concrete.
The fact is, the labour party has an ambitious and fully-costed manifesto put together with the aid of nobel-prize-winning economists that offers a completely different path to the one we've been following for the last 40 years
LOL! Somebody who takes a manifesto seriously. Was this your first general election?
"No, what you actually want is a return to 'new labour' - the aberration created by Tony Blair that turned the party into a slightly-watered-down clone of the tories. It's not an opposition if they implement the same policies, you know! And no point voting between one or the other, either".
I certainly don't want to see a return of the Tory-lite New Labour in any shape or form. Then again, the bumbling and inflexible grandad at the helm of the party today isn't doing Labour any favours either. The Tories are deep in the morass of Brexit and all Corbyn can do is actually assist May, Rees-Mogg and Redwood in implementing their version of Brexit with his unimaginative, dogmatic and tribal approach.
What I want to see is a proper, competent, capable and progressive social democratic leader of Labour like they have in Labour's sister parties in Scandinavia.
Considering the past two decades, the political mess we're in can actually be attributed more readily to the failure of opposition parties to up their game than to lacklustre governments who ideally wouldn't even be in post if the opposition were competent.
Yet still more* people voted for the useless idiots who got in than for the useless idiots who didn't get in.
* Well, sort of more, given al the problems with FPTP.
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