Posts by Swashbuckled

HMRC launches £500M procurement for new ERP, though project's already a 'red' risk

It would be so nice if someone - anyone - in the Government had a teeny inkling about IT. Don’t forget that this bunch is led by Ministers who can’t even remember how to find WhatsApp messages on their (mislaid) phones. In the absence of knowledge, they use consultants at a cost of £1500 per day per person.

To cap it all, the Secretary of State responsible for “Innovation” and all things IT is one Michelle Donelan, whose career prior to entering politics was in marketing - for both the magazine Marie Claire, and (wait for it) World Wrestling Entertainment.

No further questions, M’Lud.

Silicon Valley billionaires secretly buy up land for new California city

Billionaire Cities

I’d put money on Peter Thiel being one of those secretive billionaires. Palantir has inserted its data systems and influence into global defence, US law enforcement and UK health on a previously unimaginable scale. If you control data, and the access to that data; and when that data gives you the power to manipulate the personal information of millions of people, you have the potential capacity to rule the world.

If you also happen to be a Trump-funding, alt-right fanatic who states openly that democracy is not compatible with capitalism, then we’re in deep dwang.

The connection with this article is that Thiel and others like him have been advocating for “closed” cities for years - where only billionaires can live, and which exclude the rest of us mere mortals. We are simply to be the worker ants of the colony - expendable bits and pieces. The cities will apparently be designed so the occupants (not us) can be protected from the ravages of climate change and the subsequent eventual breakdown of society.

I can provide links to those assertions, btw.

UK to introduce new laws and a code of practice for police wanting to rifle through mobile phone messages

Re: ...if they are "helping to locate a missing person"

Suicide is not a crime. Assisting a suicide is a crime, punishable by 14 years in prison.

Vodafone: Yes, we slurp data on customers' network setups, but we do it for their own good

It’s a great shame they didn’t call, email me or SMS me - instead, they had a Default put on my credit file. That has has ENDLESS dreadful ramifications for me, loss of previously high credit limits, cancellation of my cards etc. I intend to sue them.

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove etc

The Earth is something called an oblate spheroid. That’s a sphere which bulges slightly at the equatorial point. As for the BBC’s anxieties about bias, of course it’s bloody biased. Nearly all its Board members were put there by David Cameron, and I don’t recall him being politically neutral. As one example, and there are hundreds to choose from, the BBC stopped reporting on the Gilets Jaunes protests in France, after about three days. The daily protests carried on, bringing many major towns and cities to a standstill, for more than six weeks. Not a peep from the BBC. No reporting AT ALL of the many, many thousands of veterans who marched in protest at the Government’s decision to prosecute an elderly, unwell ex-soldier alleged to have killed two civilians during the Bloody Sunday riots - in 1972. Yes, 1972. Nearly 50 years ago. The veterans brought the M1 to a standstill by riding thousands of motor bikes at walking pace to London. Three thousand of those marching sang the National Anthem outside Buckingham Palace. Nope. Nothing on the BBC news.

You’re welcome.