Tenebris Nox

Thanks for the info. These sort of things are always difficult. A bit like finding out a favourite musician breaks a boycott or has dodgy ideas but makes great music.

I wasn’t aware of the issues with the Lemmy devs. Some of the original posts about them don’t seem accessible. Is the issue because they are pretty pro-Chinese government?

Isn’t the concern that “Those that need them still” won’t get them? There is a HUGE amount of unclaimed benefits in this country. Many old people can’t cope with the level of tech you need to apply (you can’t just phone up or pop into a benefits centre in most parts of uk).

Do we, though? Macron’s reaction seems to go too far the other way. Surely a “Congratulations on your reelection, Mr President and we look forward to working with you in the interests of both our countries” would be sufficient.

My first two heads were both involved in fraud. This was in the early days of grant maintained schools. The first one set up a printing business within the school and staff could only do photocopying etc through the printers. He was taking home a nice cut of the “profits”. The second one defrauded the school for about a million pounds in a scam where her husband sold the school computer equipment, got a stupid deputy to sign for empty boxes and then claimed that the computers had been supplied. That head went on the run to Spain. Eventully went to the High Court and she got away with it. We were told by local LEA that if we leaked anything to the press we would be prosecuted.

Also have to mention the heads who pretend you aren’t there when you try to talk to them in a corridor. I was once told never to approach one head because “Kings only talk to other kings!”

Regular state school. I worked in another where the executive head hired a private investigator to keep an eye on staff who were on longer-term illnesses and do “background checks”.

It works fine. Not many videos there - but it’s early days. It doesn’t seem to be a desktop app. Works through the Loops app.

Really awful. Starmer could congratulate Trump without indulging him.

Worked in a school where the head refused to employ any of the candidates who turned up for interview because none of them wore a poppy (and one of them wore tan-coloured shoes that hadn’t been polished, too!) Some of the candidates were perfectly suitable and the school needed to fill the post to help reduce workload on the rest of us.

Labour: like the Tories but better at it.

Nanny state etc. What do people want? A government that looks after them? The freedom to vote means the freedom to die of chicken-egg-poisoning. Dying of food poisoning is a fundamental British value that woke experts will have to rip from my stinking hands. (or something like that.)

You could be right. I listened to a Tory minister on the radio today talking about ending anonymity on the internet and - more interestingly - about silo-ing parts of the internet so that certain groups, such as children, could only access certain “versions” of the internet. I wonder whether that’s the longer-term agenda.

I grew up with even less access. At school we used paper and ticker-tape to program computers. And there was no tv (which was black and white anyway) during the day. Those were the days. Boring as fuck!

This apparently “spontaneous” group of “ordinary mothers” looks surprisingly media-trained. I’d be interested in knowing more about the founders. When the “keep our schools open during covid” group were examined they turned out to be a puppet of a right-wing thinktank.

HMRC claim that only 5% of UK don’t pay their taxes.

That 5% is worth £36 billion a year!

I’ve got my suspicions about who that 5% are. Damn you you single-parent, new trainer-wearing, work-shy benefit claimants! Damn you!

Do dentists in other countries have the same sense of prestige as British ones? I used to work with a guy whose wife was a dentist and he constantly talked about being a dentist as being on the same level as a doctor. Said that entry requirements for dentistry at university is the same as medical doctors.

Hmmm… 2024…. isn’t there supposed to be some sort of big thing happening involving politicians. And of course the British people can see right through any attempt to bribe them. Can’t they?

This table was in an article discussing benefits including pensions from across Europe. I’ll see if I can locate it. I think the data comes from this calculator: https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/benefits-and-wages/tax-benefit-web-calculator/#d.en.500997

No, it is one-sided reporting. I wonder how much of the praying was used as a means of push-back by pupils at Michaela to the authoritarian way the school is run. I don’t think I’d like a school where even in my breaks and lunches I have to have conversations with my teachers using prompt-cards.

Better not upset the rich and powerful… who strangely also seem to be religious.