Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party.

[brad465]

Cutting edge comms with the below image:

https://twitter.com/GillianKeegan/status/1698966539381203190

The vast majority of schools will be unaffected by RAAC. For those that are affected, we are working non-stop to mitigate any disruption to education, and protect pupils and staff.

(Image saying "Most Schools unaffected" from the Department for Education)

Labour Press then tweeted this spoof:

https://twitter.com/labourpress/status/1698986726985757034

(Image says "Most Beachgoers not eaten by big Shark")

 

[Gloster]

Sunak now finds himself in a dilemma: does he sack Keegan as she has given signs of disloyalty or, worse, incompetence by her carelessness in interviews as to she blames for the RAAC situation or does he keep her in the cabinet to be sacrificed later. The first option produces the question as to why he didn’t sack her in the recent mini-reshuffle, while the second leaves the problem of having an urgent problem left in the hands of someone who has managed to lose all her credibility in a couple of days. But then, who does he replace her with?

 

[jfollows]

Legislation to ban posession of nitrous oxide - bad idea. Something else in the "populist" vein - the reality is that it will drive use underground and not have any impact on its use, and the police will not be pursuing the criminality other than as an adjunct to something they're doing already.
And isn't the Conservative party meant to be about individual liberty anyway, there are many significantly more harmful drugs which are not illegal but they're picking on this one because it's used by young people (non-voters or voters for other parties) and might appeal to old people (who think anyone under the age of 18 is a trouble-maker).

 

[nw1]

Legislation to ban posession of nitrous oxide - bad idea. Something else in the "populist" vein - the reality is that it will drive use underground and not have any impact on its use, and the police will not be pursuing the criminality other than as an adjunct to something they're doing already.
And isn't the Conservative party meant to be about individual liberty anyway, there are many significantly more harmful drugs which are not illegal but they're picking on this one because it's used by young people (non-voters or voters for other parties) and might appeal to old people (who think anyone under the age of 18 is a trouble-maker).

The current Conservative Party are most definitely not about individual liberty, as such things as Hard Brexit and the Policing Bill have demonstrated. They are firmly in the authoritarian-right quarter of the political graph; indeed the JohnsonTrussSunak government is, IMO, the most authoritarian of my lifetime.

Braverman is surely the very definition of an authoritarian, and Patel, while less bad, still very much had authoritarian tendencies.

 

[Gloster]

The Grauniad comments that, “Ministers have suggested they are banning the drug more because of the mess caused by discarded laughing gas canisters than because of the possible risk it poses to health.” Granted that the sight of canisters lying about is not a joy to behold, but haven’t they got better and more important things to do with parliamentary time than appease the litter-phobes. And it goes against the advice of the Independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, who consider it disproportionate. But what do they know: they’re experts.

(And, no, I can’t do a link.)

 

[nw1]

The Grauniad comments that, “Ministers have suggested they are banning the drug more because of the mess caused by discarded laughing gas canisters than because of the possible risk it poses to health.” Granted that the sight of canisters lying about is not a joy to behold, but haven’t they got better and more important things to do with parliamentary time than appease the litter-phobes. And it goes against the advice of the Independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, who consider it disproportionate. But what do they know: they’re experts.

Then the crime should be dumping the canisters, not taking the stuff.

I don't have any desire to take nitrous oxide myself, for sake of clarification, but it's all just symptomatic of the petty authoritarianism and sanctimoniousness of this government.

 

[birchesgreen]

Its all they have left, hatred and bitterness.

Much easier than trying to make a better land for all. Instead just say to your core electorate, we will make THOSE GUYS' lives worse!

 

[The Ham]

might appeal to old people (who think anyone under the age of 18 38 is a trouble-maker).

Fixed that for you.

Given that there's a perception by some that Millennials are [insert negative comment of chose] yet a lot of them are under 38, the oldest are about 42 years old (even the oldest Gen Z are around 27 years old).

Whilst it's traditionally been the fact that the older you get the more likely you are to vote Tory, the Millennials are not only not doing so but are often getting more left wing as they age (and therefore less likely to vote Tory).

Not having doctors appointments for their parents, and having schools which could be potentially unsafe for their children certainly isn't going to encourage them to change that view at the moment.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Cutting edge comms with the below image:

https://twitter.com/GillianKeegan/status/1698966539381203190

Labour Press then tweeted this spoof:

https://twitter.com/labourpress/status/1698986726985757034

(Image says "Most Beachgoers not eaten by big Shark")

Ah, nice to see “working non-stop” make a reappearance, it’s been a while. As utter stupid as “straining every sinew” which was one of box-headed gym bunny Dominic Raab’s favourites

I noticed yesterday Sunak condemned Keegan’s sweary outburst, or at least the language used. Strange how he seems not to have condemned Anderson’s language in telling migrants to “f*ck off back to France”.

 

[birchesgreen]

Ah, nice to see “working non-stop” make a reappearance, it’s been a while. As utter stupid as “straining every sinew” which was one of box-headed gym bunny Dominic Raab’s favourites

I noticed yesterday Sunak condemned Keegan’s sweary outburst, or at least the language used. Strange how he seems not to have condemned Anderson’s language in telling migrants to “f*ck off back to France”.

He's probably afraid 30p Lee will nut him.

 

[Gloster]

The Minister for Sport, Gambling and Civil Society has told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee that it took ‘a decision to step back from a ban on gambling advertising as there was ‘little evidence’ that it led to harm among users’. He said that ‘the government had taken an “evidence-led” approach to reform.‘ (I presume that the decisive evidence was large cheques for lots of money sent to the Conservative Party and individual MPs, together with lots of jollys, by the gambling industry.)

Source: The Grauniad; sorry, I can’t do a link.

 

[dangie]

Birmingham City Council has declared itself effectively bankrupt. Being a Labour run council I’m sure the Conservative government has had something to do with its demise somewhere along the way.

However one reason given for its bankruptcy was the delayed implementation of its Oracle IT System.
From the BBC:

Intended to streamline council payments and HR systems, the flagship system was expected to cost £19m. But after three years of delays, it was revealed in May it could cost up to £100m.

 

[nw1]

I noticed yesterday Sunak condemned Keegan’s sweary outburst, or at least the language used. Strange how he seems not to have condemned Anderson’s language in telling migrants to “f*ck off back to France”.

It's extraordinary how that thuggish hard-right yob Anderson seems to be able to get away with anything. Sunak's stupidity in a) hiring him in the first place and b) not firing him now is breathtaking. All that Winchester College education wasted, it seems.

The most loathsome MP since Enoch Powell, bar none.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Sep 2023 ==

The Minister for Sport, Gambling and Civil Society has told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee that it took ‘a decision to step back from a ban on gambling advertising as there was ‘little evidence’ that it led to harm among users’. He said that ‘the government had taken an “evidence-led” approach to reform.‘ (I presume that the decisive evidence was large cheques for lots of money sent to the Conservative Party and individual MPs, together with lots of jollys, by the gambling industry.)

Inconsistency of course. Gambling is fine, nitrous oxide is not. The cynical reasons for the respective decisions have of course already been discussed.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Sep 2023 ==

Fixed that for you.

Given that there's a perception by some that Millennials are [insert negative comment of chose] yet a lot of them are under 38, the oldest are about 42 years old (even the oldest Gen Z are around 27 years old).

Whilst it's traditionally been the fact that the older you get the more likely you are to vote Tory, the Millennials are not only not doing so but are often getting more left wing as they age (and therefore less likely to vote Tory).

Not having doctors appointments for their parents, and having schools which could be potentially unsafe for their children certainly isn't going to encourage them to change that view at the moment.

By contrast I'm surprised how many of Generation X (born between about 1960 and 1980 though definitions vary) have drifted rightwards. This is my own generation; given that many of our generation hated Thatcher in the late 80s/early 90s, voted against the Tories in 1992 (which was very much an election were voting patterns depended on generation), had the fall of the Berlin Wall and release of Nelson Mandela in or close to our teenage years, and have spent most or all of our adult lives in the EU (and most or all of our lives full stop in the EEC), I'm surprised so many of us seem to have become Tory Brexiters and turned our backs on the politics and zeitgeist of our youth. It's not as if many GenXers can remember pre-1973, so there is little 'nostalgia' reason for supporting Brexit!

GenX have also been affected by some of the issues affecting millennials, for example I was not able to buy my own flat until almost 40; when prices were low around the mid-late 90s I wasn't earning enough anyway and by the time I was earning enough, prices had increased.

Will millennials do the same and drift rightwards, or is there something fundamentally different about them?

 

[Yew]

Birmingham City Council has declared itself effectively bankrupt. Being a Labour run council I’m sure the Conservative government has had something to do with its demise somewhere along the way.

However one reason given for its bankruptcy was the delayed implementation of its Oracle IT System.
From the BBC:

Intended to streamline council payments and HR systems, the flagship system was expected to cost £19m. But after three years of delays, it was revealed in May it could cost up to £100m.

Sounds about right if Oracle are involved...

 

[birchesgreen]

Amazing how often big IT projects mess up like this. When i was doing my software engineering degree in the early 90s we did a unit on managing big IT projects, how (often) they mess up and how problems can be avoided.

See little has changed there.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Sounds about right if Oracle are involved...

Depends on a lot of factors other than just the choice of systems, not least how it was implemented, and local government has a long history of doing
Implementations on the cheap with predictable consequences

 

[takno]

It's extraordinary how that thuggish hard-right yob Anderson seems to be able to get away with anything. Sunak's stupidity in a) hiring him in the first place and b) not firing him now is breathtaking. All that Winchester College education wasted, it seems.

The most loathsome MP since Enoch Powell, bar none.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Sep 2023 ==



Inconsistency of course. Gambling is fine, nitrous oxide is not. The cynical reasons for the respective decisions have of course already been discussed.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Sep 2023 ==



By contrast I'm surprised how many of Generation X (born between about 1960 and 1980 though definitions vary) have drifted rightwards. This is my own generation; given that many of our generation hated Thatcher in the late 80s/early 90s, voted against the Tories in 1992 (which was very much an election were voting patterns depended on generation), had the fall of the Berlin Wall and release of Nelson Mandela in or close to our teenage years, and have spent most or all of our adult lives in the EU (and most or all of our lives full stop in the EEC), I'm surprised so many of us seem to have become Tory Brexiters and turned our backs on the politics and zeitgeist of our youth. It's not as if many GenXers can remember pre-1973, so there is little 'nostalgia' reason for supporting Brexit!

GenX have also been affected by some of the issues affecting millennials, for example I was not able to buy my own flat until almost 40; when prices were low around the mid-late 90s I wasn't earning enough anyway and by the time I was earning enough, prices had increased.

Will millennials do the same and drift rightwards, or is there something fundamentally different about them?

I'm not convinced this is as extreme as you're suggesting. The inflexion point where people switched from being anti Brexit to pro Brexit was in the top half of the GenX age range, and there was a large groundswell of GenX support for Lexit and Corbyn. Essentially I think GenX and older millennials have in many cases tried to express left wing attitudes, but in a hapless and naive way.

 

[jfollows]

Amazing how often big IT projects mess up like this. When i was doing my software engineering degree in the early 90s we did a unit on managing big IT projects, how (often) they mess up and how problems can be avoided.

See little has changed there.

I am always disappointed but not surprised when I see this.
I ran a £37.5 million public sector IT procurement in 2012 which completed on time and on budget.
It's simple in concept - ask for what you want, evaluate the responses and select the best one.

The problem seems to be that often the people who write the tender don't know what they want (and there is a variant process to help with this if this is the case, but it's either not used or abused), or they're incapable of stating it formally. Then the requirements get changed anyway, or the requirements that the people responsible for writing the tender were given were wrong in the first place. Then "senior management" interferes. Then the delivery and acceptance processes are not properly defined and the private sector makes sure that any changes post-contract cost a lot of money. The implementation and acceptance processes are mis-managed. Finally, nobody learns from their mistakes and does it all again a few years later.

I was lucky, I admit. I had help to fend off senior management interference, who reluctantly stopped it and let me get on with it. I delivered and, yes, it wasn't a perfect solution because by the time of delivery some of the requirements had indeed changed, but my organisation was wise enough to live with that. We had to spend the money by the end of March (financial year) which meant we didn't have any formal acceptance tests because there was no time for them. But it was the right thing to do under the circumstances and I'll defend what I did because of the cards I was dealt. We didn't waste taxpayers' money.

But in general public sector procurements of things like Oracle, senior people think they know better and interfere with the process although they don't want to sully themselves with knowledge and details, and invariably lead to big mistakes. They get promoted, move on, go somewhere else and do it all over again.

 

[najaB]

They get promoted, move on, go somewhere else and do it all over again.

That's the problem more than anything. And it's not unique to the public sector - I work in the private sector and see it all the time with our revolving door for product managers.

 

[SuspectUsual]

I genuinely don’t know if people like Greg Hands are stupid, naive, or just taking the mickey out of us now. He’s gone on Twitter highlighting the Birmingham council bankruptcy and saying it proves Labour can’t be trusted in power.

Does he realise Tory councils have gone bust too?

 

[Gigabit]

Feels like the end of Gordon Brown in 2010 to me now for Sunak.

 

[Gloster]

I genuinely don’t know if people like Greg Hands are stupid, naive, or just taking the mickey out of us now. He’s gone on Twitter highlighting the Birmingham council bankruptcy and saying it proves Labour can’t be trusted in power.

Does he realise Tory councils have gone bust too?

He may well do, but a lot of those who get their news and information from Twitter don’t. One gullible fool who believes the simplistic claim is one potential extra voter.

 

[nlogax]

Sounds about right if Oracle are involved...

Indeed.

Though the ERP project is a relatively small part of the total liabilities I wonder if it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

 

[jfollows]

Amazing how often big IT projects mess up like this. When i was doing my software engineering degree in the early 90s we did a unit on managing big IT projects, how (often) they mess up and how problems can be avoided.

See little has changed there.

I had something similar, maybe ten years earlier, but the basics are well understood and haven't changed. It's just that people ignore them.
To me, the most important phase is the first one, gathering and understanding the requirements. Get that right and the rest follows almost logically. Get that wrong and the project is doomed. So spend time and effort appropriately, that's to say on gathering and understanding the requirements. Management tends to want you to leap to the solution and its price before anything else.

 

[cb a1]

I had something similar, maybe ten years earlier, but the basics are well understood and haven't changed. It's just that people ignore them.
To me, the most important phase is the first one, gathering and understanding the requirements. Get that right and the rest follows almost logically. Get that wrong and the project is doomed. So spend time and effort appropriately, that's to say on gathering and understanding the requirements. Management tends to want you to leap to the solution and its price before anything else.

I would say that applies to any major project, not just IT ones.

The classic 'Tree Swing' poster originated in the early 1970s (possibly earlier) - https://www.businessballs.com/amusement-stress-relief/tree-swing-cartoon-pictures-early-versions/

 

[jfollows]

I would say that applies to any major project, not just IT ones.

The classic 'Tree Swing' poster originated in the early 1970s (possibly earlier) - https://www.businessballs.com/amusement-stress-relief/tree-swing-cartoon-pictures-early-versions/

I am sure you're right, and we're getting off topic I know, but the thing about IT projects in particular is that people with influence and power think they know better than the people tasked with running the project and interfere detrimentally, in a way that a project - say - to replace the double glazing in a building wouldn't get interfered with.

 

[nw1]

I'm not convinced this is as extreme as you're suggesting. The inflexion point where people switched from being anti Brexit to pro Brexit was in the top half of the GenX age range, and there was a large groundswell of GenX support for Lexit and Corbyn. Essentially I think GenX and older millennials have in many cases tried to express left wing attitudes, but in a hapless and naive way.

To be fair I wasn't suggesting that all of Gen X have moved rightwards, just a surprisingly high proportion given what I perceived as a strong anti-right-wing, anti-authoritarian, and internationalist sentiment of the late 80s and early-mid 90s amongst the (then) younger generation. IMX (and I recognise that of others may differ) this was particularly profound at the 1992 election, and many of us who were young at the time were genuinely surprised (not to mention very disappointed) at the result. The result seemed to be the complete opposite of our perception of the values of the early 90s.

Incidentally what do you mean when you say that GenX and older millennials have "tried to express left wing attitudes, but in a hapless and naive way"? Is this compared with younger millennials, or with the more left-leaning baby-boomers?

 

[birchesgreen]

I had something similar, maybe ten years earlier, but the basics are well understood and haven't changed. It's just that people ignore them.
To me, the most important phase is the first one, gathering and understanding the requirements. Get that right and the rest follows almost logically. Get that wrong and the project is doomed. So spend time and effort appropriately, that's to say on gathering and understanding the requirements. Management tends to want you to leap to the solution and its price before anything else.

Another factor is companies agreeing to do something which probably isn't feasible but they want the work (and someone else will get the contract anyway). For some reason the project ends up late and over budget...

Saw it happen all the time at the first company i worked at.

 

[156421]

isn't the Conservative party meant to be about individual liberty anyway

No they sacrificed that on the altar of using covid as a excuse to destroy basic freedoms

 

[takno]

Incidentally what do you mean when you say that GenX and older millennials have "tried to express left wing attitudes, but in a hapless and naive way"? Is this compared with younger millennials, or with the more left-leaning baby-boomers?

I don't think I was suggesting it was unique to GenX and older millennials, but a lot of enthusiasm and activism for left wing causes in that group particularly was wasted on naive and self-defeating support for Corbyn and some very unhealthy outdated attitudes to Europe. Younger age groups are either just now getting into the politically-active or interested stage of their lives and remain to be judged, or are still in the naive Socialist Worker phase of their late teens and early twenties.