Westminstenders: How many Dead Cats Do You Get In A Thunderstorm?

[RedToothBrush]

It never rains. It only pours.

What I wouldn't give for a bit of old fashioned drizzle right now.

4 years on and we are facing a torment of calamities. Brexit, serious political instability in the USA ahead of an election that Trump will refuse to lose even if he does, trade deals with the rest of the world put on 6 week deadlines, anger within the commonwealth, a sick weak dependent PM on the back foot and ill briefed, rampant growing corruption in the Tory party, woke nut jobs out of touch with reality, councils on the brink of bankruptcy and the whole covid-19 crisis.

Just heard on the R4 news a reporter, presumably reiterating a government briefing, to the effect that oneweb were supposed to be providing support for Internet access and that the government hoped that the satellites could be tweaked to provide the precise timing signals for GPS. Given the UK also needs extended Internet access this would be a win/win.

Some minister has obviously fallen for a line spun by a snake oil salesman. The technology behind precise clocks and GPS is not a 'tweak' to Internet routing, the orbital heights and the need to have 'spares' are significantly different.

Also anything provided by this route wouldn't have any of the additional switching/control/encryption for military/spook use that is the only rationale for having a 'british' variant. Everything else is available for free from the existing systems.

Stinks of cummings limited tech background. "its a satellite, how hard can it be, jfdi."

Frankie
Stinks of cummings limited tech background. "its a satellite, how hard can it be"
Cos his pals in Russia told him it would be easy

where IS that report ??

@FrankieStein402

Just heard on the R4 news a reporter, presumably reiterating a government briefing, to the effect that oneweb were supposed to be providing support for Internet access and that the government hoped that the satellites could be tweaked to provide the precise timing signals for GPS. Given the UK also needs extended Internet access this would be a win/win.

Some minister has obviously fallen for a line spun by a snake oil salesman. The technology behind precise clocks and GPS is not a 'tweak' to Internet routing, the orbital heights and the need to have 'spares' are significantly different.

Also anything provided by this route wouldn't have any of the additional switching/control/encryption for military/spook use that is the only rationale for having a 'british' variant. Everything else is available for free from the existing systems.

Stinks of cummings limited tech background. "its a satellite, how hard can it be, jfdi."

sigh and only a few posts ago I warned of the Stephen Fry level of "understanding" being a risk here. ...

They main reason for wanting an EU-controlled super accurate GPS is primarily for better weapons targeting, with added commercial uses a nice-to-have. And that's the bit the UK has lost out on. Solely because one country in the project insisted that it only be available to EU members (as I recall, the other countries weren't fussed).

It's inconceivable that the UKs military services did not flag this up as a huge risk factor and were obviously told to STFU.

So there is a fair point to wonder what other huge risks were hushed up prior to the vote ? We're already seeing that criminal and security intelligence is going. What else ?

On the selfish side, I wonder if there's any work going at OneWeb ? Maybe I'll submit my cv and put "fluent in complete bollocks" as a language skill.

But the UK Defence forces are the ones who have bought two aircraft carriers
but cannot afford planes
or support ships
www.nao.org.uk/report/carrier-strike-preparing-for-deployment/

Solely because one country in the project insisted that it only be available to EU members

Funny that. Which country was that? (Don't tell me, I know!)

I mean seriously- can Cummings get anything right?
He's turning into the new Grayling

www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/26/satellite-experts-oneweb-investment-uk-galileo-brexit

Peregrina- I don't know for sure.... but am 99.9% confident it's the uk - because it's the sort of fucking stupid thing this country- or the people who lead it would do

I see Owen Paterson’s wife has died. She got a mention in the last couple of Private Eye for her work at the jockey club / Aintree, one of the first sporting bodies to open up.

rugrats
she hung herself - there is clearly a much deeper and sadder story behind it all

Has that been made public?

It has now

I picked it up from the news reports - read enough sources
its desperately sad

pointything you really cannot equate Netherlands and UK culture, political, moral or anything. The Netherlands still has a democracy and a tradition of debate and compromise. We do not. We have a class system and an oligarchy and things have been going more that way.

The law - well there's an old saying about lawyers and accountants. But they are needed. Not in the old Victorian sense of defenders of the propertied class, but as the professional establishment they came to be. All that has been put under threat through austerity and the reduction in help for accessing the law. I don't think threats to juries are new. There have been complaints about how access to redress by law has been restricted for poorer people for a long time. It has all served to undermine the principle of equality before the law, and if we lose equality before the law then we really are back in the days of Old Corruption, with all notion of public interest or a public gone.

Pepperwort
You have just hit on an INCREDIBLY important point
Most people who use accountants are in business so can offset the fee
in many other situations, accountants can think of a way to offset the fee against tax
but we accountants are used to thinking about VFM at every stage of our work

Barristers get paid even if their advice is utter shit
solicitors get paid even if the letters they wrirte are binned

there is a HUGE problem in the big firms of the disconnect between fees and clients (see wirecard)
but at the real level we focus on VFM

too much of the legal system (eg the way employment tribunals are run) has a total disconnect

I admit I do not have enough knowledge to plan a way out for that field

Unlike the UK, many European countries don't have juries of complete amateurs

e.g. Germany has courts with up to 5 professional jurors, depending on the court tier / seriousness of the crime.

Systems with trained professionals instead of juries can work well
if they have been developed that way from the start

That's very different from a populist government, known for incompetence and vindictiveness, abolishing them suddenly,
without cross-party consultation & agreement for this decision, or on a replacement system

@ListeningQuietly

rugrats she hung herself - there is clearly a much deeper and sadder story behind it all

I wondered when I saw the reports and the wording that she had been 'found dead' if it was something like that. I hadn't seen anything else about her cause of death. Theres a story to be told there.

Though just looking now, its interesting reading and the stuff of conspiracy theories.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8454823/Tory-MP-Owen-Patersons-wife-dead-family-home.html

West Mercia Police said the death was currently being treated as unexplained. A spokesman said: 'We can confirm the body of a woman has been found in woodland. At this stage there is believed to be no third party involvement'. She added the body was found in the 'early hours of this morning'.

Rose Paterson's death came as she became embroiled in a planning row alongside housing secretary Robert Jenrick, who has asked his department to re-examine an application by the Jockey Club for 300-plus homes and a hotel at Sandown Park, after it had been unanimously rejected by Surrey councillors last year. His intervention has raised concerns about conflicts of interest because of the Jockey Club's links to senior Conservative figures including Mrs Paterson, who sits on the club's board. No final decision has been made.

Very difficult situation, jury trials in this crisis.

It is a significant problem atm that a good chunk, maybe a majority of the country,
would be very reluctant and even frightened
e.g. to sit in a room with 11 strangers to debate their decision
or just because they are hanging on to their job by a thread

Also, vulnerable and shielded could be missing from juries, which could affect their demographics or characteristics.

I've served on a jury once (although it pled out, so we never had to deliberate), was called again within 5 years so was able to tell them to go away until the August and by the way, I'm breastfeeding so will need somewhere to express and access to a fridge (strangely I didn't get another call that year ), spent a week going to and from the sheriff court not getting called, before (fortunately) being discharged, and have now been called twice to the High Court - first time I was able to ring the night before to be told straight away that I was discharged and the second time should have been 8 April

Scottish juries are 15 people. There are, as far as I know, no plans to reduce jury trials in Scotland as a result of Covid.

There are, or there were, many people within the legal profession concerned about that growing disconnect. A lot of it began with the destruction of legal aid. Bringing that back would be one big step. Naturally I cannot find any of the material I have seen about this in the past in a hurry, but there is this from 2015 www.hja.net/press-releases/damning-new-statistics-denounce-unfair-confusing-and-inaccessible-uk-justice-system/, also an Amnesty International report in 2016 www.amnesty.org.uk/files/aiuk_legal_aid_report.pdf. As I said it isn't new concerns.
Lawyers themselves would be the people best placed to ask, and there are some good eggs in there. It does not seem to matter how much people point these issues out for the poorer groups, however, nothing has ever been done about it in Britain's political climate, not until it affects the middle classes: and at that point the middle classes find out that those further up are perfectly happy to sell them out too.

If you've still got them, keep your registration cards - might prove to be collectors items.

Having kept one might mark you out as some kind of dissident, DGR.

Perhaps it has now become a normality that no one really questions any more. Along with the ideas that "life is unfair" so we should just live with it and questioning it is pointless and unproductive. Here's the Law Society www.lawsociety.org.uk/policy-campaigns/campaigns/access-to-justice/. There was a Good Law project too - another charity. So much left to charity now that used to be standard rights within the public domain.

Saturday Papers:

The i and the telegraph
report on "traffic light system" for foreign holidays without quarantine on return

• would BJ dare mark down the USA as red and risk offending Trump ?

The Daily Star
has a photo of damage to Cummings' car after another mishap

• remarks on his eyesight illustrate his escapade remains a continuing embarassment to the Tory party

but am 99.9% confident it's the uk - because it's the sort of fucking stupid thing this country- or the people who lead it would do

According to DS who apparently knows about these things, the idea was to stop the countries which had absolutely no hope of being accepted in the near future from wasting time making applications to join. That's not entirely a bad idea, but it backfired when the UK decided that it really didn't need to have anything to do with the EU and could go it alone/cosy up to the USA.

Now this latest idea is yet more public money likely to be wasted or 'spaffed up the wall' in the delightful language of our PM.

Having kept one might mark you out as some kind of dissident, DGR

I think having bookshelves will mark me out quicker than having an old polling card in a box somewhere.

Funnily enough RTB that was one of the comments prior to the last election that stuck out for me; a Tory canvasser noting that if there was a bookshelf they knew would not be voting Tory.
I think it was about a week after a Leave voting friend tried to convince me to "go minimalist and get rid of all those books!" .
Still holds true for everyone I know face-to-face.