The people only think they know what they want. That's why enacting the populism you ask for always fails when the public see the outcome. Yes, Farage may well win next time, but will follow that with failure when the people chuck him out.

 

 

 

Yes they are, that is precisely how elective democracy works and why it's often called elective dictatorship.

 

What is needed now is NOT what people think they want. What's needed now is to give them what they really want, to be happy and content.

 

How? Simple, follow the Scandinavian example where the people are happy and content even when things are not always going well.

 

Labour has had that opportunity twice but failed by choosing to have pseudo Labour leaders like Blair and Starmer, both trying to succeed the Tory way. Neither had the guts to do what is really necessary, greatly increase taxation to the point that the country's income gives the people what they really desire and which makes them happy and content; security, stability, good housing, high employment, social support when necessary.

 

Of course you and our English small c conservative large majority will reject any such policy out of hand and vote further Right, so we will continue in decline far into the future, lurching from Right to Left with an occasional dalliance with a Centre that doesn't in truth exist.

.

 

Patronising, nonsense and balderdash.

 

You regularly show how much you despise your fellow citizens, exuding the hideous arrogance of the left, in the way you describe the ordinary people as if they were large children in need of constant guidance by people with wisdom -like you.

 

Dictatorial, antidemocratic tendencies have also been obvious in your attitude to whether people should be allowed to own motor cars.

 

The concept of 'democracy' is simple and well established. It respects the will of the common citizen. Your perversion of the idea is revolting.

 

You say, 'People only think they know what they want.'

 

No - they know what they want. Democracy needs to reflect that.

 

Farage will struggle to gain enough candidates with the experience to deliver what is needed, but on the other hand - given the record of incompetence shown by others, it could hardly be worse.

Change of subject, I know, but have you tried a birdy? I have a Brompton, thought for years the cramped cockpit, severe road buzz from rock hard little tyres, primitive fork and odd geometry was just me. Even fitted a rohloff to it, but never enjoyed it. Then, year ago or so, picked up mk2 birdy in charity shop. Chalk and cheese, you can spend an entire day on a birdy and feel increasingly happy, no road buzz due to fork, great geometry.

I put it down to culture, there's something masochistic about us British. Not so much with Germans like herr riese und muller. It's why we voted for brexit, pursue offshore tax havens, tax avoidance at cost of public services, effective cancer treatment, social care. Have neocons like starmer or jokes like truss or farage. We enjoy nothing more than truly rogering ourselves.

edit - apologies if that sounded dismissive, i still have my old brompton, couldnt bear to let it go, too many fond memories

 

The Brompton has all the faults you describe Jonathan, but I think Andrew Ritchie - its designer was focused on creating a folding bike which could collapse into the neatest, and smallest package for taking on public transport, or into an office or small urban flat. I note that they now make a twenty inch wheeled version, which I expect rides rather better. On good roads - aside from its frisky handling, the 16" Brompton goes along at a good speed and reasonable comfort, but on our now ruined roads, it can be unpleasant.

 

Around twenty years ago, I had a TSR27 Moulton. That was a far superior road bike and I could ride it almost 40 miles in 2 hours. It just flew along and handled well. Its fold was awful though. In fact it didn't really fold, you removed a couple of pins and it came in half.

 

It was a very expensive bike and I was constantly worried it would be stolen, so I never used it as day to day transport. I sold it it to an American millionaire I met on a folding bike forum. He flew from San Franscisco to Heathrow, met me in London and bought it. He told me he had that many air miles that the flight cost him nothing. He even compensated me for the petrol I used in driving it down from Newcastle. As I recall, he added £40 to the price.

 

My TSR27

 

 

I've never ridden a Birdie, but years ago when I frequented that folding bike forum, there were many advocates of the design. I think they were expensive.

 

EDIT:

 

I just remembered one of the really good features of that Moulton design - it had a weird but effective front and rear suspension. Rode like silk.

 

Edited August 17, 2025Aug 17 by Tony1951

I put it down to culture' date=' there's something masochistic about us British. Not so much with Germans like herr riese und muller. It's why we voted for brexit, pursue offshore tax havens, tax avoidance at cost of public services, effective cancer treatment, social care. [/quote']

 

Tax avoidance is entirely legal and proper.

 

It exactly follows the rules set out by a succession of chancellors.

 

Do you have an ISA? Do you, or did you contribute to a pension scheme? Might your children benefit from inheritance tax exemptions when you die and your house is sold? Have you benefited in your life from married tax allowance rates? Have you ever had child tax credit or its predecessor benefits?

 

This is Tax avoidance. You take advantage of allowances which were deliberately created to encourage saving, pension provision, marriage ,and having families.

 

Chancellors set rules DELIBERATELY to encourage certain kinds of enterprise or financial behaviour and DESIGN incentives to encourage those things. There is nothing wrong with claiming the reliefs they designed.

 

Tax evasion is a different thing and I am sure that tax avoidance and evasion are not just British characteristics.

 

EDIT:

 

Jonathan - there used to be a cricket commentator on the BBC with the same name as you. Was that you? He retired maybe last year.

Tax avoidance is entirely legal and proper.

there are just too many of those carve outs.

How many people can use them up? Second pension contribution after retirement, life insurance premiums etc. Take lifetime gifting (no limit), junior ISA gifting (£9k per grandchild per annum), ISA (£20k per annum), free business assets up to 1M etc and the rich still want more.

there are just too many of those carve outs.

How many people can use them up? Second pension contribution after retirement, life insurance premiums etc. Take lifetime gifting (no limit), junior ISA gifting (£9k per grandchild per annum), ISA (£20k per annum), free business assets up to 1M etc and the rich still want more.

 

DELIBERATELY made by democratically elected Parliaments of both Labour and Conservative type. At every change of government, it was open to Chancellors to repeal, change or grant new exemptions.

DELIBERATELY made by democratically elected Parliaments of both Labour and Conservative type. At every change of government, it was open to Chancellors to repeal, change or grant new exemptions.

That justifies the pink tory label.

Starmer can set a limit to family trust contribution, life time gifts etc to say £10 millions.

That is enough for most families with less than 2.4 children. How much would you like to leave to your grandchildren? £100k each? £500k each? Even £100k is sufficient to avoid student loans when they grow up and you won't be there. So why unlimited lifetime gifts? The amount collected will be very substantial with just that simple change and it will hit only those who leave more than £100 millions.

Edited August 17, 2025Aug 17 by Woosh

You regularly show how much you despise your fellow citizens, exuding the hideous arrogance of the left, in the way you describe the ordinary people as if they were large children in need of constant guidance by people with wisdom -like you.

 

You really do reply with such utter nonsense. If I was anything like that I would be inclined to be involved in politics, but I never have been, have never been a member of any political party, nor ever demonstrated against any government, accepting every government elected by the majority, and its decisions, however much I might have disliked them.

 

Dictatorial, antidemocratic tendencies have also been obvious in your attitude to whether people should be allowed to own motor cars.

 

I have never posted such a belief, nor do I agree with such a restriction. What I have done is warned that restricted ownership of cars is being surreptitiously designed into our western world as a matter of policy and why the authorities are doing that, its implementation already well advanced.

 

The concept of 'democracy' is simple and well established. It respects the will of the common citizen. Your perversion of the idea is revolting.

 

Yours is the perversion in posting your view of what democracy is. We do not have that democracy enacting the will of the people. Instead, and I repeat, we have an elective democracy in which the will of those elected to represent us is enacted. The two can be and often are very different.

 

You say, 'People only think they know what they want.'

 

No - they know what they want. Democracy needs to reflect that.

 

If they’d known what they wanted they’d have it by now after so many governments since 1950, despite the deficiencies of our democracy.

 

Farage will struggle to gain enough candidates with the experience to deliver what is needed, but on the other hand - given the record of incompetence shown by others, it could hardly be worse.

 

True, but Reform will still fail to satisfy because, despite the people thinking his is the solution, it is not, nor ever will be.

.

Edited August 17, 2025Aug 17 by flecc

True, but Reform will still fail to satisfy because, despite the people thinking his is the solution, it is not, nor ever will be.

.

Farage pledges to reduce immigration and taxes,opposes net zero. That's about it. His politics is of grievances.

If he has expanded further afield, such as the nhs, student loans, the military, trade deals, nuclear reactors, house building, evs etc, he will lose supporters. Latest polls suggest hung parliament. I reckon the chance of farage to be next pm is as high as Johnson makes a comeback.

Just listening to this BBC radio programme about the way an address had to be drafted for the President to deliver in the event that the first moon landing astronauts could not be returned to earth.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct5yr2

 

Quite an interesting listen, but I was thinking had a tragedy occurred and the men died in the moon landing attempt, it would in reality have been little different to what happened all the time when men were lost at sea. Tens of thousands have died at sea I would guess in the last hundred years, not to mention the loss of explorers trying to investigate the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

 

 

 

Scott's hopeless expedition to the South Pole was but one case of the sort.

The Brompton has all the faults you describe Jonathan, but I think Andrew Ritchie - its designer was focused on creating a folding bike which could collapse into the neatest, and smallest package for taking on public transport, or into an office or small urban flat. I note that they now make a twenty inch wheeled version, which I expect rides rather better. On good roads - aside from its frisky handling, the 16" Brompton goes along at a good speed and reasonable comfort, but on our now ruined roads, it can be unpleasant.

 

Around twenty years ago, I had a TSR27 Moulton. That was a far superior road bike and I could ride it almost 40 miles in 2 hours. It just flew along and handled well. Its fold was awful though. In fact it didn't really fold, you removed a couple of pins and it came in half.

 

It was a very expensive bike and I was constantly worried it would be stolen, so I never used it as day to day transport. I sold it it to an American millionaire I met on a folding bike forum. He flew from San Franscisco to Heathrow, met me in London and bought it. He told me he had that many air miles that the flight cost him nothing. He even compensated me for the petrol I used in driving it down from Newcastle. As I recall, he added £40 to the price.

 

My TSR27

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="64049]64049[/ATTACH]

 

I've never ridden a Birdie, but years ago when I frequented that folding bike forum, there were many advocates of the design. I think they were expensive.

 

EDIT:

 

I just remembered one of the really good features of that Moulton design - it had a weird but effective front and rear suspension. Rode like silk.

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="64050]64050[/ATTACH]

i often considered a moulton, but somehow never got around to one yet, it sounds good. The argument that Brompton prioritise fold over ride is familiar, but that too is cultural - about living on a steamy little island that prioritise squeezing, fitting in amongst unhappy sweaty corporate slaves on the 630 to waterloo on a monday morning over floating down a nice wide continental cycle lane on a good ride.

i admire andrew ritchie, but he's but an inspired landscape gardener/computer programmer. Take this example of profoundly superior design almost everyone anywhere will disagree with (making it a bargan, so i dont complain). Harry Bickerton, ww2 aircraft engineer who tuned exhausts for the merlin, the bickerton classic - it puts 80% of ones weight on the back wheel (same size as Brompton so 80 plus psi for low rolling resistance without discomfort), leaving a relatively soft free running front wheel with little rolling resistance and a supple comfortable ride, great ergonomics. Happilly, given that the world is mostly inhabited by conformists, one can pick one up in all its 8.5 kg glory for twenty quid on ebay. however, its not good for hills. But i well and truly recomend it (i have one).

Tax avoidance is entirely legal and proper.

 

It exactly follows the rules set out by a succession of chancellors.

 

Do you have an ISA? Do you, or did you contribute to a pension scheme? Might your children benefit from inheritance tax exemptions when you die and your house is sold? Have you benefited in your life from married tax allowance rates? Have you ever had child tax credit or its predecessor benefits?

 

This is Tax avoidance. You take advantage of allowances which were deliberately created to encourage saving, pension provision, marriage ,and having families.

 

Chancellors set rules DELIBERATELY to encourage certain kinds of enterprise or financial behaviour and DESIGN incentives to encourage those things. There is nothing wrong with claiming the reliefs they designed.

 

Tax evasion is a different thing and I am sure that tax avoidance and evasion are not just British characteristics.

 

EDIT:

 

Jonathan - there used to be a cricket commentator on the BBC with the same name as you. Was that you? He retired maybe last year.

did mention tax havens, the idea that our politicians use tax avoidance to guide investment is idealistic, reality is about jobs after politics their rich chums with offshore accounts promised and "hospitality". thought about using a nic like "maharaja of the yorkshire dales" but felt smuggling attacks on collective inflated british sense of self worth would be easier with a persona like aggers.

edit - part about locking up prisoners in cages triggered flashback, used to work in forensic unit (did interviews to establish whether offenders are fit to stand trial, responsible for an alleged offence - back in dark days when this, in southern hemisphere, involved determining whether they meet criteria for diagnoses on axis 1 or 2 of the DSM3R or 4, or suffered an "emotional automatism" - which would suggest an absence of conscious premeditation, culpability). Right up your street. Reason i profoundly disagree is because the interviews often left me with profound sense of there but for the grace of god; given the right cocktail of severe early abuse/attachment trauma, minor neurological dysfunction and a trigger event (we've all worked in incestuous organisations) we're all capable of doing each other great harm

Edited August 18, 2025Aug 18 by jonathan.agnew

Oh dear, so every broken down milkfloat will bring the motorway to a standstill.. Even if it isn't burning!

Coz breakdown vehicles don't have the insurance to move them. Maybe just forklift them over the barrier, and everyone else can get on with life?

last Friday, China successfully conducted a 30-second test firing of the Long March 10 rocket's center core with its seven YF-100K engines that burn kerosene and liquid oxygen. The primary variant of the rocket will combine three of these cores to lift about 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

There's now little doubt that China is going to win the space race. China plan lunar mission for 2030 and Mars for 2035.

 

Battery powered GWR train breaks world long distance record on a single charge

.

What if US does sanction the UK censors..

Then the EUSSR censors..

No US travel, no Visa, no Mastercard, frozen accounts, brilliant!

Some of their own medicine.

What if US does sanction the UK censors..

Then the EUSSR censors..

No US travel, no Visa, no Mastercard, frozen accounts, brilliant!

Some of their own medicine.

If you value protection from harm and social cohesion, you might see UK's and EU's anti hate speech laws as justified and necessary.

So where do you stand?

 

I am not surprised that some people think that free speech should be totally, absolutely free.

Imagine a world you will be arrested based on someone else's opinion.

Next time you go to Trump 's USA, you may have to wipe your phone before you board the plane.

You just described the situation in the UK, in case you hadn't noticed..

Maybe bad orange man is coming to wipe something else..

Like farmer harmers smile off his face

Grok, google, openai all spent billions and billions training their models. Now they go head to head on a chess tournament.

you don't have to play a lot of chess to have a giggle.

You just described the situation in the UK, in case you hadn't noticed..

Maybe bad orange man is coming to wipe something else..

Like farmer harmers smile off his face

It's well within her rights to consider legal action against the police. I however can't see her winning. The court jailed her after she pled guilty. She said in that video that she of course do not wish for these things to happen in real life.

That she is not alone to say things that she does wish but not really wish to happen in real life is true but that is not an excuse.

Watch to the end where he presents 2 supposedly peer reviewed papers by supposedly degree qualified people that say the exact opposite of each other!

 

Iceland has the highest per capita energy consumption in the world, why are they not castigated? Why has all their ice not melted?

 

Meanwhile dead head Ed zero dept refuses to say how many flights they take, or use milk floats re "co2"

Net Zero means zero sense, zero energy, zero civilisation.

Iceland has the highest per capita energy consumption in the world, why are they not castigated? Why has all their ice not melted?

Good question. Would you like not to heat your house when the average temperature in mid summer is a balmy 8 degree Celsius and in winter is well below zero?

Meanwhile dead head Ed zero dept refuses to say how many flights they take, or use milk floats re "co2"

Net Zero means zero sense, zero energy, zero civilisation.

Ed zero sounds a pretty cool nickname. We are limited by the energy density of our batteries. That will eventually improve over the next few decades.

Lol - i've told you repeatedly how he can defeat Farage, but you find it obnoxious and that other gentleman (who recently said i was a follower of Enoch Powell) says the ideas belong in another century... ROFLMAO!!! He says that, but recognises my facts are broadly correct....

 

The way to defest Farage, is to do what i said, and recognise that in a democracy, politicians MUST RESPOND TO WHAT PEOPLE WANT.

 

They are not put there to dictate to the people. This isn't Russia, or facist Spain, Greece, Portugal, or Italy. They are there to do what the people want and expect. But for Starmer and Labour, there is no chance.

 

Angela Rayner has i understand told him this. There were briefings from cabinet meetings about six weeks ago. The ideas she is said to have expressed, probably stem from her survival instinct rather than a comitment to representative democracy, but who knows for sure.

 

She likely has a more rooted understanding of ordinary people than he does. I know he keeps saying his dad was a toolmaker. The guy certainly made a tool when he begat him.

At some point the people wanted brexit, boris, truss etc - the last two being, like farage, an expression of the character, integrity, intelligence (or utter lack of it) behind that project. Much like Germans pre ww2, they were happilly colluding with being misled. To lead involves ethics, ideas, making these work, more than manipulation, fostering division xenophobia. But I get where the wish to control politicians come from given most of our mp's act on the wishes of donors rather than the public.

Farage will likely win the next election. It will probably be a good thing. Much the way it would have been if a truss premiership survived. Or the way trump will succeed in irreversibly damaging the us economy with protectionism. The way he is bailing out intel (after its collapse against AMD reminds, powerfully, of the dying days of leyland). It's the beginning of a more meaningfull learning curve than our verheated westminster electoral cycle

People did want BREXIT. The people who voted for it still do want it, though many of the original voters have now died.

 

The ONLY reason BREXIT wasn't a success for us was the spiteful reaction from the EU to ensure that it damaged us economically and in convenience of travel. There was no need for any of that. It was deliberately imposed as an act of malice. ALL brexit was about was to establish that the UK Parliament is sovereign. To the best of my knowledge we have not downgraded hygiene standards, product safety standards, nor have we boosted state aid in any way that is not common in the EU, and yet in a flurry of spite - the EU created a storm of problems to keep out our products and to impose barriers.

 

Paradoxically - if Russia carries on as it has been doing, they will change their tune about whether it was right to treat us so spitefully. I think Boris (the clown) was far too soft. We should have returned the favour - especially for Ireland who ably assisted in harming us.

 

I think you are wrong to invoke pre-Nazi Germany in the discussion. I'm being polite here - The party I repeatedly tell you has problems and I do not support - has NONE of the dangerous characteristics of the NAZI Party. NONE. There is no brown shirted militia attacking opponents, murdering homosexuals, or beating up Jews. So really - I think you shouldn't be going there. There is no plan to outlaw other parties as soon as a majority is won. Farage is a blow hard, an annoying oaf, and likely a classic pub bore, but he is a democrat.

 

YOU think people are being misled and knowingly allowing this to happen. That is an opinion. I think they have been misled in a different sense. They have been led by people who ignored their needs and their concerns for too long.

 

You are entitled to your view. Of course you are, though I disagree with it - in the main.

 

By the way... The people didn't vote for Truss and they were not asked. She was given power for about six weeks by a ballot of Conservative Party members only. 81,326 members voted for her and 60,399 voted for Sunak. That makes an approximate total of 141,726 people who voted at all. She was obviously a disaster. We knew it before hand. I think she is plainly neuro divergent. You only need to watch her for a minute to diagnose that. I have nothing against autistic people - but there may be roles they are not best suited to. Leadership at this level being one.

 

In the last general election, Labour got 9.7 million votes, Conservatives got 6.8 million votes, Reform got 4.1 million votes, and the Lib dems got 3.5 million votes. I think next time, we will see a transformation of Reform's situation. I have said several times, I fear they may not by then have enough very able candidates so it remains to be seen whether they will be up to the job. To be fair though, I would question the quality of many of the MPs we have in Parliament.

 

edit - part about locking up prisoners in cages triggered flashback, used to work in forensic unit (did interviews to establish whether offenders are fit to stand trial, responsible for an alleged offence - back in dark days when this, in southern hemisphere, involved determining whether they meet criteria for diagnoses on axis 1 or 2 of the DSM3R or 4, or suffered an "emotional automatism" - which would suggest an absence of conscious premeditation, culpability). Right up your street. Reason i profoundly disagree is because the interviews often left me with profound sense of there but for the grace of god; given the right cocktail of severe early abuse/attachment trauma, minor neurological dysfunction and a trigger event (we've all worked in incestuous organisations) we're all capable of doing each other great harm

 

I apologise that I did not see this post from a week ago until now.

 

I do know what you mean about some offenders.

 

When I first retired about 14 years ago, someone I knew who was a magistrate said she thought I should consider applying to be one.

 

I'll give you a moment to collect yourself and stop laughing - - - - -

 

So, I spent a few weeks attending courts as an exercise in deciding whether I should do it. I attended many days in the magistrates courts and also in Crown Court.

 

In many cases - I felt compassion for the defendants. There were numbers of them who were - to use an old fashioned term - subnormal in intelligence and social capability.I can remember vividly one man especially. My feeling was dominated by the thought, 'How can that man possibly function in society where he has to get money to pay for rent and food and the clothes on his back?'

 

But they were not all like that - not by a long mile. The feeble minded sort were mostly there for trivial offences. I saw profoundly evil people in the dock at the Crown Court and also appearing for their first appearance before the magistrates. One such were a group charged with the attempted murder of a rival gang member. They were utterly unrepentant, evil thugs. Their demeanour in the dock was atrocious. Holding up clenched fists to supporters in the public gallery and parading about like heroes, having been charged with shooting a man with a shotgun and causing life changing injury.

 

Another case was the murder of PC Beshenivsky and the attempted murder of her colleague PC Teresa Milburn. A gang of monsters were in the dock. I saw them, being present for several days of the trial. They shot two unarmed women at point blank range while robbing a money changing place.

 

I think in general the courts are pretty lenient with people who are inadequate and non-dangerous.

 

You may be glad to know that I decided against the Magistracy, on similar grounds to yourself. I am not religious, but I do know about religion. I recalled the term from the Sermon on the Mount, 'Judge not, lest ye be judged'.

Edited August 26, 2025Aug 26 by Tony1951

Grok, google, openai all spent billions and billions training their models. Now they go head to head on a chess tournament.

you don't have to play a lot of chess to have a giggle.

 

Were the models trained on chess or in any way designed to play chess?

 

The models used were unless I am mistaken, Large Language Models.

 

I have never thought of using an LLM to play chess, so I asked my Ollama AI running google's gemma3n:e4b model locally on my own mini pc, if it could play chess. It responded:

 

As a large language model, I can't "play" chess in the way a human or a dedicated chess program can. I don't have a physical body to manipulate pieces on a board.

However, I can absolutely understand and analyze chess! Here's what I can do:

• Understand chess notation: I can read and interpret moves written in algebraic notation (e.g., "e4", "Nf3", "O-O").
  
• Evaluate positions: I can analyze a chess position and assess its strengths and weaknesses. I can identify key factors like material balance, pawn structure, king safety, and piece activity.
  
• Suggest moves: Based on my understanding of chess principles and the position, I can suggest possible moves. I can even provide explanations for why a move might be good.
  
• Analyze games: You can give me a sequence of moves from a game, and I can analyze it, pointing out critical moments, mistakes, and good play.
  
• Answer chess questions: I can answer your questions about chess rules, strategy, openings, endgames, and famous games.
  
• Generate chess puzzles: I can create chess puzzles for you to solve.
  
• Play against you (text-based): We can play a simplified version of chess through text. You tell me your moves in algebraic notation, and I'll respond with my moves. This is a basic text-based implementation, not a full-fledged chess engine.
  

To get started, you can:

1. Give me a chess position in algebraic notation. For example: rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1 (this is the starting position).
   
2. Ask me a question about chess. For example: "What is the best opening for white against the Sicilian Defense?"
   
3. Tell me you want to play a game. I'll start the game and we can take turns making moves.
   

Keep in mind: I'm not a perfect chess engine like Stockfish or Leela Chess Zero. My analysis is based on my training data, and I might not always find the optimal move. But I can be a helpful tool for learning and understanding chess.

So, what would you like to do? Do you want to:

• Show me a position?
  
• Ask a question?
  
• Start a game?
  

 

I highlighted the important point of its answer in red

Edited August 26, 2025Aug 26 by Tony1951