Julio Cruz posted:

can we add Laurence Fox to the Weetman embargo list already

Total Meatlove posted:

I work in a connected capacity, but not on the dedicated smart meters side The barely disguised panic comes from the interconnected and incestuous nature of the utility industry in the UK.

The history of the Data Communications Company and the network being created is the history of poor decisions though. (yay capita). To get agreement across a lot of the longer term objectives of any project, you’re looking at at least fourteen to twenty distinct companies and entities agreeing and being able to agree on standards and interoperability for legacy sets going back to the 60’s. I can see if anyone at work wants to do a tell all on how hosed it was, but to give you an idea, the current work being done to get energy data to anything approaching the open banking standards is to take til ‘23.

Julio Cruz posted:

can we add Laurence Fox to the Weetman embargo list already

StarkingBarfish posted:

Cheers, don't worry about asking around for it, I just find it fascinating that more or less the same poo poo that caused the current rail networks issues are happening to the electricity network as well (and to telephony/internet I guess too). It's almost as if... privatisation is bad for the consumer?

Guavanaut posted:

Go with Bulb, they keep delaying their smart meter rollout forever (prices are good too).

StarkingBarfish posted:

Avro as well. They're the reason I'm now submitting manual reads even though I've new meters. At least it means I don't need to trepan myself on the basement ceiling every time I want to read the gas- I now just take it from the IHD.

Lungboy posted:

Careful with Avro if you try to leave them. Even though meter readings were submitted to switch away they insisted on using their internally calculated usage and kept taking money off us for months without telling us as they decided we still owed them money when they owed us.

quote:

A public inquiry into state collusion in the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane will not take place at this time, the government has said.
Mr Finucane was shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries from the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in February 1989.
His family had fought a long campaign, involving numerous legal actions, in a bid to have London fulfil a commitment given 20 years ago to hold an inquiry.
Several examinations of the case found state forces colluded in his murder.
NI Secretary Brandon Lewis said he had taken the decision due to other review processes needing to run their course.

"I am not taking the possibility of a public inquiry off the table at this stage, but it is important we allow ongoing PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) and Police Ombudsman processes to move forward," he said.
PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne said it was his organisation's view that there were "currently no new lines of inquiry", and would now determine if a further review was merited given previous investigations.

Gonzo McFee posted:

https://twitter.com/joanna_louise0/status/1333322039067815936

I know Lawrence Fox is just a spoilt brat acting out because Billy got the house, the kids, the friends and the talent in the divorce but gently caress me he deserve the hate he gets.

ThomasPaine posted:

I'm trying to be more patient with people these days but dear lord, I cannot possibly in good faith believe that an apparently functional human adult with a brain can be this wilfully stupid on so many levels at once.

ThomasPaine posted:

I'm trying to be more patient with people these days but dear lord, I cannot possibly in good faith believe that an apparently functional human adult with a brain can be this wilfully stupid on so many levels at once.

Mr Owl posted:

Anyone else spend a large chunk of today trying to decide what a "Substantial Meal" is and where things fall on the scotch egg food rating system?

Trying to order food in for a pub when you dont know how many people you are going to get in and what you have to serve them is a unique and novel nightmare.

ThomasPaine posted:

Oh yeah I 100% believe Fox doesn't believe a thing he's saying and he's just angling to become another manufactured controversy generator in the Clarkson/Morgan mould, but I don't get why. He's already a well-off posho living a perfectly comfortable life as a third rate actor, he doesn't need to. And while people like Clarkson have said some pretty godawful bigoted and ignorant things this goes a step beyond, using his platform to spout garbage like this isn't just your standard 'belligerent dude being offensive', it's an active threat to public health, it's going to get people loving killed, and he knows it. I don't understand how that kind of person looks at themselves in the mirror tbh. I think the point I realised quite how bad he is was when even bloody Morgan was calling him out.

CGI Stardust posted:

an inspiring message!
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1333498533521936384

Guavanaut posted:

Go with Bulb, they keep delaying their smart meter rollout forever (prices are good too).

CGI Stardust posted:

an inspiring message!
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1333498533521936384

Guavanaut posted:

Go with Bulb, they keep delaying their smart meter rollout forever (prices are good too).

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

I just want to give a heart-felt thank you to whoever introduced me to that reddit relationships thread over in GBS. They're currently debating whether a planned simultaneous group piss in a hot tub without your wife's knowledge is divorce-able material.

betaraywil posted:

My (25f) husband and two friends (all 25) peed in the hot-tub when I was sitting in it with them last night. I feel so disrespected and grossed out but he keeps saying "you're making WAY too big a deal of this."

quote:

Last night we did a small friendsgiving at my husbands parent's house who are out of town. It was mainly centered around his boyhood social circle, most of whom still have family that live in the neighborhood.

After we got done eating, a few of us decided that it would be nice to relax in the hot-tub and look at the lights of the city. We had been in maybe 5 minutes and my husband said "everyone ready?" his two friends gave a thumbs up and the in succession they each said "done." My husbands friend Sachim said done last and they all started laughing and the other two said "ok, we'll buy the next round." It was an obvious inside joke so I asked what they meant and they started laughing and explained the "hot tub pee game" that they had been playing since they were like 5 years old. I wanted to throw up and asked if they serioulsy all just peed in the hot tub. My husband said yes and it's no big deal. I was disgusted so I got out took an hour long shower and went to sleep in his sisters old bedroom and decided I didn't want to talk to him until today.

Today I feel like I've calmly approached him and tried to explain how dirty he made me feel, how unsanitary it was and how, while I appreciate that he has these long running rituals with his friends, he needs to stop the ones that would make him laugh in middle school and for certain leave me out of them.

All he keeps telling me is "relax, you are making WAYYYYY to big a deal of this."

I am sick of hearing him make excuses for this disgusting and childish behavior. How do I approach him to make him appreciate I need him to never do this again?

And the update:

(update) I posted the other day about my husband and his friends peeing in the hot-tub while I was in it with them. TLDR: we are getting a divorce.

quote:

I posted about this on Friday morning. We spend all day Friday fighting about how not only was it disrespectful but that he refused to even acknowledge my issues with literally being pee'd on.

Around 10pm I told him that if he said "you're making way to big a deal of this" one more time, I was going to file for divorce. He said it almost like he was daring me.

TL:DR: My mom and I are going to talk to an attorney today. My dad is a partner in his accounting firm and he thinks that since we are young and don't really have much, the divorce should be very quick and simple. My STBX husband has tried to called god knows how many times to apologize and saying he gets it now but it's way too late for that. It was too late for that when he and his friends did the initial act. I have more self respect than that.

Niric posted:

And the update:

(update) I posted the other day about my husband and his friends peeing in the hot-tub while I was in it with them. TLDR: we are getting a divorce.

namesake posted:

I got a smart meter installed and then the energy company didn't send me any bills for over a year. It was fun but they realised their mistake last month and backdated the new bill they did eventually send.

Niric posted:

Also Bulb do a referral scheme thing of £50 each (credit rather than cash, but still), so if anyone is minded to switch it might be worth mentioning in-thread to sort something with another poster out if you were inclined

Niric posted:

quote:

Does Contact Tracing Work? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from an
Excel Error in England*
Thiemo Fetzer† Thomas Graeber‡ November 24, 2020
Abstract
Contact tracing has been a central pillar of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, contact tracing measures face substantive chal- lenges in practice and well-identified evidence about their effectiveness re- mains scarce. This paper exploits quasi-random variation in COVID-19 con- tact tracing. Between September 25 and October 2, 2020, a total of 15,841 COVID-19 cases in England (around 15 to 20% of all cases) were not imme- diately referred to the contact tracing system due to a data processing error. Case information was truncated from an Excel spreadsheet after the row limit had been reached, which was discovered on October 3. There is substantial variation in the degree to which different parts of England areas were exposed – by chance – to delayed referrals of COVID-19 cases to to the contact tracing system. We show that more affected areas subsequently experienced a drastic rise in new COVID-19 infections and deaths alongside an increase in the pos- itivity rate and the number of test performed, as well as a decline in the per- formance of the contact tracing system. Conservative estimates suggest that the failure of timely contact tracing due to the data glitch is associated with more than 125,000 additional infections and over 1,500 additional COVID-19- related deaths. Our findings provide strong quasi-experimental evidence for the effectiveness of contact tracing.
Keywords: Health, Coronavirus JEL Classification: I31, Z18

Disnesquick posted:

That's kind of my point, really. China runs a big trade surplus and it doesn't seem like a beneficial relationship. What are they using that money to buy that they can't just make themselves? I'm hard pressed to see what Britain can provide that they would want in exchange for the vast amount of manufactured goods they send over. At some point the money has to convert to something or you've just handed over goods for nothing.

Edit: China still has an actual, real economy at this point. The UK has an economy based around a massive Ponzi scheme that assumes rates of growth not seen since before 2008 and even those rates were a fantasy built on the housing Ponzi. It's hard to imagine, having built things to the point they are, that China would want to exchange big chunks of productivity for a stake in such a flimsy illusion.

quote:

“Trade war is often presented as a war between countries. It is not: it is a conflict mainly between bankers and owners of financial assets on one side and ordinary households on the other — between the very rich and everyone else.”

The economic success of China was the result of an extreme version of what the authors call the “high savings” model of development, together with exploitation of trade opportunities, which Japan pioneered. Thus, from the early 1990s and particularly after 2000, there was a sharp decline in the share of household consumption in China’s gross domestic product.

“As of 2018, Chinese households still consume less than 40 per cent of Chinese output — a lower ratio than in every other major economy in the world, by far,” the authors write. This is due to a host of mechanisms — high household savings, low interest rates, lack of rights of rural migrants in cities, regressive taxation, weak social safety nets and the failure of state-owned companies to pay dividends — all designed to shift income from workers and retirees to companies and the state.

Convex posted:

Sometimes I wonder who would be the more principled and pragmatic leader; keith stammer or a single sheet of A4 paper