mjr
@mjr@infosec.pub
- Comment on Age Verification: What’s sold as “online safety” means surveillance via ids checks or face scans. 2 days ago:
It’s almost like this law is more about shutting down small online forums that might organise and agitate against governments than it is about safety online, isn’t it?
- Comment on A new public footpath is planned for one of the UK’s most famous ancient sites 3 days ago:
Council councils in the East of England have been putting out plenty of news releases about the numbers of trees. 🌳🌳🌳 Cynics have been pointing out how many council planted or council required developer planted trees have died over the last few years due to inappropriate species, or simple failures to water during heat waves after planting thirsty young trees in a drought area. 🍂☠️😧 They still get counted as plantings and sometimes so do the replacements 🤦
- Comment on Serial rail fare evader faces jail over 112 unpaid tickets 3 days ago:
That’s really unusual because GoVia usually settle out of court (costs them less) and if not, only charge for the offence where the evader was caught red-handed. Loads of examples of that on rail forums, even for repeat offenders. Multiple prosecution on that scale is rare.
- Comment on RSPB 'shuts down' X account in 'foreseeable future' update 3 days ago:
It’s really not. Bluesky is just a twitter repeat, another centralised service ready to be subverted when it helps the far right.
- Comment on RSPB 'shuts down' X account in 'foreseeable future' update 4 days ago:
If I’d seen this earlier, I would have congratulated their chugger at the shops! I wonder if that would have gotten back to HQ. Now, are they in the fediverse yet?
- Comment on School pool barricaded as repairs contract ends with work unfinished 1 week ago:
PFI companies like Innisfree usually hire sharper lawyers and accountants than councils, so these projects tend to become scandals where government is fleeced. Here, Innisfree is accused of taking dividends early then letting the PFI company collapse at the end of its term with work not finished and the council having no tools to make the PFI company’s owner save it.
The bigger scandal is some politicians who ignore or deny this danger and still want more PFI and PPP with minimal safeguards.
- Comment on NHS England quietly removes open source policy web pages 2 weeks ago:
Getting ready to buy more secret-source systems from dodgy providers?
- Comment on Number of people who say Britons must be born in UK is rising, study shows 3 weeks ago:
There’s soooo many reasons to exile him besides that!
- Comment on Number of people who say Britons must be born in UK is rising, study shows 3 weeks ago:
As media pushes 3 main parties to start pushing fascist ideology. Media “acts” surprised.
Fixed that for you.
- Comment on Rachel Reeves Says Progressive People Should Be Zionists 5 weeks ago:
😲 Does she think she’s progressive? 🤣🤣🤣
- Comment on Fresh dystopian hell from Samsung fridges with ads. 1 month ago:
I’ll not take that bet. Would you like to bet it’s not in the pre-sale spec sheet, so you only find out after you buy?
- Comment on Fresh dystopian hell from Samsung fridges with ads. 1 month ago:
Being able to see the contents without the inefficiency of opening the door or having the problems of a translucent door or doing admin work could be cool. But now I hate them too. So glad we have no “connected” kitchen gear yet except Tasmota switch and power monitoring sockets.
- Comment on Patients clogging up A&E with hiccups, sore throats and niggles 1 month ago:
Technically, we only have private-sector GPs, but most work mainly under contract to the NHS. This is a consequence of how the NHS was created in the 1940s.
Some offer private services too and some only do private work, but try it for yourself. Throw a pin in a map of England and try to make a private primary care appointment. You’ll often end up in the nearest city or large town, maybe 30-50 miles away if not on the big city spine. Not convenient, and then there’s the cost, often £150-200 for a first short appointment urgent package. Unless you’re already subscribed to private healthcare at “from £11.32 to £127.89 per month” to quote one private mutual, it’s not an option for most people (and why should it be needed if we’ve paid our National Insurance…)
- Comment on Patients clogging up A&E with hiccups, sore throats and niggles 1 month ago:
It should be just part of the NHS website
Should it, though? Do you want central government knowing when you’re seeing your doctor? Perhaps even controlling your access?
Government should maybe provide templates, software, certificates and so on, but not hosting.
- Comment on Patients clogging up A&E with hiccups, sore throats and niggles 1 month ago:
Yeah, good luck with that. GP businesses ignore this requirement widely, the Care Boards are too dysfunctional to make them comply and the Department of Health seems too broken to fix the Care Boards. The new government seems to be starting to fix things, but it’s like turning a charging mammoth around and the Treasury don’t really want to give them enough pull anyway because the right-wing press are trying to scare financiers already about how much they’re spending.
- Comment on Patients clogging up A&E with hiccups, sore throats and niggles 1 month ago:
Most of England cut their urgent care clinics during the last Tory decade of cuts, so that option isn’t here any more, mostly, which is why ERs are having to handle those patients, which they aren’t intended for.
Maybe the flu itself can’t be treated, but some of the complications can be lethal if not treated and that’s what scares people into seeking help.
- Comment on Patients clogging up A&E with hiccups, sore throats and niggles 1 month ago:
My GP no longer handles eye care. We have to phone an ‘urgent eye service’ on the other side of the country, send phone pics and so on. They then send the prescription to the pharmacy online. If you need to be seen in person, either you go to a hospital clinic within 24h if it’s urgent, or get a GP appointment weeks later when it’s irrelevant, in my experience. Guess I got treated sooner and didn’t have to deal with as much transport while I couldn’t see properly, but it all felt a bit inefficient and impersonal.
- Comment on Patients clogging up A&E with hiccups, sore throats and niggles 1 month ago:
Perhaps, if those are appointment types are needed and wanted, but mainly ending the choice between wardialling and too-long waits. It sucks that you phone up at 9am and get told to call at 8 tomorrow if you’ve not got so ill you go to A&E or a private clinic if you can. Ill people often can’t control their sleep and primary care should be run with more consideration for the patients, not mainly operator convenience.
- Comment on UK energy bills to rise by £108 to pay for infrastructure upgrades 1 month ago:
How much are shareholders extracting per year at the moment?
- Comment on Patients clogging up A&E with hiccups, sore throats and niggles 1 month ago:
Not necessarily. It could also be done by requiring humane appointments systems in the GP contracts.
- Comment on Patients clogging up A&E with hiccups, sore throats and niggles 1 month ago:
Shocking no one wants to try and have a conversation about their health by shouting over the counter to a pharmacist in a packed shop as they vaguely listen with one ear while packing medication.
You can ask for a consultation with the pharmacist, which should be in a private side room. Of course, you do have to wait a bit if they’re busy dispensing, but it’ll almost always be quicker than the wait in A&E.
Agree entirely that the real solution is to fix the GP appointments farce, which in most places is still a choice between wardialling at 8am for an urgent triage appointment or waiting weeks for a non-urgent appointment by which time you’ve recovered or deteriorated to the point of visiting A&E anyway.
- Comment on Channel Tunnel says UK investment 'non-viable' as it halts projects 1 month ago:
Yes, and maybe one of them would like the depot or to run an extra service. That’s what I’m saying. Eurostar hasn’t been allowed to hog the Temple Mills train depot, so why should Eurotunnel hoard the Barking freight depot on the link to the state-owned LTS line? These depots are expensive to build and can only go in limited places, so they should use it, sell it, or lose it.
- Comment on Channel Tunnel says UK investment 'non-viable' as it halts projects 1 month ago:
it had scrapped plans to reopen a freight terminal in Barking and to run a new direct freight service from Lille.
Fine, let another freight operator have them, then.
Meanwhile, their biggest shareholder is still building part of HS2. 🤷
- Comment on Shabana Mahmood puts the signs up: Britain is full. No blacks, no dogs, no Irish 1 month ago:
Sensible? They call it Danish-style, but the Danish Social Democrats reportedly just got their bottoms handed to them at the local elections ballot box, losing almost half their mayors and about a quarter of their councillors from the last local elections, with Copenhagen electing a non-Social-Democrat mayor for the first time since the post was created in 1938. Is that what Labour really wants to turn itself into?
- Comment on Shabana Mahmood puts the signs up: Britain is full. No blacks, no dogs, no Irish 1 month ago:
Didn’t stop the signs as late as the 1980s.
- Comment on ‘He used to say things like “Hitler was right”’: Farage faces more allegations of racist behaviour at school 1 month ago:
And now Farage has suspended a party councillor for letting the mask slip too far:
Tom Pickup, who was elected to Lancashire county council in May […] posted: “Everyone in Reform is a lot more hardline on immigration than is typically stated publicly, to get a majority government we have to be tactical.”
[…] Pickup, who was the council’s lead member for resources and finance, admitted he was a member of the group but said his messages had been “twisted out of context”. He said he was not aware of the more extreme posts, which included one person allegedly calling for a “mass Islam genocide” and encouraging others to stockpile weapons to attack “lefties” and “migrants”.
- Comment on Who supports Reform and why? The charts that show who favours Farage’s party 2 months ago:
Could be good polling with poor explanation!
- Comment on Paperwork blunder by UK bookmaker reveals possible illegal offshore operation 2 months ago:
It does say billions of pounds bet, so probably one of Entain, Evoke, Flutter or bet365, as not many others are that big.
- Comment on On Prince Andrews Road, a Frustrating Effort to Get a New Address 2 months ago:
www.openstreetmap.org/way/57945563 is named after her. Look at the nearby street names. It’s in the next town north from the royal estate at Sandringham.
- Comment on UK Pension Age Changes: Workers Warned They May Work Until 80 2 months ago:
“alarming analysis by consultancy Barnett Waddingham” is saying this, not Labour. It’s basically think-tank fantasy.