Ghosts!

The BBC seems to be getting into A.I. as the way ahead. First, a series of lectures fronted by an A.I. Agatha Christie. Now, they plan to do something with the much more recognizable image of Alfred Hitchcock.

Only sometimes?

The government is on the side of working people, right? So why is the Transport Secretary going to stick it to them by getting rid of the £3 cap on bus fares?

Another bogus

The latest bogus human rights, if Those People are allowed to get away with it, will be a right of access to the internet and then a right to get TV on the internet.
    Predictably, the response from academics who have found that kids are being damaged by excessive internet access is sceptical. But since when did good sense have anything to do with bogus human rights?

Back down to Earth

The response to the Farage Reform agenda from the Conservative Shadow Chancellor has been to calculate that Reform’s tax giveaways would bankrupt Britain!
    No sign of the fourth party that will save us from the first three yet?

Impossible dream

Combine Farage’s ideas with those of sidelined Boris Johnson, and we’d really go places. But like that would ever happen.

Major challenge

After reading Nigel Farage’s Saturday essay about what his party is about and what his concerns are, the only possible response is a big yes to all of it.
    But could Nige deliver against the dead negative hand of the Blob in the civil service?

Sneaky

The reason why Chinese electric vehicles are relatively cheap is that they have a hidden kill switch in them, which would let ‘bad actors’ bring them to a standstill at a time when they are intent on mischief.
    That’s the story, anyway. How true it is depends on how much you subscribe to the theory that the purpose of new tech is to screw up the lives of people still using older tech.

Bound to happen

Bets are being laid on when Reform UK, currently the refuge of the protester, will become as reviled and the Conservatives and Labour, and people will be rushing to vote for another bunch of upstarts and not-the-establishment.

Leaky Britain

We’re heading for a summer drought and all that goes with it; hosepipe bans, low water pressure and so on.
    So why aren’t the water companies getting a good and continuous battering to get on with fixing the leaks in the distribution system, which allow so much of it to go to waste?

Worst people in the world?

Are lawyers totally disconnected from truth, decency and the British way of life?
    Is that why the one who’s our prime minister can quite casually give away the intellectual property of the country’s creative sector to Big Tech in the USA without charge and not think the move should never even have been contemplated?

Very small teacup

Is it really a ‘Hitler storm’ if a Labour MP gets the hump with a posting by a Reform councillor to the effect that it’s a good thing that no one suggested to Adolf Hitler that he should invade us using small boats?
    Or is it just a Labour MP being pathetic and needing to grow up into the real world?
    Or is there a ‘get Reform for being successful’ trend in progress?

How amazing!

Got a good laugh from Tom Utley of the Daily Mail, who found that Google’s A.I. thinks his niece is both his mother and his grandmother.
    Definitely artificial intelligence and no substitute for the real thing.

A man with history

I gather the new Pope is a Yank. That must have really chuffed the Africans who think it’s their turn. A surprisingly young bloke; a mere 69; with a history of not being too worried about child abuse by priests.

Why would it?

What a totally daft idea – Mad Max Verstappen telling people that becoming a dad didn’t make him a slower Formula One driver. No, mate, especially with your wife, your staff and relatives doing all the work.

Long term solution

San Quentin State Prison houses a bloke who was convicted of killing 16 men back in 1989 and sentenced to death.
    He is now 80. Was that by death by old age rather than something like a gas chamber or a lethal injection?

Trade surprise (to me)

Where do 50% of Scotch whisky exports go? India! Mind you, there are rather a lot of them and the place is prosperous in parts.

Real speedy

I gather they elected another Pope whilst I was otherwise engaged. A real Speedy Gonzalez job?
    I bet they’re still messing about with electing a new Archbishop of Canterbury at this time next year.

Another of life’s big mysteries

Fat women spraying sweaty armpits. Why is that appropriate teatime TV advertising?

Good for him

Bravo to Prime Minister Carney of Canada for telling President Trump where to get off and that Canada ain’t going to become the 51st state of the United States.
    CFL fans at the Mansion would be totally outraged if a Trump take-over led to a forced merger of the excellent Canadian Football League with the much less adventurous NFL in the States.

Good for them

Nice to see the newly elected Reform UK councillors refusing to waste time by being shoved onto a propaganda course about climate change or diversity.

If Only

Nothing like a spot of nuclear sabre rattling by Pakistan and India to make stranded traveller wish they’d just bloody get on with it and it would go global!

Going nowhere

I’ve been stuck in one of those travel shambles, where you sit around for hours and hours and hours and nothing bloody happens.
    I feel the need for a couple of days off to recover!

No Taste

You don’t need a fashion sense if you’re a popstar. That’s the message from the one who was strolling around New York in a sheer dress to show off the logo on her underwear.

Not exactly joined up

The Chancellor’s VAT raid on private schools was advertised as funding 6,000 more teachers in the public sector. The next thing you know, the Schools Minister is talking about teacher redundancies. That was a pretty big bump in the road.

Confidence builder – not!

There are junior doctors who are condemning the Supreme Sourt ruling on what a woman is with a claim that this is biological nonsense. Who’d want to be treated by one of these idiots?

Keep them guessing

President Trump was making noises about running for a third term, even though that’s constitutionally impossible. There was a strong hint that he was hoping for popular acclaim.
    But reality has bitten and he’s not going to do it.

More than likely

If the lights go out due to Edstone Milipede’s wilful failure to ensure constancy of the electrical supply, someone observed, then that will give Beer Smarmer another excuse for failing to sack the useless bugger – he won’t be able to find him!

Could be true

Apparently, some experts think Reform UK won the Runcorn by-election by only six votes because our prime minister didn’t go there during the election campaign.
    The feeling is that the result would have been a landslide for Reform UK if Uncle Beer had dared to show his ugly mug!

Get rid

A judge who has the full make-over from make to female is off to the European Court of Human Rights to complain about the Supreme Court ruling on biological sex.
    It’s definitely time to bin the ECHR, which has turned out to be a major time and money waster here.

News or olds?

Is it still news that the Chancellor is being investigated by the watchdog at Westminster over another of her freebies?
    Or do we just accept that’s the way things are going to be for the rest of her term in office?

Free will needed?

 The pensions industry is reported to be worried about people accessing their pension pot to use the cash for gambling and wants to quiz people about their gambling habits when they apply for cash.
    The Open Rights Group reckons asking people about their gambling is intrusive & could affect their credit rating adversely.

Silence recommended

There are reports of some junior doctors condemning the Supreme Court ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex. They claim this is biological nonsense!
    Which leaves me wondering why they didn’t keep their traps shut. After all, who’s going to have any confidence in them if they can’t handle basic biology?

Man with a plan

The Environment Secretary wants to confiscate and crush vehicles used by fly-tippers and impose the cost on them instead of leaving the local council stuck with it.
    Nice to see a member of this government getting serious about a problem.

Just silly

Trigger warnings are supposed to go on material which the audience might not have encountered before. But the National Theatre has plastered them all over an upcoming production of Hamlet which is ridiculous, tiresome and infantile.

Just Shameless

You’d think a Cardinal who’d been gaoled for five and a half years by the Vatican court, and who isn’t eligible to pick the next pope, would sit on the sidelines quietly.
    But not the one Pope Francis told not to get involved. He’s using his exclusion as an excuse for going around yelling he’s innocent.

After Beer!

There’s a growing amount of support for the current Health Secretary as a successor to Beer Smarmer. Mainly because he has a personality; something which is totally absent in Beer’s empty suit; and he can be quite sensible when he tries.

Phone Guinness!

Our wonderful government is setting a new world record for losing support faster than any previous newly-elected government in the whole history of the universe.

Quite a change

At the general election, it was Vote Farage, Get Labour.
    Nigel seems to have cashed in to the max on an unpopular Labour government, one which is setting new world records for being useless at everything.
    But can Nigel deliver now?

Bound to fail

The major power blackout across Spain and Portugal was due to a failure of the juggling act with occasional sources of power to adjust to demand. Proper power stations provide a generous amount of slack in the system and offer energy reliability. The sort of system Labour is going for doesn’t.

No to the lot of them!

Pollsters out before this week’s local elections found that when presented with a list of the major parties, 41% came back with ‘none of the above’ as their choice.
    And 43% didn’t trust any of the major parties to sort out the financial problems created by local government incompetents.

Feet are for dragging

The Treasury is claiming it is bringing new rules on debanking into force in response to what happened to Nigel Farage at the hands of Coutts. But that was a couple of years ago and the new regs won’t come into effect until next year.
    Two speeds; dead slow and stop.

How important are local elections?

Not terrifically, has to be the conclusion after there were no riots in the areas which didn’t have any due to Angela Rayner’s gerrymandering.

Quite Insane

That has to be the verdict on the Cambridge University Polar Museum’s operators, who would have us believe that exploring Antarctica was an act of colonialism, even though no one lived there at the time.

Huh?

What was up with GB Views the other night? I switched on just before 8 p.m. for the State of the Nation programme and the news summary.
    12 minutes later, they were still going through the stock of plugs and promos with no explanation for what had gone wrong.
    So I pulled the plug on them in disgust.

Real Retro

Looking for an expensive gift for someone? An American company is using Tyrannosaurus to cook up an artificial fabric which will have the texture of T-Rex skin and can be used to make gloves, etc.
    And if anyone complains that whatever they’ve bought doesn’t feel like dinosaur skin, they’ll just be confronted with “How do you know?”

Inability to focus?

Our Chancellor headed for the United States to do something about a trade deal. Next thing you know, she’s being reported as telling all sorts of people that Uncle Beer is much more interested in a deal with the EU. That’s going to do wonders for her chances of a deal.

Enjoy it while you can

We’re having a rather lengthy period of sunny weather. Not something we can look forward to the future if the climate spivs get their way and start blocking our sunlight in a futile attempt to change the climate.

Suspend judgement

Trump’s first 100 days in office, a political milestone or a millstone?
    I suppose we’d better wait a while before we decide if he’s rewriting the script constantly.
    Ending the war in Ukraine in a day? That’s now a joke. And not a brilliant one.