Snap General Election called

[Digby]

So Boris unveils his great plan, we're going to borrow and build, borrow and build, and then for the variation borrow and build.

Maybe the plans will be for infrastructure that creates future growth and really gets a bang for the buck, and maybe the plans will take account of climate change, but in advance I'm not anticipating competency

[Sandydragon]

Its only a £5billion pot, it won't go that far.

[Digby]

And most of that was already announced, turns out he was just expelling some hot air

[Puja]

And most of that was already announced, turns out he was just expelling some hot air

This my shocked face.

Mind, he has really surprised me with his offer of residence to the Hong Kongers owed a British Overseas Passport. It's the morally right thing to do, a strong censure to China, and a very sensible bit of foreign policy and diplomacy, which still leaves me baffled as to how it's come from the mouth of Boris Johnson.

Puja

[Digby]

I'm pleased about the offer of sanctuary to holders of BOP in HK too. I'm not sure it's sensible, but it seems the right thing to do

[Digby]

I'm not really sure if this deserves to be in this thread or the Brexit one, either way it's a lot of money being used to get something at best comparable to Galileo

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53279783

And it's only a lot of money to buy into an American company that we'd joint own with an Indian communications company, we could still face hurdles with the US dependent on what we want to do with the technology, especially when it comes to any Chinese involvements. It's certainly not the UK alternative we were told we'd have, and it's only a few hundred million to buy in, it's going to take billions more for an idea that might not work out.

Yet another giant fuck up courtesy of Brexit, but with Boris in charge debt is a problem for the future and providing that's not his future he doesn't seem to care

[Digby]

OneWeb as a construct wasn't intended to be used for a navigational system payload, so we're going to have to see if as a concept it can be converted despite it operating at an orbit height around 1/17th of other navigational systems proven to work. I'm sure OneWeb did a terrific job selling the UK government this wouldn't be a problem, but they were failing and looking for any path out of bankruptcy having laid off more than 80% if their workforce and simply keeping enough people in place to keep current satellites (or their capital spend to date) in orbit whilst desperately seeking new investment, but this isn't proven and the UK government has a miserably bad record on technology projects.

I presume we're buying into OneWeb rather than starting our own UK company because of the hope it'll be cheaper to try and piggy back a system that was meant for something else, though Galileo was better and cheaper than either of those options, so again hearty congratulations to team Brexit you useless lying wankers

[Digby]

Having just posted the above 2 comments I've just now read an article on a website which seems to be more about technology updates than any particular bias, but others might know as left/right or perhaps more importantly remain/batshit crazy in bias

https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/oneweb_bs/

[Digby]

Another update (and he does concede this might not be a stupid move by the UK government and it might even pay off, but there are some concerns raised)




I can say chatting to some maths gurus at a well known tech company named after a river not quite as long as the Nile they're pissing themselves with laughter, even the British one who's pro Brexit and pro Trump (and in a really bad mood he can't get back out to New York from Sutton Coldfield) is between laughter and pain from his chin hitting the floor

[Stones of granite]

I've no idea what the rationale is behind this investment, but one thing seems clear to me - it can't be about creating yet another GNSS system. It just doesn't make any sense from either a technical or commercial perspective (who wants to be 5th to the market..?).

There must be some reason for it that hasn't been disclosed yet, and so far I have been unable to come up with a convincing guess.

[Digby]

We do need a system, and we do need it for our military else we could simply be civilian participants of Galileo. But christ alive this isn't much more sensible than playing the lottery as an actual financial plan if that's what it is.

[Digby]

Given I'm more than a little annoyed with this issue I am also left wondering just where the 4th estate have gone when it comes to the government committing us to a vast spend at no little risk?

[Stones of granite]

We do need a system, and we do need it for our military else we could simply be civilian participants of Galileo. But christ alive this isn't much more sensible than playing the lottery as an actual financial plan if that's what it is.

If you mean we need our own GNSS system, then that is debatable, but what is certain is that OneWeb is not the way to achieve it.
There may be a military purpose to the investment, that is conceivable, but it would be about comms, not positioning. There isn't a single aspect of the OneWeb architecture that lends itself to a GNSS system.

[Digby]

We do need a system, and we do need it for our military else we could simply be civilian participants of Galileo. But christ alive this isn't much more sensible than playing the lottery as an actual financial plan if that's what it is.

If you mean we need our own GNSS system, then that is debatable, but what is certain is that OneWeb is not the way to achieve it.
There may be a military purpose to the investment, that is conceivable, but it would be about comms, not positioning. There isn't a single aspect of the OneWeb architecture that lends itself to a GNSS system.

Either we have our own military system or we somehow beg access to someone else's and then we're accepting a dependency. I agree OneWeb isn't in advance ideally placed, or even badly placed, to support positioning but I can't see why we're doing this if we don't (however weirdly) think it can be repurposed

[Digby]

I did wonder about putting this in the Covid thread, but seeing as it pertains to Agent Cummings and Goings more than Covid I'll link it here

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/a-river-to-my-people/

[Digby]

Sterling work over the last year or so by Johnson and Patel to protect rapists from prosecution

https://victimscommissioner.org.uk/news ... f-justice/

I suspect they will claim they're not intentionally acting to protect rapists, which would lead one to conclude they merely don't give a shit

[Sandydragon]

Sterling work over the last year or so by Johnson and Patel to protect rapists from prosecution

https://victimscommissioner.org.uk/news ... f-justice/

I suspect they will claim they're not intentionally acting to protect rapists, which would lead one to conclude they merely don't give a shit

Unfortunately this is the pendulum swinging back after the false accusations of child abuse scandals various. However in fairness to the CPS, it’s hard to prosecute a case where there is little evidence , which there often isn’t in rape cases.

[Digby]

Sterling work over the last year or so by Johnson and Patel to protect rapists from prosecution

https://victimscommissioner.org.uk/news ... f-justice/

I suspect they will claim they're not intentionally acting to protect rapists, which would lead one to conclude they merely don't give a shit

Unfortunately this is the pendulum swinging back after the false accusations of child abuse scandals various. However in fairness to the CPS, it’s hard to prosecute a case where there is little evidence , which there often isn’t in rape cases.

It is tough to make a case, but their solution of prosecuting less cases is a shitty answer. We weren't exactly prosecuting 50% before they took a massive step back from the problem. Whether it stems from child abuse accusations proving faulty I don't know, I wouldn't want to say that without some more info, the most I'd be willing to say is the CPS have been told they needed to raise the successful prosecution rate and they did that by refusing to even take forward tougher cases, which as so often happens when presented with a target is middle managers finding a way to meet a target that doesn't actually address a problem

[Stones of granite]

An absolute masterclass of fuckwittery from Boris Bunter. He put five placemen into the Intelligence and Security Committee, in order to get another puppet elected as Chairman. Presumably he had been planning on using Failing Grayling to suppress or spin the salient points of the forthcoming Russia report. Sadly, one of his pets was a bit more savvy than expected and got himself elected instead, resulting in him being thrown out of the Parliamentary Party, and now Bluffer has a hostile Chairman about to publish the report.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53422010

[Digby]

An absolute masterclass of fuckwittery from Boris Bunter. He put five placemen into the Intelligence and Security Committee, in order to get another puppet elected as Chairman. Presumably he had been planning on using Failing Grayling to suppress or spin the salient points of the forthcoming Russia report. Sadly, one of his pets was a bit more savvy than expected and got himself elected instead, resulting in him being thrown out of the Parliamentary Party, and now Bluffer has a hostile Chairman about to publish the report.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53422010

I hadn't heard Boris had stacked the deck with new appointees, though like many I did wonder just how on earth Grayling was being lined up for what should be an important role

[Stones of granite]

An absolute masterclass of fuckwittery from Boris Bunter. He put five placemen into the Intelligence and Security Committee, in order to get another puppet elected as Chairman. Presumably he had been planning on using Failing Grayling to suppress or spin the salient points of the forthcoming Russia report. Sadly, one of his pets was a bit more savvy than expected and got himself elected instead, resulting in him being thrown out of the Parliamentary Party, and now Bluffer has a hostile Chairman about to publish the report.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53422010

I hadn't heard Boris had stacked the deck with new appointees, though like many I did wonder just how on earth Grayling was being lined up for what should be an important role

All the members of the committee are nominated by the Prime Minister. You can see it here
http://isc.independent.gov.uk/

He picked the Tories that he thought were safe hands...

[Digby]

An absolute masterclass of fuckwittery from Boris Bunter. He put five placemen into the Intelligence and Security Committee, in order to get another puppet elected as Chairman. Presumably he had been planning on using Failing Grayling to suppress or spin the salient points of the forthcoming Russia report. Sadly, one of his pets was a bit more savvy than expected and got himself elected instead, resulting in him being thrown out of the Parliamentary Party, and now Bluffer has a hostile Chairman about to publish the report.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53422010

I hadn't heard Boris had stacked the deck with new appointees, though like many I did wonder just how on earth Grayling was being lined up for what should be an important role

All the members of the committee are nominated by the Prime Minister. You can see it here
http://isc.independent.gov.uk/

He picked the Tories that he thought were safe hands...

I simply hadn't heard he'd gone with supposed safe hands, that isn't supposed to be how it's done. At least we didn't end up with Captain Drop The Ball

[Sandydragon]

That is the first bit of news in a good while that has cheered me up. Appointing Failing Grayling as head of the Intelligence Oversight would be like giving a contact to run a ferry service to a company with no ferries. Utterly absurd.

[Digby]

Outstanding work by Raab to get out in front of the report which Lewis will surely release into Russian interference by releasing his own report saying when we told you Russia wasn't interfering that was true bar the part about it being true.

[Sandydragon]

Outstanding work by Raab to get out in front of the report which Lewis will surely release into Russian interference by releasing his own report saying when we told you Russia wasn't interfering that was true bar the part about it being true.

Notice he didn’t mention the Brexit vote. Either the formal report isn’t conclusive on it or he hopes by getting ahead of its release it will take the sting out of that revelation.