[Yug]

"Winning the argument" is more important than winning the election.

What these twats don't seem to understand is: by not getting enough votes in the right places to win the election they have actually lost the argument.

One of the definitions of winning is 'coming out on top'. Having enough MPs to be the Party of Opposition (or worse in the case of the Greens with their count-on-your-fingers number of MPs) cannot be described as 'coming out on top' and certainly isn't in the same building as 'winning'.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Burnham talking about cleaning up very large toxic waste dumps today. There's one in Makerfield, which was an issue in the by-election. Starmer had announced a similar clean up of some other sites, don't know how those progressed.

These are an enormous issue which project a sense of government not caring and being incompetent, so good to focus on it. They seem to be too large for local authorities to cope with, so central government has to do it. Waste on private land is a massive issue in lots of places. Obviously, it's the landowner's responsibility but surely there's some scope for government/council removing it when it's incredibly unhealthy for people living all around it? Jaywick in Clacton has tons of these dumps on derelict properties right by occupied properties. Does there not come a point where they accept that the (very absent) landowner isn't going to remove it.

[soulboy]

Don't you mean (very absent) MP?

If only the good residents of Jaywick had someone to fight their corner.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It’s a very long term problem in Jaywick. I’m sure Giles Watling had a go at getting it removed even in Farage hasn’t.

[Tubby Isaacs]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... lish-exams

What do you do with students who don't pass GCSE English and/or Maths? Current policy seems to be failing- only one in seven retake Maths and pass and only one in six retake English and pass. So I quite like the idea of another qualification for them that they have more chance of passing. But the new policy seems to be that they take that, then have to retake GCSE. That's a long haul for a 16 year old who probably hates and fears exams. Are they going to stick around in school for that? It was an idea from Becky Francis, who seems to be very good overall.

[Tubby Isaacs]

One area where I think there's space for improvement in comms is data centers. I don't know much about them, but my natural bias is towards building them and adding renewables capacity, even though I recognize the scale of that challenge, and that the developers will have a go at paying for as little of it as possible.

They've become enormously unpopular in the US with both sides, and it's heading the same way here, when you read things like this-

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... o-new-york

Proposed London datacentre will have annual carbon footprint of 27,000 flights to New York
Exclusive: Planning documents show datacentre in North Ockendon would be incompatible with UK net zero targets

The article's fine, nobody can say it's misrepresenting the challenge. My worry is that we become like the mood in the US (which has many faults, but will get things done in a "fuck you" kind of way, which has some benefits, if not for people at the sharp end). We're going to end up not doing anything at this rate. A very effective synergy will form with pure nimbyism.

But this would seem to be a suitable challenge for Action Andy and his considerable comms skills. It's private investment, it's tech, it's future growth, it's an engineering challenge. And for Andy it's making the developer pay a fair share of the costs (Ofgem have proposals).

[soulboy]

I'm an advocate for AI. We need to get away from ginormous spreadsheets and gut feelings. Given good, clean data (far from a given), there are huge benefits when it comes to all manner of incredibly difficult national and international challenges. It is not just Grok images, Reach newspaper articles and SKYNET!!!1one1!

As you say, renewables could be used to address the carbon challenge but water usage for cooling is going to be a harder sell. Again, not insurmountable. Off the top of my head, there may be options for using non-potable, grey water rather than fully processed drinking water as long as there are options for onsite filtration to avoid scaling up the pipes.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Consumer confidence hit its highest level in two years in August
In another positive sign for the economy, consumer confidence has hit a two-year high in August, according to a survey released overnight.

A long-running monthly index measuring consumer sentiment by GfK improved to -14, up from -17 in July (though yes, those figures are still in the minuses…).

Are things that bad? The GDP figures perhaps suggest they aren't. Then again Sir Keir didn't exactly project undying optimism, and it's only a matter of time before political commentators turn up on screen wearing sackcloth and ashes.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

You mean they'll be penitential? Unlikely...

[The Weeping Angel]

One area where I think there's space for improvement in comms is data centers. I don't know much about them, but my natural bias is towards building them and adding renewables capacity, even though I recognize the scale of that challenge, and that the developers will have a go at paying for as little of it as possible.

They've become enormously unpopular in the US with both sides, and it's heading the same way here, when you read things like this-

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... o-new-york

Proposed London datacentre will have annual carbon footprint of 27,000 flights to New York
Exclusive: Planning documents show datacentre in North Ockendon would be incompatible with UK net zero targets

The article's fine, nobody can say it's misrepresenting the challenge. My worry is that we become like the mood in the US (which has many faults, but will get things done in a "fuck you" kind of way, which has some benefits, if not for people at the sharp end). We're going to end up not doing anything at this rate. A very effective synergy will form with pure nimbyism.

But this would seem to be a suitable challenge for Action Andy and his considerable comms skills. It's private investment, it's tech, it's future growth, it's an engineering challenge. And for Andy it's making the developer pay a fair share of the costs (Ofgem have proposals).

In the States, the likes of Sam Altman and Elon Musk haven't helped by promising that data centres will be the end of the world as we know it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That's right. Ask people if we need computing centers to handle all the work we now do online, and they'll probably agree. That's understandable to people, offices used to have big computer rooms in them. Ask them if they want a data centre for Musk to take over the world, then they're less enthusiastic.

O'Malley is a bit gung ho about how easy it is to put all the renewable energy in, but the Guardian are just throwing the kitchen sink at it. See how the nimbies get roped in to the argument. What's the point of that? The same nimbies would object to a solar farm.

I'm also dubious of this group Foxglove, who are one of the regular think tanks that the Guardian pick up stories from. The calculation may not be accurate. And the analogy of 27,000 New York Flights is not a very good one. Computing power that makes our society a lot more productive isn't the same thing as a bunch of people going to see the Empire State Building.

[Yug]

I'm dubious about the need for AI being available to the general public. Being generous, 10-15% of it's use is for serious academic or scientific stuff. The rest? Do we really need fake animal videos? Fake natural disaster videos? Fake child porn? Fake videos and photos of the current US President doing noble things? Tommy Robinson types 'artworks' of lions in crusader garb? Do kids really need it to do their homework for them? Do we really need to use millions of gallons of water to cool power-hungry equipment which is largely used for generating shit? Call me a Luddite if you like, but I don't believe it's necessary.