[Andy McDandy]

Why does that MP spend all their time in [Westminster/their constituency]? All the time they're [there/here] they're [ignoring their voters/not doing their jobs]. And they [never/always] post updates about what they're doing, because they think [they're too good for us/we give a shit].

Yeah, it's just like Malcolm Tucker and the special chair.

[The Weeping Angel]

I blame the expenses scandal. It convinced everyone that MPs were all in the take and that seeing anything, no matter how inconsequential, as corruption. Such as Starmer getting a pair of glasses.

[Boiler]

Why does that MP spend all their time in [Westminster/their constituency]? All the time they're [there/here] they're [ignoring their voters/not doing their jobs]. And they [never/always] post updates about what they're doing, because they think [they're too good for us/we give a shit].

Yeah, it's just like Malcolm Tucker and the special chair.

Farage?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Farage "isn't hypocritical' about all the bad shit he does. Or something.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I blame the expenses scandal. It convinced everyone that MPs were all in the take and that seeing anything, no matter how inconsequential, as corruption. Such as Starmer getting a pair of glasses.

That's a very good point.

I wonder if some of this stuff might have been claimed as expenses in the past. Not every MP who gets taken to the racing is thrilled by a 3 mile handicap hurdles or a 6 furlong maiden stakes. They're there because of what might be called networking. If something is an important industry, you can probably meet more people more quickly in an environment like that than any other. That's what happens in private business. Where some just chuck down the free sauce and others don't.

MPs of course aren't like regular businesspeople of course, so they need to be careful.

[Andy McDandy]

At a certain level, almost every job is networking.

[Abernathy]

Has anybody else noticed the way that Reach websites (Birmingham Live, all that sort of clickbaity shite) has been feeding out a very steady drip of insidious scare stories about the Burnham government?

Burnham is planning to take driver's licences off the over-70s. Burnham is going to introduce penal charges on particular types of car. Burnham is going to introduce new taxes on this, that, and the other. Burnham is coming after your pension. Burnham is building holiday camps for immigrants near you.

They're all at best inaccurate, false, or outright made-up lies, but they are all transparently aimed at a particular electoral demographic of perhaps Mail/Express readers whose gullibility levels and paranoia about filthy lefty governments are visible from space

Do take a look - it's there.

[Boiler]

Birmingham Live in particular is utter shit and a waste of electrical energy.

More fool anyone who reads it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, this stuff is shit. But there’s a market for it. And the idea that “Leveson 2” or anything could stop it is fantasy. A paper can basically make stuff up based on a non-existent anonymous source, and a regulator couldn’t force them to name them.

It’s shit. I suppose it’s another way that demographics favours the right.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Per The Times, the Government have postponed to put in Thames Water into administration on cost grounds. Despite what’s often said, there would be a cost in terms if not in cash but in terms of taking on debts. Railtrack in 2003 had about £7m in debt that the government took on.

Still may be worth it, but a pattern is emerging of straight talking populist Andy finding that it’s all a bit harder than it looks.

[Tubby Isaacs]

"Analysis finds" something the Guardian doesn't like anyway is bad. It's our old friends Foxglove, who who might as well have a seat in the Guardian office. An almost comically biased set of commentators are phoned up for quotes. None of this is peer reviewed, it's on the hoof campaigning.

Two planned datacentres will have higher UK carbon emissions than ExxonMobil, analysis finds

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... exxonmobil

Nobody is processing data or pulling fossil fuels out of the ground for fun. They're serving the wider economy and our lifestyles. Is Europe supposed to leave this stuff to the US and China? We hear a lot about strategic importance and resilience. Isn't this part of that? This isn't that hard to decarbonize over a time period, much easier than lots of heavy industry which most people accept we need here. Without being too James O'Malley, this is doable.

I'm still up on this tech stuff- I even had a decent experience with Evri this week.

[RedSparrows]

"Analysis finds" something the Guardian doesn't like anyway is bad. It's our old friends Foxglove, who who might as well have a seat in the Guardian office. An almost comically biased set of commentators are phoned up for quotes. None of this is peer reviewed, it's on the hoof campaigning.

Two planned datacentres will have higher UK carbon emissions than ExxonMobil, analysis finds

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... exxonmobil

Nobody is processing data or pulling fossil fuels out of the ground for fun. They're serving the wider economy and our lifestyles. Is Europe supposed to leave this stuff to the US and China? We hear a lot about strategic importance and resilience. Isn't this part of that? This isn't that hard to decarbonize over a time period, much easier than lots of heavy industry which most people accept we need here. Without being too James O'Malley, this is doable.

I'm still up on this tech stuff- I even had a decent experience with Evri this week.

I think people would have more time for some of it if it wasn't being used for such transparent and endemic enshittification: online, and via LLMs.

At the very least, a data centre is a visible, big, ugly box/series of boxes to point to and say 'this represents a load of shit I hate', be that NIMBYism and/or anti-tech and/or anti-AI and/or environmentalism etc etc. And yes, punters are hypocrites, they'll order something from Amazon a moment later.

'Lifestyles' does a lot of heavy lifting here, and doubly-so when we're essentially being repeatedly told the future is AI and all that it entails - as if we have no choice, and there's no other possible way of living.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, there's a certain amount of hypocrisy among punters. Pile your savings into the bank with the best rates, then moan that they've got AI screening your complaints, not someone sat behind a counter in your small town, waiting for you to pop in. I'm actually finding this fairly type of AI is improving, and that's as far as I go with it. Well that and the option on the google homepage, I find that quite impressive.

I'm sure that the data centers will try and pay as little of the costs as possible. That's more my concern.