Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Not that I'm aware of the Greens bothering with nature very much in their utterances these days.

They used to support depopulation as well, which is very handy if you're against bulldozing over communities.

Its been noted that pine martens are bad at catching red squirrels but do gobble up grey ones. The reds are making a comeback in Kielder Forest since pine martens were introduced.

Can I have a pine marten in my back garden, please?

The Guardian seems to have forgotten that the Greens don't do nature anymore.

The Government Can't Win, Part 94.

Every other day we're told the Government needs to be ambitious and bold and all the rest of it. So here's a white paper criticized for... having too much in it or something.Or not having enough in it, maybe.

The Guardian view on schools: Send reforms aside, the government’s white paper lacks focus
Editorial
Plans to resurrect the children’s services decimated by austerity are appealing. But schools also need attention

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... acks-focus

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Thu Feb 26, 2026 10:05 pm

The Guardian seems to have forgotten that the Greens don't do nature anymore.

Lost Species?
Can we get Velociraptors, up that Tufton Street?

Accused!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... MP=bsky_gu

Keir Starmer has been accused of trying to mimic Donald Trump’s social media output after posting a TikTok video about the crisis in the Middle East overlaid with the prime minister’s voice and the Dire Straits song Money for Nothing.

The video opens with footage showing Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters flying over his head before cutting to British military jets in action and a drone being destroyed, as Starmer’s voice states the position he has taken on the conflict.

“Our number one priority is protecting our people,” says Starmer, overlaid with the sound of electric guitars played by Dire Straits.

Starmer refused to join the US and Israeli strikes on Iran but has since authorised “defensive” action.

Al Pinkerton, a Liberal Democrat MP, said the choice of song when the military was “crying out” for the government’s defence spending plan seemed “particularly cloth-eared”.

“Trump’s illegal war in the Middle East is not a movie for promotion despite what [the president’s] press channels may imply,” he added, referring to social media posts by the White House that celebrated the bombing of Iran with a montage of clips from Hollywood films and television shows.

“Downing Street seems unable to avoid being sucked into the orbit of Trump’s deranged confusion of blockbuster with international conflict.”

The Green party said the TikTok clip “has echoes of videos coming out of the White House glorifying war”.

Asked if the prime minister approved the music used on his social media posts, his spokesperson told reporters: “I’m not going to get into internal processes but you have his words on his commitment to defence spending.”

Starmer told the Munich Security Conference last month that the UK was “going to have to spend more, faster” when it came to defence, after promising last year to spend 2.5% of national economic output on core defence by April 2027.

TikTok has increasingly become a social media platform of choice for the prime minister, whose output has been previously praised as “borderline competent”.

Who is this Jack Hughes and can he please fuck off?

'Accused' by one no-mark Lob Dem MP who no-one (or at least me) has ever heard of...

Thin gruel, even by the weasel-mouthed* Guardian's standards.


*A mixed metaphor created when a mealy-mouthed 'journo' spouts weasel words.

Yeah, this is pathetic stuff.

“Mimicking Donald Trump” is the new “outreforming Reform”. ie they aren’t.

The country is “crying out” for credible tax plans from Al Pinkerton’s party to fund Defence. Or it would be if they were relevant. “Money For Nothing” isn’t a bad summary of the current Lib Dem approach to tax receipts.

In fairness, Donald Trump is the only politician ever to make videos using… music and his own voice. So you can see where the confusion of Starmer and Trump from.

Now they mention it, Starmer channels Donald Trump by using a microphone and having a larynx. Very sinister.

I find it hard to know what to think about AI datacenters. Anyone know much about them?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... s-warnings

Lincolnshire council approves AI datacentre despite emissions warnings
Campaigners say campus near Scunthorpe could generate emissions close to those from all UK domestic flights

This is what the council say about emissions.

Council documents estimate the proposed datacentre’s “peak annual scope 2 emissions”, or indirect greenhouse gases from generating electricity, will reach about 1m tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2033-34. All of the UK’s domestic flights total 1.2m tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

I don't get this. Aren't greenhouse gases very low if they can generate electricity from clean power? That's 8 years into the future, with clean power intended to be 95% by 2030. The issue as I understand it with aviation isn't that the emissions are high so much as there's no easy way to carry on with aviation and get them down. That wouldn't apply here, one wouldn't think.

My first impression- this probably won't happen anyway, but it doesn't seem to be spectacularly stupid on climate grounds. And anyone got any better ideas for Scunthorpe? It's also actually 15 datacentres.

Data centres are very heat intensive which gave this firm a clever idea now being trialed, house servers in private homes to provide free hot water
https://www.techradar.com/pro/a-data-ce ... es-a-catch

Music industry YouTuber Rick Beato asks if data centres will be needed when home computing can host people's AI needs. Not a tech insider but an observation based on technological path that music recording has taken.

That's an interesting angle. It would be more energy intensive to have lots of dispersed AI though, wouldn't it?

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2026 9:05 pm That's an interesting angle. It would be more energy intensive to have lots of dispersed AI though, wouldn't it?

Yes a lot more energy to run a distributed cloud.
You also require a lot more over-capacity in a distributed cloud.

I'll provide an example of the latter (a deliberate worst case).

You run lots of different computer tasks, let's say 100, which require 2 processors each.
You can expect to handle this with 65 locations hosting 4 processors.

But there's a switch in task mix.
Now one task requires 20 processors for 2 hours.

In the distributed cloud, that task is capped at four processors, takes 10 hours to complete - customer loses patience and finds a new supplier.
If that cloud was all in one chunk, you could dynamically assign 20 processors and nobody would complain.

Thank you.

At some level, I think that I did actually mean something like that.

The Guardian view on prisons: sentencing reform has not eased the sense of crisis
Editorial

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -of-crisis

Roughly translated- haven't they fixed it yet? A manager of a football team would get more time from the Guardian than this. Predictable dig at Lammy who's apparently not doing any work apart from restricting jury trials. There's a courts minister, Sarah Sackman (QC) who is leading on that, just as there's a prisons minister (Lord Timson). The Secretary of State maintains an overview, sits in Cabinet etc.

A point worth adding regarding the loss of some jury trials is the potential risk of political appointees to the judiciary. Great for the government – get rid of juries and choose the judges. If we ever went down that path there would be no going back.
Alexis Livadeas
Kidlington, Oxfordshire

Potential risk of lots of things, Alexis. I think the likelihood of David Lammy going all Law and Justice Party on the appointment of judges is pretty remote.

And how likely would it be that a government who fixed the judiciary in the way you fear would leave good old English juries in place, at least for politically significant trials?

It's almost as if the international situation is perilous and the PM needs to fly abroad a lot.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... MP=bsky_gu

Keir Starmer’s government is spending an increasing amount on foreign trips, with almost 40 visits abroad adding up to more than £4m since he took office, the latest transparency figures have showed.

The prime minister had his most costly quarter for foreign travel in the last three months of 2025, with eight trips adding up to £1.2m.

The most expensive was his three-day visit to the Cop climate conference in Brazil, along with 29 officials, costing £413,000.

The trade trip to India with 45 staff on a commercial flight cost £341,000, while the G20 in Johannesburg along with 30 staff on an RAF plane came in at £367,000.

Starmer’s 39 trips abroad have earned him criticism from the Tories, who have called him “never here Keir”, while some of the prime minister’s own aides having tried to get him to spend more time in the UK and less on international diplomacy and attending summits.

However, Tony Blair, David Cameron and Theresa May made as many, if not more, trips abroad in their first two years in office. Blair’s annual travel spending was about £2m for 22 overseas visits in 2006.

So effectively its quite normal and Boris Johnson probably didn't due to the fact it was Covid.

mattomac wrote: ↑Tue Mar 24, 2026 9:41 pm So effectively its quite normal and Boris Johnson probably didn't due to the fact it was Covid.

Who the hell needs a trade trip to India when we've got Sovereignty?