Fuck, I’d pay extra.

oh_no_anyway.jpg

Good. There is literally no reason to have a phone in school. Most schools already have bans already and a few I know have had EXTREMELY belligerent parents cause havock because they insist on being able to constantly monitor their children. Having the government on side is helpful. The kids will manage. The ones that complain the most are also the ones that need time away from their phones the most, and they quickly get used to it.

We don’t have “Flock-style” cameras at all. We have a statutory system with a strictly defined remit that was subject to years of argument, scrutiny and rewrites before it was turned on, not an invasive profit factory run by ruthless, messianic psychopaths. Secondly, our cops are all educated to degree level, they’re not just a bunch of otherwise futureless thugs who sit a three-week impossible-to-fail class and are given a gun. Neither the UK ANPR system nor police are perfect, far from it, but both are orders of magnitude better than what you have the Land Of The Free™.

I know enough about the ANPR systems on public roads that the UK police have access to. Firstly, it’s centrally managed through the PNC and every single query is logged: each query has to me made by an authorised officer who signs in with a federated identity and has to make the query in the context of an investigation - any query made without that immediately launches to an internal investigation and instant no-questions-asked dismissal is on the cards for anyone who makes a query without official justification. You know how American cops can shoot a protester and go back to full work after a two-week fully-paid break? Last month a cop in the UK was fired and blocked from ever working in the police, as a security guard or even as a doorman for the rest of his life without any possibility of appeal. He stole a reusable carrier bag from a supermarket.

Also, different people in different organisations have different levels of access. The DVLA can see if a particular license plate has been logged anywhere in a given month to see if an untaxed car is in use, for example, but they can’t see anything else. A traffic cop can see if a car has insurance, tax and an MOT certificate, but not the owner’s name or address. The biggest loophole at the moment is private car park owners who can ask the DVLA for the details of the owner of a car to issue parking fines, but that’s being clamped down on and, regardless, is nothing to do with public cameras.

Also, also: as a public, statutory systen the UK system is subject to FOI and GDPR: anyone can demand a copy of all of their own records from it. Highly recommended.

Tongue in cheek, obvs, but it’s easy to forget that GB News hemorrhages cash and can only function because a bunch of foreign billionaires provide it with an unlimited cash stream, a form of financing that only right-wing extremists can call upon, sadly. Does make me wonder, though, why Ofcom doesn’t have rules about channels being viable, lest they become puppets of their paymasters…

FOR WASHING YOUR FILTHY FEET AFTER WAFFLESTOMPING OBVIOUSLY!

“How dare we deal with minor problems while there major problems even if those major problems are also already being dealt with and we have the capacity to do both.”

No, it won’t. I’ve been on buses and trains where this has happened. “We will not be moving until the freeloaders depart or the British Transport Police arrive.” Well, the people who don’t care they’re pissing off everyone around them already won’t care if it’s being pointed out, meanwhile all of the paying customers are being delayed, being made late for work, being made to miss the connections. You can’t use shame on the shameless.

Oh my fucking god I feel like I had PTSD for a second reading you comment.

That’s fucking gross. What do you think the shower is for?

I agree with what he says up to a point, but then he always says something else and I’m like, no I don’t agree with that bit, that bit is stupid.

Well, if your comment isn’t a self-illustrative example of this I’m not sure what is.

A special constable. So he volunteered as a copper on his spare time. His real job is… working at Sainsbury’s, where he stole the bags from.

In reality:

Before it happened: “If we [thing] it will destroy us and we will deserve it.”

After thing: “lol oh well in for a penny”

I’ve worked in IT for private and state schools in the UK and let me tell you: the prats running private schools get away with shit that would land anyone at state schools in prison, so I can’t say I’m surprised to hear this about Eton but please don’t tar every school with the same brush.

In the private schools I worked at, the process for issuing a device to a student invariably went: “Here’s your top-of-the range Apple iThing. Here’s a piece of paper with the apps we expect you to install.” and that was it - the kids were free to do what they wanted, which is the problem here: not that they have an iPad, but that they have full access to the web browser, App Store, social media, games, etc. Kids were addicted to them from day one for all the reasons we all already know about, but the Fauntleroys who make the decisions in those places just don’t want to hear it and will push back on having to make any kind of decision.

State schools were invariably more sensible and when devices were issued - to students, classes, libraries, whatever - they were heavily managed by MDM to make sure that student had exactly what they needed and nothing more: no social media, no games, usually no camera, a website whitelist, a curated list of apps that could only be used based on time of day, geofencing, etc, all controlled by policies customised to each location, yeargroup, curriculum needs, etc. Those kids were less enthralled with the devices specifically because they weren’t the target of a never-ending sensory and emotional barrage from predatory billionaires. Where devices were issued to kids on a 1:1 basis for use at home (very rare) they were strictly limited to school-approved tasks unless the parents specifically gave consent (and took responsibility, even rarer); even then there were still strict controls in place and those kids wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near TikTok and it’s ilk. In this context, tablets, smartphones, laptops, whatever are actually really useful, serve their purpose well and really do benefit the students.

The problem, as ever, isn’t the technology, but a lack of consideration and reflection on the part of the decision makers.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. They can’t turn their nose up at any effective advertising channel, even if it’s one that shitty, and even more so if it’s one gleefully used by the people trying to dismantle society. Honestly £2m over more than two years doesn’t seem like that much anyway.

From the Wikipedia:

Waugh borrowed ideas such as M. Scott Peck’s postulation of four stages of spiritual development to develop his own concept of four ‘levels’. People who were ‘level one’ are characterised as being chaotic and childlike, whereas ‘level four’ indicated someone who was enlightened and had profound perspective of the world. According to a former member, within the group everyone except Waugh was considered ‘level one’ due to their lack of proper upbringing. Waugh himself was ‘level four’.

Sounds perfectly reasonable and not at all like the mental diarrhoea of a messianic physchopath. Kifflom.

The Type G outlet is the best in the world in every way that matters except one.

People who claim that there’s nothing more painful than stepping on Lego don’t live in a country with Type G plugs.

Good. Guys a dick. He proudly declared that he made “fuck around and find out” his business model and then whines whenever “find out” doesn’t suit him.

TrentBarton are a fucking nightmare for this.

They used to have a physical Mango card with RFID that could be topped up manually in stores or online, or be set to auto top-up. But they killed that off and replaced it with an app that displays a QR code - an app that has to be online to work, and a QR code that changes every fifteen seconds or so. Seeing elderly people trying to deal with that was horrible for everyone involved, not least the elderly person themselves. If you tap on with contactless or pay cash you don’t get any discounts or daily caps, so as per the article you need the app if want to use a pass.

They also have the most bewildering convention for labelling their services. Instead of numbers, they all have quirky names like “the threes” (there is no “the ones/twos”, but there is a “the nines”), “rainbow one” (there is no “rainbow two”), “H1” (there is no “H2”), “my15” (there is no “my1” through “my14”), “the harlequin”, “the mainline”, “the miller”, “the comet”, “red arrow”, etc, but those all refer to multiple bus services that visit different places or take different routes so you just have to know that the bus that’s pulling up is the one you want which you can only see in - you guessed it - the fucking app.

I honestly think that the higher-ups at TrentBarton are sadists who get off on making their services as infuriating and confounding as possible.