Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Creator of good books such as Trans Britain and Pressing Matters. Lifetime Achievement Award PrideOfManchester 2021. Drove two Nissan LEAF EVs for ten years and is now enjoying a BYD Dolphin called Hattie. Posts about #climate mitigation, #trans moral panic, #books and now #fascism.  #Retired. She/Her.

Buy Trans Britain online: https://www.queerlit.co.uk/collections/non-fiction/products/trans-britain-our-journey-from-the-shadows
Bookstore UK Affiliate ‘store’ listing trans-related books: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/christineburns
Location: Manchester UK

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Last Notes

2026-07-13 14:18:31 GMT

After years of spreading fear uncertainty and doubt about Electric Vehicles the media are having to walk back those lies one by one. The latest subject is batteries: Remember how the media seeded and constantly reinforced the lie that your EV’s battery would need to be expensively replaced after 2-3 years? Now that lie is untenable the only option is to splash the new story that they’re not wearing out. But notice the framing: Their part in the belief is absent. It’s just a huge surprise.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/913/065/458/487/215/original/ee4b8d9e943c4003.png

2026-07-02 12:30:05 GMT

Britain is currently running on an electricity generation mix that is over 90% renewables. The amount generated is in fact 112% of demand and the rest is being exported. That means that, were it not for the need to currently keep gas running to provide frequency and voltage stability, the country could technically be running on wind, solar and a bit of hydro. https://grid.iamkate.com
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/850/440/076/242/241/original/7029fbc57b2020d2.png

2026-03-18 07:52:51 GMT

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So, what I guess I’m hoping for is that a more finished and polished economic policy agenda starts to address the easy criticisms but still adheres to the quality of being different. I know that the broad brush upsets the status quo and brings on fierce criticism but I’d like to see him win that argument.

2026-03-18 07:50:29 GMT

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To me, as someone without any orthodox economic grounding, I find Polanski’s broad brush ideas refreshing even though I know that exposes me to accusations of naivety and of succumbing to Polanski’s skill as a populist of the left. I’m cautious because I recognise Polanski’s success is that he’s harnessing the tricks of the populist right to advance a leftist policy agenda, but his economics seem to make refreshing sense. After all, the orthodoxy hasn’t been working for yrs.

2026-01-28 07:06:40 GMT

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A European security alliance incorporating Ukraine as a valued source of innovation and strategic prowess may have a tough belt-tightening few years as it builds Ukraine-style border defences across the rest of the eastern flank but it’s doable given the will that an aggressive threat instills. The new alliance would have a purpose whereas NATO has come to seem like a solution for yesterday’s threats.

2026-01-16 08:10:35 GMT

The weirdest excavator I’ve ever seen! I think they’re referred to as spiders and they can lift each leg independently and widen or narrow their track whilst the cabin does a full 360. There must be a temptation for the driver to play all day. One was in action this week, clambering down into the bed of the breached Llangollen Canal to help dig out narrowboats that had been washed into the void.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/903/762/623/375/027/original/5c736b7765b86192.png

2026-01-15 07:10:45 GMT

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It’s a crying shame that it costs more now to tempt developers over the line with higher guaranteed returns because the UK made itself a less attractive place for projects under the Tories. Ten years ago they were queuing up to do business at lower bid prices but then we had all the stop/start political uncertainty and, whilst that was happening, more opportunities came along around the world for investors, meaning we now have to compete to attract them.

2026-01-12 06:00:26 GMT

This is scary for reasons the average buyer may not understand. Proper supply equipment for charging EVs is engineered for safety. It’s designed to be used outdoors in all weathers. A proper cable doesn’t have high voltage on it until it is plugged into the car, the car senses it’s there and ASKS for power. The engineering means EV supply cables typically cost around £150. A £60 cable like the one here has none of that nicety and is live at all times. Potentially lethal
https://youtube.com/watch?v=wxtxwszJHxQ&si=toFa6rk1blBRxMAn

2026-01-09 08:17:09 GMT

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I’m pleased to see people have already put a name to the hyped up gun toting murderer. He got careless with his mask and the internet is very resourceful.

2026-01-09 06:53:34 GMT

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It’s funny how pubs (fast dying out in the traditional sense) are so fetishised. Farage has perfected this of course. I’m surprised they aren’t so performative on whippets and ferrets too. It’s a vision of Britain taken from WW2 era black and white movies. I say this having grown up in a pub in a naval dockyard town in the sixties.

2026-01-09 06:40:20 GMT

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Could it just be that the modern political class — young PPE graduates with no first hand experience of either life or business as experienced by the majority — are just blundering blindly through one bad decision after another untethered from reality?

2026-01-06 09:32:46 GMT

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The verb you are searching for is ‘taken’. Or perhaps ‘extracted’. Earning doesn’t come into it.

2026-01-05 18:29:38 GMT

‘While Trump threatens military action against Greenland, a quieter takeover is already happening. This investigation exposes how Ronald Lauder — Trump's billionaire friend, who planted the Greenland idea in 2017 — is systematically buying into Greenland's economy and its elites through a Delaware corporation called Greenland Development Partners.’
https://youtu.be/UwVJq6BhRZE?si=lJAvxMgcYd1b_3bH

2026-01-02 09:23:28 GMT

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One of the features I like about Great Manchester’s Bee Network app for the buses, trams and trains back under public ownership is a button for silently reporting any incident taking place on board. I’ve not needed to use it but I’m pleased it’s there. I’ve been helping a neighbour learn how to use the app to see when the next bus is arriving so she can time when to leave the house and walk to the stop. A good app really transforms a service.

2026-01-01 09:42:57 GMT

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Britain has to get over its baked in delusions and sense of exceptionalism — show some genuine humility — before much can change. I rate the likelihood of that next to zero in 2026, especially with the chaos that’s likely to come with having a multi-party system in a FPTP electoral system. Barring a serious upset there is a danger of sliding further towards Reform even though I’m pretty sure that the extreme right remains a minority interest on the ground.

2025-12-19 13:39:51 GMT

The Christmas Private Eye cover is chef’s kiss…
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/746/507/923/681/029/original/55ec7acbce85fdf6.png

2025-12-17 07:36:27 GMT

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The OPEC part is almost like a map of the worst places in the world and (excepting Canada) the non-OPEC part is not much better. If there are future historians they will surely conclude that the 150 year reign of oil brought out the worst in humanity and almost killed us.

2025-12-09 13:00:18 GMT

It seems to me that the very thing the Supreme Court DID NOT DO when it ruled on the meaning of ‘sex’ for the purposes of the Equality Act back in April was to offer any “Much needed clarity” as claimed by Keir Starmer. In fact what they achieved was to create total chaos for everyone — not least trans people, who’ve been exposed to eight months of performative cruelty by a shocking array of commentators. Playing amateur lawyers.

2025-12-02 13:26:08 GMT

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It’s the supplier so they’re used to coming to cap off the pipes on day 2 of the install.

2025-12-02 09:49:11 GMT

So… this morning I have a man coming to survey for installing a heat pump and removing the gas supply. Whilst he’s here there’s another one will be calling in by phone to refine a quote for solar panels and a battery — an electricity project. Then, this afternoon, another man is replacing my old water meter with a smart one. Gas, electricity, water… I think that’s ’full house’ for the utilities 😂 I very seldom spend on capital projects but then I do them all at once.

2025-11-15 14:02:01 GMT

60,000 cisgender women write powerful open letter in support of trans community: ‘We have had enough’ - PinkNews https://apple.news/Asj3iNfCWRDiK__ZYu-E5vA

2025-11-14 09:29:51 GMT

I confess my attention was elsewhere on more wholesome pursuits back in July when Musk’s GROK had its full-on Nazi day. If you were busy being a decent human too then this little documentary is an excellent way of catching up on what happened and why it points to something monstrously lacking in the insane rush to “win” in the AI “race” that nobody asked for. And it’s not rocket science. If you want fresh water you don’t put your hose in a cesspit. https://youtu.be/r_9wkavYt4Y?si=ICrA-3UyCBFUidSf

2025-11-10 12:10:16 GMT

Tomorrow will be one whole calendar month since I deleted my ‘BBC ID’ and all their apps from my devices: iPlayer, Sounds and News. Do I miss the right wing captured state broadcaster? Nah. I’m still well informed but less frustrated by bias passing as ‘balance’.

2025-11-07 08:55:55 GMT

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We are the country seduced by the original promise that the existence of BSkyB meant Sky wouldn’t have a monopoly of satellite broadcasting and then meekly allowed one to eat the other whole.
We are the country stupid enough to let Rupert Murdoch control a sizeable chunk of our mainstream press, from the scummiest tabloids to the newspaper of record — and then have the government that Green lit that mistake serve at their pleasure.
The ‘I’ in ITV stood for ‘Independent’.

2025-11-01 18:53:13 GMT

A fascinating talk by Sophie Wilson on the early days of Acorn Computer and, ultimately, her ARM design which nowadays forms the beating processor heart of almost everything including the phone or tablet you’re holding. https://youtu.be/t8MWXdEbDeI?si=fkH6crZEGs0FdHBW

2025-11-01 09:54:34 GMT

Irrational numbers are such a delight when you stumble across one by accident…
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/473/822/547/141/920/original/af4e7d5c8815127f.jpeg

2025-10-30 09:00:23 GMT

Good Law Project plan to take the England and Wales Cricket Board to court over their blanket ban on trans women participating in amateur matches. It’s quite astonishing to note who has moved with indecent haste to implement such bans because the ESB Are not alone.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/462/279/093/951/012/original/a894e04554797372.jpeg

2025-10-30 07:20:45 GMT

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I’ve rented out a property for12 years and, although I’m aware of the separate laws on HMOs (and avoided getting into that space) I’ve never heard of this one. I see someone suggesting it’s a local council bylaw in her case and therefore something where, at most, you’d say sorry, pay the fine and move on. Mainly: how on Earth are you supposed to know that such a bylaw might even be in place?

2025-10-28 10:56:54 GMT

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The question, of course, is how (these days) you control for the disinformation and partisanship of the supposedly reliable news outlets the research is trying to compare with. Other analyses of AI tell us that the most likely culprit for inaccuracy in AI output is the AI itself but I feel there should be a way of filtering out the error component in the source material.

2025-10-27 07:14:07 GMT

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The hook is that amazing rich voice of Karen’s on the very first words: “Why do birds…” It was and remains so distinct from the normal higher pitched reedy sound of female leads.

2025-10-10 18:14:49 GMT

Today I learned that there are only three English cities with an electrical consumption greater than 200 megawatts: London, Manchester and Birmingham. By comparison, the people who want to build AI data centres here, which nobody asked for, want a supply of up to 1 gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) for each one. That’s how skewed this whole nonsense is.

2025-10-08 12:14:36 GMT

If you’re a pound shop politician desperately angling for populist clout by claiming you’ve seen no white faces in some place you visited then I have some advice: If that’s truly what you’ve observed then it’s not evidence that BME migrants don’t “integrate”. It’s evidence that the whites won’t integrate. It’s evidence all the whites moved away when visibly “foreign” newcomers tried to move in alongside them. By trying for racist clout you’ve shown prima facie evidence of whites being racist.

2025-10-05 07:21:14 GMT

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It’s a reminder that whenever politicians pursue a policy that is neither morally nor logically defensible then everything is twisted trying to maintain an impossible position. It’s like making a law that bricks should float in the air and then trying to hold the policy position by stubborn attempts at levitation.

2025-10-04 19:21:32 GMT

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M’lud my client cannot have knowingly committed the offence with the sign in question, being literally unable to have written it or known what someone else may have written. You must therefore dismiss the case against him, being unable to prove intent to the criminal standard.

2025-10-04 19:11:46 GMT

I’ve just been looking at a rather fun-looking long distance electric bus service covering (so far) the north half of Scotland. To use it you select the route you want on the web site and pay in advance. The bus only stops at the designated stops where people have said they want to get on or off. You need to book at least 10 minutes beforehand. The fares look very reasonable and the bus is QUIET! The service is at https://www.ember.to and the picture here is from a live tracker of all buses
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/317/231/941/866/198/original/ee4a07219e7be77f.jpeg

2025-10-01 06:23:25 GMT

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“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right…” a true anthem for our age.

2025-09-29 07:02:04 GMT

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Was the architect MC Escher by any chance? 😀

2025-09-25 16:20:58 GMT

Starmer to introduce digital ID cards. You just know it’ll be used to out trans people as well as the stated purpose of harassing anyone who doesn’t look white enough. Starmer to announce plans for digital ID scheme https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g54g6vgpdo

2025-09-24 11:10:40 GMT

Greg Jackson explains how the UK wholesale electricity market operates as a racket https://youtu.be/R5ssyFaUkR0?si=a8Nf3w97Kz6HLBjK

2025-09-23 06:05:09 GMT

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Perhaps for the same reason that people don’t give honest answers to pollsters? … Knowing when their views or beliefs aren’t a good look? Maybe, whilst having secret dreams of shafting the workforce for greater profit they still retain enough awareness to know that customers and potential customers will judge them harshly if/when they know that quality and their interests are being sacrificed?

2025-09-21 07:21:13 GMT

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Regarding wider use, someone on the News Quiz this week quipped that if everyone on Pride marches draped themselves in the flag then the right would pretty soon go off using it as a symbol.

2025-09-19 06:42:58 GMT

At a time when there is precious little reporting at all, this long read provides a deep dive into what our unexpectedly repressive Labour government is about to inflict on trans people. If accurate, the EHRC’s wet dream will create a state in which people who operate toilets for use by staff and the public will be turned into toilet police and trans people may be unable to pee safely anywhere outside their homes.
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/britains-bathroom-ban/

2025-09-19 06:34:54 GMT

Britain’s Bathroom Ban
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/britains-bathroom-ban/

2025-09-17 10:58:19 GMT

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Hello, is that the treasury? I’d like to speak to the Chancellor. Tell her I’ve got some magic beans to sell but she needs to hurry as this offer is time limited and she’ll kick herself if she misses out.

2025-09-17 08:23:13 GMT

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The absurdity of this is that I, something of an outsider whose career has definitely been impacted by prejudice and not being very pushy, fall into the ultra wealthy category because I invested well in starting a self administered pension pot 40 years ago and invested my parents’ legacy equally well in a rental property to add to my own. I really am not super wealthy and have to budget very carefully to stay solvent. This is an exercise in analysts totally losing the plot.

2025-09-16 06:09:47 GMT

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By extension it follows that racism is only one of many ism’s that emerge from the maladaptive behaviour. We call it racism because the particular focus is the human construct of race but I would contend that antisemitism, sexism, ageism, disablism, homophobia and transphobia are all different foci for the same thing. We really ought to have a name for the inciting socio-psychological maladaptation and seek to treat the root as well as the specific problem.

2025-09-15 12:32:41 GMT

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Having been born there I’m kinda proud of Redbridge and Ilford for being that close to take down the quisling.

2025-09-13 07:47:22 GMT

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There, of course, is the weakness of being on the left: an exaggerated willingness to apply ‘live and let live’ tolerance to the right, even as they tear everything down in their futile rage that can never be satiated. It’s the paradox of tolerance. The left do ultimately fight but are slow to cross that rubicon.

2025-09-13 07:42:46 GMT

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The upshot is that the more extreme the right becomes the more likely it is to want to murder anyone perceived as a stranger or outsider — to the point where they ultimately end up attacking their own for not being extreme enough. Being on the right is a spiral towards the depths of human depravity. The more extreme the left becomes the more likely followers are to believe in communitarian ideals and the most memorable of Christian invocations: to love thy neighbour and be kind to strangers.

2025-09-13 07:42:46 GMT

I can’t help laughing when some commentators try to distract from the extremes of the right by claiming there’s an extreme left. Let’s unpack that… The right is characterised by a belief in individualism and ‘winning’ at life as though it’s a contest. It breeds selfishness and calculated cruelty. The extreme of that is zero empathy, more selfishness, more cruelty. The left starts from kindness and mutual support. It believes in sharing. The extreme of that is extreme kindness. Extreme empathy.

2025-09-11 16:11:27 GMT

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Oh please let it be so.

2025-09-02 13:53:11 GMT

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Doesn’t that beg the question of what military personnel are doing accepting unlawful and unconstitutional orders?

2025-09-01 17:01:03 GMT

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Prior to the age of 24 hour rolling news and mobile phone alerts we all managed to get along fine with maybe hearing or reading some news once or twice a day. The news bulletins were mostly short with only the major evening news programmes stretching to half an hour (Today programme excepted). People weren’t ‘disengaged’. They simply weren’t obsessed. It was (and is) possible to liven informed life without saturation coverage. Very little is existentially necessary.

2025-08-25 07:13:57 GMT

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The worst part is that the AI overviews come from having already scraped (I.e. stolen) the sites that are now losing traffic. Sites really ought to agree on techniques to poison the well so that all the LLMs become progressively more absurd.

2025-08-22 12:18:08 GMT

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You just know that, in the brutal way of these things, that phrase will resurface as a caption to a photo of Kash in leg irons.

2025-08-15 07:25:35 GMT

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I couldn’t help noting a degree of relief in the media that boys had done better than girls this year. They really can’t cope when girls are ahead.

2025-08-11 16:15:06 GMT

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For context, Britain’s whole grid currently carries 30-50 GW between the generators and the regional distribution networks. The UK national grid looks a lot like a mainline railway map. Generators were either coal (placed next to the big coal fields and pits) or nuclear (placed away from population centres). The whole grid doesn’t have to carry the whole load. It mostly..
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/010/982/571/365/671/original/e2ddb2123cbd0076.jpeg

2025-08-11 15:58:13 GMT

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The HVDC cables connecting us to Ireland and Europe typically carry up to 1.4 GW and require a big converter station at each end to convert to and from alternating current as needed by the grid and consumers. A typical run of pylons carries two circuits (3 wires on either side) and each one is rated at about 2GW. So, a line of pylons is 4GW.

2025-08-11 05:55:25 GMT

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It’s enough to make your eyes water! £667.5 million https://wind-curtailment-app-ahq7fucdyq-lz.a.run.app
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/008/551/553/331/827/original/8ea0fbe80ff05442.jpeg

2025-08-07 10:40:02 GMT

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Oh here we go. Not quite as I remembered it and the editorialisation is taking place in the Mastodon post rather than on the news platform but this is the kind of question that doesn’t belong near serious news. There are some things beyond debate and it is not the job of the BBC to pretend they’re debatable for clicks.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/987/041/483/999/487/original/57ed664707531731.jpeg

2025-08-07 10:32:51 GMT

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This isn’t the BBC’s worst. Yesterday I also saw an article whose headline amounted to “Does RFK Jr have a point?” Not the exact words (I scrolled past for the sake of my blood pressure) but it was essentially both-sides’ing part of his wellness schtick.

2025-08-05 15:00:09 GMT

Another 31,000 electric cars and vans came on UK roads in July. Also 327 electric motorcycles and 57 electric HGVs https://storage.googleapis.com/public_download_assets/ecc_pdfs/20250805%20ECC%20July%202025.pdf
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/976/734/017/077/437/original/a2747d70369df59c.jpeg

2025-07-29 13:49:13 GMT

We’re challenging the EHRC’s interim guidance | Good Law Project
Good Law Project are in court tomorrow applying for permission to progress their case against EHRC
https://goodlawproject.org/case/were-challenging-the-ehrcs-interim-guidance/

2025-07-26 08:08:43 GMT

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I feel that way every morning when I come on here.

2025-07-24 08:14:42 GMT

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..staff to whistle into their acoustic coupler to verify it was working before dialling the number. Sending data by email over a 1980s phone line was sketchy as hell but, remarkably, it worked well enough to produce valuable next-day management information on thousands of data points. It’s odd to think that the sales phase of the project would have been about forty years ago now.

2025-07-24 08:14:42 GMT

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Spillers Foods — famous for canned sauces, pet food and ‘Fred the flour grader’ was the client. They had a hundred women touring supermarkets nationwide each day to record where their products were on the shelves and I wrote the software (running on an A4 size computer from Epson) to guide them and record results. At night these ‘merchandisers’ would then dial in using an acoustic coupler and dump their data into an email to be read at HQ the next day. I fondly remember getting a room full of..

2025-07-24 08:02:48 GMT

In 1986 the BBC’s ‘Micro Live’ did a whole programme on connecting your computer to the phone, sending emails and accessing other services. You could be forgiven for thinking it would never catch on. One service it shows was BT’s Telecom Gold and, at the time it was screened, I had just delivered a whole project doing data collection from supermarkets and collating it through Telecom Gold rather than build a whole ton of infrastructure
https://youtube.com/watch?v=GL1NaenGPdw&si=ueRB43rMgaSKl02w

2025-07-20 08:34:04 GMT

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I agree. I was checking the replies before intervening to say much the same thing. You’ve made the distinction more clearly than I think I could have expressed it. AI is a very broad subject area and it’s integrated into the everyday in modest ways that the person in the street wouldn’t have recognised. The problem area is the con trick that is ‘generative’ large language models and the ensuing wild goose chase after the general intelligence of fiction.

2025-07-18 10:12:39 GMT

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They were so scared of what the press would do to them that it’s as though they’ve got Stockholm Syndrome. It says the press are so powerful that a party of the left is afraid to breathe a word of a remotely social democratic idea. It begs the question of what are they for if, as the government, they are too afraid to stand for anything their abusers wouldn’t approve of.

2025-07-18 09:44:49 GMT

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They came to power a year ago virtually unprepared for government. It’s as though 14 years in opposition had led them to forget the need to have a strategic set of policies grounded in a moral and principled worldview. They’d come to think that being “not the Tories” was enough. A possible exception has been Ed Miliband, who got the job he wanted with a clear vision of what he wants to achieve for the good of the species.

2025-07-18 07:29:48 GMT

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I detect a pattern:
Labour claims to know more about racism than a prime target of racism.
Labour thinks it knows more about disability than disabled people.
Labour believes it knows more about conversion therapy than LGBT folk.
It’s the party that vilified a critic of Israeli oppression of Palestinians by starting an ‘antisemitism’ witch hunt.
And I’ll leave another one hanging awkwardly unmentioned because I hate being predictable.

2025-07-16 07:22:12 GMT

“This one weird trick that eliminates the mosquitoes around you is taking the UK by storm” says one of those absurd adverts that infest YouTube. The voiceover is AI of course and all the stock elements of a scam ad are there. I always wait for the bit that attributes the wonder invention to an award winning but disgruntled scientist or engineer. As a Brit who grew up without mosquitoes and under the safety umbrella of regulation requiring ads to be ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’ I just..

2025-07-16 07:22:12 GMT

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..find myself wondering how we, as a country, gave up on consumer protection and let US snake oil vendors infest our lives. The mosquitoes aren’t a thing. ‘One weird trick’ is always the precursor to a comfortable lie. They are an insult to our intelligence. I know it all pays for free video but it’s not as though we are short of honest products to advertise. I pine for the days when the TV ads made you smile.

2025-07-15 11:36:02 GMT

There is a great deal of food for thought as to what counts as ‘wealthy’ in this examination of Britain’s very unequal distribution of assets.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VX8eWRlZx_g&si=Na4sy0Evqrn1HPIi

2025-07-13 09:55:34 GMT

Solar Power in UK Surges 42% With Sunniest Spring on Record: Analysis - EcoWatch
https://www.ecowatch.com/solar-power-generation-uk-2025.html

2025-07-08 15:35:16 GMT

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Lansley’s redisorganisation put a damper on management action for two years whilst administrators focussed on keeping their hands clean and jockeying for new opportunities. The physical reorganisation then scattered institutional knowledge, shut off reporting paths, shut down good systems and left everyone waiting for new orders from a structure nobody yet understood. Sheer vandalism cosplaying as management science.

2025-07-01 06:28:48 GMT

“The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security would like to bring attention to and condemn recent judicial and governmental developments in the United Kingdom, which attempt to harm transgender and intersex people in the UK by stripping them of privacy and segregating them as ‘others.’ The Lemkin Institute believes these moves are part of a broader process of erasure.”
https://www.lemkininstitute.com/red-flag-alerts/red-flag-alert-on-anti-trans-and-intersex-rights-in-the-uk

2025-06-24 12:27:50 GMT

Fossil fuels amount to only 5.7% of mainland Britain’s electricity generation right now. 1.86GW. If you added in the 1.14GW biomass bizarrely classed as ‘green’ that’s still only 3GW

2025-06-23 08:59:11 GMT

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Whilst these votes are welcome signs I feel obligated to caution that, just as Trump ignores Congress, the courts and the constitution as and where it suits him, we are already seeing forces of illiberalism simply ignoring laws made by Parliament by constructing false narratives about what those laws say and mean and by placing their preferred people in the press and in positions of power and responsibility to cement and carry through their false logic.

2025-06-23 08:59:11 GMT

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So far I see few signs of ‘the good guys’ really engaging minds on how to deal with wanton lies created in service of getting around genuine evidence led policy and decision making. I speak naturally from the viewpoint of an observer in a minority where these techniques have been developed and refined. From our point of view the rest of you are next unless this kind of cynical manipulation is somehow tackled and wrestled to the ground. Trust depends on it.

2025-06-18 15:18:18 GMT

Looking at the western English speaking world it’s hard not to conclude that a small but powerful part of the population has developed a full-on psychosis brought about by the latterday visibility of trans people. The abundant evidence that humans are not strictly unalterably binary has set in train such a concern for the viability of patriarchal sex roles that a rage results, intensifying into violent desires to somehow literally erase the people causing their cognitive dissonance.

2025-06-17 15:37:42 GMT

Good Law Project forces EHRC to backtrack…
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/699/440/259/505/186/original/96ac5213d67deb7b.jpeg

2025-06-11 08:04:49 GMT

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Goodness! I’d forgotten all about this (I used to follow him on the other place). I discovered and used the site back in 2012 when I first hatched the idea of travelling from San Francisco to New York by train. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to make the necessary bookings without the video guide and option breakdowns he provides.

2025-06-09 16:14:00 GMT

LGBT Foundation launches national campaign with support of JCDecaux Community Channel | JCDecaux UK
“This is what a woman looks like”
https://www.jcdecaux.co.uk/news/lgbt-foundation-launches-national-campaign-support-jcdecaux-community-channel
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/654/288/009/889/788/original/3dd098b60d7191d2.jpeg

2025-06-06 06:58:15 GMT

Dublin’s Custom House flying the LGBT+ Progress flag next to the Irish flag
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/635/104/449/062/303/original/cd22de35b963c3d2.jpeg

2025-06-04 17:12:20 GMT

Nicest view today. On the lower of the two roads on the Dingle Peninsula in Western Ireland earlier today. And, before any aficionados ask me, yes I did the Connell Pass route coming back, although it was hard to see the road let alone the view in the low cloud.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/626/187/720/701/499/original/4d446ecbbe84e41e.jpeg

2025-05-31 09:08:55 GMT

The Scottish Parliament must retract its transphobic toilet rules | Good Law Project
Please take a few seconds to add your name to a letter to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood. It is not enough for officials to say they won’t enforce the humiliating rule they’ve created.
https://action.goodlawproject.org/stop-scottish-parliament-toilet-police

2025-05-29 09:07:52 GMT

Thought I’d come and explore Highgate cemetery. Karl Marx must be so delighted that there are fees to get in and see his grave
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/590/325/121/496/945/original/a184fe3c176977cc.jpeg

2025-05-27 06:43:25 GMT

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You have to laugh. I don’t know about you Prof but here I am looking back on seventy years of embracing progress and changing norms (sometimes MAKING those changes) — always managing to feel relevant and comfortable — and yet there are boys and young men in their twenties moaning that life has changed and left their cherished attitudes behind. And what? Are we supposed to stop moving for them?

2025-05-26 12:11:08 GMT

Given the great interest that I got yesterday for my post about a low carbon day on Britain’s electricity grid I thought I’d share a post emphasising just how much wind power has to be wasted because the system doesn’t yet have the configuration to be able to use it all. This month alone the grid operator has had to pay wind farm operators £41.5 million to turn down their output. This process of ordering generators to turn down their contracted output is called ‘Curtailment’. Cont…
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/574/002/638/241/545/original/ee6c513fc2a84a0d.jpeg

2025-05-25 11:24:27 GMT

Right now, mainland Britain has got almost enough wind and solar power to meet our electricity demand. Add in the power from nuclear and a small dash of gas (used solely to maintain enough mechanical inertia to stabilise the grid) and we are having to export 4.4GW to neighbouring countries. The need for that safety inertia will fall away with new renewable sites like Dogger Bank, whose inverters are capable of ‘grid forming’ as opposed to merely grid following…
https://grid.iamkate.com
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/568/156/501/809/181/original/b04e9327335d208c.jpeg

2025-05-15 06:47:46 GMT

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The excuse of choice in the past has always been that our pipes leak. That was the explanation in the summer of 1976. The only other factor (maybe) is that the ubiquity of the front loading washing machine means people use considerably more water in more loads for convenience (despite newer washers being designed to waste less). I’m the sort who saves up the washing for a ‘proper load’ and puts only enough water in the kettle to boil exactly one mugful of water for tea.

2025-05-14 12:11:24 GMT

Popped into Manchester Museum to get out of the sun and kill half an hour. It was also a self-serving opportunity to check how my statuette (“Mini Me”) has settled in after returning from a guest stay at Queer Britain. And will you look at that! She’s hobnobbing with the Suffragettes! That’s got to upset some folk.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/506/078/614/418/199/original/586eea94ec1e99cf.jpeg

2025-05-09 07:14:03 GMT

Nothing sums up the feeling that we are a faded, broken, has-been nation like being mugged by a sociopathic geriatric imbecile and having an uninspiring technocrat leader tell us we got a good deal out of abandoning our standards.

2025-05-05 15:45:14 GMT

Almost all of the countries of the world have national debt. But if every country owes money then who do they owe it too (a question I’ve often asked). This video demystifies a rather crucial aspect of economics and shows (a) who owns the debt and (b) why the debt is essentially the money supply and the grease in the wheels of societies. But I’m still aghast to reflect that I’m a lender to some pretty crummy governments.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Eh3iAzbLUqI&si=1-6AmszeIZlXud6S

2025-05-05 07:59:50 GMT

A Guide On How To Write A Letter To Parliament - TransLucent
As a colleague of Stephen Whittle for fifteen years, and having helped utilise the approach he describes here (along with my other key colleague Claire McNab) I thoroughly endorse the step-by-step advice he lays out here for really getting key messages across to your MP.
Writing physical letters may seem awfully retro these days but they’re vital.
https://translucent.org.uk/a-guide-to-how-to-write-a-letter-to-parliament/

2025-04-27 14:52:02 GMT

Trans people banned from toilets of gender they identify with, says UK minister
Pat McFadden said ‘there isn’t going to be toilet police’ amid warnings about ‘incredibly dangerous’ consequences
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/27/trans-people-banned-from-toilets-of-gender-they-identify-with-says-uk-minister?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2025-04-26 12:44:51 GMT

Help us challenge the Supreme Court’s judgment on trans rights | Good Law Project
https://goodlawproject.org/crowdfunder/supreme-court-human-rights-for-trans-people/

2025-04-26 09:02:23 GMT

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Were it not for the deliberate ambiguity over what you can and can't do without a license, and being in the demographic that had free licenses withdrawn and is now a target, I wouldn't pay for a subscription any more than I really want to buy a license (though I do). The quality just isn't there. I consumed radio comedy but last week BBC Sounds regurgitated a show from 1992. On TV I sometimes watch repeats on BBC Scotland because they are more interesting than the pap..

2025-04-26 08:52:26 GMT

Guardian: "Rights can be lost in a second -- Older trans people reveal their fears after supreme court ruling"
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/403/380/796/052/586/original/64f39f88cf9d79c2.jpeg