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Entries from June 24th, 2014

Health & Safety Gone Mad

June 24th, 2014 · Comments Off on Health & Safety Gone Mad · Politics

Here is an idea. I would like to propose a change to H&S regulations to the effect that any politician who complains about health & safety regulations in the workplace is not only exempt from all such regulations themselves, but if they ever go on a photo opportunity visit to a construction site, factory, warehouse, […]

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Starbucks culture shock

June 19th, 2014 · 1 Comment · Life

Earlier today I watched an interview with Howard Schultz, the Chairman and CEO of Starbucks, on The Daily Show, amidst a haze of cognitive dissonance. The Daily Show host, Jon Stewart is very much a left wing liberal in US terms but instead of ripping into Schultz for dodgy tax accounting he seemed to be […]

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The Boys Are Back In Town

June 18th, 2014 · 4 Comments · Politics

Guess who just got back today? Them wild eyed boys that had been away Haven’t changed, haven’t much to say But man, I still think them cats are crazy So, I went to the town hall on Friday for the annual council meeting, to see my Labour colleagues take their places back in charge and […]

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On pets, vets and the NHS

June 16th, 2014 · 1 Comment · Politics

We have been at the vets quite a bit over the last week. One of our cats was not very well, in fact was very close to being dead. The vets got to the bottom of it, discovering a kidney problem, and more or less fixing her. Each time I went there I had the […]

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How not to do a Turing test

June 16th, 2014 · Comments Off on How not to do a Turing test · Technology

There was a lot in the news last week about a program that supposedly passed the Turing test. I’m not so sure about that, for several reasons. First of all, I don’t think that Turing ever proposed a test as such, but rather made a statement about it being forseeable that one day a machine […]

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Looking back at nostalgia

June 8th, 2014 · 1 Comment · Life

I don’t know what to make about this short article about nostalgia on the BBC website. It all sounds reasonable enough, or as reasonable as pschobabble can be, and yet my own experience doesn’t follow it at all. It says that people prone to nostalgia (which I am) are less likely to have lingering thoughts […]

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Meet the new boss…

June 7th, 2014 · Comments Off on Meet the new boss… · Politics

…hopefully very different to the old boss! Now that control of Crawley council has changed hands it will be interesting to see what happens. The Crawley News jumped in quick with their suggestion of what Labour’s top ten priorities should be. It is a strange list. For a start, it includes three things that the […]

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A strange new feeling

June 5th, 2014 · Comments Off on A strange new feeling · Politics

This is unusual. It is our constituency meeting tomorrow and I am actually looking forward to it, even though it is an AGM. Even more remarkable, this is not just because it is our first meeting since the local election victories, but because there is a proposal to change the structure of the party and […]

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Voting selfies

June 2nd, 2014 · Comments Off on Voting selfies · Politics

This is where I eat my own words a little bit, even though I didn’t actually say them aloud at the time. Just before the elections there was an article on the BBC website about voters being told not to take selfies while voting. At the time I thought this was all a bit officious. […]

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