Richard Jones

Peter Mandelson issues secret notice demanding press leave him alone – read in full LATE on Friday evening, this notice was circulated from representatives of Peter Mandelson, via press regulator IPSO and the Press Association news…

Well done, The National. And fuck you, Mandelson. It’s in the public interest. www.thenational.scot/news/2583451...

Very sad to hear about Richard Bornat. Richard was a great person and always very supportive. Talking to him was always fun.
www.linkedin.com/mwlite/feed/...

I may be biased (surely not - ed.), but I particularly welcome the increased encouragement for the systems side of PLAS. New tracks for the investigation of high-risk ideas (PL Experiments), and for short, sharp pieces that crystallise valuable insights (PL Squibs) are also exciting.

Alastair Donaldson, the new Editor-in-Chief of ACM TOPLAS, has introduced four new tracks: Tools, Systems and Practitioner Reports; PL Experiments; PL Squibs; and Surveys and Tutorials. These are very welcome additions to the ACM's flagship programming languages and systems journal.

Congratulations, Aliy. I know you’ll do a great job as editor.

40 years of vi (OK, now vim)
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I was the shadow housing committee chair on a district council in the early ’80s. IIRC there was a Parliamentary Select Committee report at the time the predicted precisely the selling off council houses would lead to a housing crisis in the future. As it has.

Poem response to Starmer's Farage/Powell cosplay - full text in the link

Island of Strangers - by @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social m.facebook.com/story.php?st...

We know Reform are winning lots of seats, but look at this under the bonnet - they dominate 2nd places too - in wards Labour, Tories, Lib Dems & Greens won Reform was most likely to have come 2nd in all of them. Thinking today *must* be a high water mark for Reform is a mistake as more ground to go

What now for the UK economy? The UK economy is facing yet another crisis. After Covid, the 2022 gas crisis and the Liz Truss bond market fiasco, we now have to face the…

I know we're all focused on the US psychodrama right now, but... what should we be doing in the UK, as our spluttering economy lurches into yet another crisis?

I've written a new personal post on what the UK needs to do now...
acjsissons.medium.com/what-now-for...

Interesting analysis

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Asterix is fabulous. And interesting to compare the name jokes in the English and French versions.

YouTube video by Code Sync David Turner Memorial Session - J. Hughes, S. Thompson, L. Augustsson, J. Gibbons | Lambda Days 2024

Remembering David Turner at LambdaDays last year, with John Highes, Lennart Augustsson and Jeremy Gibbons youtu.be/ZeEj1icGfVg

Reeves’s Heathrow third runway report was commissioned by London airport The chancellor is under fire after a study cited as evidence for expanding the terminal to boost the UK’s economic growth was ordered by Heathrow itself

So now we have it. Rachel Reeves's claim that a third runway at Heathrow Airport would boost economic growth comes from a report commissioned by .... Heathrow Airport. Instead of acting in the national interest, she's channelling corporate lobbyists.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“appealing” or “appalling”?

The Lattice Science Publication (LSP):
“Article Submission open for Original Article(s) if (1) plagiarism of the article is less than 15%”!!!Though, to be fair, that did include references.

Pesticide emergency authorisation denied for 2025 to protect bees An emergency authorisation for Cruiser SB, a neonicotinoid pesticide, will not be granted

🐝🐝🐝

Sloppy journalism by the BBC. Unfortunately it’s becoming increasingly common.

Andrew Carnegie and the 19th-century ‘robber barons’ have lessons for today’s oligarchs about the responsibilities of wealth The 19th-century industrialists were called ‘robber barons’ – but they did more to improve society than many of today’s super-rich.

We’re in a new Gilded Age - which sounds great, but the Robber Barons are back.
And this time, they’re more selfish than ever, as Prof Tobias Jung, St Andrews University, writes:

theconversation.com/andrew-carne...

Evidence that #university education is beneficial to both students and the country.
Not that I needed convincing.

So, if one wanted to read about Indian history (and the East India Company and the British Raj, which is all I was taught at school), what books would you recommend?

It’s well worth reading. I always tremble when I start a book with a technology theme, expecting nonsense, but this was convincing. It’s a well constructed book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

BBC article says: “One of England's top-rated water companies is using an accounting trick to artificially inflate its balance sheet by more than a billion pounds, BBC Panorama has discovered. Severn Trent Water claims that an investment is worth £1.68on in its accounts, when in reality it has no value to the overall business. The made-up money makes the company appear more financially robust and helps to support its bumper payouts to shareholders. Severn Trent denies the accounts are misleading and says Panorama's allegations are "completely inaccurate" The water company - which is regulated by Ofwat - is part of a complex web of companies in the wider Severn Trent plc group.”

great reporting here by BBC Panorama

Reuters 25 March 2024: British farmers protest outside parliament over food imports. With picture of tractors blocking streets in Whitehall.

BBC 25 March 2024: In pictures: Moment tractor convoy reaches Parliament. With pictures of tractors blocking streets in Whitehall.

Telegraph 26 March 2024: Tractors bring rush-hour chaos to London as farmers stage protest. With picture of a digger outside parliament.

Euronews 26 March 2024: 'Slaughtered': UK farmers protest post-Brexit rules and trade deals. With picture of tractors blocking streets in Whitehall. The front one bears a placard: "No Farmers. No Food. No Future."

Kemi Badenoch at #PMQs: "We had a budget in March this year and tractors were not blockading the streets of Whitehall afterwards."

Here are the tractors blockading the streets of Whitehall in March this year. They were protesting - you really couldn't make this up - Badenoch's trade policies. 😂

Apologies, I haven’t read this article - it’s behind a pay wall. BASIC had a huge impact as a gateway to programming but Fortran, COBOL and Algol were hardly inscrutable numbers and glyphs as the snippet suggests.

Oh no he didn't like that. Do it again!

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