@uk Isn't that some kind of American brand? Why is it news here, where I don't think I've ever even seen it.

@ChrisMayLA6 Crown Estate money goes to the Exchequer I think. In return for their "settlement". Only the Royals' private estates go into their pockets directly.

@MostlyHarmless Some of the pubs near us have psychic evenings- guaranteed to be busy that night, otherwise the psychic wouldn't decide to go there.

@ChrisMayLA6 Definitely. Compromise with these simply allows them to shout "see we were right all along but they still aren't doing it properly".

@AaronDavid Took me a minute or 2.......

@PKYo @ChrisMayLA6 The obvious (to me) retro example is Oasis' Beatles music.

@AbramKedge @ChrisMayLA6 Precisely. One is a retro revival from an amazing production. (I'd loved it). The other a timeless wonder. See also Kate Bush, more recently. These are all significant because they are the exceptions.

@ChrisMayLA6 These were somewhat exceptional, quirky, novelty items surely. It was the quirkiness that gave them appeal. Bur in the 70s there weren't digitised back catalogues to promote at almost zero cost and negligible risk. A beancounters dream. (Cynical, me? Surely not).

@ChrisMayLA6 I just find it shocking (and question whether the industry have had a malign influence). In, say, 1970, would there have been a big resurgence of 1930s tunes?

@paul_ipv6 @jerry Such stories feature in #TheRegister in the comments pretty frequently. The overall impression- communication and planning in many companies is appalling.

@ChrisMayLA6 Thing is that the first thing they do to improve efficiency is increase the admin. To make sure that we shifty unreliable front line staff aren’t skiving off down the pub or something of that sort. And the second thing they do is to cut the admin support to “ensure resources go to the frontline”. Because career bureaucrats and politicians know so little that they’d have to revise to achieve “clueless“

@ChrisMayLA6 Even that won't change the basics. You need a certain number of staff to teach primary school classes: maybe she thinks education is only the secondary sector and they can reduce their curriculum.

@terrybot One of my favourite bits.

@ChrisMayLA6 I do wonder whether offering free installation of solar panels and community solar PV projects with storage and small wind generators where suitable might be a better solution. How much would it cost to install these on all Town Halls, schools etc. Currently payback on domestic solar pv is up to 10 years. Making it free or even just subsidised and more affordable seems much better use of the money.

@afewbugs Thinks “beep beep” #RoadRunner

@ChrisMayLA6 One issue is that normal AIs lack ability to self-check, this is meant to be designing actual thinking machines for problem solving. But they can't verify the “thought”against external reality and the internal feedback system just falls over under pressure. The report on this on The Register quoted ".... These models fail to develop generalizable(sic) problem-solving capabilities for planning tasks... performance collapsing to zero beyond a certain complexity threshold".

@slowblues This looks less like technology and more like a way to carry on trading in the face of insolvancy. At least, that's usually the case in these circumstances.

@ChrisMayLA6 Labour, all our politicians it appears, seem to be infected with this idea that ownership of capital is sacrosanct.

@carrideen If that jar and mom's location is anything like the UK buying new* jars for jam making costs a year's mortgage. So we hoard and reuse old jars.
* It's cheaper to buy actual jars of low cost jam/marmalade and flush the contents down the drain than buy the things empty. We then reuse the jars repeatedly. #capitalism

@ChrisMayLA6 The thing about "police attitude" is that they aren't autonomous individuals. So attitude will underlie most of their deciding to strip searching a young girl. But targetting a fairly innocuous bunch of proresters is down to their instructions. Someone decides what the priorities are, and how far to go with individual cases.