• 89 Posts
  • 340 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • I am completely satisfied with the idea that all doctors should be career doctors who have dedicated a large part of their life to the study and practice of medicine.

    I am not entirely as satisfied with the idea that all politicians should be career politicians who have dedicated a large part of their life to the study and practice of politics.

    Parliament would be a much richer and more effective place if it were populated by people from a range of backgrounds and specialisms. I don’t think it’s a good thing that a sizeable fraction of them all studied the same politics degree at the same two universities.







  • I’m no fan of Wes Streeting, but the Canary is trash and is doing its usual of selectively quoting.

    We will go further than New Labour ever did. I want the NHS to form partnerships with the private sector that goes beyond just hospitals. Here’s one example. High street opticians have the staff and equipment to provide basic tests. Meanwhile 220,000 patients have been waiting more than 18 weeks for eye care. Specsavers have welcomed Labour’s plan to use high street opticians to cut waiting lists, saying they stand ready to help.

    Personally I’m not enormously bothered about high street opticians taking NHS appointments (within their competency). This is essentially the same model that GPs and dentists already follow (and always have done).

    There’s plenty to be guarded about, but let’s not catastrophise based on half-quoted electioneering material.





  • As a trade union official myself, I’d just like to say that that is some seriously good shit. It’s practically a wishlist of all the things I feel would make my job of representing people in distress easier.

    I know Unite are critical, but other unions are less so. I’d suggest that Unite’s criticisms are more about the strength of the pledges (i.e. how committed Labour are to implementing this stuff quickly) rather than the content of what’s being promised. While they could always go further, this is nonetheless a really solid set of reforms.



  • A “rival operator” in the sense of route duplication seems utterly pointless. Assuming finite capacity and demand for tunnel crossings, that’ll mean halving the customers for each operator carries, reducing opportunity for economies of scale, increasing complexity for ticketing etc. Unless there’s some suggestion that Eurostar is price gouging (and they’re hardly wildly profitable compared to other operators) it won’t do much.

    What we do need is more diverse routes with different destinations (so that not everything is a transfer at Paris or Brussels). There probably is capacity for that, but Eurostar (and other operators who have dipped their toes in) have generally concluded that the demand isn’t there to make the routes sustainable (at any price).



  • A small set-top box (essentially a Steam Deck with the screen, controls and batteries removed, and with components that don’t have the space restrictions that come with a mobile device) would still be an interesting proposition. Particularly if they partnered with the main video streaming services to port their apps across, and implemented Chromecast/AirPlay support.

    I can see a market for it, as a “Chromecast and Apple TV competitor that also plays all your games”.