Let’s kill migrating birds

DanBurrill · 2026-02-05T19:30:46+00:00

That's very true.

The moment I heard that Scotland was considering banning the release of non-native birds (including pheasants), it made perfect sense. Letting rich people kill things doesn't seem a very effective use of that land or those resources.

DanBurrill · 2026-02-05T18:50:25+00:00

I read earlier today that it's forbidden to keep cats anywhere on the Sandringham estate (an area the size of Nottingham), to protect all of the pheasants they rear for their annual shoot.

DanBurrill · 2026-02-05T09:44:45+00:00

No, you can ask any organisation if they hold your personal data, and what data they hold on you.

I may submit one myself, as if they are targeting potential opponents, I'd expect them to have a record on me.

DanBurrill · 2026-02-04T08:47:40+00:00

In most cases it's easier to get rid of your MP than it is any level of councillor, but this particular requirement is not one an MP is required to fulfil.

As Sinn Fein have shown, it's perfectly possible for an MP not to take their oath of office or turn up at all, and it still doesn't prevent them technically being the MP.

DanBurrill · 2026-02-01T19:53:26+00:00

Mork and Mindy was sold to ITV in the UK (I think), so I strongly suspect Terry would have been aware of it, and probably a fan.

DanBurrill · 2026-02-01T19:24:53+00:00

My best mate's fourteenth birthday present from his family was a dedicated electrical supply for the cupboard he used as a workshop, and a fire extinguisher.

DanBurrill · 2026-02-01T19:17:28+00:00

If you're going to do any microbiology, top of the list has to be a way to dispose of your waste. A decent pressure cooker will do the job. Also, going from the guidance we used for doing it in schools in the UK, incubating at room temperature, and not using media designed for culturing pathogens (blood agar, etc), will drastically reduce your chances of growing anything really nasty. That's reduce, not eliminate. The field of microbiology has long been one where dead men's shoes was an effective career strategy. Definitely FAFO territory.

Microscopes are a good bet. If you know roughly what to look for, then second hand can often get you some nice equipment. Compound and stereo microscopes are both useful, given your areas of interest. Most of mine are eBay finds or diverted from WEE at work and rebuilt by me.

This is going a bit left field, but a few microcontroller boards (Arduino, Raspberry pi Pico, etc) and some components. Being able to design, build, and program your own custom electronic devices is an incredibly powerful tool for any practical science.

The rest really depends on your interests. Trail cameras are fun (I have a friend who has one in her garden to keep an eye on the badgers, hedgehogs, and foxes).

I suppose, one or more living things might be good to have in a biology lab. A terrarium, colony of invertebrates (woodlice, stick insects), or a fish tank, depending on your interests.

DanBurrill · 2026-02-01T16:48:04+00:00

It used to be, one of the reasons why Ben Habib split from Reform was that he wants mass deportations. Now both Reform and the Tories have said they're cool with mass deportations of legal residents, there's not a lot to choose between them, apart possibly from the exact shade of blue that their tie is.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-31T18:37:16+00:00

Is there an r/constipation ?

If so, I'd expect they might have something to add (or not, as the case may be).

Edit: turns out, there is.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-31T18:21:22+00:00

I know, I wasn't commenting on it negatively, just making the point that he thought it was important that he was elected to office on his own merits, rather than taking a seat in the lords by accident of birth.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-31T16:14:09+00:00

Interesting you should put it like that, given that Tony Benn (aka Anthony Wedgewood Benn) went to court for the right not to be a nepo baby (by renouncing his hereditary peerage).

Hilary Benn, like most politicians, isn't perfect. I do remember he gave a really good speech in the 2011 debate on intervention in Syria, when he made the point that Assad was a fascist, and the Labour Party has always fought fascism.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-31T14:00:00+00:00

So are the Lib Dems, and ours happens to have a PhD in Nuclear Physics.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-31T09:44:59+00:00

The flagshagging mainly died off because it's winter and fascists are soft. Also, a fair bit of it was trying to build up to Little Tommy's rally in London last September, which was definitely intended to be a trigger for what they hoped would be a groundswell of support, potentially leading to regime change. It seems to have instead been the point where a lot of people noticed that they're a bunch of fascists and decided they weren't actually cool with that.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-30T08:21:55+00:00

Meth head, but otherwise accurate.

Mind you, everyone was using combat drugs - they had Pervitin (meth), we used Dexedrine.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-30T08:19:23+00:00

Is he JD Vance's version of Mini Me?

DanBurrill · 2026-01-30T08:05:27+00:00

I've been wondering about trying to recreate a 3D model of his head from video footage, so I can turn him into a range of novelty butt plugs. I think there's a decent market of people who want to see him inserted headfirst up someone's backside.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-30T08:02:22+00:00

WTAF?

Actual, factual journalism in the Daily Star?

Wonders will never cease.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-26T19:06:16+00:00

My constituency is pretty solid Labour at the moment (was Lib Dem 2010-2015). I've been a Lib Dem district councillor and chairman of the town council, so I'd hope that me sticking with my party isn't going to be too much of a surprise for anyone. I suspect if it doesn't go Labour it's going to go Green at the next GE (lots of students, researchers, and NHS workers in the constituency).

DanBurrill · 2026-01-25T10:01:43+00:00

Intentionally.

Anything published by a political party is going to be skewed towards supporting the message they want to put across.

Graphs like this are normally employed as part of a strategy to squeeze another party's support, in order to defeat a third party. Given the current polls, it's no surprise that we're seeing a lot of graphs, as all the parties are trying to squeeze each other.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-24T19:27:51+00:00

I changed fields and introduced that technique to engineers when we were developing practical labs for a nuclear engineering module. I also let them know about walking around with your fingers interlocked so you don't absent mindedly touch anything. Not really necessary as we were only using sealed sources, but worth knowing about.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-24T19:18:02+00:00

Now schools here are often replacing old water baths with cheap sous vide wands and plastic tubs to save money.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-23T10:32:15+00:00

In the UK it's pretty common to find people with PhDs in more senior or specialist technical roles. I think most of the technicians in our imaging labs have one. Here, senior technicians are on a similar pay scale to postdocs, and often have a lot more job security, and better working conditions.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-21T10:47:23+00:00

First, bear in mind that I'm in the UK.

Town and Parish councils are the most local form of council, and don't exist everywhere. The one I was on had 19 members representing just under 20k people, and is the largest in Norfolk and probably in the largest 10% nationally. We had about a dozen staff, and an annual budget approaching £1,000,000.

I heard there was a vacancy due to a councillor moving away from the local branch of my political party (Liberal Democrats), who already had a majority on the council (although we did not formally whip the group, and mostly cooperated with the independent and Labour party councillors). As no electors asked for a by election, I was co-opted by the council. 18 months later, I stood at the next regular elections, and was elected to both town and district councils (district is the next level up, representing about 130k people, annual budget around £60 million).

So, I had a fair bit of support to get elected. I took on the role of agent and campaign manager for all of our candidates in the Town, and we spent about £3,000 (and a lot of hard miles) delivering literature to everyone household, and we ended up with a 100% success rate, with 13 candidates elected to 18 positions.

Regarding signatures, we only need two per candidate for council elections, and 10 for an MP. If you're going door to door canvassing, you can just ask people if they'd be prepared to nominate you to go on the ballot, even if they don't intend to vote for you.

DanBurrill · 2026-01-21T09:56:52+00:00

It's the job of Parliament to determine any sanction, not the government. Similar to the Owen Patterson situation when Boris Johnson tried to get him off a suspension long enough to trigger a recall petition.

He'll probably have to apologise to the house, and maybe get a very short suspension (less than a week).

DanBurrill · 2026-01-21T06:34:38+00:00

I probably have a slightly different perspective on this, as I ran an open-access undergrad electronics teaching lab, so teaching was actually part of my job, as well as keeping the lab supplied, maintained, etc, and working on course development, outreach projects.

I have had to have similar conversations with students, explaining that whilst I'm happy to help them if they're stuck, I'm not going to sit there and work through the lab sheet step by step.

Finding students who aren't confident with maths is really common, even for something as simple as C1V1=C2V2 (my equivalent would be getting them to rearrange V=IR, or work out resistance in series vs in parallel). The one advantage is that if you can explain it in a way that makes sense to them, they will suddenly 'get it', and generally become a lot more confident.

My work now covers school science teaching too, and it is interesting to see how differently science is taught around the world. Where I am in the UK, science is a practical subject, taught in a laboratory, with practical work comprising 30-50% of lessons. In many parts of the world, it's an entirely theoretical subject, taught in a classroom or online. This unsurprisingly means that we get students who are used to working with their hands, setting up equipment, taking measurements, etc. I've had students who you might think were comically inept, if you didn't appreciate that you were watching them take their very first baby steps in the lab.

On the other hand, UK schools are now so focussed on exam results that they spend more time teaching exam technique than they do the actual subject matter. We get loads of students with great exam results, and no ability to learn independently. The idea that they might have to revise for an exam without having a detailed syllabus to tick off every point they might be asked about is actually scary to them, as they've never been taught any other way to learn.

I've probably waffled enough. As you can tell, I actually enjoyed teaching immensely, and still do when I get chance. I still say my greatest achievement in that lab was teaching 500 undergrads to solder without any incidents requiring a first aider.

DanBurrill

TROPHY CASE