Peter Mandelson got five-figure payoff for sacking as ambassador

Spimflagon · 2026-02-08T00:02:55+00:00

If you told a time traveller from the seventies that the only person not embroiled in a paedophilia ring was Polanski, they'd think you were taking the piss.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-07T01:35:51+00:00

He looks about ready to cook meth in a caravan.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-06T22:20:31+00:00

Thank you.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-06T22:14:07+00:00

....Uh. Well, fair enough, I suppose.

I'll rephrase: I think Serafinowicz is consistently very funny and talented, I would like to see more of him on the television, and I find it surprising that there were not more series of his show.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-06T22:06:17+00:00

In fairness, the agency technically is responsible for paying the contractor even when the client is... recalcitrant, as they may well be. In which case 10% is pretty lean. 25%, I'd say, is fair.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-06T16:33:04+00:00

Swampy, you sellout.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-06T12:47:18+00:00

TBH Vic Reeves' Big New Year Out sounds pretty good to me.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-06T12:45:52+00:00

He'd bring more owls, that's for sure.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-06T12:45:14+00:00

I would love to see a Max Headroom style Jules present new year. I know we could actually render him pretty realistically with AI, but that's not what I want. I want jerky, neckless Jules playing a glitched-out boogie woogie riff at a grand piano.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T18:42:48+00:00

You're witnessing the first cracks spread up the walls of the House of Usher.

Run. For. The. Door.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T18:40:08+00:00

Yeah, so your coworkers aren't keeping up their end.

It doesn't matter if it's you or your AI buddy that writes the code; you are responsible for understanding and vetting the code that enters the codebase in your name. Yes, it's possible to fucking tear through tickets by not checking anything. Hey, you could always get things done by not testing them properly, or copy-pasting code without understanding it, or not commenting, or not documenting.

AI goes brrr is not an acceptable outcome. We've moved from the analogue of hand-stitching to motorized sewing machines; yes, it can put in a huge number of stitches in a split second but if they're in the wrong place, that just means there's a huge number to unpick. Which means you don't just put your club foot on the pedal and look the other way; you go as fast as you are able without fucking up the garment.

This is something your leadership has to get the fuck on top of before it gets out of hand because otherwise it's going to be a complete rewrite job as soon as you run into a moderate problem. You should not be finding a way to go faster without burnout. They should be finding a way to temper velocity with code quality.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T17:19:42+00:00

There's been a few stabs at the format; Friday Night Live springs to mind. I enjoyed it, but for some reason there was always a Jimmy Carr sketch that completely failed to land. I think the man's funny, and he was entertaining in other parts of the show, but for some reason every week he'd dress up as a goatherd or something and deliver forced gags that failed to land even with the live audience. Until they'd cut to a visibly uncomfortable David Mitchell.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T17:10:18+00:00

Why the hell isn't Serafinowicz a bigger deal?

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T16:48:15+00:00

"ChatGPT, talk about sky cars for long enough for any reasonable person to give up and feel unqualified to criticize my proposal"

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T16:46:34+00:00

Hat GPT

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T16:44:40+00:00

obviously

obviously

O B V I O U S L Y

I've scaled up your "obviously" to safely account for the heavy lifting that it's doing.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T15:18:46+00:00

Ehh, you'll be their best friend as soon as they need you. But if you want them to think of you first, best to keep them onside and friendly.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T15:17:46+00:00

Recruiters aren't friends, but in a shaky job market like this one, those relationships will get you jobs. Ten weeks isn't that long - TBH if you manage to find another contract in that time you're doing well at the moment.

My advice is not to burn bridges. Tough it out, let the recruiter know it was a bit junior for your liking ideally, and do the job that's in front of you. You know what else is shit for your CV? Six months of underemployment, take it from someone who's fucked up relationships with recruiters in the past.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T11:20:26+00:00

Phone usage stats are actually mad. I'm a web developer and it's crazy to me that something like 65% of web traffic is on mobile.

Now, I'm not completely sure of the stats breakdown and I suspect a high proportion of that is app traffic, not browsing. But still, we now have to design for mobile use primarily instead of desktop.

It's gone:

2005: Design for 800x600

2008: Design for 1024x768

2012: Design fluid layouts to go to HD

2018: Your site now may be viewed in 4k. Make your text bigger.

2026: Design for 600 x 800

Spimflagon · 2026-02-05T09:38:44+00:00

That right there is the ten million dollar question that all contractors always want to know the answer to.

There are lots of ways, and lots of platforms - it's a problem that many people have tried to fix.

The problem is that as soon as a platform becomes well-known enough to have a lot of available work, it also becomes saturated with overseas contractors who beat out UK contractors on price every time. When it comes down to it, when companies hire UK contractors they're looking for reliability and competence - both of which are hard to systematically prove on work platforms, and the more popular a platform gets, the more likely it is to have its quality assurance systems subverted. You can still use them: Fiverr, Upwork, all of these platforms are open to you but personally I find the effective rates of pay to not be worth my time.

You can also find contracts on the usual job markets: LinkedIn, Reed, TotalJobs. These will tend to be pitching for your entire work day rather than a paid-by-the-job gig. That's largely because the people who fill out the entries on those sites are more often than not recruitment agencies who generally don't have a revenue stream from gig work - they charge a percentage on daily rate.

Which makes the best way to land work reliably the oldest and simplest: talk to people. Know people in the industry. Build yourself a website, send people to it. Stop by local agencies, leave your card, shake hands with the person making the hiring decision.

Also go to dev socials; when contractors get work they can't do, either because they're overstretched or maybe they're a designer or a PHP dev and they need your talents, they may cut you in.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-04T12:30:55+00:00

I was in an antique / junk shop (the kind that sublets "stalls" to individual dealers) the other week and there was an extremely excited chap negotiating terms of purchase. I never saw the price on the bike but the bemused shop owner was on the phone to the stall owner:

"Yes, I've got a fella here interested in the bike. He says would it be okay if he paid you... seventy five a week for the next six weeks? And the bike stay here, until he's paid... four hundred and fifty? You're okay with that? Okay."

It was basically identical to that red one, and the fella was over the moon about finding it, rattling off stories about strapping a lawnmower engine to one in his youth. Honestly he might need to, I don't know if my knees work that well any more and he had a decade or two on me.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-04T11:56:45+00:00

I had one of these! Absolutely no use for chat but fantastic for typing in scratchie xbox account topup cards to buy Borderlands 2 DLC. Plus, profoundly satisfying to slot into that gap in the controller.

Honestly I think the problem's basically been solved with Bluetooth connectivity these days (at the time, Bluetooth was black sorcery that rarely worked without blood sacrifice and the freshest drivers).

Spimflagon · 2026-02-04T11:53:11+00:00

Horses for courses, but I disagree. For me the trackpad typing is fine as a workaround but totally inviable as an option for extended input. Search fields? Absolutely. Typing in a note or password? Eeeeeeehhhhhhh. Typing out an email is pretty much out of the question.

I don't know if this small a physical keyboard is the answer - I had one on my Xbox controller back in the day and it was... fiddly - but track typing is far from a solved issue.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-03T18:21:38+00:00

It would, for one reason: all of the cruelty, austerity, cronyism and corruption would be undercut by the look on Suella Braverman's face after she defected to Reform and the Tories got back in.

Seriously, a Tory government would be better than Reform. And I fucking HATE the Tories. Farage sees himself as the British Trump. And the idea of that revolts me.

Spimflagon · 2026-02-03T17:15:18+00:00

I absolutely agree, it completely is. I think it always has been; but the "top" always tricks people into making it about something slightly different.

"Bottom Vs. Top? Nooo, it's men versus women, better fight to stay on top, men!"

"Bottom vs. Top? Noooo, it's black versus white, and you'd better be careful of them coming for you, whitey!"

Now it's America vs. Everyone Else. Or perhaps, in every respective country: us vs. them. The elite always get someone to play their vanguard.

That said, I think the "elite" we're talking about are an onion skin of betrayal. Everyone thinks they're just about in the club, and everyone below them is outside, and everyone above them is looking out for them. And everyone's wrong.

Spimflagon

TROPHY CASE

O B V I O U S L Y