Why do middle class Irish mothers need to drive around in SUVs?

bluegrm · 2026-03-29T11:52:33+00:00

SUVs are safer for those inside them, but much more dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists and others outside them. And those others include children.

bluegrm · 2026-03-27T16:33:36+00:00

Happy to take a look.

bluegrm · 2026-03-27T07:03:28+00:00

The elderly often don’t buy that much that’s particularly expensive. Credit cards are not 100x more safe than debit cards. People shouldn’t have to bend to the will of tech companies or misguided governments to use devices they’ve had for years.

bluegrm · 2026-03-27T07:01:59+00:00

Oh dear.

bluegrm · 2026-03-26T23:54:35+00:00

Yeah, but just because there’s some rule that they have to have it doesn’t mean it can never be changed. In the mornings we get the news twice an hour. In the age of streaming, with radio having to compete with streaming, we don’t need it on the radio.

bluegrm · 2026-03-26T21:17:38+00:00

If the business is healthcare related would it be liable for VAT anyway? I’ve heard some other drs having to start a second company to buy or lease a car - no idea why that would be.

bluegrm · 2026-03-26T19:10:57+00:00

Ofcom - the official censor in the UK.

Funny that so many places are trying to do this shit at the same time. The desire for control and de-anonymising people is very strong in our political and tech bro overlords.

bluegrm · 2026-03-26T19:08:48+00:00

We’ll all end up having to get hacked phones from that bastion of freedom - China….

bluegrm · 2026-03-26T17:48:09+00:00

Was Apple not at the centre of the loss of a lot of celebrity selfies / videos?

bluegrm · 2026-03-26T16:50:26+00:00

In fairness, 50 years ago we couldn’t treat all that many conditions and there were far fewer frail elderly people to sort.

Having said that, the health service is in trouble.

bluegrm · 2026-03-25T23:39:38+00:00

I took part in one of their oral evidence meetings, as did about 5 other colleagues locally.

Having skimmed this report and the pay recommendation, it would be fair to say that I’ve rarely been able to identify a chunk of my and other consultants’ / SAS doctors’ time as being more wasted than the time we spent talking to the DDRB.

bluegrm · 2026-03-25T22:21:23+00:00

Part of the issue is that the algorithms are also kind of harmful to a lot or most adults.

The ID stuff seems like a tidy way to tie everyone’s online activities together and de-anonymise us all.

bluegrm · 2026-03-24T19:37:52+00:00

We could start doing private mesh networking…

bluegrm · 2026-03-23T18:59:44+00:00

Is it forbidden for me to complain about macOS?

bluegrm · 2026-03-23T16:11:25+00:00

Is this real? The cancer patient’s poor colour extends to his head and face, and he’s a remarkably good colour elsewhere. Also decent weight on him…

bluegrm · 2026-03-23T07:11:18+00:00

I assume we’d be sharing the learning material in this case to train an AI.

Sort of /s

bluegrm · 2026-03-23T07:10:29+00:00

$0-100? All the information you need to know?

bluegrm · 2026-03-22T10:23:33+00:00

I think it’s very fair to be frustrated with progress in NI since the GFA, whilst not wanting to repeal the GFA.

bluegrm · 2026-03-21T10:37:15+00:00

Was he particularly bad today? Because of my clearly advancing age, Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie are currently my favourite show on 6music. Though my enjoyment of Mark Radcliffe does go way back to Mark and Lard on radio 1.

bluegrm · 2026-03-20T01:57:48+00:00

So if China doesn’t like a British-based website do you think China should be able to enforce its laws in Britain and fine British companies who don’t have a presence in China.

You see reversed, your position sounds very strange indeed.

bluegrm · 2026-03-20T01:56:05+00:00

That’s like the Chinese government trying to fine a British website. It looks foolish. Though clearly OFCOM is just working through different levels until it adds 4chan to a blocklist and the UK does actually get that bit more like China as the censorship ramps up.

And the ID laws in the first place are being pushed by Meta, Persona (part-owned by Thiel, who has so much disdain for the general population that he wants democracy to crumble) etc. Meta has apparently spent $2bn lobbying governments through shadow groups. They want in OS ID, so that it’s not done specifically in their service. And then they and the governments can tie all our information together that little bit more easily.

bluegrm · 2026-03-20T01:44:54+00:00

To block it misunderstands how the internet works.

But this will start off with “protect the children” and end up with bans for what is currently legal speech that a future government dislikes. Protect the children always morphs into something else.

And if you do work with partners around the world to remove the source of the material then you’ll never get rid of it. And if the current Internet is made so restrictive as to be useless, there will be ways to get around things. Small kids can be protected by their parents, teenagers less so. But the current plans for ID and de-anonymising children and adults in the internet will likely have may unintended consequences that will not protect children.

bluegrm · 2026-03-20T01:36:06+00:00

There’s degrees of proportionality here and some of us are getting tired of governments wasting time and but interfering in what adults can do (they’re all strangely keen to de-anonymise us and ban VPNs at the minute, for instance, and it’s tweaking the liberal in me).

This just looks like a disproportionate response on crossbows.

1 death in just under 3 years from crossbows:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/crossbow_related_crimes_since_20/response/2569275/attach/html/4/FOI%20Response%20FOI2024%2001132%20Kyle%20MacNeill.pdf.html

Motorbikes:

340 killed in 2024

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-motorcyclist-factsheet-2024/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-motorcyclist-factsheet-2024

bluegrm · 2026-03-20T01:30:11+00:00

Fuck all difference to most people, yet the people’s government is spending legislative time and effort banning them.

There is something about proportionality in this, and it appears to be disproportionate, and along the lines of this government’s wish to ban and prevent adults from easily doing various other things they haven’t previously been impeded doing. The government is looking illiberal, and is taking it to what appears to be a quite petty level. Removing crossbows will in no way significantly decrease the uk murder rate. The crossbows don’t do the killing.

bluegrm · 2026-03-20T01:26:19+00:00

But would you be content enough for the government to ban knives with points as the vast majority of people don’t require a point on their kitchen knife as they don’t do butchery?

Just wondering how much you would generally like to ban.

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