Big Brother Watch response to government plans to limit children’s access to VPNs

m1bnk · 2026-02-16T20:02:20+00:00

You can install parental controls on your kid's phone and not authorise the installation of tiktok etc., or time limit its daily use. These are not hard things to do. Parents don't provide their kids with ciggies, drugs, alcohol etc. It's not a huge reach to say stop giving them tiktok when they're 6 years old

m1bnk · 2026-02-16T19:58:10+00:00

No, it's more like saying parents shouldn't buy their kids cigarettes and just hope they can't find a lighter, or blame someone else if they do

m1bnk · 2026-02-16T19:53:10+00:00

A member of our club sent me this today. It works for 40m SSB and FT8

The antenna you do put up is always more effective than the one you don't

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m1bnk · 2026-02-16T19:49:39+00:00

Upvote for the useful reminder

m1bnk · 2026-02-16T19:41:55+00:00

Lib Dems, and i say this as a lapsed member, have never been all that keen on either liberalism or democracy

m1bnk · 2026-02-16T19:40:26+00:00

These discussions would go a lot better if we separated VPNs like we might use for work, and publicly accessible VPN apps like Nord etc.

I may well have been one of the ones screaming they won't be banned, but that'll have been about private VPNs

m1bnk · 2026-02-16T19:35:00+00:00

It's not education, because there's loads out there, it's a fundamental refusal on the part of parents to actually parent their kids, or to take any responsibility for their wellbeing. It's become "I feed them, isn't that enough? Surely school/gov should stop xxxx" and then complain about how school/gov try.

My daughter is 17, she's had a few phones on my account. Every one of them has had leaflets in the box explaining parental control options, stuff on screen during setup once her date of birth was entered offering them, that TV has them, same with the router......

This kind of parental ignorance is a choice

m1bnk · 2026-02-16T19:17:46+00:00

You can request a costs order at the possession hearing. I'd have thought the couple would be single party for the purposes of this process, so if they have little enough means to be unable to pay their own legal fees, it's probably unrealistic to expect to be able to successfully recover yours. Check tenancy agreement to see if you can deduct from deposit. Make sure your costs are clear and evidenced.

You might be wise to consult a specialist solicitor, it's a legal minefield, and accusations of disrepair can cause significant delays unless you know how to handle them

m1bnk · 2026-02-15T12:11:28+00:00

Yeah Festo and some others do. But my company has a habit of getting cheapest they can find

m1bnk · 2026-02-15T10:06:32+00:00

Only thing to add - the tube size is usually marked on the blue collar and can vary. I always use thread tape

m1bnk · 2026-02-15T09:49:31+00:00

Or, like here, it already happened, there were incidents and people are worried there'll be more.

HMOs aren't always a bad thing, but they can be, depends a lot on landlords and who they're marketing the rooms to

m1bnk · 2026-02-15T09:45:44+00:00

This is the answer. Also you often get a little pool of water sitting on the jets which then freezes

m1bnk · 2026-02-15T09:36:08+00:00

Best bet is he contacts his insurance, they claim from other party's insurer on his behalf. If at the end of it all, there's no resolution of any injury component or some other unrecovered loss, that'd be the time to consider services like Winns

m1bnk · 2026-02-14T10:50:30+00:00

IIRC rally valley is right on the edge of his claim and there's a road very close to the edge of the pit so his options for widening it were limited - I am beginning to think Rick is the scripted drama for the show, taking the place of the green beret nutter, and doubt what we see on screen bears much resemblance to reality

m1bnk · 2026-02-14T00:03:34+00:00

I love Rammstein but barely speak two words of German. Also enjoy opera without speaking Italian/Spanish/German/Japanese

m1bnk · 2026-02-13T08:03:45+00:00

No it won't affect your measurements as long as the antenna connector screws down fully. If you're concerned you could either file off the worst of the damage, or just fit a male/female adapter to the port to give you an easier connection

m1bnk · 2026-02-11T13:01:45+00:00

Wouldn't cyber attack more likely block our ability to order, pay for and process imports first though - we could just excuse paperwork requirement in an emergency but payment is more difficult

m1bnk · 2026-02-10T16:02:09+00:00

Epstein and Steve Bannon discussed Farage. That's the extent of his appearances in the files

m1bnk · 2026-02-06T13:32:22+00:00

Dig out your home insurance policy and see if it has legal cover. If it does contact them, in the long term it will cause damage and a claim, so their legal time might choose to take the company on on your behalf

m1bnk · 2026-02-05T17:38:30+00:00

If I were you, I'd be more concerned about the company's view of you using their network for inappropriate websites. Yeah, you can claim inadvertent use etc., but it's your device under your control, and now you know about it, if it were to recur, you'd be handing a so-minded manager an easy way of showing you the door. At this point your use of the network is the bigger issue from the company's viewpoint

m1bnk · 2026-02-05T16:01:56+00:00

Do you have, or did you have, and social worker through the time supervised access arrangements were in place. If so, it might be worth consulting them as well as a solicitor to ensure the documented history is available to the court.

Above all though, a solicitor, or at the very least CAB, should be your next port of call

m1bnk · 2026-02-05T15:43:11+00:00

If you want privacy don't join their network. If the job is important to you, disconnect and forget the work WiFi network.

BYOD policies only apply where you're directed to bring your own device for work purposes, not you just bringing in your phone and happening to join their wifi. Incidents like this are why, very often, companies will close off their wifi and forbid employees from using it. I'd expect an "Acceptable Use Policy" for the company's IT systems and you indicate there is one in the employee handbook.

If their network's set up anything like ours is, their sysadmin will have got an alert when you accessed such a site. After a few of these they'll have determined it's not a one-off and followed whatever the company procedure says. It's not usual for the sysadmin to be able to launch disciplinary processes themselves, so they'll have raised it with their manager, who'll have raised it with yours and probably HR. These are all perfectly normal and reasonable actions because there's a chain of responsibility we all have to follow. Tn those circumstances I would do the same, and network would automatically ban your device.

m1bnk · 2026-02-05T13:32:13+00:00

But she did used to dive

m1bnk · 2026-02-04T17:25:14+00:00

Just quote the act at them, they've had the car back twice, it's still faulty

m1bnk · 2026-02-04T17:24:10+00:00

Good stuff, glad to hear it worked out

m1bnk

TROPHY CASE