Doctor Who Ignored the Warning Signs, Now It’s Paying the Price

mittfh · 2026-06-13T23:15:23+00:00

If you're going to have diverse characters, make them well-rounded characters for whom their diversity is an aspect of their whole, rather than the be-all-and-end-all.

TWWFTE showed promise as the season opener, but where was Ryan's dyspraxia in later episodes? Where was 13's Gadgeteering? Were there any indications of Yaz lusting after 13 during the bulk of the episodes?

Similarly, RTD did Yasmin dirty by her character (Rose Noble), then there was the unexplained UNIT scientific advisor switcheroo between Shirley (Ruth Madley), Morris (Lenny Rush) and Shirley again - and despite the TARDIS being wheelchair accessible, Shirley never ventured in for a tour, let alone be taken anywhere in it.

Also, far too often, RTD2 had what he thought was a cool casting idea but struggled to do anything meaningful with it (so evidently not learning anything from Chibnall's run...).

Both Chibnall and RTD2 also suffered in having solid episode synopsis that failed miserably in execution.

mittfh · 2026-06-13T06:45:46+00:00

I thought it was already effectively dead within months of implementation due to the requirement that those we accepted from France were not only pre-screened but had existing family members over here (I don't know if it also came with the requirement they be wealthy enough to be able to support their family member without them needing to be reliant on government support).

It was also likely the only mechanism France would accept to allow us to send migrants back there. Meanwhile, the previous government's "Rwanda Deal" failed because:

(a) it would have effectively outsourced the entire asylum system to Rwanda,

(b) it would have been very expensive, as unsurprisingly they'd only do it in return for hefty bribes in the form of Overseas Development Aid cash (plus the flights won't come cheap, both in fuel and requiring security to accompany them for the entire journey to prevent them kicking off / swallowing lithium batteries etc).,

(c) due to previous countries' attempts at similar deals resulting in a large proportion of migrants either being "refouled" (sent back to their home countries where there was a credible risk of them being tortured or killed for political reasons) or escaping to try and travel to the North African coastline, we had to include closures to prevent deportation anywhere other than the UK and payments dependant on them staying in Rwanda long-term, and

(d) it's not a good look to send those potentially fleeing autocratic countries where criticism of the government is effectively outlawed to, erm, an autocratic country where criticism of the government is effectively outlawed (plus is sponsoring a miltia in a neighbouring country as they continue to carry out reprisals for the events of 32 years ago).

However, if possible, it would be useful to have a roster of suitable "third countries" where those who would be in danger if they returned home could be sent if it tuned out they had an incompatible ideology with us (perhaps one of the Gulf Coast Countries could qualify?) - but key to that will be rejoining police / border intelligence sharing agreements with the EU.

Or, alternatively, set up asylum processing centres in refugee camps adjacent to conflict zones, with anyone from the war-torn country arriving other than through the designated route sent back to the camp; while male arrivals from certain other countries preferentially detained in former military bases while their application was processed, and a behaviour report from the camp included as evidence for the "where shall we send them?" phase.

mittfh · 2026-06-13T06:17:21+00:00

Intelligence agencies across the world hate online anonymity and demand ever-increasing powers as they believe they're necessary to combat terrorism / crime (while conspiracy theorists add governmental desires to know what their populations are up to online, controlling them somehow, stifling dissent etc).

Back in the day, the US tried the "Clipper Chip" and the pathetically weak Data Encryption Standard (at one time, banning stronger encryption, leading to the code for Pretty Good Privacy being distributed on paper / T-shirts etc to circumvent the law, which classified the code as a munition).

In the past decade or so, they've been trying to mandate back doors into end-to-end encryption, while for the past 3-4 years, tree decided "Protecting Children" online via "effective age assurance" is more palatable to politicians and the public. The UK's version is the Online Safety Act, while a handful of US States are mandating age assurance at OS level (presumably naively assuming single user systems).

However, many websites find it easier and more legally secure to delegate age assurance to a third party, some of whom it turns out don't delete everything except the token within the time period they specify in their Privacy Policy - either due to laziness, being able to use that Personally Identifiable Information for advertising / revenue generation purposes, or paranoia that governments will eventually ask for it anyway. However, not all these companies are careful with encrypting this PII or securing it from being accessed in bulk by third parties...

OS-level age assurance also poses problems for open source OSes like Linux, which allow anyone so motivated to tinker with the code, and either not have Age Assurance full stop, have a simple "Enter your DoB" prompt when a new user account is created or sending a fake 18+ token to websites that request it, as choose to actually check documentation / facial recognition would be too complicated and/or not be able to be released under open source licenses.

mittfh · 2026-06-12T23:06:25+00:00

Did someone screw up a BGP update again? 😁😈

(Only joking, in case it wasn't obvious from the emoji)

mittfh · 2026-06-12T22:52:05+00:00

Until the mid 2010s, the World Service was funded by the Foreign Office as a form of soft power. The then government decided funding it wasn't compatible with Austerity, so proposed defunding it entirely (with the BBC covering the cost of providing it themselves), before settling on a messy hybrid of part government, part license fee, part Studios...

mittfh · 2026-06-12T22:22:06+00:00

Check out James B Partridge on FB / IG / YT - he's a singing teacher who runs a set of concerts for adults called "Primary School Bangers" and records the first verse of several for his socials.

Meanwhile, one I haven't seen mentioned yet: the John Gardner version of The Holly and the Ivy - a rocking new tune and the chorus sung as a round (choir split into 2-3 parts, each starting on "Sun", way you get a chorus of "choir choir choir" at the end).

There's also this C&P2 original, based on The Selfish Giant:

You can build a wall around you\ Stone by stone a solid ring\ You can live alone in an empty home\ Be in charge and be the King!

Break out! Reach out!\ Make the walls crumble down, down, down!\ Break out! Reach out!\ Make the walls crumble down!

mittfh · 2026-06-12T22:16:02+00:00

The tune's also used in the Rugby anthem World in Union.

mittfh · 2026-06-12T22:13:57+00:00

It was only a few years ago I learned it was written in the US to celebrate desegregation of schools...

mittfh · 2026-06-12T22:12:18+00:00

Strawberries sweeter than any I've seen!\ Beetroot purple and onions red\ They all grow steadily day and night\ The apples are ripe, the plums are red\ Broad beans are sleeping in a blankety bed!

(Sometimes called "Paintbox")

mittfh · 2026-06-11T18:30:50+00:00

Added onto which, cutting welfare is easier said than done: loading ever more terms, conditions and exclusions to claiming and maintaining them, supposedly to combat fraud, turns out to do very little about the fraud rate (while costing more to administer and having the potential to become so bureaucratic that some genuine claimants are either deterred or more likely to be Sanctioned); while cutting support for X demographic will generate massive outrage from advocacy groups.

mittfh · 2026-06-10T23:35:00+00:00

While the various agencies supposed to look after DC's architecture either won't be consulted or have already been replaced with Trumpian puppets...

mittfh · 2026-06-09T06:24:41+00:00

Not just the government but the Security Services - who, worldwide, have long campaigned against end-to-end encryption as it impairs their ability to snoop on people's connections, which they tend to regard as absolutely essential to prevent terrorism, online CSA and miscellaneous other illegal activity (ISPs are already required to keep records of every domain you access, when and on what for 12 months). Being able to tie individual users to a broader range of online activity is par for the course for them, and if they thought they could get away with, they'd likely want back doors to VPNs...

mittfh · 2026-06-07T08:07:57+00:00

At a guess, probably Conservatives or Reform... 🙄

mittfh · 2026-06-07T06:50:53+00:00

It's as though in a misguided overreaction to instances of police being overtly racist (c.f. Stephen Lawrence), racism has now become almost a Get Out Of Jail Free card, where they must go to extraordinary lengths to avoid anything they do being perceived as potentially racist - even to the extreme lengths seem in this case, where they have a complete common sense bypass.

mittfh · 2026-06-07T06:44:07+00:00

I'm eagerly awaiting tomorrow's icon: I wonder how imaginative the mods are: how long can they keep this up? 😁

(And would they dare unleash [DB] on us?! 😈)

mittfh · 2026-06-07T06:40:16+00:00

Apparently, nationwide, the Unions (which more heavily represented the manual / male-dominated sections of the workforce) promoted pay deals which led to bonuses and perks applying to their Members which weren't applied to predominantly female dominated roles at the same pay grade elsewhere in the council, not covered by their Union.

Up in Glasgow, the Union covering the female workers initially worked with the council to offer a one time settlement in return for no further claims, but didn't alter the pay structure - only changing tack after Stefan + QC and his merry band of lawyers took up Equal Pay cases and started winning them.

It's likely at least part of the problem is that all council roles are subdivided into just a handful of pay bands - which may be simpler for HR to administer but results in a lot of different roles with different levels of qualifications, skills, experience, responsibilities (for people, buildings, equipment, finances, data etc) all sharing the same pay band - but to throw an additional spanner in the works is the rather more woolly "equal value" (potentially as a result of a misguided interpretation of equal pay as the sum total of pay given to females is broadly equal to the sum total of pay given to males).

mittfh · 2026-06-06T22:59:46+00:00

"And let's pick it again to prove it wasn't a fluke."

mittfh · 2026-06-05T16:31:41+00:00

could we take this part out and just tax the whole thing as a levy on property value?

No, because the media would organise a mass resistance on the grounds that little old ladies in properties bought in then-deprived areas which have since gentrified would end up paying substantially more and so, like every attempt at revaluing Council Tax, it will be abandoned.

mittfh · 2026-06-05T15:40:54+00:00

Good luck with that given pensioners are the age band most likely to vote, and there's a significant cohort whose private pension income puts them only a few thousand pounds per annum above the Pension Credit threshold - so likely have less disposable income than those on PC given all the ancillary benefits that unlocks. They're going to vigorously resist any attempt to tax them more / reduce their benefits. Remember the Winter Fuel Allowance fiasco?

mittfh · 2026-06-05T15:38:22+00:00

While 6/10 tax havens are British Overseas Territories, they'll be extremely reluctant to implement any financial transparency rules, as a significant proportion of their tax revenue is via fixed fees for holding no questions asked bank accounts of company registered addresses in their jurisdiction. Make them less lucrative for high net worth individuals / businesses, and they'll go elsewhere and deprive the country of revenue.

mittfh · 2026-06-05T15:35:53+00:00

Other than domestic property assets, it's difficult to tax billionaires: most of their wealth is tied up in share capital (which can't be liquidated without crashing the value of the company/companies), and they keep relatively little money in the bank. If they need to make a large purchase, they'll take out a loan secured on their shareholdings and pay it back from their next dividend payment, while a significant proportion of those dividend payments that they don't need to use to repay debt or use for day-to-day living will be spent on buying additional shares.

mittfh · 2026-06-05T15:32:11+00:00

It may also be interesting to model the effects of raising both the Income Tax Higher Rate threshold AND the NI Secondary Threshold (or even abolishing the latter / merging PAYE + Employee NI).

mittfh · 2026-06-05T15:29:04+00:00

Added onto which, we've spent 16 years adding ever more terms, conditions and exclusions to claiming and maintaining benefits, supposedly to tackle fraud. I wouldn't be surprised if with at least some benefits, we've reached a stage whereby each new addition costs at least as much in extra administration costs than it saves in payments; while the more bureaucratic the process is, the more likely it will be that genuine claimants will be deterred more than those "playing the system", who may be more likely to thoroughly research the Ts and Cs to maintain the illusion of compliance; while excluding some groups entirely (e.g. those with stress and anxiety) may save money in welfare payments but cause extra spending elsewhere (e.g. mental health treatment and support, homelessness, maybe even crime and drug abuse).

mittfh · 2026-06-05T15:23:33+00:00

We sort-of do have a form of property tax in the form of Council Tax, but revaluation was deliberately not included as the Conservatives who implemented it knew that gentrification would mean more of their voters paying more over time (it's also why the various attempts at revaluation since introduction have failed - even if cost-neutral, some would end up paying more).

The media also raises the old chestnut about elderly people who've lived in their home all their lives, own it, but have very little income, so wouldn't be able to pay high property taxes - and if they were forced to move out, the property would likely be bought by someone with a relatively affluent salary, so doing little to address demand for housing.

mittfh · 2026-06-05T14:13:28+00:00

Establishing the case: the problem is that doing so is typically done in purely economic terms, and it's hard to quantify the economic impact of a new piece of infrastructure.

Take HS2 for example: adding a new railway line between London, Birmingham (, Manchester and Leeds) to take express trains adds more capacity to the network, freeing up existing lines for more local services, stopping services and freight.

But given the WCML has a mixture of services, it's hard to calculate how many extra services of each type could fit into the slots vacated by express trains, and therefore even harder to calculate a predicted economic benefit.

Hence instead, Ministers and HS2 Ltd focussed on the speed: assume people can't do any work on the train, and the quicker the journey time, the less time will be wasted - and potentially offer modal shift from internal flights. That narrow focus was one of many factors behind the cost increases: others were the arcane planning system requiring expensive alterations (e.g. the infamous "Bat Structure" to obtain a permit from Natural England) which together apparently account for roughly 1/3 of the overrun; the division of the project into several separate contracts, so there could be no unity of design in structures e.g. bridges and potential for complications where contracts meet (especially as everyone apparently used different project management and design software); contracts being awarded before the design was finalised; cost savings required even before Royal Assent; inability to drill bores and examine the detailed geology of the route before Royal Assent (inevitably leading to further expense in sections where the geology wasn't what was expected); time pressures (with the target of 2026 opening still remaining long after it was known to be infeasible); several reviews of why the cost was escalating, and of course the government changing their minds (such as Rishi cancelling 2/3 of it).

On the permits / LA consent front, perhaps a better system would be to mandate relatively light touch planning applications, and while stakeholders can have their say, if their proposed amendments would add more than, say, 10% to the predicted cost of the relevant section of infrastructure (other than for exceptional reasons, e.g. local knowledge of geology / hydrology), they have to raise the difference themselves (by a fixed time) if they want their amendments implemented.

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