Now @stuartb@stuartb.uk

https://social.teamb.space/@stuartb

Husband.
Father.
Pops.
Lefty (Politically).
Occasional thinker.
Former drinker.
Mediocre writer.
Lapsed dreamer.
Non-practicing intellectual.
Trying not to swear but some people make it bloody difficult.
Women's rights are human rights.
Trans rights are human rights.

Pronouns: He/Him, They/Them
Location: Manchester, UK
Website: https://stuartb.uk
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Last Notes

2026-10-05 21:49:54 UTC

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2026-09-08 10:51:12 UTC

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Just spitballing here - there are ~1 million 18-24 year olds who are currently unemployed, expected to rise to 1.25 in 5 years.
How many people aged 62-66 are currently exhausted after 40+ years of work, but worried they aren't going to survive to retirement at 67?
Could we wipe out most if not all youth unemployment by setting the state retirement age at 62, so that those who wanted to retire, on a full pension, could do so?

2026-08-09 00:09:08 UTC

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and lets not forget that the homeless man handed himself in, and showed remorse for his actions, while the CEO didn't...

2026-08-08 22:15:17 UTC

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one thing to note here, which only reinforces the whole point.
The 40 months the CRO received is apparently "slightly less" than the 6 years the prosecution asked for.
6 years is 72 months.
That's not "slightly less" than 6 years.
That slightly more than 3 years.
3 years snd 4 months, to be precise.

2026-07-26 12:40:07 UTC

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Wasn't this one of the pastiches of LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem?
I know it was used in protests in Turkey in...2013? 2014?...when it was changed to "Every day I'm Çapuling (Chapuling)", that last word translating into English as "Looting" or possibly "rioting".
And there were other places this song was used as a protest song, turning a protest into a dance party in a similar way to some of the anti-ICE protests in the US last year, it could be one of those you're thinking of.

2026-07-21 22:33:38 UTC

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This always blows my mind.
According to this, Meta has an unrecorded debt of $420 Billion-with-a-B, around 3 times it's reported debt, so call that $140 Billion.
Last year, they apparently made $60 Billion profit, so their declared debt is about 1/3 higher than their profit at $80 Billion.
If Meta was a person, the banks would be telling them to sort themselves out, and quickly, they would be made to pay off as much debt as possible, as quickly as possible.
But no, the banks are willing to throw unconscionable amounts of money at them.
Most of these debts will end up being written off, yet dare to suggest that they do some student loan forgiveness instead, for far smaller sums of money, and the banks and the Capitalists are up in arms, even if student loan forgiveness would do more for the economy than anything Meta has ever done.
As i say - mind:blown.

2026-05-08 17:48:49 UTC

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That's 900 billionaires, not 900,000...
Also, according to that article, their has been a massive uptick in "self made" billionaires.
I have to ask- how do Fortune define "self made"?
Someone whose parents worked minimum wage jobs to put food on the table, who got a scholarship to a mid tier college and worked their way up?
Or someone ehose only qualification for a course at a top tier college was Daddy's bulging cheque book, whose parents funded their first 3 companies that never did anything or made any money, and inherited 7 or 8 figures?

2026-04-04 12:47:49 UTC

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I still say that this is just a big wind-up - ive never been able to see these.

2026-03-25 07:12:36 UTC

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Apparently, someone ordered $1.5 BILLION dollars in trades on certain stocks that have been affected by the war, just 5 minutes before TACO Trump made his announcement.
I can imagine people putting on small bets on the timing of something like this, but that is one hell of a lot of money to risk, unless you know something others dont.
i'm not ruling out the first 2, but it sure as hell looks like the last one.

2026-03-23 13:20:04 UTC

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Wasn't this suggested a few years back?
I'm pretty sure this came up some time ago, with a proposed top speed that wasn't all that far north of what they do currently, making this a very expensive way of achieving pretty much nothing.

2026-03-11 09:58:21 UTC

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We also need more teachers, nurses, firemen, binnies, shop assistants, bus drivers, and more, and less people with degrees in politics or economics.
Certainly less people who can afford to live off Daddy's money while they saunter through life getting advanced qualifications in how to screw over the general public so Daddy can make more money that they can inherit.
Even in "Left" wing politics, there are far too many people in the House through generational wealth, for whom poverty is a theoretical thing rather than a lived experience, people who haver never found themselves without too much month at the end of the money, even when working full time.
ESPECIALLY when working full time.

2025-12-29 09:05:37 UTC

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"But if we tax the billionaires, they'll leave!"
If they are paying the square root of FuckAll, while getting all the tax breaks and kickbacks they can, how will we be any worse when they fuck off?

2025-11-29 20:14:24 UTC

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I'm sure there are use-cases where AI/LLM's are a valid, useful tool/
I just can't think of anything right now.

2025-11-29 11:51:25 UTC

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re: Sweden being the richest country in Europe post WWII - just remind me again how much money they had to invest to rebuild after being destroyed by the best part of a decade of warfare.
it's like the US became the richest country in the world, because their entire home country was untouched by the war, but they also simutaneously charged their "Allies" extortionate amounts for military supplies, something Sweden wasn't able to do.

2025-11-29 11:46:44 UTC

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If the ultra wealthy aren't paying their fair way, then we lose nothing by making them move away.
It should be noted, however, that most of the places they would be liable to go have higher tax rates than the UK, which are also more stringently enforced.
Meaning that they likely won't gain much, if anything, if they move.

2025-11-29 10:19:26 UTC

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Mostly, the problem is that these latest tax measures are being aimed at the wrong people.
People at the bottom of the range, those who are most likely working part time and needing top-ups from the government to barely get by, are going to be dragged into paying taxes because of the threshold freeze, which will severely impact them, while those at the top will barely notice, it will be little more than a rounding error to them.
Proportionally, those at the bottom are being asked to payn more, again, than those at the top.
maybe if thoe at the top were being asked to pay more, they might ask for better value for money.
But not like they do at the moment, where they are demanding cuts to the benefits system, which largely wouldn't be neccesary if they were to pay their workers a decent wage.

2025-11-07 15:52:20 UTC

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Hang on, i thought it was Socialism that would stop companies making money, not Uber-Capitalism...

2025-09-11 04:58:08 UTC

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There are regulations that need getting rid of - but pretty much every single damn one of them was written by or for the big orgs, in order to pro-actively restrain the rights of consumers.
See DRM-removal, as just one example.
It's notable that, for example, stripping the DRM from a single book bought via Kindle and format shifting it to something that can be read on anything more advanced than a washing machine is illegal, and could lead to fines or a jail term, but a multi-national torrenting every book ever published to feed into an LLM is perfectly fine.
The fact that the resulting output is often copyrighted is, quite frankly, hilarious.
In short, the rights of consumers must be curtailed, but big biz must be allowed yo for whatever it wants, to generate ever larger profits.

2025-09-01 11:07:29 UTC

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There is also the amusing number of these anti-immigration types who plan on retiring to Spain or Portugal, but this doesn't mean they will be immigrants elsewhere, oh no...

2025-08-30 09:09:31 UTC

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The Greens had more MPs and Councillors than any of Farage's companies/partys for years, but the media always gave him and his cohorts far more attention -- whenever Greens were given any airtime, there was always an air of "lets laugh at the weirdos/bearded hippies/nature lovers, and their silly ideas", rather than granting any respectability.
They were ready to print/broadcast all of Farage's lies, usually uncritically, but wouldn't do the same for people trying to get the public to realise the nature of the problems we were sleepwalking in to.

2025-08-21 10:45:31 UTC

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i can't speak for anywhere else, but I'm assuming it's true across the lower end of the market.
We had the union reps in at work, trying to cajole the staff into joining up.
"Join us, and we'll stand up for you, get you better wages and conditions" they say.
If that's how it worked we would be better off joining the Tory party!
Seriously, over the last 15 years, there have been several inflationary wage spikes, each one caused by the Tories (and, latterly, the Red Tories) increasing minimum wages substantially.
In between, USDAW accepted pay increases that left us worse off, often negotiating away bonuses, overtime, and additional pay to pay or it.
The last time I the union rep was in (about the only time we see them is when they are begging for money!), I asked how it felt for the Tories to repeatedly tell them they were shit at their jobs, because they (the Tories) realised we weren't being paid enough.
They got a bit upset about that!
But its true.
There was one-time the company got in to emergency talks about pay with the union due to an upcoming minimum wage rise - and yo make sure that we got the mandated rise, they negotiated away premium rates (earlies, lates, saturdays, sundays) and profit share.
This was great if you worked 9-5 mon-fri, but any latest, or weekends, and you were losing money.
Even with the massive pay rise, I was getting 200 a year less, for exactly the same hours and job, yet the press was full of storys about normal staff getting inflation-busting pay rises.
Not a word about the suits and execs, though.
At this stage, USDAW is little more than an extortion racket.
Tl;DR - Inflation caused by wages does exist, but at the low (and, increasingly, middle) end is generally caused by pay rises way below inflation for years being forced to catch up.
At the top, it's a regular occurrence, happening more often than not, but for everyone else, it only rarely happens.
But when it does, the workers get the blame.

2025-07-21 09:11:08 UTC

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Over the past 30 years, massive amounts of money have been taken out of the system - dividends, share buyback, insane bonuses, and more - money that could have gone to investment in infrastructure, repairing and replacing systems that were almost a century old when privatisation happened.
Instead of papering over the cracks and hoping for the best (while paying obscene bonuses to the upper levels for saving money), that money should have been used to upgrade and replace everything in a system that was designed for 15 million people but now has to deal with 70 million.
Yes, replacements and upgrades have been done - but just replacing what was already there at the time of privatisation is still 100 years away from completion.
So, I say that, given that they have removed so much money from the system while allowing services to stagnate, and that "emergency" sewage releases are an hourly occupancy rather than once in a blue moon, and that 1/3rd of water that leaves the reservoir doesn't reach the tap (and apparently a similar per centage is lost on the return trip), re-nationalisationbis the only real choice.
With no compensation.
Take Thames first, as that apparently can't cope with the twin demands of providing a service to consumers and providing a payout to its owners (so the service takes a back seat) without going bankrupt, then do the rest one at a time.
If any company can turn themselves around, they can stay.
For now.
But if we have to bail out privately owned companies, then they become public property.
No more privatised profits and socialised losses.
Same goes for any other industries - banks, rail, buses, power, airlines, mail...
You don't get the profits if you don't provide the service.
So get out of the way.

2025-07-12 05:12:54 UTC

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so, let me see if I understand this correctly.
Illegal immigrants invade and occupy a town, and kill 2 members of a local family, one of whom is an American citizen - and the US government thinks this is fine...

2025-07-03 15:08:01 UTC

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I've tried explaining this to some people who want to effectively defund the NHS, and occasionally they will concede the point, but more usually refuse to see it as a good thing.
There are many diseases, illnesses, or conditions that, just a couple of generations ago were death sentences - polio, smallpox, AIDS, just to name a handful.
Some have been all but eradicated, others can be managed long term, but now mean that people live longer, only to die of other things, need treatment for other things, including old age.
Instead of dying at 20 or 30, they are now living to 70 or 80 - maybe 60+ years of additional care that needs funding.
And this isn't a bad thing, this is something that any civilised, caring, compassionate society should be doing.
Sadly, we appear to be none of those things.

2025-06-17 16:20:01 UTC

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lm always surprised when Americans don't realise that medical bills are the leading cause of Bsnkruptcy in the US - over here, we know this, it's a random fact we like to bring up because it just doesn't happen over here in the UK!

2025-06-16 09:51:40 UTC

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"Israel must be allowed to defend itself!"
Yeah, let's try that sentence again.
"Palestine must be allowed to defend itself."
Can't you just hear the pearls cracking from being clutched so tightly.
Palestine has been under attack and losing sovereign territory for almost 80 years now.
Comparing maps of Palestinian territory from, say, early 1948 with now is instructive - it is now basically Gaza and the West Bank, where they had extensive lands back then.
But why are te Western nations backing this?
Simple.
This is precisely how Western nations acquired their wealth - invading and stealing land, wiping out or subjugating entire indigenous populations, and taking their wealth and labour to enrich themselves.
Yeah, backing ethnic cleansing and genocide because it's what we used to do, and we don't want to acknowledge that we made a mistake taking land from a people who live there and giving it to the descendants of people left there (for whatever reason) centuries ago.

2025-05-11 10:34:05 UTC

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Back in 2010, Gordon Brown lost a General Election, in part because he referred to a person complaining about immigration as "a bigoted woman" on a hot mic.
This was probably Labours biggest mistake of the Blair/Brown years - they had spent more than a decade promoting immigration, without explaining, in simple terms that the average voter could understand, the benefits of immigration.
The data on immigration shows the positive effect it has, but it's a complex subject that takes time and effort to understand the nuances.
And so those on the right planted cherry-picked details in the press, misleading the electorate about immigration, and we're allowed to do so unchecked.
And thus we find ourselves in the situation we are in today, because of an unforced error back then.

2025-04-16 09:15:14 UTC

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I don't know if this is a Greater Manchester thing, or if it is happening across the UK (I suspect it may be), but there gas been a lot of old social housing, mostly terraced housing, demolished over the last 30 years or so, replaced with much less deadly packed newbuild, most for sale, but with a small per centage offered as social housing.
People who have lived in the area, sometimes in the same house, for generations are competing for the few new houses, and are mostly forced into much increased private rents to stay in the area, or move miles away.
These same developments offera small number of "affordable" homes for sale, usually starting at £250,000 - £300,000.
Yeah, try getting a 1200% mortgage when you're on minimum wage.
Whole communities have been displaced and dispersed, thousands of working class families replaced with hundreds of middle class families, in what I can only describe as class-cleansing.
Oddly, this rarely happens the other way around, the only time the well-off collectively have a small number of homes replaced with a large number of homes for the not-well-off-at-all is when the land owners fall on hard times.
I'm not saying we need to go back to the days of tightly packed, 2-up-2-down terraces with no green spaces or amenities, but there is a need for high-density, low-rent housing, close to existing amenities and services.
Brown field sites should be converted for housing stock, even if that means taking them from those who are land-banking them, with cleanup costs collected from those who allowed them to pollute the land.
Unused housing should be subjected to additional taxes, with any where no tax revenue is raised seized by local councils, with no compensation.
Council tax rates also need looking at, they haven't had meaningful adjustments in decades, and now heavily favour large houses owned by the rich, and need lowering at the bottom end and raising at the top.

2025-03-02 16:10:22 UTC

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The thing that gets me about that story- in this day of "government efficiency", the US would have saved itself a boatload of money by seeing her onto the flight she had booked home - but no, she is being detained indefinitely, and will end up being returned home, probably with an escort, and all being paid for by the US taxpayer.
And all over something she could possibly have theoretically done, if she felt like it, rather than something she HAD done.

2024-12-27 14:55:38 UTC

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I remember the first time I read Dracula as a teen, and being rather incredulous about the number of letters being exchanged every day between the Harkers and Vsn Helsing, St one point there were 3 or 4 letters each way every day, and none crossed over.
Almost as incredulous as reading about the speed of train journeys from London to Cornwall in the Sherlock Holmes novels - it's not that much further to Manchester from London, yet the modern (at the time - mid to late 1980s) saw the Northern route taking around 3 times as long as the Western route.
@npub1fjl…akzz

2024-12-17 19:40:27 UTC

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So, I found this.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1090169/twitter-uk-tax-on-profit/
The numbers bring bandied about are far more than Twitter/X ever paid in UK tax in their entire history, or more than declared revenue over any of the last few year.
And no one else wonders how they can possibly do this?

2024-10-11 11:10:51 UTC

With all the shenanigans by Matt Mullenweg, I'm looking at restarting (at least) one of my sites, and moving them away from WordPress.
Would prefer something I can self-host, and ActivityPub would be nice - anyone have say recommendations?

2024-10-11 06:38:10 UTC

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Hmm.
UNIFIL is mostly made up of Irish soldiers, with some Polish troops on the ground supporting them.
If Polish troops were to come under direct fire, could Poland invoke NATO Article 5, which would compel all NATO nations to come to their aid?
With Polands current leadership, it's not likely, but would that be a possibility?
Ireland isn't a member, but is aligned with NATO, so could they do it?

2024-10-09 10:47:12 UTC

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Or, at the other extreme, I put something in the oven and forget about it, and my wife starts wondering why I'm treating her like a God...

2024-10-09 10:40:25 UTC

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So.
Many.
Times.
Seriously, I'm a liability in the kitchen!

2024-08-06 21:06:50 UTC

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I work for a UK supermarket (not that one), on the fruit and veg department, and Scottish produce usually (but not always) has the St Andrews flag.
Occasionally, Welsh produce has the dragon, but English and (rarely) Ulster produce has the Union Flag.
What bothers me more is the amount of Israeli produce we get, mostly avocado's and potatoes.
@npub1zcy…ncf8 @npub1y83…ehwl