Grumpy Owl

Laughing gas ban ‘will not stop young people using it’, say experts from: https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2023/03/26/laughing-gas-ban-will-not-stop-young-people-using-it-say-experts/ I agree, this stuff is already regulated and these canisters are already illegal for those under the age of 18 to buy. The small metal 'bullet' canisters people will often see scattered around on the streets are meant to be used in ice-cream whippers, those that caterers use. It's the same with most other things, kids under the age of 18 aren't able to buy cigarettes, alcohol or knives from shops. Yet many kids smoke, drink and carry knives. So it begs the question of how they are able to get hold of this stuff? "Banning" doesn't solve the problem, as we can clearly see. It would be unfair on those who buy and use this product legitimately. There seems to be a "naive expectation" in this country that banning something, or making it illegal, will make people stop doing it. But if such laws are then either never enforced, or perpetrators given 'soft' sentences, its all utterly pointless. It is illegal to use a mobile phone while driving - many people still do. It is illegal to smoke on a bus - many people still do. It is illegal to carry a knife in public - many people still do. It is illegal to exceed the speed limit on roads - many people still do. I could go on, but you get the idea.

On what basis?

I've heard all this shit before - Tony Blair claiming that Iraq had nuclear missiles that could reach the UK in 45 minutes, then after bombing the shit out of, and then invading the country, there was no trace to be found of these so-called "weapons of mass destruction".

Doesn't sound like a forum issue to me, more to do with whatever device you're using, especially if you have problems with Instagram too.

In "their" twisted imagination, those things you describe will all be "online", in particular from Amazon, the online retailer that seems to have it all and can deliver to your front door, so there would be no need to travel far afield to go and things you 'need'. It's already happening with doctors/GPs, where most appointments are carried out over the phone. And the Covid lockdown was a great way to 'trial' doing away with physical school buildings and having 'online lessons' instead. Oh, and it showed many big corporate companies how they could have their workforce working remotely from home, so there's less need for big office spaces. Amazingly despite the so-called "cost of living crisis", many people still seem to have plenty of money to be able to regularly afford takeaway meals, which again will be duly delivered to your door by Just Eat or Deliveroo drivers. Luckily for me I live out in the leafy green suburbs of south Birmingham, so there's less of this nonsense going on round here, and to be fair, apart from work that I have to commute to, I do have pretty much most of what I need within a 15 minute walk from my home. But there's no way I'd want to live in the city centre. I just want to save as much money as I can and bugger off to a nice little cottage in some rural village on the coast, get as far away from this madness as I can...

It's exactly what Common Purpose thrives at doing, creating a 'toxic' workplace culture - "toxic" only for those who aren't "part of the club" and refuse/are unwilling to go with the 'agenda' - and blaming or scapegoating others for their failings. The biggest 'problem' with the NHS is highlighted in one of the photo captions on that BBC article: The NHS is no longer a 'public service', it is a corporate behemoth, but its revenue stream comes directly from the UK taxpayer.

Yeah, this has been simmering away in the background on the local news sites the last few months.

I've seen the video that the Express & Star shared on their Facebook page. What you don't see apparently is the car pulling up across the road, then the guy gets out, walks quite calmly across the road, then up the driveway. He pauses for a moment, then walks up to the snowman, kicks it, and then shouts something before walking back off. Doesn't look to me like anyone with any anger issues or being wound up, I suspect there was someone else filming this as 'a laugh' for some silly TikTok video, and it just happened to get captured by this Ring doorbell device.

To be honest, I don't know, and I'm past caring now. Whatever happens, we won't have a Conservative government. (One could of course argue that we haven't actually had a 'conservative' government for several years now) As history tends to repeat itself - yet not much changes - it will probably be another landslide Labour victory, as we saw with Tony Blair in 1997. Failing that, we could end up with a Labour government propped up in coalition with the SNP.

It was quite remarkable here in south Birmingham, when I got up on Friday morning, the snow was coming down quite heavy and my garden looked like Antarctica - by 4pm the sun was shining and most of the snow had gone.

Sorry, you're right, it was something like "undocumented migrant" rather than 'displaced', but I think you get what I meant. By changing the language or the wording, it does nothing more than 'soften' or gloss over the actual truth - in the same way that 'they' prefer paedophiles to be referred to as "minor-attracted persons".

"Everything we know so far about..." As other people have pointed out before, they are not 'reporting' on the news, they are just 'repeating' what other people have already said. Repeaters, not reporters. Most 'local' news stories now are just 'embellishments' on what the local police/fire/ambulance services are already posting on Twitter. The 'national' newspapers mostly carry the same headline stories, and usually just parrot each other.

Because that is exactly what is happening! There is a slow invasion taking place on the south-east coast, with thousands of fighting age men (very few in the way of women or children) swarming across France and the rest of Europe, and NOBODY has any real desire to stop this happening, in fact there are groups facilitating this, and our own government is being far too soft by letting them in and putting them up in fancy hotels. Yes, the language used might 'remind' her of pre-war Nazis, but the situation is completely different. And that is the same mistake that Mr Lineker made. Genuine refugees and asylum-seekers would have found refuge or sought asylum in the first 'safe' country that they came to. Why travel across Europe - via a multitude of 'safe' countries - unless you're an 'economic migrant'? Also it was reported earlier this year that the majority of people arriving on boats from across the Channel were actually Albanians, from a country that is NOT a war-zone. I don't like using these labels as such, but the 'woke leftists' are just doing what Orwell described in '1984' with regards to 'newspeak', alter the language, make people think about what they are saying, and word it in a way so as not to 'offend' people. In the same way that they're trying to remove the words "illegal immigrant" from the vocabulary, to be replaced with some nonsense term like "displaced person".

Watch as doorbell camera catches man from passing car kicking nine-year-old girl's snowman into pieces from: https://www.expressandstar.com/news/local-hubs/dudley/2023/03/12/doorbell-camera-catches-man-from-passing-car-kicking-nine-year-old-girls-snowman-into-pieces/ (This is also currently the 'top story' on the Birmingham Mail website, must be a slow news day)

True I suppose. I may not be able to write code like this myself, but I can at least read through what it has written and I understand what it is doing.

I'm pretty sure it is all indeed a 'massive distraction'. Gary Lineker is an overpaid tool, he's been spouting his biased 'opinions' on Twitter for years, yet only now what he has said is a 'problem'? The BBC has always been a 'government mouthpiece', it is a state-funded 'public broadcaster', just like RT is in Russia. Gary Lineker may criticise the UK Government, but this Conservative party currently in power is just as 'left-leaning' as he is, they merely 'pretend' to be right-wing. This is all part of the 'social engineering' project to manipulate people into voting against the Tories at the next election, which will see Labour take power:

It does have its uses, following on from what I posted in the 'New Tech Thread': I'm fairly 'tech-savvy' but I can't code for shit, not anymore like I used to, back in the days of using BASIC on my Commodore Plus/4 as a child, or using STOS The Game Creator on my Atari ST as a teenager! This ChatGPT does have its limitations, it wouldn't code an entire PHP script to create a full ecommerce website from scratch for example, but I like how it is able to come up with code to perform certain tasks and routines. It did provide me with a PHP script for updating stock from a CSV file running on our webserver, which was great and did work, but was limited by our VPS itself. I then asked it for an equivalent Visual Basic (VB) script, that I could run on our own local server - a nifty little Windows PC we have at work - and it duly came up with a VB version. I could maybe have achieved this myself with a lot of Googling and 'trial-and-error', but I couldn't have coded anything like this myself. Is it cheating? Maybe yes. Has it saved us money instead of hiring freelancers to do the coding/scripting for us? Of course it has.

I didn't realise this. I'm pretty impressed. I've been struggling for sometime to find a way at work to update product stock levels on our website, which doesn't involve expensive or rubbish Wordpress plugins. After a bit of trial and error, its come up with a PHP script that reads data from a CSV file then uses the Wordpress API to update the product stock levels accordingly. ChatGPT was also able to give me some 'tweaking' recommendations for the PHP configuration to make the script run more efficiently.

Maybe he can go back to concentrating on his hairdresser/barbershop business in Kidderminster? Does 'social media commentary' really pay that well?

So predictable really, we should make this one of those 'drinking games', I guarantee we'd all be pissed within the hour!

Just to add to the above, yes, I do think that most 'local journalists' are nothing more than 'bloggers', based on some recent examples I've seen on my local Birmingham Mail 'news' site. I tried Primark and Marks & Spencer gym wear - and one wasn't even fit for a work-out https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/reviews/tried-primark-marks-spencer-gym-26358202 I tried washing powder from Tesco, Aldi, Sainsbury's and Asda and one made my house smell like a perfume shop https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/reviews/tried-washing-powder-tesco-aldi-26380905 I mean, is this really 'news'? Or just 'distraction fodder'?

I tend to agree with you, the problem with most internet news websites now is that they are just chasing clicks for ad revenue. I wrote a couple of articles on my website last year with my thoughts: Media is just the bits in between the adverts https://thegrumpyowl.co.uk/2022/07/24/media-is-just-the-bits-in-between-the-adverts/ The Decline Of Local Journalism (or “How To Be A Reach Journalist”) https://thegrumpyowl.co.uk/2022/07/31/the-decline-of-local-journalism-or-how-to-be-a-reach-journalist/ Those are both from over six months ago, and it would seem to me that the standards of journalism are getting even more worse. Even the BBC - though it does not carry advertising on its news website (not in the UK at least) - is becoming more like a typical Reach site, with 'click-baity' headlines. They all just 'parrot' from each other. And as we saw recently with the Nicola Bulley 'case', the lack of detail and investigative reporting just leads the reader to start 'speculating', due to all the unanswered questions, and I think sometimes this is all intentional. The clue is always to look at the news stories where comments are actually allowed and haven't been 'turned off'.

Food fraud probe into beef falsely labelled as British from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64904334 I'm hoping this is not more widespread than it appears. Well, as I've said numerous times before, "they would say that" So, if it is none of the above, then who's left? Heron Foods? Farm Foods?

It's enough to make you sick. Our government is already sending millions of pounds to Ukraine, now the British public are expected to "give what you can", all while there is a supposed "cost of living crisis", caused by our own Government imposing 'sanctions' on Russia. You can't make this shit up, and people will go along with it, like the 'pots and pans clangers' during the Covid lockdown. "I can't afford to heat my home or feed my family, but I've done my bit and donated to this worthy cause."

Happens all the time you know!