pap

Yeah, yeah, I think you completely got away with being completely in the wrong there by using that smiley Zero hours contracts are fundamentally bad for the public, as it places nearly all the power in the employer's hands, and "employer" means anyone, from the CEO to the frustrated supervisor with a insoluble weight problem that uses his or her job to compensate. I have come across plenty of the latter in my career, especially in the sort of job in which zero hour contracts are now employed. At least back then, employees were guaranteed a certain amount of work. Alright, they might not have been first in line for any overtime that going about, but the vindictive couldn't strip them of their basic cash. Now they can. I say "nearly" because this is a free market. The affected employee could find another job, but let's face it, it'll probably be another zero hours contract.

What assertion? I never made it. I just listed a few obvious examples where Wes had missed the mark. Child's play really, but then it always is with easily contestable claims and fabrications. Still, I'm sure evidence will be "found" by the end of the day and you'll have me bang to rights.

How do you know they've worked hard to accumulate it? Could be inherited money, or like in Cameron's dad's case, he could have been diverting funds destined for the exchequer to an island that'd be a banana republic if it wasn't for that huge, tax-free banking industry. What about lottery winners? Did they work hard for their money? Your assertion that anyone with cash must be deserving of it is entirely false.

Around 5%, give or take 3-4 percentage points in either direction, depending on the state. We pay 5% for the "luxury" of things like electricity, water and gas. Now I'm not too interested in a comparison of our sales tax vs their sales tax, because we do tons of things better than they do. But VAT is an example of something sounding perfectly reasonable to start with (it'll just be luxury items! There will be safeguards) and ending up becoming entirely unreasonable with no real safeguards. The utility VAT rate of 5% won't be around forever.

Heh. Tell an American that we pay a regressive 20% sales tax on most things deemed a luxury. He won't think he's the idiot.

A few people. It'll píss a load more people off, I reckon.

Lightweight.

Probably simpler than that. Surely it's just a case of a team trying to exploit what they think is a weak link. Backup keeper that hasn't had many recent competitive fixtures under its belt. When Boruc got taken off during the 2013 3-1 defeat against Chelsea, Mourinho instructed his lot to shoot from long-range against Gazzaniga.

The South Western Arms was a fine ending to my day. Goatboy and I once again ended up being the last two forum goers in the boozer, Jonnyboy f**king off early to have a life or something Jonnyboy is correct about the weird feeling of meeting people you kinda already know. As I continue to maintain, UJ is charming in real life, so that never really happened there. GB is much like his real life persona, but louder. Jonnyboy is a calm and laid-back kind of a dude, and I'm happy to report that he is consistent with his forum persona, and a decent sort. I am not around for the Spurs game, but I'd like to make a big effort for the last home game of the season. Who's up for some jars before we play the Villa on May 16th (and perhaps after too)?

Kelv was great today on a day when, first half especially, the defence were looking a little disorganised. Great saves in the second half too. I've said loads of times that I had no confidence in ability to win games without Forster and Boruc in goal. Kelv is still a little bit rusty and perhaps a little nervy. He's usually got a better defence in front of him than he had today. Ok, I know they didn't score, but Hull aren't tearing up the goalscoring charts, but they seemed up for it today and Kelv had a big part to play in keeping them out. Super Kelv about accurate today.

Ok. Sort of omw. Heading to Central to get train to St Denys

He'd go through Miliband like a hot knife through butter, and probably get a landslide in the next election. Good thing Eddie Izzard is on the ascendancy

And I bet your rework rate is pretty staggering too. Mine typically sits at around 5%. Offshore is 60%. Had a project come in during a time when I was already pretty busy. It was a requirement to produce a bespoke report from a large dataset. There's always a bit of back and forth with numeric reports, so taking that and the "making a large dataset work quickly" requirement into account, I estimated two weeks for comfort, specced it out, ready to be put in my production queue. We were trying out a new offshore firm, recommended by one of the directors, so we bounced the work to them. During the spec handover, we spoke to two guys. The first guy had reasonable, if heavily accented English. The second chap could only say "yes, sir". Three months later, we still have no solution, and a bill for six man months of consultancy services. The firm was never used again, and the recommender was quickly bounced out of the firm. It was later completed in-house in two weeks. This is why I have such an issue with the accepted wisdom that private industry is more efficient. I have a huge amount of respect for those agile, small firms that navigate success in a big market, but once companies get to a certain size, they're almost like kingdoms, with all the attendant succession crises, alliances and cut-throat politics. Most of the private companies that we'd be looking to offload public services to are of that size. Should taxpayer money be funding the madness? I am probably slightly more obsessive about getting something out of those meetings. I think the main problem is pacing; there is almost no pausing and a lot of repetition. I'll be honest, and you probably won't be surprised - I'm near the point of rude at some points, particularly if we're covering the same ground (happens loads) or I've not understood anything. I've started documenting tons more. It's unambiguous, there for future reference and can be explored at leisure. Doesn't mean it gets read though.... *sigh* I reckon we'd get a laundry list of complaints if we started a thread about it.

Haven't quite a few utter bastards started out as loveable buffoons? Idi Amin. Gaddafi to an extent. I do worry about the combination of his temper and all that power. He's not nice when the mask slips, and doesn't have many political friends.

I have an irrational and entirely unfounded fear that Boris is a Boys From Brazil pure Aryan type, genetically engineered to take down the last remnants of the British Empire with a combination of joviality and buffoonery. I've only ever seen the Boys From Brazil once, too, and yet, the fear remains

Forgive me for the slight opening tangent, but you've probably had a similar experience. I first realised that newspapers were potentially rife with inaccuracies when I was in my late teens. Already something of a nerd (I'd had computers since nine), I'd read computing articles in the mainstream press and spot tons of stuff that just wasn't accurate. Made me wonder what specialists in other fields think about the accuracy of the mainstream reporting of their fields. Anyways, applying that principle here, we both know the false economy of off-shoring because we're inside this particular sector. My personal view is that Indians probably have just as many good programmers as us per capita. The problem with the Indian market is that too many people have seen it as an employment panacea, and some people just aren't built for it. There is also the fact that you're adding layers between client and studio, because many of the studio aren't competent communicators. The culture is different; one of my former mentors works for a company that specifically does outsourcing. He says that it is very much work to rule, and that (arf!) he misses the fact that I used to question things so much. Tell those guys to do something, they'll do it. Doesn't matter if it's wrong. On the communications issue, I know it sounds terrible to say so, but the Indian accent is not easily interpreted by Western ears. If there was one piece of advice I'd give to the aspiring Indian coder, it would be to make as much effort being understood in the language. My grandad's Pakistani accent has mellowed over the years, but I've worked with dudes 25 years in the US that sound like they've just arrived. Genuinely hard work. I bet, like myself, you're wondering if other industries are as messed up as ours.

Early yet, Super Michael. There is plenty of time for the Conservative Party to sink to new depths in terms of its briefing. I do wonder how successful they'll be though. I've read that they are heavily focusing on the Ed factor, which I think could be counter-productive. Miliband has taken on and defused many of the labels thrown his way. He's a geek, nerd, especially about politics. He does look a bit like Wallace, and let's be honest, has a slightly whiny and pleady oratory style. He is perceivably vulnerable, something that the Tories are looking to exploit, and the reason I think it could backfire. Barring the foaming few and perhaps the anti-semitic set, I don't get the sense that many people hate Miliband. Why would they? The main doubts centre on his perceived oddness and some of the people around him. People may not want him to be Prime Minister, but the British people aren't big on bullies (if evictions on our popular democratic contests are anything to go by!), and Miliband has handled the personal attacks with dignity. Can easily see the Tories overplaying this card.

Whitey, you know I love ya, but one of the reasons we spar so much on here is because you belong to a class of posters that doesn't spend a great deal of time in justifying your position. Don't get me wrong, it's great for overall forum activity and can even lend a conversational style to proceedings, but when compounded with basic errors or obvious speculation, you paint yourself into a corner. Some posters on here have the twin virtues of being detail-conscious and a bit of a shít. As a long-term contributor to the forum, you know this, so my advice to sir would be to stop bowling underarm. VW, if you punch me on the lip and bust it open, it's a crime. Doesn't have to be life-threatening. You won't do any bird, but it's still a crime. I'd have done the same thing in Oysin's situation, just for peace of mind.

The best you can say about the efficiency of the private sector is that sometimes, it is fiscally efficient. Successfully run firms will pull more cash than they spend. However, let's not kid ourselves. It's not efficient from a resources perspective. There is so much waste from so many quarters. Personal ambition, poor management and/or resource planning, feats of accounting prestidigitation by employing contractors, who don't appear on the headcount, rather than the permanent employees that do. Now I'm not trying to pretend that the public sector does not suffer from many of the same problems. However, it's a nonsense to suggest that private industry is inherently any less dysfunctional than the public sector, particularly when it comes to resource management and efficiency. The main difference for me is the private sector's ability to raise and distribute cash as it sees fit. It doesn't have to debate or get a popular mandate. It just needs to make good commercial decisions. Stepping back a bit and examining the system as a whole, it's terribly inefficient. If you and I economise, we're cutting our cloth. The economy is "make more and more stuff in the hope that it sells", endlessly. Western consumerism caters for wants far more than needs, which isn't very efficient. The market is mature enough to have gradation in almost every sector, with the lower end stuff being of poorer quality and a needing to be replace quicker than the higher end stuff. One thing that makes me laugh is the claim that competition drives efficiency. I have no contention with the idea that it drives the internal efficiency of companies; show me a well-run firm that isn't looking to cut costs. The problem is that competition is inherently inefficient on a wider scale. Firms spend huge sums of money on product development, marketing and advertising in order to beat the other guy. We're locked into a yearly commercial release cycle which means that firms need to iterate their products, even if they are perfectly serviceable. Cost is king, and the huge inequalities in the globalised system have stretched supply chain by thousands of miles, adding weeks of transit time, requiring someone out in the Far East to make sure the subcontractors are doing their jobs. It's convoluted, long-winded and requires so much workaround when things go wrong, but it still looks cheaper on paper. Same deal with this army of Indian hotshot coders that have been threatening my livelihood for the last two decades. Fiscal efficiency ain't resource efficiency, and a lot of the time, the private sector cannot even manage that.

No-one, not even you, knows the full facts. Going by your definition, no-one should have an opinion. Continually telling people that they know nothing isn't debating, Sarnia, especially given the paucity of detail in your own responses. At best, you're Ygritte of the Free Folk. At worst, you're a twát. If we're wrong, at least attempt to explain why we're wrong, y'know, with counter-arguments. "I'm right because I live in a neighbouring country to the North" or "you no nothing, Europeans" are not counter-arguments. Now I've ribbed you on a couple of occasions on this thread, but I reckon I've been fairer than most, especially recently - so I've got a piece of travel advice to add to your do's and don'ts. Stay out of Twát County, mush. The place isn't good for you.

The militarisation of the police is something that should concern any citizen. Firstly, what does it say about the government's feelings toward its own people? Are US citizens really that dangerous that you need an armour-plated RV to deal with them, and if so, why? No-one should be shot to death for the crime of "running", especially when the suspect isn't presenting a threat to anyone. Many of these shootings are completely unjustified. I maintain that there is an underlying fear driving all of this. Citizens buy guns to protect themselves from each other. The cops need bigger guns to protect themselves from the citizenry, to the point where they are becoming a colour-swapped version of the actual military. One of the key attributes of civilised societies is an absolute unwillingness to deploy its armed forces on its own soil. Not only is it a safeguard against military coups and the consequent tyrannies, but it also says a lot about the relationship between a nation's leaders and its citizens. There is mutual trust, and a general expectation that neither the citizenry or the authorities are not going to go f**king mental anytime soon. The big ol' social contract. The US military and police becoming virtually indistinguishable says much about the state of the USA's social contract.

It's sort of on the way to Bassett Let us know, GB.

It's even easier now. The stuff I did at tech college was harder. The scope of projects has become enormous, but we're generally building them with "bricks" as opposed to "atoms". The laziness thing is important. I hate doing anything twice, especially if it's a long-winded process which is prone to error. One of my first jobs was a dual role Unix Sys Admin and coder, which pretty much set the tone of my career. Any support request that came in more than once typically got a program written for it. But yeah, modern day coders are standing on the shoulders of giants.

The three great virtues of a good coder are laziness, impatience and hubris.

So basically, you've no knowledge of what the people you're managing are doing. That is hard work!