for outsiders it seems strange

It will, if they're fed a diet of misinformation and continuous "Government Bad" propaganda with the same effect as "what invasion?" has on ordinary Russians.

Meanwhile back on planet Earth, the UK, US EU ... all seem to go along nicely - they just have slightly different perspectives and priorities. The key word being slightly and not the apocalyptic visions given by those prone to hyperbole and/or bots programmed to spout such division.

As for perishing and dying horrible deaths -- do you really believe that?

And from a country where medical care is a privilege of those who can pay, and where you can be killed by police for being in some places whilst having the wrong skin, or where there are mass shootings every other day... the old saying about people in glass houses throwing stones seems relevant.

The UK and EU have many faults [not least the corrupt and incompetent bunch in the UK parliament], but try to keep a sense of proportion.

Likewise, almost every American I've met has been friendly and nice to know; the impression generated through US government announcements and the media (and on slasdot) is that the USA is filled with the selfish and the wilfully stupid.

Image (esp manipulated image) is not the same as reality

For non UK readers, the current shower are looking for ANYTHING that they can say which (a) appeals to their right wing and /or (b) causes outrage. They're making all sorts of noises in all sorts of directions at the moment.

Why?

To distract attention away from the numerous parties and drinks sessions held in Downing Street whilst lock-down procedures were in place. Apparently, "work meetings" there required many people and wine to be brought in by the suitcase full. At the same time, people were being denied last visits to dying relatives and students fined for meeting in a park.

Not a great advert for government responsibility - much outrage about "one rule for us and another for them". Comments on wine fuelled meetings explaining the quality of decision making etc.

With the record of announcements turning into actions, the likely timescale and other fiascoes in the pipeline, this is likely to be yet another Macbeth style proclamation (full of sound and fury, signifying nothing)

I don't seem to be getting mod points recently, but please consider this a +1 Informative !

"British ministers don't seem to understand however."

Usually it's clear, but in this case it's hard to see whether this is

(a) a lack of understanding of "techy stuff", something for the plebs rather than us clever chaps studying classics

or

(b) deliberately not wanting to understand, giving a plausible deniability when their dealings with big companies and their 'chumocracy' is exposed.

My money is on both being true to some extent. This is both the least competent and most corrupt government that the UK has suffered in my experience.

Guess the "volatile VM" (VM reset to old hard disc snapshot when exiting) will be getting even more usage in future.

In this case (and GDPR in general), it's less of the politicians wanting to own the ones and zeros and more of allowing end users to own their data. This is an honourable stance and, in general, the approach is a good one - it's the implementation specifics that are weak.

I would certainly want my town council / local authority / government to be able to discuss sensitive matters privately [with provision for freedom of information requests to be handled appropriately] -- just as most businesses would like their commercial negotiations to be restricted to those who need to know [even if NDAs are seldom fully enforced]. If that means keeping them local and not using overseas providers (who have a reputation for eavesdropping), then so be it.

It's rather like telling staff to buy coffee from a trusted local shop rather than another who's manager is the town gossip and will tell the world what was bought and when -- or even worse, keep track of the occasional extra bar of chocolate to use as a threat to shame / blackmail / oust an overweight manager.

I agree that, in general, politicians don't understand technology - we've got to this position because they'll look at the price first, second, and third** with functionality being a poor fourth -- if they consider reliability, security, privacy at all, it's usually only in reaction to something going wrong.

** actually, with the current UK government, one of the biggest drivers is "is it supplied by one of my chums?" -- the tale of the responses to the pandemic and association with "friends" of politicians is both enlightening and very depressing.

Amazon has support? [checks date for April 1st]

I guess they would have for AWS, but for the shopping site you are more likely to win the lottery than to actually get contact with a human.

If you go through their contact channels, finding a contact who can (or wants to) help is [in my experience] impossible.

I started to boycott Amazon long before it was fashionable because of the way they treated my request for help/complaint. The amount concerned (approx GBP 150) is small change for Amazon , but for me to be out of pocket it was non trivial. The way they are treating staff and their contempt for social norms are not making me warm to the idea of going back to them as a customer.

Substitute middle/higher management for kids throughout and your point still stands.

Sad but true.

Yes, but in the UK the political classes look down on engineering; the old 17/18/19th centuries of people who know what they are doing being 'trade' (and thus lower class) as opposed to the 'enlightened elite' who study classics is still sadly prevalent.

Even now, some government numpties are pushing for Latin to be taught in schools as a means of 'levelling up' -- a dead language used mainly for showing off, rather than something genuinely useful !

On the water pipe idea -- someone with more knowledge than I has doubtless looked into it, but I do know that the main supply pipe to my house (middle of a medium sized town) is only approx 12mm external diameter [I know because it sprang a leak and I saw it being dug up and fixed]; I don't know about the sewage pipe, but in some bigger cities [thankfully not {yet} in my town] there are reports of blockages becoming more common through a combination of non degradable wipes and solidifying cooking fat. Clearing those is a messy job and I doubt that protecting any fibre cables would be a major consideration for the people/equipment involved.

It won't be technical problems holding it back, but the sheer grief of dealing with the multiple water companies -- who are SO much better at running things than the previous public arrangement {sarcasm - they are not!} and cost more [bonuses to pay, armies of independent departments to shift blame, deny responsibility and generally slow down communications...] will be fraught with issues.

Expect this to be like most politician's promises -- short lived and easily forgotten.

I agree.

In a way it's a shame that she's going at the same time as the change of show runner. With a better scriptwriter, I believe that she would shine.

The trouble with the current set up is that the moralising is laid on with a shovel, at the expense of the natural flow. OK, give positive messages now and then, but don't sacrifice the pace, direction and narrative flow.

I've been watching it since the William Hartnell era -- the effects may not have been that "special" in the 60s/70s/80s but the story lines were [though that may be rose tinted memories and the difference in my age between then and now]

Nice idea but poor choice of example.

As a native English speaker (UK citizen), I would argue that for speakers of neither language, German would be the easier of the two to learn.

Spelling is consistent and logical - if you can read it, you can pronounce it - same way, every time (unlike the vagaries of English - eg number of ways of pronouncing ough)

Tenses are simpler

Word order is deterministic

As for C vs Rust -- I don't have enough knowledge of Rust to form an opinion, but this will be an interesting large scale test case -- providing the 'control' of C version remains for people to use if they wish

I agree with much of what you say, but on a point of fact: the BBC is state funded media but not state run [the sheer number of complaints from all sides of those in power/in opposition illustrates that]. It is appreciated by most of us - just not the tabloid media who'd see Ghengis Khan as a bit of a "leftie" and hate anything that doesn't agree with their agenda.

Please also don't conflate the current bunch of incompetents with the UK public at large. At virtually every election since 1945, the winning party has had less than 50% of the vote (often much less), due to the first past the post system and constituency boundary manipulations [again both main parties are guilty of this]. Brexit only had around 30% support (the non-voters and disenfranchised were the biggest proportion).

Just as not all Americans are overweight, geographically ignorant, gun toting rednecks, neither are all British stuck-up, arrogant wannabe fascists with bad teeth. Caricatures are just that - exaggerations for effect.

Sadly, however, a combination of powerful business interests, a strong right wing press, and a population tired of politics,Brexit, Covid... results in proposals like this being put forward in the first place.

The only saving grace is that UK Government ineptitude, and the goldfish like attention span of the current bunch of ministers mean that little of substance is likely to happen. That and the general systemic inertia will mitigate any slippery slope based predictions of doom and gloom.

Taxation is a form of paying a share of costs of providing services that we all use. It is a moral system. How it is implemented in practice is open to debate.

Careful what you wish for...

Personally I'd like to see how Amazon (and others) would cope if a rule were enforced along the lines of "you haven't paid your share => you can't drive on our roads" / "Oh so you were burgled? shame you haven't paid for police to investigate" / "your warehouse is on fire? I suggest you ship the water from Luxembourg, the hoses from Ireland ... as you've not contributed to a fire service here" / "people have conned you? shame the courts aren't available for you to take action"...

The workers, who do pay taxes, would receive all these services; the corporation and its officers wouldn't.

To make it clear: I do not advocate burglary / arson / forcing delivery vehicles off the road.... I would not, however, shed any tears for Amazon if a disaster befell them and I do resent paying for well heeled free loaders.

As an ex colleague of mine once said on the topic of race/skin colour: "quarter of an inch down and we're all the same -- we're all red and squishy inside"

An interesting view - slightly undermined by his being the local first-aider (who you'd hope knew a bit more detail than 'red & squishy')

Can't recall where I heard this, if it was you - sorry about the lack of attribution

But

The number 42 sounds a bit like "fortitude" which could be contrived as a guideline, if not answer, to life.

But.... this is just the 'free market' in operation.

Advertisers choose where they spend -- surely you're not advocating forcing them to spend on sites you approve of but which they don't?

Likewise with site funding -- if your views aren't popular with the mass market, you're not going to attract mass funding -- this is true for 'left/right' politics and other areas which divide people.

Free market capitalism works right up to the point where it doesn't align with personal or societal viewpoints.

I do agree with you, the Internet was much more free before businesses saw it as something to be monetised -- but again this was inevitable - a rich, valuable 'resource' (albeit virtual rather than physical) was bound to be exploited and [ab]used.