What may not be apparent to others is that the UK system of parliamentary 'seats' and first past the post ballots can lead to situations like this.

A party gets into power. They then get the boundaries commission to look at population densities and 'correct anomalies' so that each set has roughly the same number of voters [this is their job]. Of course what they actually do is to ring-fence areas where there is a great deal of support for them and spread areas with largely opposition support amongst many seats to dilute their effectiveness.

  This leads to the concept of "safe seats" (where you could safely bet on an outcome because people would vote for a monkey if it had the right coloured rosette). In reality UK politics is decided by a relatively small number of 'marginal seats' where the outcome is less predictable.

What this means in practice is that the majority party in parliament rarely (almost never) has a majority of the popular vote (typically only around 35%). They are 'first past the post' in more seats but fewer supporting voters overall. It also means party officials can reward people with safe seats for following directions.

Two take away points:

1) Don't judge the British on the basis of the politicians we've got -- we are not all so inept/clueless

2) Even by the standards of most MPs this guy is seriously out of step with reality. He is in a party that would like to dismantle the NHS and farm it out to their chums in private medicine so it's no surprise he's on a committee that could cause sabotage.

Well said

I'd like to mod you as both Insightful and Funny

you mean use anthropomorphism to make computers seem like politicians / journalists / managers ...

Originally tit for tat was a stylised way (ie slang) for saying "this for that". (Interestingly "titfer" became rhyming slang for a hat).

The word 'tat' is also used colloquially in the UK to describe something of poor quality (I believe it came from something falling to tatters). Something described as 'cheap tat' is usually near to wothless / meretricious rubbish.

How well this applies to mobile operating systems is left to the reader to decide :-)

If you believe a London Underground train could get to 120mph, I've got a nice set of title deeds to the Houses of Parliament I can sell you at a very reasonable price :-)

This isn't a new thing - it's been done before...

I was working in Copenhagen about 8 years ago and the metro there was driverless; the London Docklands Light Railway (DLR) has been driverless for years.

One thing that's been conspicuous by its absence in all discussions is nationality. Will the Scots get their own passports? and how will they be allocated? By residence - how to handle ex-pat Scots in England and English in Scotland? How to establish the foundations for applying for nationality? Rescinding of UK citizenship when becoming a Scot?

Then how will Scotland pay for and staff up embassies around the world? they surely wouldn't want to use the existing ones would they? after all they are escaping from us - to want to ride on our backs would be hypocritical in the extreme.

If they do split and things go well for them - that's great; if things go badly and the evil English aren't available, who are they going to take the blame?

As I said - there's been a deafening silence over this.

I've had a similar experience - many times.

First of I am not a lawyer - but I can read Wikipedia :-)

So when we get to "we've detected a problem with your computer" I ask "how?" and get a stream of babble about seeing data which looks like a virus.

Then I ask innocently -- "so you can look at my traffic?" "oh yes and you definitely have a virus - we can see from how your PC is behaving" "so you can look at my PC?" "Oh yes"

I always ask - "are you sure about this?" to allow them to dig themselves even deeper into a hole and then ask for their name/company name (claiming I misheard at the start).

At this point I inform them that either (a) they are probably committing offences under one or more of Computer Misuse Act 1990, Data Protection Act 1998 or Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 -- or (b) if they want to own up (and I do know that they are lying because I'm not running Windows and my firewall is pretty tight) that attempting to obtain money through false pretences is an offence under the Fraud Act 2006.

"Which one do you want to choose?"

They usually hang up at this point having spent around 15 minutes with me when they could have been hitting another victim -- though one did ring back and shout abuse.

I suspect it's on the other side of the paper containing the list of patents Microsoft is claiming Android violates.

I went into my bank recently and got the hard sell about switching to internet banking.

This is something I've resisted, but I was told it was "quite safe" and "millions of people do it".

They had a so-called free cash-back offer on the debit card. I looked at the sign-up process and was told by the counter staff it needed a password of 6-8 characters - case insensitive and letters/numbers only.

For some reason they were surprised when I informed them that this was incredibly weak password scheme and that I wanted nothing to do with it.

Needless to say, I'm still refusing to sign up for any internet based banking and automated money transfers.

It's because British beer [ie bitter, stout, ale] has some flavour.

Drinking liquids ice cold reduces your sense of taste so you don't realise it's just yellow water.

"People should have to work....." many of them DO.

A large proportion (possibly the majority - I don't have the stats to hand -- of those claiming benefits are in work but in low paid jobs.

Someone on minimum wage (or just over) cannot afford to live in large parts of the country. I know of a head chef who works 60 - 70 hours a week yet has no prospect of affording to rent [let alone buy] a small flat where I live -- and that even without food, heating, lighting..... Before we get the "free market will fix this, go and live elsewhere" arguments, without people doing jobs such as cleaning, catering... society would collapse.

Effectively the benefits system is subsidising those employers who pay low wages. However this argument is drowned out in the "reckless, lazy wilfully unemployed" messages put out (especially by some newspapers who could give lessons in propaganda techniques).

The politicians would probably not care.

Voter apathy is at an all time high in the UK. This can be read in many ways ('they are all the same', 'a pox on both your houses', 'they only care about getting re-elected and their cronies - not about us'...) but the net result of a lack of political party output would probably be welcomed by all sides:

1. for the people at large, it's a pause from hearing someone spouting forth about how they'll promise a wonderful future [right up until 24 hours after the results are declared when promises spontaneously evaporate]
2. for the politicians, less kept on public accessible records the better - they can then bury history and past broken promises [as the Tories did in taking their past web history off-line recently] - al less well informed populace is easier to bamboozle and less likely to think critically
3. for the news media [who are pushing for this -- those most vocal are also those who delight in publishing the very stuff they'd like to see banned] it's less competition for eyeballs

If this seems cynical - it probably is: there is precious little to choose between the parties nowadays. After the expenses scandal (thankfully we don't have quite the scale of campaign contribution corruption over here [yet]) politicians in general are not highly regarded by many and a period of quiet while some other group gets bad publicity would be welcomed by them -- is this the hidden agenda behind this? ;-)

I know I'm never likely to do it but as a thought experiment...

Install a small photocell linked to a servo motor (via an Arduino/Raspberry Pi if you want to get into fine tuning).

Have the servo flip a mirror (nothing fancy, just plain glass -- could be coloured red for the rear facing one) which is sited by the windscreen and back window. Think of a SLR camera mechanism but larger.

Then when the antisocial idiot doesn't dip head lights (oncoming) or tailgates on full beam (behind) the mirror would flip up and give 'instant feedback' * allowing them to modify their behaviour.

The simpler implementation of a hinge on the dash/parcel shelf plus mirror plus piece of string to pull would be too obvious if stopped by police or your vehicle was examined after an accident.

* OK I know it's not truly instant, but close enough when considering human perception/reaction times

What about the phone sanitisers?

(http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Golgafrincham)

There is a huge gap between being identified as "Joe Klovance" and "middle aged white male"... yes ... right up until they tie in the date/time on the video with the swiping of your loyalty and/or credit card at the till. And glasses, masks... won't be much help there.

Besides which, isn't it a bit presumptious, not to say patronising, to think that all people of a given age/gender/ethnicity will like a specific set of products? If we were that predictable why bother with adverts in the first place? -- just give the checkout staff an upsell cheatsheet.