I grew up there in the sixties. Regular ingredients came from the local market (this was before supermarkets) who typically sold regionally grown produce. We supplemented with home and allotment grown vegetables which were shared around the neighborhood. The food was great. Tinned food was quite expensive and generally considered an unhealthy novelty best used on camping trips - I’m looking at you fray bentos, you and your weird deliciousness.

https://flathub.org/ is a great way to manage linux apps/programmes. Very easy and several other benefits

if it’s for construction use, Bonsai is an incredibly powerful BIM solution that can also output 2D. Bonsai is probably the most complete IFC compliant (and native) system available.

can you still get the fabulous Marmite Twiglets in the UK? I live in SE Asia now, and marmite spare ribs are widely available and absolutely delicious, and cheap, so all good.

why even fly? Just jump up high in San Francisco, and wait for the earth to revolve beneath you before coming back down and landing in Houston. Houston, no problem.

Blender should be on there as an alternative to many Autodesk and Adobe products

In 1998 i was part of a project team that included the Met Police’s IT R&D team. Those guys had a novel facial recognition system then, that was trialled in Clarendon Road in Watford. The results were not good, but the reason for canning it was that the civil liberties groups were going nuts and threatening mayhem. I cannot believe that 26 years later they haven’t already implemented it and been using it for some time.

Don’t bring a Health and Safety officer to a gun fight.

To stay alive we must eat. Generally, to optimise our life span we should eat healthy, nutritious food. The current regime doesn’t appear to be benefitting suppliers or consumers. The current regime appears to be skewing land prices with detriment to other uses of the land - housing affordability. Fundamental reform is needed. Kudos to those attempting reform. I hope we get a good solution for all.

Not an accountant, but i guess the funeral ceremony for the previous head of state - no political involvement - cost about the same. Thus swapping one non-political head of state for another cost in the region of 150mil. That seems rather a lot for someone to carry out a purely ceremonial role. Am i missing anything?

Thinking that undocumented (inherently illegals) will be spared to continue providing cheap labour, ignores the impending AI revolution impact. Millions of jobs will be lost. The menial jobs currently being done by undocumented labour, will soon be done by legal citizens who have lost their jobs to AI. The Ministry of DOGE coin apparatus will soon be in place to implement this at national scale. The leopards are going to eat the faces of 99% of us.

National Intelligence! Oxymoron shenanigans, I’ve called it.

It is, they have hooves.

Codswallop

Thank you. I increasingly appreciate what you and the other mods do.

some years back I was the ‘Head’ of systems stuff at a national telco that provided the national telco infra. Part of my job was to manage the national systems upgrades. I had the stop/go decision to deploy, and indeed pushed the ‘enter’ button to do it. I was a complete PowerPoint Manager and had no clue what I was doing, it was total Accidental Empires, and I should not have been there. Luckily I got away with it for a few years. It was horrifically stressful and not the way to mitigate national risk. I feel for the CrowdStrike engineers. I wonder if the latest embargo on Russian oil sales is in anyway connected?

Thank you so much for your reply, it’s greatly appreciated, and has removed enough fog of doubt to propel me to register to vote.

Regarding a dedicated overseas MP, this grows in attraction. Having support and representation would be beneficial for me, but I equally believe that feeding back the experiences of us overseas would enrich and inform the UK parliament. I have participated in a fair few trade missions, inter-institutional and cultural/soft-power events, especially under the remit of expanding British business overseas. The UK is still held in the highest regard, and with good reason. The policy of our institutions and government to publish their data, procedures and processes is of immeasurable help. If you’re a medical doctor in a foreign country wanting to draft hospital wide procedures, the first stop is the NHS (and then copy-paste). If you’re developing processes for the adoption of industry digitalisation, the UK institutions are amongst the finest (copy-paste). These should be enriching, or at least empowering, the UK, but are missed at High Commissioner/Ambassador level.

In this globalised world, and we have form in this, having one overseas MP to stand on their hind legs in the House of Commons and act as a conduit seems like a sensible investment.

Time to give some thought to action it.

I’m stuck in this dilemma. I’ve lived abroad for seventeen years. Strangely, it makes me much more aware that I am English, also British, but undeniably English. It also makes me incredibly grateful to be English - it’s about the least worst country on the planet. I could bang on about doing ‘stuff’ for the UK overseas (intergovernmental and trade stuff), and that how my foreign wife’s career would take a huge hit if we moved back to the UK (she’s a senior medical doctor, but would be made to start from the lowliest grade should we return). But that’s contextual and circumstantial. I’ve been painfully deliberating the principles for years, and fully appreciate the ‘not here, no vote’ sentiment. But, I am English and under the governance of the UK gov. I look to the year 1647, the Putney Debates, during the civil wars. The debates considered the rights of people (men) under governance. Colonel Thomas Rainsborough stated, “I think it clear, that every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government.” I am under the UK government, so doesn’t that give me the right to vote? I want to vote now because I hate the tories. How much? A lot. I think a dedicated overseas MP is a great idea. We are global now, and it could feed useful information back into parliamentary debate. I’d appreciate any comments, constructive or abusive, they all contribute. Thanks.

Today I learned! Much appreciated, thanks

I’d prefer a statue of his daughter, Ada Lovelace, it’s the best thing he produced.