Grumpy Engineer

@sophielouisecc @LOVillaJavea It’s a good job they don’t run a brewery….

I’m sorry but if Starmer’s rivals can’t even stage a coup properly then I deffo don’t want them running the country Useless.

@bphillipsonMP The only thing you have delivered is misery to millions of decent, hard working, law abiding people. Just go.

We have delivered good, Labour things – action on child poverty, strengthening workers’ rights, protections for renters. But we can’t and we shouldn’t pretend the status quo is working. To stop Reform, we have to be bolder and we have to deliver change faster.

@Keir_Starmer You are so out of touch with the reality of most people’s daily lives, you don’t even know what the issues are. If you are told, you deny them because most of the issues are caused by you and the clown government you claim to lead. Just go.

We must respond to the message that voters have sent us and break with the status quo once and for all. We must confront the big challenges the public face with real answers. That is how we will deliver the change that people are desperate for and build a stronger and fairer country. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

@Keir_Starmer How can Britain be stronger when all you do is destroy it and everything it stands for?

Together, we will build a stronger Britain.

@Only9built 1, 7, 12, 16, 20

Pick one from each row and match my selection.

@AvonandsomerRob If your not lucky enough to have a driveway to charge one on, none of what you state is possible. They are also ridiculously heavy, soulless appliances.

With an Octopus Energy EV tariff, you can charge your car with 250 miles of range for £6, using cheap overnight rates of 7p/kwh. That's around 275 miles per gallon of petrol, equivalent. Why is there still a resistance to Electric Vehicles?

@AutoPap With the standard of driving I’ve seen in Ubers recently, I reasonably open minded about self driving.

I did last week and hate the whole idea. Taking real people’s jobs and family incomes away for the sake of saving someone £2 is a totally flawed concept IMO.

@elonmusk Does that include hand signals that aren’t in the highway code?

Tesla self-driving now recognizes hand signals

@ListerLawrence I seriously considered one of these for daily use but not really enough luggage space to be practical. But they aren’t really special enough to justify otherwise.

Best looking i8 I’ve seen. Are these a future classic??

@kelvmackenzie There is no penalty for failure for those in government, they just keep getting cushy jobs and richer. Maybe if it came out of their pockets they would be a lot more careful and we’d have better government.

This cheered me up. Labour will have to pay Reform’s £150,000 legal bill for throwing in their hand over council elections. Actually it would have cheered me up until I realised it wasn’t coming out of Starmer’s personal pocket but yours and mine as taxpayers.

@Danjsalt I think this is the root cause of many of this country’s problems.

I continue to be amazed at the bubble Westminster exists within - especially on the Labour side - they really don't understand the country they govern

@Nigel_Farage It can if you find the right balance between home and office. Workers need to be organised and so do their managers. It’s the latter that often let the side down.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. People are not more productive working from home. It’s all a load of nonsense.

@TheAliceSmith While I tend to agree, I think that when Starmer goes the factional fighting in the Labour party will force a GE sooner rather than later. It depends on how quickly this happens as to how much economic damage is done. The damage is already happening; it’s now how much.

Prediction: Starmer will resign. The Labour Party will swing further to the Left. They will borrow + spend on an unprecedented scale to bribe back the white working class vote. They’ll fail and lose the next GE but leave an economic collapse in their wake.

There is something deeply troubling about this whole Chagos issue. I for one do not believe that Starmer is doing this in the national interest nor was Mandelson and Powell when they spent weeks lobbying the State Department.Another treacherous act by Starmer #Chagos

I’m sure the Chagos islands sale is a key piece of this Mandelson scandal. Why would a new Labour government make giving away a remote foreign territory (for £35 billion!) such a priority? Unless someone stood to make a lot of money.

@HedgieMarkets @FUDdaily I’ve often thought that implementation of AI will be dependent on people’s trust in it. Inappropriate and rushed rollout could end the technology before it gets started.

🦔 Microsoft is pulling engineers off new features to stabilize Windows 11 after months of patch failures. January brought emergency fixes for systems that couldn't shut down, OneDrive and Dropbox freezing, and machines stuck on black screens at boot. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri says reliability will be the focus for much of the year. Microsoft's stock dropped 12% this week on AI spending concerns. My Take I wrote about this recently. Nadella says 20-30% of Microsoft's code is now AI-written. A GitClear study found code churn doubled after AI tools became widespread. Microsoft's own researchers found developers miss 40% more bugs reviewing AI-generated code because it "looks clean." I can't prove the connection, but when the company bragging about AI-written code has to stop building new features just to fix what's broken, the question keeps asking itself. They're still pushing Recall, which screenshots everything on your desktop. Still shoving Copilot and OneDrive prompts at users. Still overriding browser choices to route traffic through Edge. Users are dealing with broken updates and aggressive upsells at the same time. Trust erodes fast when your operating system feels like it's working against you while also failing to work at all. Hedgie🤗

@johnmcdonnellMP I think that the Westminster bubble seems to apply to most of the political spectrum these days. Westminster (and regional/local government) is too detached from the reality of people’s everyday lives in this country.

They are part of the Westminster bubble cut off from the emotions and beliefs of our rank and file party supporters. Keir has become so dependent on them that they are virtually out of control. 3/5

I’ve declined all media for the last 48 hours because I didn’t want the Burnham issue to be dragged into Left /Right stereotypical reporting. It isn’t that. It’s a straightforward power without principle struggle waged by the clique of advisers around Keir Starmer. 1/5

@AutoPap That looks like it should dispense paper towels

I finally did it. I finally ordered an EV charger. Friend owns Andersen who I think make the nicest looking boxes.

@catturd2 I can only identify 3 of them, is this a good thing?

None.

Everything costs more, so much more and Britain is getting poorer, so much much poorer. People can feel it - it’s a pretty dreadful combination. Food’s more expensive, energy bills soaring, a pint costs six quid outside Central London. Childcare, insurance, mortgage payments. It’s everything and it is bloody awful. Inflation MUST come down. It doesn’t feel like anyone’s got any answers. Well, there is one. The only one. Brutally slash tax, radically tear away vast swathes of the state and eventually rebuild national resilience/confidence. There is no easy solution. We are in deep, dark shit. There is no other way to describe it. It will be painful. Very painful. Politicians need to be honest about that. Britain has the highest tax burden since the Second World War. Millions are working harder than ever, yet becoming poorer every single month. Inflation runs rampant. The cruellest tax of them all. Are we surprised it’s exploded? The Government printed hundreds of billions during lockdown, shut down the economy, wrecked supply chains, raised taxes on work and investment, and then acted totally baffled when prices soared. What happens if you inject such huge amount of money into a system? It all becomes worth less. This is obvious. It’s called ‘quantitative easing’, a fancy way of saying printing money and we need to ban it. Inflation is a cancer. A tax that wipes out wages, savings, pensions. It makes life more expensive. Here is the honest truth. You cannot fight inflation by taxing people more and growing the state. You can only fight inflation by cutting the size of the state itself. If we want to bring down the cost of living, we need to start telling the truth. The state is too big, too bloated, too expensive and too incompetent. The debt is too vast. The rich don’t suffer. It’s the poor who feel it. THAT is why we must change. Urgently. In 25/26 it’s expected debt interest spending to total £111.2 billion. That’s 8.3% of total public spending and is equivalent to over 3.7% of national income. Think about that. If your family’s debt interest payments equalled that, how would you cope? Bankruptcy, is the answer. Britain is going bankrupt. We spend more on debt interest than defence. It is INSANE. We are spending too much, far too much. Try running a business like that. Good luck. How do we fix it? A pound taken by government is a pound removed from the productive economy, and fed to the unproductive state. Cut taxes on work. Income Tax down. Raise the thresholds. Farage now backtracking on this (huge error). National Insurance down. Let people keep more of what they earn. REWARD HARD WORK. Cut taxes on business. Cut Corporation Tax - lowest in Europe. Reduce Business Rates. Slash Employers’ NI so firms can hire again. Ease dividend thresholds. Tear away the frictional costs of doing business. Lubricate the system. Make Britain the easiest place in Europe to do business. Tax breaks for long term investment. When businesses produce more, supply goes up - and prices come DOWN. This is basic economics. Slash the size of the state. Brutally. And I mean brutally. Billions and billions in cuts. Right across the board - welfare in particular. If you can work, you MUST work. Support those in genuine need, but that is a vanishingly small number compared to current spend. Ban foreigners from claiming any benefits. Asylum costs, foreign aid, dependent migrants. It all has to go. Civil service pensions. Unsustainable. Need to be dealt with. It’s a time bomb. We need Government to do a small list of things, but do it well. Protect our borders, people, interests. Rebuild national resilience. Build energy independence so families aren’t battered. We import SO much energy. Drill baby, drill. Frack. Use what we have. Drive the cost of energy down, and everything else follows. This is not complicated. Food security so supply chains can’t be held hostage. GROW MORE. Cost comes down, again this is not complicated. A skilled British workforce so productivity rises and dependence on vast low-wage migration ends - target education. Reward businesses who train and develop apprentices. Deport the millions of migrants who take more than they give. It is not our responsibility to financially support much of the third world. We have our own people and our own problems, thanks. Ban money-printing, without Parliament’s express consent. Crucially, tackle crime. Give people confidence to invest and reduce insurance costs. SO important. Britain must become a country that lives within it means. Not spending more than we earn. In fact, raising enough to begin paying off that debt, and reducing those interest payments. The cost of living crisis will only be solved by stripping back the state that is crushing our country. There is no other way. The left will say ‘tax the rich’? The rich will leave. They are leaving. It’s already happening. They go, and take their tax revenue with them. This is OBVIOUS. You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. Collectivism ALWAYS fails. We need cuts, cuts and then more cuts. Trust the people who actually work, build, produce and create. Give them the space they need to thrive, and we’ll all benefit. Generate wealth. Attract success. Cut inflation. Breed confidence. It’s quite straightforward. This is how we lower the cost of living. Put more money in people’s pockets. Rebuild the British economy. Make you and your family richer. It can be done, it will just take balls.