In the news

generated a criminal infrastructure at scale that is comfortable with deaths at sea.

Without condoning what the Govt does, this seems to be very true.

A criminal infrastructure investigated by Al Jazeera...many of them are living in the UK and they named a few.

folks will be deterred from ever crossing the channel

There's plenty of data showing that government policies don't have a detterent effect. Many people who need asylum will still choose the UK, regardless of barges and flights to Rwanda. Braverman and her staff must be well aware of this data. So the real reason for these policies must be to win votes. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/uk-policies-to-deter-people-from-claiming-asylum/

Not sure the whole locking people up in prison camps stopped the boats in Australia either

Wedge issue for the culture wars

Well you know what would remove that as a viable choice? A safe and legal way to enter as an asylum seeker.

That would definitely help, yes. However as things in vulnerable countries deteriorate, demand for human smugglers will probably always outstrip supply of asylum spaces. That’s not to condone current policies btw.

David Millar is delighted with his new Ineos Grenadier: "There’s a fine line between madness / genius and this car is owning it" https://twitter.com/millarmind/status/1689293287549501441

https://road.cc/content/news/cycling-live-blog-10-august-2023-303161#live-blog-item-48265

My brother has just picked up one of those, it is fucking hideous. There is absolutely no reason people should be allowed to drive around in those things, they should be taxed off of the road.

Isn't it a new old Defender?

What is the issue with this low production car vs a myriad of other SUVs?

I missed this and heard about it on that Campbell /Rory Stuart podcast

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/29/google-canada-online-news-act-publishers-content-law

Quite interesting.

Wasn't there some lawsuit pending because Land rover were claiming some kind of copyright on the design?

These things are huge, much bigger than the other types of urban SUVs

Yes, they are ghastly, but there’s like ten of them.

Regardless, they are incredibly offensive

Also I hope folks aren’t actually surprised that Millar is doing something they think silly or entirely misjudged ;)

Not sure I understand the objection of the news agencies. Surely their articles appearing in search results is a good thing? Did they want to be paid to appear in search?

I think the issue is that most of the "big tech" platforms gained revenue from republishing (with attribution) news articles. So the news orgs weren't getting views on their ads and therefore were doing the work without the revenue. The same sort of law passed in Australia and Meta pulled all news for a bit (including emergency info) before backing down and doing deals with the publishers. Same will happen here.

How and where does Google republish news?

The irony of the url being an amp link.

Amp, for example.

I guess there is also the wider question about how big tech makes it's money.

If you were going to generalise, it wouldn't be unfair to say that they use others to create content to generate revenue. They obviously do a lot of work to build the infrastructure to give content creators a platform but there is still a valid question over the profit share.

Anyway it's all a bit late in the day. They have too much money to ever be held to account.

Legionnaires disease found in the Bibby Stockholm water supply so the few asylum seekers on there now being moved out. Could this government be more shambolic.

No doubt a company owned by a Tory donor will be awarded the £25mill contract needed to investigate and fix it

And costing more than putting them in hotels that already jacked up their price massively.

The government look after those in government.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRq1Ksh-32g