Harry Gibbs

Cold War geopolitics, nuclear bunkers & communications systems. IT officer for @jesusoxfordjcr @tsaf16 @oxgeogsoc & @bentleybroadbnd

[Charlie @charliecolecc]

Excellent article in the Wall Street Journal on Britain's unsustainable welfare spending:

— 7 million people (over 10% of the UK population) now claim at least one or more sickness or disability benefit. This is up 60% in the past 6 years.

— The UK will spend over £100 billion pound this year on sickness and disability benefits. This is projected to increase to £130 billion a year by 2030.

— No other Western country has seen such a rise in disability claims. In the US, 10.6 million people claim some form of federal disability payment, despite the population being 5x larger.

— 1 in 7 new cars sold in the UK are under the Motability scheme; however, only 10% of cars are modified for a disability. In one dealership, 25 out of 26 cars they sold in August were all under the Motability scheme.

— Charities, consultants, YouTubers and TikTokers have all sprung up, telling people how to maximise benefit access. Some of these videos receive hundreds of thousands of views. Over 1,000 people a day are signing on for PIP.

— According to a Government survey from 2024, 25% of the UK's working age population could theoretically be classed as disabled under the current criteria and access these benefits.

— A minimum wage worker who works 40 hours per week would take home around £1,880 per month after tax; however, if you are classed as too sick to work and claim PIP, you can take home £2,000 tax free per month.
https://t.co/ftFzSax9VH

[Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound]

This is a proper WTAF story. This country has a death wish. Stop letting in Islamists and people likely to support them. It’s really not terribly complicated.

In this case a judge gave a Hamas man 100 years of anonymity before it was challenged by the Sunday Times. Utterly retarded. The courts are a conspiracy against the nation.

Indefinite leave to remain granted under Theresa May as Home Secretary. Ye Gods.

Read it and weep

[Duncan Campbell @duncan_2qq]

Serious news - not reported until now. In the week the UK and NATO accused Russia of armed drone attacks in Leipzig, Britain's nuclear deterrent backup link was destroyed over the Yorkshire. Our story is here.
https://t.co/fqHj8qYizW

[Nick, 30 @an0n_Nic]

FT comments never miss

[Chris Heatherly @chrisheatherly]

I’m actually a child online safety expert and was one of the pioneers in this space with Club Penguin and so I feel uniquely positioned to critique this.

The groomer problem is real but it’s also vastly overstated. The far larger issue we saw at Penguin was suicidality or reports of sexual abuse in the home.

There is no solution for lazy/bad parenting. You can implement all the ID laws you want but if parents are going to just hand kids their phones unlocked, those kids will have access to all the same things the parents have unfettered.

What I found is that these draconian safety laws actually make it harder to be an honest operator of kids apps because on one hand it’s so much legal risk and so much user friction that it simply becomes uninvestible as a business.

Parents will just lie to let their kids use the unfettered internet. For example, I have a friend who works in mobile gaming who has two kids, one above and one below the age limit but separated by just 2 yrs, and the two wanted to play and chat together on Roblox - which is reasonable. To do this, he just verified that his younger kid is old enough for the chat feature when he’s not.

This happens all the time and will happen with these laws to. How far do we want to go with this? Scan the face of the user in real-time to make sure it’s not a kid using the device? We could do that but it feels like a massive unwanted intrusion of privacy.

That’s how you know this law isn’t about kids. COPPA and GDPR-K and so forth already make it illegal to allow chat and other grooming vectors to kids.

What’s really being done here is trying to eliminate online anonymity. And this is a far bigger issue that goes to core speech rights because if you cannot criticize the govt anonymously and if wrong speech is a crime then it becomes easy to identify all the detractors of the govt in power, and ban, fine or jail them for speech crimes.

Starmer has already been doing this and he wants to do it at a much bigger scale. Starmer won’t even acknowledge the problem of actual grooming gangs in Britain’s neighborhoods but he’s worried about online grooming?

No he’s not, and this hypocrisy gives away the game. What he wants is to kill online anonymity so he can enforce censorship of his unpopular policies. No politician should have this power.

[max tempers @maxtempers]

Expanding on this, the British state is excellent at externalising the blame for its own behaviour.

‘Why are new builds so shoddy? Must be the greedy developers’
‘Why are energy costs so high? Must be the ravenous privatised utility companies’
‘Why are manufacturing plants shutting down? Must be the evil foreign owners’

Outcomes that are a product of bad incentive structures as a result of sweeping top-down mandates and state intervention are pinned on the private sector.

[Harry Gibbs @HJ_Gibbs]

Would you like some gravel with your salmon and doughnuts, sir?

@dresserman

[Sam Bowman @s8mb]

@georgeeaton According to the CEO of EDF and the director of regulation at Octopus Energy, bills would still rise even if wholesale prices (set by gas) halved.

According to the CEO of E.ON, bills wouldn’t fall by 2030 even if wholesale prices fell to zero.

[Neil O'Brien @NeilDotObrien]

99% of net British emigration is people under 35 - crazy brain drain.
Nick, 30 is off to Australia or Dubai...

[max tempers @maxtempers]

> say you'll raise taxes for fiscal consolidation
> markets react positively and gilt yields fall
> fiscal forecast improves
> scrap the tax hikes

???

[MeIisa Tourt @meIisactu]

As the original proceedings were held in a totally private court we don’t really know how they were blocked but it seems incredibly likely the govt will successfully use the investigatory powers act to have iCloud data not encrypted. Even more powers around encrypted messaging services come into force next year under the OSA - think WhatsApp, IMessage etc.

Many of these rules often require national security or terrorism concern justifications, which sounds sensible till you remember what kinds of posts have prompted arrests recently - imagine that extended to your group chat

[Nick, 30 @an0n_Nic]

FT comments never miss

[Harry Gibbs @HJ_Gibbs]

Hi @ticketek_uk - is it possible to transfer/exchange Pet Shop Boys (Warwick; 30.08) mobile tickets via the app, so that the other person can have their name & phone number on the tickets?

[Harry Gibbs @HJ_Gibbs]

@tomhfh

[Ben Sixsmith @BDSixsmith]

A fantastic piece on the Online Safety Act from the great and powerful @meIisactu
https://t.co/garK9FHLTD

[Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ]

All these things happened to me in London today

I paid nearly £30 for a train ticket to take me into London from a town just 30 miles away —on a Saturday

The first person I sat next to, I think from India, decided to have a FaceTime conversation with his friend on speakerphone so we all had to listen to it

The train was late by 40 minutes due to unexplained “signalling issues”. It was also filthy.

I paid nearly £8 for a pint

I offered a woman my seat on the tube without realising she was with a man who intervened and said “no man”. He was not from the UK. I think he took my gesture as an insult.

I was asked for money by homeless people 3 times in one day

I noticed several people who are paid to give information to taxpayers and tourists over the tannoy on the London Tube cannot speak English properly

A cabbie told me “London is dead most nights”, unless you are the global high net worth set or top 1%

Restaurants are visibly struggling and often hideously overpriced

I had dinner in a neighbourhood where the average rent is £3,663 per month while half of all local social housing has gone to people who were not even born in the UK

I was constantly aware I should not get my phone out on the street as 80,000 were stolen last year

I also read on the way back while checking that stat that there were 90,000 shoplifting offences in London last year, up 54%

My train back —delayed—was suddenly changed at the last minute with all passengers on board. They were told it would no longer be stopping at all stops.

I bought a tin of instant coffee on the way home and it had a security tag on it

Maybe I’m in a bad mood and perhaps it’s amusing to think how somebody of my political outlook is “triggered” but to me there is a deeper point here

London is over —it’s so over

It’s a city in visible decline with deteriorating standards and no real sense of identity or belonging

Going in and out of our capital city is a truly miserable experience

Infrastructure is falling apart, as is the social contract

I’ve been coming in and out of London since 1981

I simply cannot remember a time when it’s been this visibly dire and when so many things just do not work as they should

[Deborah Haynes @haynesdeborah]

London, Berlin & other European NATO allies have no one else to blame but themselves for leaving Europe hopelessly over-reliant on US military support instead of funding their own militaries to ensure they can fully defend themselves…

https://t.co/v9POT3nogR

[James Cridland @JamesCridland]

(not verified) this is apparently the only way to fix it. And goodness, CrowdStrike had better have good lawyers, because this is properly bad. (Please check this before you do this)

[Dan Neidle @DanNeidle]

We've a new report: the Post Office claimed £934m tax relief for its compensation payments to the postmasters it persecuted. That's outrageous. It's also unlawful - so the Post Office now faces an unexpected £100m tax bill. It may be insolvent.

[Rob Burley @RobBurl]

Reports of 40 babies, some beheaded, found at a kibbutz. This isn’t “freedom fighting.” it’s depraved violence perpetrated by sick men.