Wouldn’t it be possible just to replace the valve transmitter with a digitised version that sent out the same signal?

I can only agree with you.

There is also the corruption of the managerial class who collaborate in the erosion of public services. The management of schools, for instance, some of whom are recieving salaries of up to £500k.

You are completely correct.

Give it it’s clearest name: corruption. Permeating every aspect of life here. So normalised that it’s pretty invisible to 51% of country.

I’d not heard of this before. Most appropriate.

Not sure I understand what you mean er - dude - but thanks anyway. Be excellent.

Help me out here? Aren’t these the same groups calling for freedom of speech and against cancel culture. It’s all so confusing.

Episode was trash and a waste of talented performers. The show needs a rest for a decade and a complete overhaul with showrunners completely unconnected with RTD and his circle.

My 13 year-old son watched some of it. Said it was cringe and pissed himself when he saw the AI “face”. He thinks the show is stupid.

Doctor Who Derangement Syndrome.

It’s the condition of watching an erzatz version of a much-loved tv show and, despite it being mind-meltingly awful, believe that it is always amazing. Where objectively it is cringingly shit, they see profound comments on the nature of life, the universe and everything.

Doctor Who (rightly) ended on 6th December 1989. There were three incidents of a brief, distorted achronologous reversed polarity event with an Eight Doctor on 12th, 14th and 27th 1996.

Everything after that has been an ongoing fanfiction written by soap opera writers who could vaguely remember a show about a time-traveller in a blue telephone box.

If the rumours that DW is going to be put on hiatus for 10 years and the sets taken down and production staff let go I can only say… it’s about time.

The (original) show was never about cartoony, fizzed-up comic action without subtlety or nuance that tried to pick up the audiences of Strictly and Love Island. It didn’t need a budget of $1 million per episode. It didn’t need Disney. Time for a rest and then a regeneration.

Wonder if Apple are running the numbers and seeing whether pulling out the UK altogether wouldn’t lose them much money.

Are these theoretical “someones” - or actual?

I’ve been a vegan since around 2000 and keep up with the issues. I’ve not met anyone in real life or seen anyone online who has these issues. People with ASD can and do change their diets, too (and I speak with direct experience about this).

It’s the first I’ve ever heard that there are medical reasons to eat meat. People with allergies can cut out the food triggers. All animal farming needs to end. Your local Farmer Jones sprays his fields with animal shit which then gets into the local water just like big-farma.

And if you think that’s too crazy an idea, watch some videos about poultry farming to see the horror show that it is. UK calls itself a nation of animal lovers and then treats the mass of animals montrously.

Ofgem hit the bank with the £5.41 million fine after concluding it did not take “sufficient reasonable steps to ensure compliance” with its own policies around UK transparency and integrity rules.

Hmmm. Morgan Stanley’s (public) yearly profit is close to $10 billion. We know that the energy companies have been making profits in the billions as well.

They should be fined billions not millions. It’s the equivalent of convicting a murderer and punishing them by telling them “Your a naughty naughty boy” before letting them walk free.

Very interesting. I wonder to what extend fans’ ages alter the ratings?

In Doctor Who fandom, whenever the question “Who is your favourite Doctor?” pops up, the majority tend to say the current one. It also seems to be that this is responded to by younger fans/audiences. I wonder if it’s the same with Trek. Because of my age, I’ll ALWAYS prefer classic DW to recent stuff. There’s an element of nostalgia.

My first Trek was TOS and it’s what I think of AS Trek primarily. I wasn’t into TNG at all (because of my age and I’d moved away from stuff like this for a time). DS9 and, particularly, Voyager would rate mire highly as they were on when I was watching TV in the late 90s. I like SNW because it echoes TOS. While I’ll watch other Trek, it doesn’t have the same impact on me.

Who needs rivers and waterways when you have an Olympic-size heated indoor pool and all the bottles of Perrier you could ever dream of?

The people to hold to account are the villains and dupes who keep voting the Tories back in.

No, just a discussion.

I’m not sure you read what I’ve written anyhow. I tell you things like:

In the big scheme of things the money… is peanuts

And you then say:

The money given in donation and corrupt boys network schemes is small.

Which is more or less what I said. You did the same about terrorism.

I’m always interested in finding out how people invested in a broken system think that it can be improved or reformed (and willing to learn and change my mind which is the point of discussion). No worries, though.

But surely you recognise that voting in parliament is what seals the deal.

No, I don’t. I can’t see who the deal is between - because it’s not between the ruling class and the ruled (the social contract doesn’t exist). In the big scheme of things the money given to Tuften Street “think tanks”, lobby groups, straightforward corruption and ownership of the media is peanuts in comparison to maintaining the current property relations in UK (and most of the world). We’ve seen what happens when the ruling class feels threatened and can no longer maintain the façade of “democracy”. PR doesn’t alter things much abroad: it gives a different style of entertainment to keep people distracted.

I’m in favour of distributive ownership and distributed power. No one group should be in control. We know that - to save the planet - we need to do things like outlaw oil companies (and the rapid end of use of fossil fuels) and mega-cattle farming. No “parliament” (first past the post, PR or whatever) is going to do that anywhere in the world. It’s going to come down to a mix of terrible catastrophes which trigger direct action.

Very interesting info about Alice Paul - thank you. I didn’t know anything about her.

I think you misunderstood the point I was making (or, apologies, I wasn’t clear). I wasn’t advocating terrorism. I was pointing out that the sufferagist movement was sometimes labelled as “terrorists” by the press not that they were actually terrorists. I was trying to draw comparisons between the way they were described and the way that (fairly moderate) environmentalists are labelled today. (Though I do think that the Irish republican movement has also made big gains and it’s likely we’ll see a united Ireland at some stage.)

I don’t think it was World War I that enabled social change in Western Europe (that’s a nice story told by the establishment to create the illusion that the upper and lower classes were all in it together). It was the fear of the spread of Bolshevism. We saw this repeated after 1945.

My personal view about political/societal change is that direct action eventually forces longer-term political change. Voting in a parliamentary election is little more than entertainment (and, of course, distraction).