Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@qoto.org
Retired software engineer & woodworker.
Anglo-francophone.
Detest tories. Subscribe to green, leftish radical politics but not to any particular political party!.
Love the EU and all it stands for, moreover, I spent the last 10 years of my career working at an EU agency.
Enthusiastic photographer, especially wildlife and most especially butterflies.
Slightly knowledgeable gardener.
Atheist; loathe almost all religions and pity the people deluded enough to follow them. I make exceptions for Buddhism as it isn't really a religion in the strictest sense of the word as it doesn't postulate the existence of any god, and Jainism which is the epitome of peace.
For anyone who is interested, my header photo is of the most stupendous sunset I have ever seen. On the right is the waterfront of Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on the left is Thailand and in the middle, acting as the border between the two countries is the mighty Mekong river.
Joined Nov 2022
@pedestrians1st
They will elect someone vile, worthless and rampantly racist as the tory's reaction to losing a general election is always a violent swing to the unacceptable right!
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Kamala Harris hasn’t given birth unlike all the previous US Presidents who- wait, sorry, what’s that?… Oh.
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
I have been accused of being "far left".
I want:
== free healthcare for everyone
== billionaires to pay higher tax rates than schoolteachers, nurses, sanitation workers
== housing for everyone
== a decent, free education for all who want it
== serious action on climate change
== a universal basic income which lifts the poorest out of dire poverty.
In the case of Britain's shortest lived and most right wing ever Prime Minister Mary (Liz) Truss, both her parents are left-wing university academics and as far away from their daughter's repulsive politics as it is possible to get!
I don't think that parents should beassociated with or held responsible for their offspring's misdeeds!
Do you think they give a shit about your problem? Of course they don't; their only concern is to give a semblance of giving a shit whilst saving a lot of money dealing with pestilential arseholes like yourself!
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
"How did we do? Take this survey to let us know."
You fucking tried everything in your power to not let me talk to a person even though it is the easiest way to solve my problem, you threw countless automated "solutions" at me that had nothing to do with my problem, and when I was finally able to navigate your intentionally complicated system to find someone, it took transferring me three times to get someone who could actually help me. How do you think you did?
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Heartbreaking. We need a worldwide revolution before these rich elites kill everything worth saving. 😢
Almost certainly what would happen first in the run up to an all-out attack on the west by Russia. First they would destabilize the economy by a cyber-attack on the banking, trading and other vital systems, then they would mount a massive cyber-attack on infrastructure like power, water and transport and finally they would take down the internet wordwide with cyberattacks and attacks on physical infrastructure.
Only then would they mount military attacks of specific targets.
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Anyone heard how Liz Truss's first day at Microsoft is going?
It's the American way!
Yes, as a software engineer, I remember how astonished and horrified I was when Microsoft announced that it had obtained certification for Windows for use aboard commecial aircraft!
You cannot imagine how relieved I was when I read the small print and realised it was only licensed for use to run airline infotainment systems
Whilst I am aginst gross generalizations, I have noticed that a high percentage of complete morons on social media seem to claim to support this football team or the other in their bio!
The Congress Party who ruled India for many years, were founded on the basis of equality between India's majority Hindu population and India's religious minorities (Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Parsi, etc). It's only recently that the right-wing Hindu extremists have wrested power from the Congress Party and are trying to turn India in a 'one religion' state, like Pakistan and Afghanistan!
Modi is a complete scumbag!
India has always favoured the Russians as armament suppliers but I think they are having 2nd thoughts now as Russian military equipment has proved extremely 2nd rate in the Ukraine war!
Most of BA's IT dept was run by contractors anyway! The permanent salaries weren't high enough to attract top notch candidates.
I was offered a permanent job when I worked there as contractor; had I accepted, it would have meant going from £90,000 a year as a contractor to £32,000 a year as a permie; not a very attractive proposition!
Back in the 1990s, I used to work for British Airways as a contractor in IT. Then along came the fashion for huge companies to contract out everything that wasn't part of their "core business" so BA contracted out its entire IT dept to one of the big Indian IT specialists; I don't know which one.
That always seemed to me to be a massive mistake as once done, it would be almost impossible to undo. There's no way they could take it back in house if things went wrong and even moving from one sub-contractor to another would be fraught with difficulty and huge risk!
I think selling one's soul to the devil is a reasonable simile!
Likewise when I was raised in the 1950s!
In that era there were few if any plastics around so food was stored in glass or metal containers and sold in greaseproof paper or paper bags.
God knows what happened if you had a latex allergy as a child. A baby and young child's life was filled with products made of rubber and latex back then, from the teats on baby feeding bottles to waterproof baby pants, the waterproof sheets on cots and even the waterproof lining of pram hoods! Not forgetting kid's mackintoshes!
I guess you just died or lived on a diet of Benadryl (the first antihistamine, introduced in 1946)
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
I want to abolish the whip https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/07/07/i-want-to-abolish-the-whip/ The whipping system in the House of Commons has always been pernicious. Now that Labour has a massive majority, it will destroy debate and dissent in Parliament. For the sake of our democracy, it has to go.
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
@RichardJMurphy I've been saying this for forty years. Votes in parliament should be secret votes, and recorded secretly. When the next election is called, the record should be unsealed, so that the voters can know how their MP actually voted; but until that date, any attempt to access the data should be treated as a very serious offence, with mandatory jail time exceeding one full parliamentary term.
Retired software engineer & woodworker.
Anglo-francophone.
Detest tories. Subscribe to green, leftish radical politics but not to any particular political party!.
Love the EU and all it stands for, moreover, I spent the last 10 years of my career working at an EU agency.
Enthusiastic photographer, especially wildlife and most especially butterflies.
Slightly knowledgeable gardener.
Atheist; loathe almost all religions and pity the people deluded enough to follow them. I make exceptions for Buddhism as it isn't really a religion in the strictest sense of the word as it doesn't postulate the existence of any god, and Jainism which is the epitome of peace.
For anyone who is interested, my header photo is of the most stupendous sunset I have ever seen. On the right is the waterfront of Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on the left is Thailand and in the middle, acting as the border between the two countries is the mighty Mekong river.
Joined Nov 2022
