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
I'd say he was very lucky to be caught in the UK not in Dubai. The are not kindly disposed towards people who import drugs into their country
I agree - I think Jack Monroe is brilliant!
Hatey Hopkins has also lost her job as a Daily Mail columnist and as a presenter on LBC. When you are too extreme right for even the fascist Daily Heil, that really does say something!
Not sure if she is still there I no longer frequent xitter or "Twatter" as I prefer to call it!
Yep - she lost a court case against cookery author, Jack Monroe, whom she had accused of approving of the vandalism of a war memorial if I remember correctly. It was a case of mistaken identity and Katie Hopkins was asked to withdraw her remarks and apologise but for some inexplicable reason, she refused. When she finally succumbed - it was too late!
The case went to court and Katie Hopkins lost. Damages awarded were modest at £24,000 but Katie Hopkins had costs of, if I recall £300,000 which cleaned her out and cost her the family's home. If the silly cow hadn't been so pig headed, she could have walked away from that, but instead it cost her everything!
@cstross @Ruskin_Marc @boggin @ChrisMayLA6
The fault very often seems to lie with tragically unresponsive IT departments. The users don't see their IT department as helpful and willing to respond flexibly and rapidly to their needs; usually exactly the opposite! The result is that the users are tempted to bang something together using Excel rather than ask IT to do something a bit more professional.
Hopefully, he will go the way of Katie Hopkins and get slapped with a gigantic bill for costs that will bankrupt him and shut him the fuck up forever!
@Ruskin_Marc @boggin @ChrisMayLA6
I'd love to do one of those data apprenticeships but I'm 73 living overseas and retired so I very much doubt if it would be open to me!
@frogglin @vitaminsludge@mastodon.ie
...but surely everyone wants to work in an environment that is agressive, fast-paced, dynamic and thrusting, don't they?
@Ruskin_Marc @boggin @ChrisMayLA6
A mobile phone provider I was contracted to, had an Excel spreadsheet containing the details of all their transceivers along with the frequencies assigned to each one and a load of other pertinent data. As the network expanded, more and more transceivers needed to be added to this monster spreadsheet such that it took anything up to 10 minutes to open the damned thing! I was recruited to move all this data to a database where it should have been stored in the first place but met implacable resistance from all the guys working on frequency allocation even though it would have made their lives much easier if I have succeeded. In the end the rollout of frequency hopping saved the day as no specific frequency is allocated to network nodes using that technology!
@marcusjenkins @ChrisMayLA6 @YorksBylines
As an overseas resident, I have just applied to have myself put back on the electoral roll by the council where I last lived in the UK. They have replied saying that I was never on the electoral role at my last address there (which I believe to be untrue as I'm pretty nearly 100% certain I can remember voting there) and they therefore require me to jump through lots of hoops to get put on the electoral roll at my old address!
The claims dept of a well known insurance company had a guy working in the department who was a bit of an amateur wizard with Excel and had produced more than 100 spreadsheets for various purposes, for his dept. Unfortunately, the functioning of the claims dept had come to be totally dependent on these damned spreadsheets which were undocumented and developed to no proper standards. Finally, the day came when the developer reached retiring age and the IT dept were asked to take over all these spreadsheets for maintenance and update. The IT dept said "sure - that will be £25,000 per spreadsheet" which came to substantially more than the whole IT budget (software and hardware) for that dept!
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
I want to make this crystal clear for all you MAGA weirdos out there.
✨I DO NOT WANT TO UNITE WITH YOU.✨
I don't want a slice of pizza from you. I don't want to visit your car wash. I don't want to support your kids' softball team. I don't want your food, your clothes, your electronics, your applicances, your houses, your cars, trucks, planes, or hoverboats. I don't want anything you make, sell, import, export, teach, manage, grow, build, or finance. I don't want a single fruit of your labor anywhere in my home, or a single dollar of yours in my pocket. Here is why:
• You have white supremacists in your party, and you don't care.
• You have KKK in your party, and you don't care.
• You have Nazis in your party, and you don't care.
• You have Proud Boys in your party, and you don't care.
• You have traitors and insurrectionists in your party, and you don't care.
So no. I don't want anything to do with you. Here's what I do want:
I want you to keep wearing your stupid little red hats and put your Trump2024 stickers on your businesses. I want to see you. I want to know exactly who to avoid. I will happily go spend an extra ten dollars halfway across town rather than walk next door to give you one penny of my money.
No unity with racists, homophobes, sexists, and insurrectionists. Not now. Not ever.
Ah yes but the French complain about everything in France as well!
Americans tend to demonstrate very limited comprehension of the fact that everywhere on earth is not like America. When I was living in Thailand, an American retiree who had literally just arrived there for a cheap retirement (with benefits), asked me if he could legally carry a loaded firearm in Thailand. When I replied "No, not without a permit" He said "Where do I get a permit?" to which I replied "As a foreigner, you would never get a permit in a million years!". He then went into a sulk and a few days later, presumably after checking the veracity of my reply, left Thailand for some other country where they would let him carry a firearm!
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
The world’s top 1% of emitters produce over 1000 times more CO2 than the bottom 1%
When you don't tax the shit out of the rich, this is what you get. Our life support systems are not compatible with the existence of the rich.
@elecharny
I worked for a US firm here in Luxembourg. We all got an email one day from the management in the US saying that the company's stock price had taken a hit on "the street" and as a result they needed to make 650 employees redundant worldwide. When the boss (also an American) told the VP in the US how much it would cost them to make people in Luxembourg redundant, they only fired one person. They had to pay him six months salary plus holiday pay (minimum 10 days) along with pension and social security contribuions as he had been with them for a long time!
I overheard the shouted conversation between our boss in Luxembourg and his boss in the US. The boss in the US seemed completely unaware that even US companies in jurisdictions outside the USA have to comply with the laws in those countries. Staggering ignorance for someone in such a senior position! and of little comfort to the people who were going to lose their jobs to support that company's stock price!
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Rishi Sunak, "Our plan is working"
Sir Michael Marmot, "We're starting to suffer Victorian diseases.. Universal Credit pays 70% of the cost of essentials.. If you're on Universal Credit we guarantee you will get sick because we don't give you enough money to eat healthily, to heat your home"
"Britain has become a poor country with a few rich people.. It's worse to be poor in Britain than in most other European countries. Poor people in Britain have a lower income than Slovenia'"
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
