Someone was arrested by police at a demonstration the other day for holding a sign which only stated facts about what was or wasn't illegal. It actually was a joke from Private Eye.
466 people were arrested today for holding signs, this government has shown multiple times that it just escalates in such scenarios, people really need to be writing to their Labour MPs and asking them politely how the situation is to be resolved. The numbers protesting are probably going to increase, so what does AN Local MP see as the end point? Thousands imprisoned? Escalation to force?
Yesterday a man was arrested for holding a cardboard sign supporting a prescribed terrorist organisation. This morning he was on the BBC national radio repeating the phrase and explaining again his support of it.
So my question now is whether somehow the BBC will be in trouble.
There's a piece in the Statesman about the takeover of the wider party by the Labour Right and the impact this is having on - especially - younger cohorts of membership:
There's a piece in the Statesman about the takeover of the wider party by the Labour Right and the impact this is having on - especially - younger cohorts of membership:
It's particularly telling that it's Labour Students objecting - they've traditionally been heavily tied to Labour Friends of Israel and the (overwhelmingly Zionist) Union of Jewish Students, and to the right of the party more generally.
The wording of that article is poor. I assume that when it talks about "Warwick Labour Club" and "Warwick Labour Movement" it is talking about the University rather than the county or district.
The councillor mentioned is in Coventry city, which isn't in the Warwickshire county or Warwick district. I believe that Grace Lewis was formally a student at Warwick University.
Does this matter? Maybe not, but given that the article is specifically talking about youth affiliates of Labour, it might have been more helpful to clarify exactly what they are talking about.
Also Corbyn's co-lead in the party-with-no-name Zarah Sultana is MP for Coventry South. Which contains many of the places where students at Warwick University live (Westwood, Earlsdon, Canley). So not a great surprise that they are supportive.
There's a piece in the Statesman about the takeover of the wider party by the Labour Right and the impact this is having on - especially - younger cohorts of membership:
It's particularly telling that it's Labour Students objecting - they've traditionally been heavily tied to Labour Friends of Israel and the (overwhelmingly Zionist) Union of Jewish Students, and to the right of the party more generally.
Yes, and I note in that context the anecdote about the volunteer's employer being contacted by an MP and told to 'not trust them'.
The wording of that article is poor. I assume that when it talks about "Warwick Labour Club" and "Warwick Labour Movement" it is talking about the University rather than the county or district.
The CLP is the "Warwick and Leamington Labour Party"
The wording of that article is poor. I assume that when it talks about "Warwick Labour Club" and "Warwick Labour Movement" it is talking about the University rather than the county or district.
The CLP is the "Warwick and Leamington Labour Party"
Exactly - and to really confuse things, is Warwick university in Warwick (rhetorical)?
As shit as I thought Starmer was going to be, I didn't think banning Wikipedia would be part of that. The Wikimedia Foundation lost their court case today and have already said they will not bring in age verification on their sites.
As shit as I thought Starmer was going to be, I didn't think banning Wikipedia would be part of that. The Wikimedia Foundation lost their court case today and have already said they will not bring in age verification on their sites.
There has been some bleeting by MPs to the FT that the technology companies are being unfair by some form of malicious compliance:
"One senior government figure said ministers were frustrated by the “overzealous” application of the law by some platforms, amid suggestions that some companies are intentionally over-interpreting the legislation in order to undermine its credibility."
But of course if you are going to take a really loosely drafted piece of legislation and then make the penalties very large (potentially up to 10% of worldwide revenue), then companies are going to adopt a fairly risk averse approach.
And in this sense the fact that it's loosely drafted and thus malleable to interpretation comes out of the rather authoritarian bent of the Starmer cabinet and Starmer himself.
There's a piece in the Statesman about the takeover of the wider party by the Labour Right and the impact this is having on - especially - younger cohorts of membership:
It's particularly telling that it's Labour Students objecting - they've traditionally been heavily tied to Labour Friends of Israel and the (overwhelmingly Zionist) Union of Jewish Students, and to the right of the party more generally.
Yes, and I note in that context the anecdote about the volunteer's employer being contacted by an MP and told to 'not trust them'.
They discussed this on their podcast, starting at the bookmark. ISTM that if the MP identified themselves as such that would constitute abuse of public office:
And now people are being asked to delete photos from their devices to preserve water for the huge AI data centres that nobody asked for.
Not directly. But they voted by their actions for technology that required them.
But AI has been forced on people due to tech companies shoving it into everything, even when it makes things work worse.
I think the companies' view is "you can have it cheap and bad with AI, or expensive or good without". Then wait to see if people will open their wallets.
And now people are being asked to delete photos from their devices to preserve water for the huge AI data centres that nobody asked for.
Not directly. But they voted by their actions for technology that required them.
But AI has been forced on people due to tech companies shoving it into everything, even when it makes things work worse.
I think the companies' view is "you can have it cheap and bad with AI, or expensive or good without". Then wait to see if people will open their wallets.
It's capitalism that's ultimately to blame.
It's not even clear that AI is cheap - if it's using massive amounts of water and power, as seems to be the case, that will come at a cost. As far as I can see we're at a similar stage to early social media - rapid expansion and pushing it into every corner so that when the cost comes, either directly or through advertising and enshittification, people don't feel able to opt out. Part of the difficulty is that AI is pre-enshittified, so the pushing is much greater to force take-up.
And now people are being asked to delete photos from their devices to preserve water for the huge AI data centres that nobody asked for.
Not directly. But they voted by their actions for technology that required them.
But AI has been forced on people due to tech companies shoving it into everything, even when it makes things work worse.
I think the companies' view is "you can have it cheap and bad with AI, or expensive or good without". Then wait to see if people will open their wallets.
It's capitalism that's ultimately to blame.
It's not even clear that AI is cheap - if it's using massive amounts of water and power, as seems to be the case, that will come at a cost. As far as I can see we're at a similar stage to early social media - rapid expansion and pushing it into every corner so that when the cost comes, either directly or through advertising and enshittification, people don't feel able to opt out. Part of the difficulty is that AI is pre-enshittified, so the pushing is much greater to force take-up.
It's cheaper than paying people - that seems to be the main driver. But yes, it's definitely in the "let's try to put it everywhere" phase at the moment. There'll be some rolling back as it turns out that it's not sufficiently cheaper to make up for how much worse it is.
And now people are being asked to delete photos from their devices to preserve water for the huge AI data centres that nobody asked for.
Not directly. But they voted by their actions for technology that required them.
But AI has been forced on people due to tech companies shoving it into everything, even when it makes things work worse.
I think the companies' view is "you can have it cheap and bad with AI, or expensive or good without". Then wait to see if people will open their wallets.
It's capitalism that's ultimately to blame.
It's not even clear that AI is cheap - if it's using massive amounts of water and power, as seems to be the case, that will come at a cost.
I don't think AI is the primary driver here; I think this is all downstream of 'the cloud' in various forms being the only concrete idea tech (and by extension the wider economy) has for innovation, and so it keeps being re-purposed / re-badged. What we are actually seeing is an overbuild of datacentres - and an associated series of tech bubbles (helped along by massive concentrations of wealth looking for places to invest).
Most of the time 'AI enabled' is just a marketing badge rather than anything even vaguely concrete - and if LLMs, Agentic AI et al turn out to be expensive this will eventually be reflected in the cost of the services.
Unfortunately the current government have a very credulous and naive approach to these things, to the point where they are sabotaging even the limited amount of good work that was being done:
And now people are being asked to delete photos from their devices to preserve water for the huge AI data centres that nobody asked for.
Not directly. But they voted by their actions for technology that required them.
But AI has been forced on people due to tech companies shoving it into everything, even when it makes things work worse.
I think the companies' view is "you can have it cheap and bad with AI, or expensive or good without". Then wait to see if people will open their wallets.
It's capitalism that's ultimately to blame.
It's not even clear that AI is cheap - if it's using massive amounts of water and power, as seems to be the case, that will come at a cost.
I don't think AI is the primary driver here; I think this is all downstream of 'the cloud' in various forms being the only concrete idea tech (and by extension the wider economy) has for innovation, and so it keeps being re-purposed / re-badged. What we are actually seeing is an overbuild of datacentres - and an associated series of tech bubbles (helped along by massive concentrations of wealth looking for places to invest).
My feeling is that cloud hosting is a pretty solid and useful technology. It's really only a logical extension of old-style web hosting. A lot of the features offered by cloud services, like scalability, redundancy, automated backups, DDOS protection etc are genuinely useful and only possible because of the sharing of hardware. Trying to implement these as on-premises features for mosts SMEs would be grotesquely expensive and in most cases not as good. I've seen some excellent educational platforms able to be spun up on cloud platforms by individual teachers with a creative impulse without them also needing to be a tech wizard to make it reasonably secure and reliable.
And now people are being asked to delete photos from their devices to preserve water for the huge AI data centres that nobody asked for.
Not directly. But they voted by their actions for technology that required them.
But AI has been forced on people due to tech companies shoving it into everything, even when it makes things work worse.
I think the companies' view is "you can have it cheap and bad with AI, or expensive or good without". Then wait to see if people will open their wallets.
It's capitalism that's ultimately to blame.
It's not even clear that AI is cheap - if it's using massive amounts of water and power, as seems to be the case, that will come at a cost.
I don't think AI is the primary driver here; I think this is all downstream of 'the cloud' in various forms being the only concrete idea tech (and by extension the wider economy) has for innovation, and so it keeps being re-purposed / re-badged. What we are actually seeing is an overbuild of datacentres - and an associated series of tech bubbles (helped along by massive concentrations of wealth looking for places to invest).
My feeling is that cloud hosting is a pretty solid and useful technology. It's really only a logical extension of old-style web hosting. A lot of the features offered by cloud services, like scalability, redundancy, automated backups, DDOS protection etc are genuinely useful and only possible because of the sharing of hardware.
I don't necessarily disagree, I just think we are at a point where datacenters are the only type of large infrastructure everyone can agree to build, and all that money swirling around has to go somewhere. The finite market in cloud services isn't really enough to sustain that kind of growth, which was why there were multiple attempts to create the next source of demand (blockchain! web3.0! the metaverse!) with AI being the latest and most successful form.
It's cheaper than paying people - that seems to be the main driver. But yes, it's definitely in the "let's try to put it everywhere" phase at the moment. There'll be some rolling back as it turns out that it's not sufficiently cheaper to make up for how much worse it is.
To be fair, a lot of the places where AI agents are used replaces first-tier customer support that is already enshittified. There are a lot of places where an AI agent is not worse than a human customer support agent working down a script.
Apparently a good number of student Labour clubs are turning away from the government. Local councillors are moving over to the new party. There is a growing feeling that Starmer’s days are numbered. If he does go they would be giving Farage a big stick to beat them with. He could say they are no better than the Cons. Lab really need to properly push the positives. They are at a disadvantage with the press there
Comments
466 people were arrested today for holding signs, this government has shown multiple times that it just escalates in such scenarios, people really need to be writing to their Labour MPs and asking them politely how the situation is to be resolved. The numbers protesting are probably going to increase, so what does AN Local MP see as the end point? Thousands imprisoned? Escalation to force?
So my question now is whether somehow the BBC will be in trouble.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2025/08/inside-labour-students-revolt-over-gaza
It's particularly telling that it's Labour Students objecting - they've traditionally been heavily tied to Labour Friends of Israel and the (overwhelmingly Zionist) Union of Jewish Students, and to the right of the party more generally.
The councillor mentioned is in Coventry city, which isn't in the Warwickshire county or Warwick district. I believe that Grace Lewis was formally a student at Warwick University.
Does this matter? Maybe not, but given that the article is specifically talking about youth affiliates of Labour, it might have been more helpful to clarify exactly what they are talking about.
Yes, and I note in that context the anecdote about the volunteer's employer being contacted by an MP and told to 'not trust them'.
The CLP is the "Warwick and Leamington Labour Party"
Exactly - and to really confuse things, is Warwick university in Warwick (rhetorical)?
No, it’s in Coventry…
There has been some bleeting by MPs to the FT that the technology companies are being unfair by some form of malicious compliance:
https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7
"One senior government figure said ministers were frustrated by the “overzealous” application of the law by some platforms, amid suggestions that some companies are intentionally over-interpreting the legislation in order to undermine its credibility."
But of course if you are going to take a really loosely drafted piece of legislation and then make the penalties very large (potentially up to 10% of worldwide revenue), then companies are going to adopt a fairly risk averse approach.
And in this sense the fact that it's loosely drafted and thus malleable to interpretation comes out of the rather authoritarian bent of the Starmer cabinet and Starmer himself.
They discussed this on their podcast, starting at the bookmark. ISTM that if the MP identified themselves as such that would constitute abuse of public office:
https://youtu.be/CnzHuySg2AA?t=360
Not directly. But they voted by their actions for technology that required them.
But AI has been forced on people due to tech companies shoving it into everything, even when it makes things work worse.
I think the companies' view is "you can have it cheap and bad with AI, or expensive or good without". Then wait to see if people will open their wallets.
It's capitalism that's ultimately to blame.
It's not even clear that AI is cheap - if it's using massive amounts of water and power, as seems to be the case, that will come at a cost. As far as I can see we're at a similar stage to early social media - rapid expansion and pushing it into every corner so that when the cost comes, either directly or through advertising and enshittification, people don't feel able to opt out. Part of the difficulty is that AI is pre-enshittified, so the pushing is much greater to force take-up.
It's cheaper than paying people - that seems to be the main driver. But yes, it's definitely in the "let's try to put it everywhere" phase at the moment. There'll be some rolling back as it turns out that it's not sufficiently cheaper to make up for how much worse it is.
I don't think AI is the primary driver here; I think this is all downstream of 'the cloud' in various forms being the only concrete idea tech (and by extension the wider economy) has for innovation, and so it keeps being re-purposed / re-badged. What we are actually seeing is an overbuild of datacentres - and an associated series of tech bubbles (helped along by massive concentrations of wealth looking for places to invest).
Most of the time 'AI enabled' is just a marketing badge rather than anything even vaguely concrete - and if LLMs, Agentic AI et al turn out to be expensive this will eventually be reflected in the cost of the services.
Unfortunately the current government have a very credulous and naive approach to these things, to the point where they are sabotaging even the limited amount of good work that was being done:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/10/staff-alan-turing-institute-ai-complain-watchdog
My feeling is that cloud hosting is a pretty solid and useful technology. It's really only a logical extension of old-style web hosting. A lot of the features offered by cloud services, like scalability, redundancy, automated backups, DDOS protection etc are genuinely useful and only possible because of the sharing of hardware. Trying to implement these as on-premises features for mosts SMEs would be grotesquely expensive and in most cases not as good. I've seen some excellent educational platforms able to be spun up on cloud platforms by individual teachers with a creative impulse without them also needing to be a tech wizard to make it reasonably secure and reliable.
I don't necessarily disagree, I just think we are at a point where datacenters are the only type of large infrastructure everyone can agree to build, and all that money swirling around has to go somewhere. The finite market in cloud services isn't really enough to sustain that kind of growth, which was why there were multiple attempts to create the next source of demand (blockchain! web3.0! the metaverse!) with AI being the latest and most successful form.
To be fair, a lot of the places where AI agents are used replaces first-tier customer support that is already enshittified. There are a lot of places where an AI agent is not worse than a human customer support agent working down a script.