Having a holiday threshold sounds like a good idea. Allow a set amount of days and fine beyond that to discourage excessive absence.

So long as it’s not during exams or something I can’t see the harm in allowing a 1-2 week holiday a year. It would be much fairer and more flexible for families, and less complicated than things like different areas having staggered term dates

I have an X220 with an i5-2520M, I don’t use it for gaming but I have briefly played Half-Life 2 with it and it was comfortably playable.

So I would say mid-2000s titles and before will be fine. It really depends on the age the Thinkpad you want is, and the age of the games you want to play.

It’s nearly the same for me, depending on what offers Dominos have that week.

We tend to mostly get Chinese takeaways now because it comes out at almost the same price as fish and chips but with a lot more variety. Even just a portion of chips from the chippy is pricey now.

Reducing suicide is always approached as trying to block pathways to death, rather than by improving life.

As always with this country it’s putting a plaster over the symptoms rather than addressing the cause.

Dedicated and separated cycle lanes are the way to go. Cars, cycles, and pedestrians all need their own space. The challenge for the UK is our often quite narrow existing roads. Making space for physically separated cycle lanes is often going to mean taking lanes away from cars. Which is not necessarily a bad thing but obviously creates a lot more friction to be implemented.

Many cities in Europe have had an easier time with this due to more post-war modernisation/rebuilding that created wider roads.

I wish more would be done to link up walking routes. There’s a lot of footpaths in the country but they often poorly connected to each other. Local authorities are supposed to have plans on implementing new routes but progress seems very slow.

Schools should not be giving in to bigots and banning books. The content of school libraries should have the same protections as the curriculum itself.

Many of these bans seem very knee jerk also, if books are being removed after single complaints.

So they come to power on a change platform promising to fix our “broken” country, but then invite austerity back for an encore. Urgh.

It seems Britain is breaking because our political class no longer believes in change itself.

Melon really has a bee in his bonnet about Britain at the moment.

The police response is does seem to be working, getting the key agitators off the streets and dissuading the hangers on.

But I think the public reaction has also been important. The public at large have rejected the mob, showing them this is not the popular “uprising” they might have thought it was.

I wonder how this period will shift political undercurrents in the longer term though, for better or worse.

Hopefully this is the turning point, and the disorder will now fade out.

From the news I’ve seen this evening across the country the counter protestors seem to greatly outnumber the “protestors” this time around.

Many of these people have existed since long before Brexit, but they now feel more emboldened to make public displays of themselves.

Normalisation of (ever further) right wing views in old media, extremism pipelines in social media, deepening division in culture generally, it’s all playing a part.

We need to start properly looking at the root causes of these attitudes if we want to make real progress. Both where they spread from and why they become accepted.

Not necessarily. A lot of the old aristocracy isn’t all that wealthy any more. Not uncommon to hear stories where only a handful of rooms in a country house are occupied because they can’t afford to heat the rest.

If we want to raise taxes the real target should be tackling the tax avoidance of enterprise.

They seemed to be softening somewhat on the cap, even Starmer himself had been making more open comments on it. I’ve seen some suggestions this was laying the groundwork for a “rabbit out of the hat” at the budget, either raising or removing the cap.

However, if the Starmer camp feels they still need to project strength and stability, the shift on the cap may now be jeopardised. They could now double back down on keeping it to not be seen as caving in to rebels or flip-flopping.

Time will tell. I hope I’m wrong but we still haven’t seen what the true colours of Starmer’s Labour will pan out to be.

Thankfully everywhere I’ve been today was still taking cards. I had to have an emergency rummage for some extra notes this morning just in case.

That’s one of the few things I miss about the COVID lockdowns. Far less people travelling meant a lot less noise and more clean air.

I’m not sure what it says about us when it takes a disaster to help the planet.

I’ve also been off today, but my plans nearly unraveled because all the trains were cancelled at my station.

Ticket office had all computers down with blue screens, it was chaos. I managed to work around it, but anyone trying to get to airports etc today for holidays are going to be really struggling.

There some low cost MVNOs that offer rolling plans. No frills but cheaper than major networks.

Giffgaff have recurring “goodybag” system that can be quite cheap. They keep costs low through things like having minimal customer support.

Seems a pointless endeavour. The open and enterprise sides are so deeply linked, it makes sense that they share a brand.

Separating them only weakens the broader SUSE ecosystem.