My guess: the Trump congratulations text was ready to go, designer used an eraser tool that wasn't set at maximum opacity to get rid of it, wrote the Biden text over the top. Voila, mystery Trump artefact left in the background.
Also slightly worried that Biden and Harris already seemed furious at Johnson, and this seemingly minor gaffe will just exacerbate that.
But it's just some text on a black background? Just type it out again! This is like saying there was an image artifact in a powerpoint presentation!
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
+4
Options
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
My guess: the Trump congratulations text was ready to go, designer used an eraser tool that wasn't set at maximum opacity to get rid of it, wrote the Biden text over the top. Voila, mystery Trump artefact left in the background.
Also slightly worried that Biden and Harris already seemed furious at Johnson, and this seemingly minor gaffe will just exacerbate that.
But it's just some text on a black background? Just type it out again! This is like saying there was an image artifact in a powerpoint presentation!
It makes sense to me if the Trump text layer had been flattened and the designer didn't want to start over entirely.
Like, it's a dumb mistake, but I can see a sequence of events here that would lead to it.
I wouldn't worry about fallout with Biden over this. Even if it was a big enough gaffe to seriously register on his radar he really did not have a favourable stance toward this government in the first place. In general I question where this idea of favourable treatment toward the UK comes from. American politicians are far more invested in pleasing Irish Americans who can actually vote to put them in power than people in the UK who can't.
Why is it a jpg anyway. A png file in 2 colors is also tiny, and would have 0 artifacting and scale.
(I know the answer, whoever made this doesn't know any of this)
I used to work with a guy who each month recieved a list in Excel and needed to count a subset of this list.
His process was:
Put a filter on the list
Delete everything he didn't need to count
Then delete the rows that previously held the things he didn't need to count (first delete was a delete contents)
Then unfilter and count the subset he needed
Never underestimate the ability of people to find literally the worst way possible of doing something
Wait, that’s not how you do it?
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Why is it a jpg anyway. A png file in 2 colors is also tiny, and would have 0 artifacting and scale.
(I know the answer, whoever made this doesn't know any of this)
I used to work with a guy who each month recieved a list in Excel and needed to count a subset of this list.
His process was:
Put a filter on the list
Delete everything he didn't need to count
Then delete the rows that previously held the things he didn't need to count (first delete was a delete contents)
Then unfilter and count the subset he needed
Never underestimate the ability of people to find literally the worst way possible of doing something
But its at a different font size and offset from the line of text. It's not like "here's one version, which we hastily edited because we chose the wrong outcome", it's "Here's the copywriters notes of what to change in the event of an alternate outcome and we didn't remove those notes".
Its like scanning an image that someone has manually marked up and then trying to make the changes and remove the mark up. Just go back to the base file!
But its at a different font size and offset from the line of text. It's not like "here's one version, which we hastily edited because we chose the wrong outcome", it's "Here's the copywriters notes of what to change in the event of an alternate outcome and we didn't remove those notes".
Its like scanning an image that someone has manually marked up and then trying to make the changes and remove the mark up. Just go back to the base file!
Look, you're holding them to an unreasonable standard. This isn't a competent, professional organization - it's the Johnson government :P
Commander Zoom on
+5
Options
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I wouldn't worry about fallout with Biden over this. Even if it was a big enough gaffe to seriously register on his radar he really did not have a favourable stance toward this government in the first place. In general I question where this idea of favourable treatment toward the UK comes from. American politicians are far more invested in pleasing Irish Americans who can actually vote to put them in power than people in the UK who can't.
The UK gets favorable treatment because it often acts as the U.S.’s proxy in the EU...
I wouldn't worry about fallout with Biden over this. Even if it was a big enough gaffe to seriously register on his radar he really did not have a favourable stance toward this government in the first place. In general I question where this idea of favourable treatment toward the UK comes from. American politicians are far more invested in pleasing Irish Americans who can actually vote to put them in power than people in the UK who can't.
The UK gets favorable treatment because it often acts as the U.S.’s proxy in the EU...
In other "shower of bastards" news, I'd like to highlight (once again) the fuckery and ignorance of the DUP.
NI was placed under relatively strict COVID restrictions on 16th October, to last for 4 weeks. The health minister was advised that a further two week extension was needed. The DUP forced a cross community vote on the issue which they could essentially veto. They proposed their own half baked semi-restrictions and, as a compromise, a one week extention was proposed so that they could at least be considered. They pulled the same shit again and vetoed that too. As it stands, the restrictions expire on Friday which is the worst case scenario according to the medical advice.
All of the other significant parties agreed with the need for a two week extenstion. Once again, Northern Ireland is being held hostage by the minority of the DUP. We all know they're a bunch of covid-denying morons. They've been pushing against any form of restrictions after the first wave. They've only begrudgingly caved in when it was clear there was no other alternative - and even then half of them wanted nothing done at all.
What really, really irritates me is that they have the brass neck to invoke "mental health" as a reason to ditch restrictions. Mental health is naturally a serious concern - but the DUP don't give two shits about mental health. Invoking mental health to drive through your own half baked "economy first" ideals in the middle of a bloody pandemic is absolutely deplorable. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-54897748
(The term "bankrupt" doesn't really have a coherent meaning for public bodies like this, suffice to say it has collapsed under the weight of its debt obligations and has exhausted its reserves)
The argument du jour is whether this is down to mismanagement (I think it was a Labour council) or whether it was inevitable as a consequence of being underfunded relative to its statutory obligations, coupled with pursuing riskier and riskier investment schemes in an effort to plug its unmanageable deficit
(The term "bankrupt" doesn't really have a coherent meaning for public bodies like this, suffice to say it has collapsed under the weight of its debt obligations and has exhausted its reserves)
The argument du jour is whether this is down to mismanagement (I think it was a Labour council) or whether it was inevitable as a consequence of being underfunded relative to its statutory obligations, coupled with pursuing riskier and riskier investment schemes in an effort to plug its unmanageable deficit
(The term "bankrupt" doesn't really have a coherent meaning for public bodies like this, suffice to say it has collapsed under the weight of its debt obligations and has exhausted its reserves)
The argument du jour is whether this is down to mismanagement (I think it was a Labour council) or whether it was inevitable as a consequence of being underfunded relative to its statutory obligations, coupled with pursuing riskier and riskier investment schemes in an effort to plug its unmanageable deficit
I'm going to go with "some combination of both".
The problem with councils and councilors and politics, in general, is that you don't have to actually be qualified at anything to get the job. It's like asking a barrel of monkeys to manage £100 million in cash. They're just gonna rip it to shreds and shit on it.
GT published a public interest report (which I think is a rough equivalent to a Scottish Section 22 report, albeit without there being a public audit body in England) which makes for pretty grim reading
It's quite readable even if you don't have a financial background
The headlines are:
- they mucked about with the accounting treatment of a couple of things which would have masked the scale of the deficit, and the council itself (that is, the elected members responsible for governance) didn't ask any questions about this
- they have crippling overspends in what are termed "demand-led services". The two mentioned are Social Care and Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children. The problem with these are, as the name suggests, the council can't control the level of demand, they are required by statute to meet the need in their area. They also spent £73m on cost cutting programmes in these areas without any evidence that they achieved anything, or even if anyone asked if that expenditure had achieved anything. Usually in a council huge recurring overspends in these services simply means the council doesn't understand the demand picture and isn't budgeting appropriately
- There is some suggestion that the UASC issue is particularly acute because the home office is based there and so the council area became a dumping ground for people that the home office should have been processing and transferring to other council areas
- they seem to have effectively been taken for a ride by a trading subsidiary that they set up. The intention was to borrow to fund it to build houses, with the proceeds and/or lease income paying off the loans. Within a year it appears the subsidiary had set itself up as a commercial entity (again, without anyone within the council questioning whether this was a good idea) which proceeded to focus on that rather than building housing that the council could use.
All underpinned by the fact that it appears GT has been doing everything short of throwing things in their last few audit reports to warn that this was coming.
The 2019/20 forecast position has been reported to the Cabinet throughout the year and this highlighted continued in-year overspends. The reduction in the forecast outturn overspend of £8 million between quarter 2 and quarter 3 is unusual and based on Cabinet minutes the explanation provided that this related to one-off initiatives was accepted without challenge.
GT in quarter 2: "You have a serious problem"
The council in quarter 3: "don't worry, it's totally fine now, we checked"
This is pretty typical of local councils generally, who are always getting taken for a ride by corporate and commercial entities, and who spend a lot of money on consultations without getting anything to show for it, and who have statutory obligations with relatively uncontrollable demand that occasionally just shred into their reserves
But in this circumstance, it definitely appears to have been a combination of failure of management and a case of the requirements on the council that they must provide just being startlingly expensive. Really we need more financial support for local councils both in a financial sense and in more direct, understandable and accountable financial audits.
All my experience in this area is for Scotland, but in England there definitely seems to be an issue with councils trying to set up quasi-commercial trading subsidiaries in an effort to generate commercial income in order to fund deficits. Or, worse, getting into speculative investment to generate income, like they were a hedge fund or some shit
Up here, the (Scottish) Labour government was very keen on commercial subsidiaries as a governance structure but usually as CICs (community interest companies) or SCIOs or similar notionally non-profit entities. The idea was that this worked a bit like a commissioning model - the council agrees to pay the entity a certain amount of grant per year in exchange for it providing specified services (e.g. running a leisure centre). In principle this isn't a terrible idea because it notionally insulates the council from losses of the trading entity collapses.
The SNP are pretty strongly anti-trading sub but they also haven't been keen to coerce councils that have them to dissolve them
GT published a public interest report (which I think is a rough equivalent to a Scottish Section 22 report, albeit without there being a public audit body in England) which makes for pretty grim reading
It's quite readable even if you don't have a financial background
The headlines are:
- they mucked about with the accounting treatment of a couple of things which would have masked the scale of the deficit, and the council itself (that is, the elected members responsible for governance) didn't ask any questions about this
- they have crippling overspends in what are termed "demand-led services". The two mentioned are Social Care and Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children. The problem with these are, as the name suggests, the council can't control the level of demand, they are required by statute to meet the need in their area. They also spent £73m on cost cutting programmes in these areas without any evidence that they achieved anything, or even if anyone asked if that expenditure had achieved anything. Usually in a council huge recurring overspends in these services simply means the council doesn't understand the demand picture and isn't budgeting appropriately
- There is some suggestion that the UASC issue is particularly acute because the home office is based there and so the council area became a dumping ground for people that the home office should have been processing and transferring to other council areas
- they seem to have effectively been taken for a ride by a trading subsidiary that they set up. The intention was to borrow to fund it to build houses, with the proceeds and/or lease income paying off the loans. Within a year it appears the subsidiary had set itself up as a commercial entity (again, without anyone within the council questioning whether this was a good idea) which proceeded to focus on that rather than building housing that the council could use.
All underpinned by the fact that it appears GT has been doing everything short of throwing things in their last few audit reports to warn that this was coming.
The 2019/20 forecast position has been reported to the Cabinet throughout the year and this highlighted continued in-year overspends. The reduction in the forecast outturn overspend of £8 million between quarter 2 and quarter 3 is unusual and based on Cabinet minutes the explanation provided that this related to one-off initiatives was accepted without challenge.
GT in quarter 2: "You have a serious problem"
The council in quarter 3: "don't worry, it's totally fine now, we checked"
I feel like your deep dive has validated my snap judgement.
I can't believe that Cummings will be going.
I just don't think we have that kind of luck.
My worst case scenario predictor says that it's an internal coup by the anti-lockdown assholes, of which I can unproudly count my MP as a member. Because it can always get worse, and it's gonna.
Feels like it's an excuse for the rats to flee the sinking ship. They've caused all the damage, now they get to stroll off and let someone else deal with it, just like David Cameron did.
If he leaves without being sacked in disgrace he'll just come back when they install the next tory PM. Hell, he'd probably come back even if he was kicked out in disgrace. Hasn't stopped half the cabinet after all.
I was actually thinking that if Boris was a member of this cabinet, this is about the time he'd resign due to "irreconcilable objections to how things were going" ie ejecting in time for the incoming shit to miss him, and then come back with a new job afterwards. I wonder if Boris has noticed his own playbook being used on him.
I wonder how much to read into the fact that this was Johnson creating an entirely new post and title to promote this guy into
The guardian's article seems to suggest he'd been thinking about leaving anyway, so that seems to have been a last ditch attempt to keep him
So, the outrage from the rest of the party might be at least partly that they resented Johnson putting another layer of SpAd between himself, the cabinet, and parliament (though a lot of it seems to be that he was just personally very unpopular)
I find the casual intimations of influence in this from Carrie Symonds in this to be concerning. We've got enough non-elected officials with major clout around the place without throwing some Trump-clan style family influence and nepotism in there as well.
I find the casual intimations of influence in this from Carrie Symonds in this to be concerning. We've got enough non-elected officials with major clout around the place without throwing some Trump-clan style family influence and nepotism in there as well.
I was thinking the same thing. Does she have any role in government at all? I know she used to be Tory communications director but my understanding is she has no official title right now?
0
Options
TavIrish Minister for DefenceRegistered Userregular
Are UKIP still a thing? Pretty sure they'd fucked off into oblivion once farage moved the graft on to the brexit party, and then whatever his new company masquerading as a political party is.
On a more serious note, their fall into a mixture of comedy and overt racism is a great example of the failings in political discourse in the UK. Once they no longer had the disproportionate media representation they were gifted due to farage they became what they nearly always were - nothing of note. They were never a serious party. I often wonder how far would the whole brexit affair have gotten if the BBC hadn't given farage near constant free airtime? At one point it seemed like the only person on Question Time more often was Dimbleby.
UKIP are still a 'thing', but with Farage gone his cult has moved with him. What's left in UKIP are just, I dunno, *points at someone literally called Gammon*.
Posts
But it's just some text on a black background? Just type it out again! This is like saying there was an image artifact in a powerpoint presentation!
It makes sense to me if the Trump text layer had been flattened and the designer didn't want to start over entirely.
Like, it's a dumb mistake, but I can see a sequence of events here that would lead to it.
Wait, that’s not how you do it?
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
You use countif() . That's what it's for.
Its like scanning an image that someone has manually marked up and then trying to make the changes and remove the mark up. Just go back to the base file!
Look, you're holding them to an unreasonable standard. This isn't a competent, professional organization - it's the Johnson government :P
The UK gets favorable treatment because it often acts as the U.S.’s proxy in the EU...
...or used to.
Steam | XBL
NI was placed under relatively strict COVID restrictions on 16th October, to last for 4 weeks. The health minister was advised that a further two week extension was needed. The DUP forced a cross community vote on the issue which they could essentially veto. They proposed their own half baked semi-restrictions and, as a compromise, a one week extention was proposed so that they could at least be considered. They pulled the same shit again and vetoed that too. As it stands, the restrictions expire on Friday which is the worst case scenario according to the medical advice.
All of the other significant parties agreed with the need for a two week extenstion. Once again, Northern Ireland is being held hostage by the minority of the DUP. We all know they're a bunch of covid-denying morons. They've been pushing against any form of restrictions after the first wave. They've only begrudgingly caved in when it was clear there was no other alternative - and even then half of them wanted nothing done at all.
What really, really irritates me is that they have the brass neck to invoke "mental health" as a reason to ditch restrictions. Mental health is naturally a serious concern - but the DUP don't give two shits about mental health. Invoking mental health to drive through your own half baked "economy first" ideals in the middle of a bloody pandemic is absolutely deplorable.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-54897748
https://www.itv.com/news/london/2020-11-11/cash-strapped-croydon-council-goes-bust-after-running-up-15-billion-in-debt
(The term "bankrupt" doesn't really have a coherent meaning for public bodies like this, suffice to say it has collapsed under the weight of its debt obligations and has exhausted its reserves)
The argument du jour is whether this is down to mismanagement (I think it was a Labour council) or whether it was inevitable as a consequence of being underfunded relative to its statutory obligations, coupled with pursuing riskier and riskier investment schemes in an effort to plug its unmanageable deficit
Jesus.
EDIT: oh 1.5 billion that’s less insane.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I'm going to go with "some combination of both".
The problem with councils and councilors and politics, in general, is that you don't have to actually be qualified at anything to get the job. It's like asking a barrel of monkeys to manage £100 million in cash. They're just gonna rip it to shreds and shit on it.
https://www.croydon.gov.uk/democracy/budgets/report-in-the-public-interest
It's quite readable even if you don't have a financial background
The headlines are:
- they mucked about with the accounting treatment of a couple of things which would have masked the scale of the deficit, and the council itself (that is, the elected members responsible for governance) didn't ask any questions about this
- they have crippling overspends in what are termed "demand-led services". The two mentioned are Social Care and Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children. The problem with these are, as the name suggests, the council can't control the level of demand, they are required by statute to meet the need in their area. They also spent £73m on cost cutting programmes in these areas without any evidence that they achieved anything, or even if anyone asked if that expenditure had achieved anything. Usually in a council huge recurring overspends in these services simply means the council doesn't understand the demand picture and isn't budgeting appropriately
- There is some suggestion that the UASC issue is particularly acute because the home office is based there and so the council area became a dumping ground for people that the home office should have been processing and transferring to other council areas
- they seem to have effectively been taken for a ride by a trading subsidiary that they set up. The intention was to borrow to fund it to build houses, with the proceeds and/or lease income paying off the loans. Within a year it appears the subsidiary had set itself up as a commercial entity (again, without anyone within the council questioning whether this was a good idea) which proceeded to focus on that rather than building housing that the council could use.
All underpinned by the fact that it appears GT has been doing everything short of throwing things in their last few audit reports to warn that this was coming.
Edit: love a bit of understatement
GT in quarter 2: "You have a serious problem"
The council in quarter 3: "don't worry, it's totally fine now, we checked"
But in this circumstance, it definitely appears to have been a combination of failure of management and a case of the requirements on the council that they must provide just being startlingly expensive. Really we need more financial support for local councils both in a financial sense and in more direct, understandable and accountable financial audits.
Up here, the (Scottish) Labour government was very keen on commercial subsidiaries as a governance structure but usually as CICs (community interest companies) or SCIOs or similar notionally non-profit entities. The idea was that this worked a bit like a commissioning model - the council agrees to pay the entity a certain amount of grant per year in exchange for it providing specified services (e.g. running a leisure centre). In principle this isn't a terrible idea because it notionally insulates the council from losses of the trading entity collapses.
The SNP are pretty strongly anti-trading sub but they also haven't been keen to coerce councils that have them to dissolve them
I feel like your deep dive has validated my snap judgement.
My local council set up its own energy supply company which they've just sold at a massive loss..
Steam | XBL
I just don't think we have that kind of luck.
My worst case scenario predictor says that it's an internal coup by the anti-lockdown assholes, of which I can unproudly count my MP as a member. Because it can always get worse, and it's gonna.
Steam | XBL
Cain is a massive "let's no deal-yolo" fan so him being quitting is probably over whatever Boris is going to the EU with.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
The guardian's article seems to suggest he'd been thinking about leaving anyway, so that seems to have been a last ditch attempt to keep him
So, the outrage from the rest of the party might be at least partly that they resented Johnson putting another layer of SpAd between himself, the cabinet, and parliament (though a lot of it seems to be that he was just personally very unpopular)
I was thinking the same thing. Does she have any role in government at all? I know she used to be Tory communications director but my understanding is she has no official title right now?
satire is dead
Gammons
UKIP candidate.
As the kids say. I can't even with this
On a more serious note, their fall into a mixture of comedy and overt racism is a great example of the failings in political discourse in the UK. Once they no longer had the disproportionate media representation they were gifted due to farage they became what they nearly always were - nothing of note. They were never a serious party. I often wonder how far would the whole brexit affair have gotten if the BBC hadn't given farage near constant free airtime? At one point it seemed like the only person on Question Time more often was Dimbleby.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3