Trevor Smith's avatar

Trevor Smith

@trevv69.bsky.social

452 followers 603 following 205 posts

Opinions are my own. YMMV.
Happy husband and stepfather, liberal by instinct. #FBPE, #BLM, #ProEU, 🇪🇺🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿💫 He/Him

Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Sherry being the one option on that list that can only be made in the EU, ironically.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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... But this is still a contender for the best newspaper headline ever (recording an unexpected 3-1 win for Caledonian Thistle against Celtic)

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Ah! So this (wonderful) miniseries has basically been one long apology for why you missed an appointment to discuss that "PROJECT"? Excellent work.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Worse, I saw an article on BBc News yesterday using - in the context of the Farage manifesto launch - "other major parties" to mean Labour and Tory. Not Lib Dems or anyone else. Promoting Reform as above them.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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I note it's called non-stop party shop. There used to (might even still) be a shop opposite Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford that was a year-round Christmas shop, but, you know, tourist trap.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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I think they have a vague idea of replacing the Tory Party as the standard bearer of the Right come the next election, possibly even transacting a reverse takeover of the Tories in the interim. The worse the Tories are crushed, the more likely that will happen. As per Canadian Conservatives?

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Bloomberg's avatar Bloomberg @bloomberg.com
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Ikea lost $5,000 when each worker quit. So it began paying them more

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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The same goes for Conservatives in the UK.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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A vote for Sunak is a vote for Truss. A vote for Farage is a vote for Putin.

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Paul Morris's avatar Paul Morris @xlcchelt.bsky.social
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This is a very good spot of what Kemi Badenoch (and the Tories as a party) said about trans people, before she went all in as a Ron DeSantis protegy, and the Tories with the Heritage Foundation and their right-wing collaborative effort.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Predictably, the press barons have stuck "Sunak won" all over the front pages. The free media then reports these opinions as facts, as if it were the judgement of Solomon. The pages also face anyone going into a supermarket or petrol station or past a kiosk. That's why - so they could print that.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Party leaders (incl. If not esp. Richard Tice) needs to be challenged to condemn these stories by responsible media, not allow this negative campaigning by his supporters (real or fake) to go under the radar.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Some proper journalism going on here, albeit spoiled by mixing in parodies and official accounts. Social media being used to spread negativity and indeed defamatory "news" needs to be flagged up.

BBC News - TikTok users being fed misleading election news, BBC finds
www.bbc.com/news/article...

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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These days you don't have to be "So sad they had to fade it"... they'll edit that line out, without irony!

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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My wife has a thing for listening in the car to a radio station with a fixed retro playlist - and a few well known songs get *heavily edited* to my sheer frustration. Everybody Wants To Rule The World I swear had one verse and then cut straight to the post-middle-8 refrain!

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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I actually read Nigel Robinson's Target "novelisation" of The Edge of Destruction before ever seeing the episodes. The added material with entirely his imagination of the TARDIS interior read great, but would have killed the show stone dead even if it were possible.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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With just over a month to the UK election, polls are still solidly saying Keir Starmer will be PM. A few years ago I wrote a thread on the old bird site about how remarkable that would be. I dug out the notes. TL;DR only 6 times since 1900 has a Leader of The Opposition become PM with a majority.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Doctor Who fans say, hold my beer:

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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There is a reason that political parties usually take great care over accepting defectors, especially in such high profile ways as with #Elphicke today. This could bite the Labour leader on the backside if she is not handled carefully over whatever remains of this Parliament.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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(cont'd) Labour have given Elphicke a huge platform in one day. If she says anything tomorrow that the leadership don't like, this will be embarrassing. Worse, she now has *massive* power; In theory she could now defect to Reform or even back to Tories and it would be *humiliating* for Starmer./2

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Couple of thoughts on the #Elphicke #defection today. First, it reminds us how many Tory MPs no longer have any interest in following the whip. Indeed, if you're stepping down and waiting for your redundancy and your new job, why would you vote to prevent a general election? Also (to continue)/1

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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The strategy is to convince Labour to campaign harder in seats best left to other parties, eg LibDems and Greens - which would more likely lead to Tory wins due to a split progressive vote.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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If they dare say "strong and stable", the country would tremble like an earthquake from everybody laughing.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Incidentally, my local authority has just published on Facebook a graph of how many people had voted in the first few hours of the polling. Presumably this info comes straight from the new electronic system.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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But I did once read someone claim, in a Guardian Notes and Queries response(!), a story that they had been told of seeing the piles of Communist Party votes in a place they shouldn't be, ready to be notified to the Security Service (MI5). Which frankly wouldn't surprise me.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Which is the point of my follow-up post lol.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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...comes from the computerisation, which means the only missing info comes from the actual vote. In principle, the piles of votes for each party could, after the count, be quickly scanned and a full record of who voted for whom compiled in minutes at most.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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They always could. Ballot papers have always been numbered, and the number of the ballot paper was always noted against your name in the register when they ticked you off. Ballot papers where then held for at least a year in case of challenge/fraud. Of course the real danger.../1

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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My Freddie Mercury rose - first bloom of the year.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Random statements of fact that sound meaningful but aren't: 1) There are several wheels in a car, but only one is the steering wheel.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Clearly "Maestro" is an avatar of the Master of the Land of Fiction, and steals the real Beatles' faces, as happened to Jamie. Ruby, being Gen Z has only a vague idea of what the Beatles look like, has to put their faces together from a photofit and messes it up.

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Fight for the Future's avatar Fight for the Future @fightforthefuture.org
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Tomorrow, #InternetArchive will file their reply brief in the suit from major #publishers to end the right of IA and all #libraries to own and preserve spyware-free digital #books.

Reading what they’re replying to, we’ve gotta ask:

Who is the real “Napster” here?

A thread.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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This is what economic dependence on an undemocratic country means. Of course Apple has no choice in the matter, not least given its products are made in China. Non-compliance simply wouldn't be an option.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Threads today is full of sparkly tricks about this new Swift "surprise". Good luck to her, but I think I might take the day off from that platform.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Wouldn't it be interesting if that were a fundamental reason for the birth of civilization on this planet? And that life could evolve on other worlds, but only become intelligent if the same or similar phenomenon applied to their world too?

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Clearly we have no need for Terminator robots, if human soldiers will just defer to AI orders.

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Indeed. Separating the art from the artist isn't about excusing the work, it depowers the artist in their "creepiness". Especially the kind of creep who uses the platform their previous work has given them to systemically harm others. That's separate from boycotting new work/merch to defend hate.

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Thomas Gray's avatar Thomas Gray @thomasgray1981.bsky.social
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Sarah Connor is the least responsible mother in the whole of sci-fi dom She named her son with the one name she knew a army of killer robots would be searching for in the future

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Trevor Smith's avatar Trevor Smith @trevv69.bsky.social
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Nice idea. The problem is that there is no way Waterstones could do anything to enforce that guarantee on the part of the publishers from whom they buy product.

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Mike Wrigley's avatar Mike Wrigley @mikewrigley.bsky.social
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At the Lib Dems conference, the loudest applause for Ed Davey came after he called for building our way back into the Single Market and once again "being at the heart of Europe, where we belong... Liberal Democrats are internationalists to our core."

Hear, hear.
#RejoinEU

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Sustainable Farming's avatar Sustainable Farming @sustainablefarming.bsky.social
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African cocoa plants run out of beans as global chocolate crisis deepens. Major African cocoa plants in Ivory Coast and Ghana (producing 60% of global cocoa) have stopped or cut processing because they cannot afford to buy beans, meaning chocolate prices around the world are likely to soar.

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