Britain - The Official Thread

[UKMikey]

With enough resources the police could be "tough on crime" and "tough on the causes of crime".

If you redirect all the doctors who treat a particular disease towards researching a preventative vaccine a lot of already affected people will continue to suffer.

 

[baldgye]

With enough resources the police could be "tough on crime" and "tough on the causes of crime".

If you redirect all the doctors who treat a particular disease towards researching a preventative vaccine a lot of already affected people will continue to suffer.

I'm not saying remove literally every policeman and woman off the street and get them behind a desk. But from my own experiences in the last few years the police on the streets has sky rocketed and crime has risen to match it.

Anecdote time, with a proper link
When I used to live in Birmingham (again big city example because when I lived in and around Stoke I never saw a coppa) in 2007/2008 the only police you'd see would be either on a job blues'n'two's, on Broad Street on a Friday/Saturday night or around the stations/bus stops and pubs when Villa or West Brom had a game on.
Now, there is a police car with armed police in it, parked in the high street every morning and every evening. On foot patrols (armed and unarmed) and unmarked and marked cars. And the high street is now barricaded off.
And if you look, crime has fallen since 2007, with only the last few years rising to 2008/7 levels.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I'm not saying remove literally every policeman and woman off the street and get them behind a desk. But from my own experiences in the last few years the police on the streets has sky rocketed and crime has risen to match it.

Anecdote time, with a proper link
When I used to live in Birmingham (again big city example because when I lived in and around Stoke I never saw a coppa) in 2007/2008 the only police you'd see would be either on a job blues'n'two's, on Broad Street on a Friday/Saturday night or around the stations/bus stops and pubs when Villa or West Brom had a game on.
Now, there is a police car with armed police in it, parked in the high street every morning and every evening. On foot patrols (armed and unarmed) and unmarked and marked cars. And the high street is now barricaded off.
And if you look, crime has fallen since 2007, with only the last few years rising to 2008/7 levels.

Your last statement is self contradictory. And here are the updated stats that include 2018 YTD figures.

 

[UKMikey]

Who do you want to see on the next £50 note? It has to be a dead scientist.

I went for Prof Stephen Hawking.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/2018/november/think-science-for-the-next-50-character

 

[baldgye]

Who do you want to see on the next £50 note? It has to be a dead scientist.

I went for Prof Stephen Hawking.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/2018/november/think-science-for-the-next-50-character

Went with Alan Turing, thought I've no idea if he was already on a note or not

 

[Robin]

Mark Carney stressed for people to NOT vote for fictional scientists

 

[MatskiMonk]

Hawking currently the favourite...


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46343965

The Bank of England has released a list of scientists who have been nominated to feature on the new £50 note.

On the list are computing pioneers Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell and astronomer Patrick Moore.

The Bank received 174,112 nominations, of which 114,000 met the eligibility criteria.

To be on the list, the individual must be real, deceased and have contributed to the field of science in the UK.

The list, which includes more than 600 men and almost 200 women, includes black holes expert Stephen Hawking, penicillin discoverer Alexander Fleming, father of modern epidemiology John Snow, naturalist and zookeeper Gerald Durrell, fossil pioneer Mary Anning, British-Jamaican business woman and nursing pioneer Mary Seacole and Margaret Thatcher, who was a scientist before becoming British Prime Minister.

Mrs Thatcher studied chemistry at university and worked as a chemist for food firm J Lyons.

Shortlist
Bookmakers William Hill have Stephen Hawking as the current favourite, with odds of 7/4, followed by Nobel-prize winning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin 4/1.

Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing and Alexander Fleming have odds of 5/1 and Rosalind Franklin, who made important contributions to the understanding of DNA, is at 6/1.

Further names will be considered up until nominations close on 14 December.

 

[Liquid]

What noteworthy scientific contributions did Margret Thatcher achieve before her career in politics? Something that differentiates her from the (hundreds of) thousands of other people who are scientists at food, chemical, manufacturing or medical companies.

This just smacks of a backdoor to get her included on the list.

 

[Famine]

What noteworthy scientific contributions did Margret Thatcher achieve before her career in politics? Something that differentiates her from the (hundreds of) thousands of other people who are scientists at food, chemical, manufacturing or medical companies.

This just smacks of a backdoor to get her included on the list.

She invented Angel Delight.


No Franklin on that list? Shame.

 

[Liquid]

She invented Angel Delight.

Even that's a huge stretch considering Angel Delight came out in 1967 by Bird's and not Lyon's for whom she worked. She was part of an "ice cream emulsifying team" having previously worked for a plastics company. She spent more time employed as a taxation barrister (7 years, 1953-59) than as a "scientist" (4 years, 1948-51) before becoming a politician.

I know some people would sell their kidney to have Thatcher on a banknote and that others would take a bullet to have her erased from history all together but to have her shoehorned in on a list of some of the United Kingdom's greatest scientists is just pathetically transparent.

It is insulting our intelligence to pretend that that is why she deserves to be on a banknote.

 

[Famine]

Even that's a huge stretch considering Angel Delight came out in 1967 by Bird's and not Lyon's for whom she worked.

Technically she was on the team that invented the process of instant whip dessert. It's Angel Delight on the same basis as one does the hoovering.

She spent more time employed as a taxation barrister (7 years, 1953-59) than as a "scientist"

She did at least have a BSc. in chemistry though.

 

[Liquid]

Technically she was on the team that invented the process of instant whip dessert. It's Angel Delight on the same basis as one does the hoovering.

She did at least have a BSc. in chemistry though.

I'm not denying that she has "a" career as a scientist. But so do hundreds of thousands of other unremarkable people. Thus:

It is insulting our intelligence to pretend that that is why she deserves to be on a banknote.

 

[UKMikey]

She invented Angel Delight.


No Franklin on that list? Shame.

The list that includes Franklin?

 

[Famine]

The list that includes Franklin?

Oh she's on the list of nominations (and William Hill's betting shortlist), but she's not on the list that the BBC chose to highlight:

The list, which includes more than 600 men and almost 200 women, includes black holes expert Stephen Hawking, penicillin discoverer Alexander Fleming, father of modern epidemiology John Snow, naturalist and zookeeper Gerald Durrell, fossil pioneer Mary Anning, British-Jamaican business woman and nursing pioneer Mary Seacole and Margaret Thatcher, who was a scientist before becoming prime minister.

... while oddly choosing to highlight Maggie, as noted above.

 

[UKMikey]

Oh she's on the list of nominations (and William Hill's betting shortlist), but she's not on the list that the BBC chose to highlight:

 

[Famine]

View attachment 782762

And yet:

she's not on the list that the BBC chose to highlight:

The list, which includes more than 600 men and almost 200 women, includes black holes expert Stephen Hawking, penicillin discoverer Alexander Fleming, father of modern epidemiology John Snow, naturalist and zookeeper Gerald Durrell, fossil pioneer Mary Anning, British-Jamaican business woman and nursing pioneer Mary Seacole and Margaret Thatcher, who was a scientist before becoming prime minister.

... while oddly choosing to highlight Maggie, as noted above.

(also I don't browse the BBC site directly, because it sends PeerBlock mental, so I don't see their images)

 

[UKMikey]

And yet:

(also I don't browse the BBC site directly, because it sends PeerBlock mental, so I don't see their images)

So what?

The BBC did choose to highlight her, and most importantly she's on the only list that matters, the list of scientists eligible for inclusion. No cause for shame.

 

[Famine]

So what?

Well, it means I can neither see who is in their lead image, nor their caption...

The BBC did choose to highlight her

Not in its own copy it didn't (assuming the odds came from the bookies' own press office).

Sky briefly mentioned her:

The list published on Monday contains eminent names from scientific history, such as Alexander Fleming, Alexander Graham Bell, Dorothy Hodgkin and Rosalind Franklin, as well as more recent figures such as astronaut Piers Sellers and TV astronomer Patrick Moore.

ITV did it properly:

Rosalind Franklin
Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins may have shared the Nobel Prize for discovering the double-helix structure of DNA, but their work was inspired by Dr Franklin’s.

It was the Photo 51 image of DNA taken in her lab using an X-ray scattering technique and her subsequent report that helped inspire Watson and Crick to create their model.

Crick would later acknowledge her importance in the discovery, but she died of ovarian cancer at the age of 37 in 1958, four years before they scooped the Nobel.

And of course the Telegraph headlined Maggie:

Supporters of Margaret Thatcher as the new face of the £50 note have received a boost after she was placed on the longlist of candidates by the Bank of England.

It had been thought that the former prime minister would fail to make the cut, after it was announced that the Bank was looking only for people with a scientific background.

But Baroness Thatcher had been a scientist in her early career, and had worked on developing emulsifiers for ice-creams for Joe Lyons foods.

She has been credited with helping develop Mr Whippy ice cream, though it is disputed whether she was on that particular team at the company while it was being made.

A Bank spokeswoman said: "Margaret Thatcher is eligible to be on the note because she was a scientist - she was a chemist before she became Prime Minister, and she actually helped invent the soft scoop ice cream."

No room for Franklin there at all though. In fact a lot of the Telegraph's copy looks similar to the BBC's, which is also a bit disturbing.

Surprisingly, the Guardian runs with Maggie and omitted Franklin as well. I can't be bothered checking the Mail, but it's probably banging on about Mary Seacole and immigrants coming over here and getting on our money.

And it is a shame that these outlets are opting not to highlight Franklin, given her fundamental role in discovering the mechanism by which all living things propagate themselves, along with many of the other names. These articles would be the perfect opportunity to explain who these people are and why they are so important - important enough to have on our currency, rather than rattling on about Maggie and celebrity scientist (although well worthy of nomination) Hawking. On the BBC's part there's not much attempt to explain who Ada Lovelace or Dorothy Hodgkin are, and Mary Seacole gets relegated to "British-Jamaican business woman and nursing pioneer", along with "fossil pioneer" Mary Anning. Sky calls Ada Lovelace "computing pioneer Ada Lovelace", while Victoria Drummond is "a pioneering marine engineer". I think these guys need a thesaurus pioneer.

ITV's version is pretty good actually, even if the first two words are "Margaret Thatcher"


It's often suggested Franklin was snubbed for the Nobel (including by Watson), but the rules precluded the awarding of the prize more than three ways; Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins took the Nobel, so even though their work was based, in-part, on hers, she would not have been eligible. The Nobel Committee also tended not to make posthumous nominations in any case. In fact the biological significance of DNA wasn't even fully known until after her death, so it's not like it was even held as such a major discovery when Watson and Crick determined the structure of it - the award in 1962 was for "discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".

 

[Robin]

It would be hilarious to see Maggy smiling with a Mr Whippy in her hand on the £50 note!

 

[UKMikey]

Not in its own copy it didn't (assuming the odds came from the bookies' own press office).

But they mentioned the odds in the copy, so even if you're one of the few people who can't see the images she wasn't ignored. And for everyone else she was front and centre.

I honestly don't see any conspiracy to ignore her on the Beeb's part here. Even The Guardian mentions her in an earlier article.

It would be hilarious to see Maggy smiling with a Mr Whippy in her hand on the £50 note!

This sounds a bit like some kind of lewd double entendre to me but even the ultra fans at Guido Fawkes couldn't amass more than around 18,500 sigs.

 

[Famine]

honestly don't see any conspiracy to ignore her on the Beeb's part here.

No, nor did I say that there was a conspiracy. The BBC article barely mentions the significance of anyone, which is a missed opportunity and, as I mentioned very briefly earlier, a shame.

Maybe it's me - maybe I shouldn't expect the UK's national broadcaster to highlight some of our incredible scientists and their achievements in an article about honoring our incredible scientists and their achievements while it's kicking out headlines like "What even is a Lindy hop-a-thon?". But then perhaps I shouldn't be surprised when it's been gradually abandoning its former standards on what qualifies as news, and replicating the language of the internet over the last few years. That said, it is funded by an unusual hypothecated tax, so perhaps it should speak the language of the current culture and present stories that appeal to the largest demographic of the people who fund it. Still, it's pretty easy to read today's short headline about Baroness Trumpington as if she was a codebreaker for the Nazis ("Tory peer and Nazi codebreaker dies").

Luckily, with the internet at our disposal, there's myriad other news outlets. ITV News got it spot on (except perhaps it could have mentioned a couple of the other favourites in as much detail), Sky and the Telegraph didn't. I haven't looked, but the Sun probably mentioned the ones with the biggest tits and the Mail likely ranted about Mary Seacole (although I've heard comments about a change in direction since Dacre left).

I should check out the PA feed actually, as that's where the papers would get their original copy from.

 

[baldgye]

No, nor did I say that there was a conspiracy. The BBC article barely mentions the significance of anyone, which is a missed opportunity and, as I mentioned very briefly earlier, a shame.

Maybe it's me - maybe I shouldn't expect the UK's national broadcaster to highlight some of our incredible scientists and their achievements in an article about honoring our incredible scientists and their achievements while it's kicking out headlines like "What even is a Lindy hop-a-thon?". But then perhaps I shouldn't be surprised when it's been gradually abandoning its former standards on what qualifies as news, and replicating the language of the internet over the last few years. That said, it is funded by an unusual hypothecated tax, so perhaps it should speak the language of the current culture and present stories that appeal to the largest demographic of the people who fund it. Still, it's pretty easy to read today's short headline about Baroness Trumpington as if she was a codebreaker for the Nazis ("Tory peer and Nazi codebreaker dies").

Luckily, with the internet at our disposal, there's myriad other news outlets. ITV News got it spot on (except perhaps it could have mentioned a couple of the other favourites in as much detail), Sky and the Telegraph didn't. I haven't looked, but the Sun probably mentioned the ones with the biggest tits and the Mail likely ranted about Mary Seacole (although I've heard comments about a change in direction since Dacre left).

I should check out the PA feed actually, as that's where the papers would get their original copy from.

The BBC has been poor for a while with BBC News continuing to produce poor material for a number of years.

 

[Liquid]

It would be hilarious [if]...

That's what got us Boris Johnson.

 

[Hun200kmh]

I think this is the right thread to post this

 

[UKMikey]

I think this is the right thread to post this

No wonder my pizza is always late.

We need to start adding push bars to our police vehicles.

 

[Outspacer]

I think this is the right thread to post this

I'd say this one was a draw

 

[baldgye]

Hawking currently the favourite...


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46343965

The Bank of England has released a list of scientists who have been nominated to feature on the new £50 note.

On the list are computing pioneers Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell and astronomer Patrick Moore.

The Bank received 174,112 nominations, of which 114,000 met the eligibility criteria.

To be on the list, the individual must be real, deceased and have contributed to the field of science in the UK.

The list, which includes more than 600 men and almost 200 women, includes black holes expert Stephen Hawking, penicillin discoverer Alexander Fleming, father of modern epidemiology John Snow, naturalist and zookeeper Gerald Durrell, fossil pioneer Mary Anning, British-Jamaican business woman and nursing pioneer Mary Seacole and Margaret Thatcher, who was a scientist before becoming British Prime Minister.

Mrs Thatcher studied chemistry at university and worked as a chemist for food firm J Lyons.

Shortlist
Bookmakers William Hill have Stephen Hawking as the current favourite, with odds of 7/4, followed by Nobel-prize winning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin 4/1.

Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing and Alexander Fleming have odds of 5/1 and Rosalind Franklin, who made important contributions to the understanding of DNA, is at 6/1.

Further names will be considered up until nominations close on 14 December.

I’ve grown very fond of the above submission for the new 50 quid note

 

[Robin]

We need to start adding push bars to our police vehicles.

We really do, the cost to repair these BMW pursuit cars is astronomical.

 

[Liquid]

How much does a bull bar and fitting cost? Just curious.

 

[DG_Silva]

About £120-150 for type-approved bull bars, about £50 to fit it by the vehicle preparers.