Jul 112026
Jul 112026
Jun 142026
So we have just had a few local elections here in the UK and Reform PLC have won quite a few elections and some councils are now under Reform PLC’s control. They have my sympathy; well the residents that is. Not much sympathy for the Reform PLC councillors although they might have to work harder than expected.
I don’t think Reform PLC was quite as successful as they would like to proclaim. According to the BBC, Reform PLC won 1453 councillors. Given there are 18645 councillors in the UK, Reform PLC won just a smidgen under 8% of the total. Of course not all councillors were up for election – just 5066 were up for election, so Reform PLC won around 28% of this.
Which is impressive but not quite world shaking. But look at the councils they’ve won control over – 14. Quite impressive but it’s all in the North or London. There’s nothing down south.
This is a kick in the teeth for Labour – not totally unexpectedly given the unrealistic expectations on a Labour government. The funny thing is that the Tories are also still being kicked – they’re down to controlling fewer and fewer councils. Loosing even though they’re not in government.
But enough about the election, what is the attraction of Reform PLC?
It is all too easy to categorise Reform PLC supporters as racist and thick. It is true that Reform PLC have an unusually high number of former representatives with a distinctly racist past and present. And Reform PLC supporters are well known for being somewhat lacking in educational attainment …
(Image borrowed from The Independent)
But it is all too easy to pain Reform PLC uniformly as racist thugs – there’s certainly some like that, but there’s more.
One of the things that comes up in the cesspool that is Twitter, is the “Uniparty” word. Which is a concept inherited from the US and warped to pretend there is no real difference between Conservatives and Labour.
I can certainly see their point – Labour is far too concerned with worrying the wealthy elites and the mainstream media which is one of the tools of the elites are far too willing to engage in sabotage of the current Labour government.
And if you look at where Reform PLC was strongest – the old Labour heartlands in the North, there is a significant factor – not enough has been done to mitigate the damage that Thatcher did to the old Northern industries in the 1980s. Promises have been made and broken.
So no wonder certain folk have the urge to destroy the current system – I’ve felt that way since Mad Maggie was in power in the 1980s myself. But Reform PLC is a con job.
A crafty one at that. Reform PLC takes genuine issues – housing shortage, wages not keeping up with inflation (to a small certain extent that’s the fault of the government’s freeze on tax bands), Islamic terrorism, etc. and blames it all on immigration. That is an unbelievably facile explanation for all the problems.
The problems are real – no mistake there – but the causes are a good deal more complex than just immigration whether legal, illegal , or asylum refugees.
But rather than criticise ReformPLC supporters for falling for the con, we should instead be congratulating them for recognising that something is broken, and come up with a better answer than ReformPLC’s.
May 012026
If you have heard of the copy.fail Linux vulnerability, you may have chosen to try exploiting it. A not unreasonable thing to try especially if you work in the field.
Dead simple wasn’t it? Now go ahead and replace that /usr/bin/su binary. It has been ‘permanently’ changed to not ask for a password when escalating to root. This is admittedly obvious if you study the exploit carefully or have gone through a decent walk-through.
Well not quite permanently; it has been updated in the memory cache of the file. But it is still a very good idea to clean up and replace that file before someone realises.
But we’re sometimes in a hurry … or working in the evening when we’d rather be doing something else.
So remember to re-install util-linux (Ubuntu, Debian, and probably others).
And yes I was that dumb!
Now the remaining question, is what have we broken by disabling this ALGIF_AEED module?
Apr 032026
The Twitterverse is agog with dumb Trumpists whining about NATO not kowtowing to Trump and following his lead into war with Iran. Clearly illustrating they have no idea what NATO is.
What Is NATO?
NATO is a mutual defense treaty where members agree to come to the assistance of other members who are attacked. There is no obligation to assist a member who wants to carry out military adventures – even if those military adventures have reasonable goals behind them.
And it isn’t the US going to war with Iran; it’s Israel going to war with Iran and the US is helping its ally. Israel isn’t a member of NATO, so there’s even less reason for NATO to assist.
Is It Legal?
I’ve no idea if Netanyahu’s military adventure is legal or not, but there are legitimate concerns about whether Israel’s and the USA’s actions are legal. There’s no mandate from the UN giving permission to spank Iran; there’s not even a consensus amongst the nations of NATO.
Whilst it may seem strange to USAians that some country leaders worry about whether their actions are legal, it is not unreasonable to refuse to assist a military adventure if doing so may end up with a time in gaol.
Unlikely but not impossible.
The Nukes?
Is Iran developing nuclear weapons? Well come up with proof of that, and you’ll get cooperation. But we haven’t seen any proof; we’re supposed to trust the word of Israel (who are currently short on trust). No thanks.
Particularly when previous military adventures supposedly destroyed the weapons programme.
The Money Question
One of the things that keeps cropping up when the USians want to whine about NATO is that the US is supposedly paying for Europe’s defence. A great deal of that whining is based on lies.
First of all the direct costs of running NATO are funded by all members making a contribution based on how wealthy they are – the US contributes 16.2% of the total (Germany is also on 16.2%), and that percentage is of the entire NATO budget of €5.3billion.
NATO membership also requires countries to spend at least 2% of their GDP on military spending. That target is increasing to 5%.
However whilst Europe has traditionally lagged at below the 2% commitment, the situation has changed considerably in recent years with 23 out of 32 countries meeting or exceeding the 2% of GDP.
You will hear a great deal of the US’s $1 trillion spent on European defence. That’s another lie; the US spends that amount on all military spending including world-wide commitments. And yes that’s more than every other country in Europe – that’s how that “2% of GDP” works out – the rich pay more, and the US is effectively as large as the whole of Europe.
Now if you add up all European military spending, it still doesn’t match the US spending and that should be corrected (which is slowly happening) but it is actually a huge chunk of money – $472 billion. That’s well over twice what Russia spends militarily.
Who Defends Who?
The only time NATO was obligated to defend one of its members under “Article 5″ was in the aftermath of 9/11. Defending the USA.
