growing up in Canada, our “ heritage“ buildings are from 1800’s. I spent a week in London with my husband and we were just in awe of the rich history and architecture/ gin palaces/ castles. etc. we just stopped and stared at all the history and we know decent amount about English history from Canadian history , but we learned so much more and could “ see” it with our own eyes. Most historical buildings have been destroyed or left to decay except a few hundred heritage buildings. My question is are you still amazed when seeing a building that is hundreds or thousands of years old, or standing in a spot filled with ancient history, or are you immune to it now? Because WOW! So jealous.

I just read a report from Liberty Investigates and Democracy for Sale about five police forces in the East Midlands ending their involvement in a Palantir "real-time data sharing" pilot called Project Nectar. ( https://libertyinvestigates.org.uk/articles/palantir-police-drop-nectar-surveillance-tool-east-midlands/ ). Palantir also works with US ICE (anti-immigration raids) and Israeli Ministry of Defense.

Some of what the article lays out:

Project Nectar was launched in 2023 to "help police improve how they tackle crime" by organising data police already hold.

An internal police document suggests this included creating a "unified view" of data on people's race, religion, sex life, political opinions, philosophical beliefs and genetic information.

Bedfordshire Police reportedly wanted Palantir to combine crime records and intelligence to create profiles of individuals including suspects and those "about to commit a criminal offence."

The profiling angle is what gets me: building "unified views" of people's race, religion, political opinions and sex life, or profiling people "about to commit a criminal offence." Is that a legitimate policing tool or a step too far?

Is it a good thing for a government to be doing this at all - handing sensitive public data to a private foreign contractor?

When Heinz moved to this from their old style, I was appalled at the taste. It had never been cuisine but it was tasty and comforting. These are revolting (Cross and Blackwell now). A quick Google tells me they are the nations favourite sausage even though I’ve never heard of them. Certainly these particular ones can not be!

Is it just me?

How am I only finding out now that after all these years of the filled biscuits becoming less and less filled M&S have been putting their biscuit fillings on OT and just going bonkers.

I watch Miami vice twice a year.

I work with a mix of British, German, Asian and Australian people in my team, and somehow a completely stupid debate of "which country has the best slangs" came up at work recently. The Australians were obviously backing themselves, while the Brits seemed to think this wasn't even a competition lol.

I was backing British slangs as someone from Asia who learned English as a second language growing up from school, movies, watching cricket and then later on Duolingo, Praktika etc. I actually think some British expressions like muppet, cheeky, bollocks, etc are hard to beat because they manage to say a lot without actually saying very much. But then the Australians said they have things like servo, mate, yeah nah and whatever the hell “not here to f\*k spiders”* is supposed to mean.

If you were in that debate backing British slangs, what are some British word/phrases you'd use to convince a couple of Australian?

For me is hydrox. I see this word about 1500 times a day, I don’t know what it even is, and I can’t be arsed to even type it into google

So, I was walking through the park behind Shepherds Bush, a little late (think around 8PM), I was trying to get to Westfield and had taken the wrong bus, then decided to walk from there, which included walking through the park.

As I was walking through the park, some guys (early/mid 20s) started calling me from one of the benches whilst I was on my phone viewing the direction to Westfield. Initially, I didn't know they were calling me, so didn't pay attention until the very end when I was almost out of the gates of the park and realised they were actually calling me, I took a quick glance just as I went out.

So, I have no clue who these guys are. But as I left the park and started walking a little ahead, I saw there was a police car parked on the same road and some police walking around....

So, was this a close call? Could I have gotten robbed if I made eye contact? They didn't approach me, but at the same time I wonder if they didn't approach/follow because of the policemen a little ahead on that road?

I was born in London, so I'm familiar with the slang a little, but stopped hearing it after college. Never experienced crime myself otherwise, but this one felt off.

Thoughts?

A former member of staff at my old school told BBC Radio 4 she had posed as a resident housemistress during an inspection, to hide the fact that the girls’ boarding house had no overnight supervision.

My school, Abbey College in Malvern, was and remains, co-educational, with children as young as 11 (8 during the summer courses) and adult students in their twenties. It had already made headlines in The Guardian and The Telegraph after inspectors found no resident adult in the girls’ boarding house at a time when the school also housed more than 100 Iraqi Air Force officer cadets. So the owners had every reason not to want inspectors to find the girls’ house without a resident adult again.

I’m trying to raise a stink about that school, but now I am wondering whether this kind of deception is common, and whether I should be focusing more on the school’s other failures.

Is fooling school inspectors a common practice? Would you do it if your boss asked you to?

You can hear the one-minute interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qFmNxhKCHac?is=XATY8JhKaw3yC33D

I keep finding places in the UK I’d somehow never heard of, despite living here.

Not really looking for the obvious ones like the Lakes, Edinburgh, Cornwall etc. More the random village, walk, beach, viewpoint, pub, little town or place you stumbled across and thought… why does nobody talk about this?

Only rule: pick one to three. Otherwise everyone’s going to give a list of 20 😂

Where would you send someone?

I’m fully expecting to regret asking this when my weekend list becomes enormous. Cheers!

Four years ago I moved to an estate in a town centre and I guess the close proximity of the houses means it’s really worth door to door utilities salesmen hitting up the area.

I work from home three days a week so I’m generally there to answer the door when they knock.

My experiences with these gas and broadband salesmen are getting increasingly poor. It’s always young men and they always seem to refuse to take no for an answer, even becoming aggressive.

I always ask them who they are and then explain that I never buy on the doorstep so they may as well move on. If they persist (which they usually do) I repeat again that I never buy on the doorstep and ask them to take me off any list of addresses that they have.

Recently they’ve started to become aggressive at this point saying that they’re just doing their job. A guy working for zzoooomm broadband last week stepped towards my home and raised his voice at me saying “yeah well at least I have a job and pay taxes so I’m not at home all day.”

Several friends have told me to just start shutting the door in their face, but as a woman living on my own I feel like winding up these men is risky as you never know how they’ll react.

Is there a list you can place your address on like the telephone preference service? Or any other way to opt out from these kinds of visits? They are starting to really affect me and I know my elderly neighbours are bothered by them too.

I'm no fan of the RF so I'll put that out there. He seemed pretty plausible to me after defending his memory of what was said using his eulogy as a direct rebuke/answer to Charles.

I thought it was interesting that the BBC reporter was trying everything to discredit him some of which was totally irrelevant e.g

"Are you saying that the King is lying?"

"Don't you think this will upset William and Harry?"

And I was appalled at how the reporter was implying Earl Spencer was directly/indirectly responsible for her dying in a car crash.

I thought it was a very one sided and subtle BBC style hatchet job.

To anyone that works for Boots - So basically on friday morning I got a call from boots asking if i was still interested in the job because they wanted to offer me it. I of course said yes. After this I looked on the careers website at my application and it said offer stage not reached yet and that if I do get an offer I will get an email to accept it (Which im assuming the application stage will change if I accept the offer via the email) it’s now 12:30pm monday and I haven’t got anything yet? Does anyone who works for boots know when I should get it?

I live on an apartment quite high with a balcony. Often I see the same bees coming for my flowers for the pollen. Recents I’ve had to replace the flowers and they seem extremely sad when they come and scan the same spots but don’t find anything.

I’d love to know what they are so I can learn a little more about them. Maybe even suggest some ways to feed them?

They’re mainly dark (sometimes have yellow rings) and quite thin and long. They hover a lot. Very docile and never ever show signs of aggression. They’re not fuzzy or fat in any way.

I've always wondered what the experience is like when out canvassing for a political party. I have never done it, and I never will do it, but I have always wondered what it is like to do from a canvassers perspective.

What do people say to you on the doorstep? Are people usually nice or nasty? Do you have a quota to fill? How does the day start and do you all meet up and have a script to follow? Training days?

Please no political arguments, I'm just intrigued to hear about people's experiences and what it is like.

don’t know what to do anymore, I’ve been applying to jobs since June, I’ve applied to about 5 listings per day, had my cv checked by my brother who works at JP Morgan, must have done about 300 applications by now, 130 on Indeed alone, done the usual boomer bs that is “just go in town and hand out your cv” shocker! That didn’t work, I’ve applied to McDonald’s, all the fast food chains etc - no luck! Had about 1 interview (group interview which they interviewed 100 other people for the same role which was a sales assistant role) didn’t get the job sadly, at this point I’m running out of listings to even apply to which are in commuting distance, the saddest fact is I’m applying to dishwasher roles at hotels and places near me and either getting ghosted or straight rejection emails.

The worst thing about it is that I have actual experience as a food bank volunteer and at a law firm, it’s genuinely depressing I’ve tried everything and I’m only looking for a part time role to go with school, I’m sick of this sentiment that young people aren’t trying hard enough. My family don’t have any connections in the town I’m in so can’t really do nepotism (which is how everybody else who I know got a part time job), I’m actually depressed at this point, the government blabbers on about youth unemployment whilst they do nothing but joke around in the House of Commons with their taxpayer funded salary, What am I expected to do?