Ben Griffiths

@beng
219 Followers
240 Following
649 Posts
Amateur sleuth.

I genuinely believe that we wouldn't have such immoral tax outcomes if we changed income tax banding with a flat rate of tax, a high income levy and a low income allowance. Pretty much no-one understands how income tax works.

Then it would be harder to hide all those salary sacrifice and pension absurdities that allow high rate tax payers to pay ~60p for £1 of stuff while basic rate payers pay ~80p and the lowest paid the full £1.

Sigh. I thought we'd cracked this a long time ago. If you are making a bus app, please make sure it starts with the letter 'b', has a bus for an icon and mentions the area. So, you know, you can find it when it's been installed and it's not confused with other bus apps. "Buses Cambs" would be so much better than "My Bus App". It really would.

"Police visit over mushroom picking alarms forager"

How did they know "mushroom picking alarms foreigner" was my password?

Joking aside, I found this headline so hard to parse, I think because it triggered the cryptic crossword clue circuits in my brain.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2xex0mj3mo.amp

Forager's alarm after police visit over mushroom picking claims - BBC News

Louise Gather says police came to her home after she was accused of picking fungi.

BBC News

Almost ready for season 2 of Severance:

In honour of it, here are my top 3 Severance-themed songs:

3. Save Deleuze Dance for me - The Drifters
2. Deleuze Great American Whale - Lou Reed
1. Deleuze Goodbye - Atomic Kitten

Enjoy your dividuality, folks.

Completely indebted to the person who made me watch season one and then bombarded me with Deleuzian philosophy. You know who you are...

The kids' quiz in the Saturday guardian is always quite dark.
Nuff said
I've been thinking about this question from the Guardian's kids' quiz for 24 hours and now I don't even know what the sky is.

This is heartbreaking. I think these stories should always be shared. In common with everyone who lives daily with acute allergies I still come across people who think they're not serious or just fussy eating. It's better than it was but more to be done obviously.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/09/inquest-to-look-into-13-year-old-girl-who-died-after-drinking-costa-hot-chocolate

Inquest to look into 13-year-old girl who died after drinking Costa hot chocolate

Hannah Jacobs, who had severe allergies to dairy and other foods, believed the drink was made with soya milk

The Guardian
If that's Chalamet's voice in the Dylan biopic trailer, it's a pretty good impression/evocation. One of my old busking songs: "six crooked highwyeeeeeees"
Maths has loads of WWII folklore about counting tanks, or reinforcing airframes or fixing factory output. I don't see much about applying Maths to the asylum process, to NHS wait times, to other public backlogs and I didn't come across any of it during my time in public tech. I wonder why and if that's a fair question.