Starmer's defining trait is cowardice disguised as prudence.

"Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out" z80.timholyoake.uk/the-nine-bil... #Fortran #SciFi #RetroComputing

Ottery St Mary morning #Devon

Limit jury trials. Limit rights to protest and jail people for just talking about protesting. Arrest peaceful protestors as "terrorists". ID Cards. Plaster the country in CCTV and add facial recognition. When I was growing up during the Cold War, those were the sort of things the bad guys did.

Brexit: the trillion pound ‘mistake’ The recent NBER report suggests the Treasury’s 2016 analysis – slammed by Brexiters as a ‘hoax’– actually understated the impact of Brexit By Anthony Robinson @anthonybylines.bsky.social

What’s the point of Keir Starmer employing an economics advisor if he ignores her on the biggest economic issue of the day?

Some six months ago, I was playing the lovely Sharp MZ-700 adventure game Ropoko and writing a walkthrough. I never managed to complete it, but I just now noticed that it's been released for Steam & Switch. So I figured my partial walkthrough would be useful to new players.

Feeling confident! #PicoMZ #Sharp #MZ700 #RetroComputing

A question of perspective. Applies to children, too.

The extraordinary Ernie Wise - born 100 years ago today - seen here celebrating on 1 January 1985 after just having made the first ever mobile phone call in the UK. 'Ring in the new year'. See what they did there?

This Government has chosen to reject the single biggest thing it could do to turbocharge economic growth and repair the £90 billion Brexit black hole. For millions of people struggling with higher bills this was a botched budget.

I wish I was surprised. Buried in this Budget is a plan to slash the Digital Services Tax, giving a multi-billion tax cut to US tech giants and the likes of Elon Musk. That's right, cutting taxes for the world's richest man while hiking them for millions of hard-working Brits.

Utter madness. The project maintainers must've been pulling their hair out. So-called AI has very real costs that go far beyond the planet burning datacentres needed to run them.

Today the Government had the opportunity to end the cost of living crisis, get Britain growing again and repair the £90bn Brexit black hole - by fixing our trade with Europe. It didn't.

This was a botched Budget by a Chancellor who’s diagnosed the disease but won’t administer the cure. Despite promises to cut the cost of living and grow the economy, the Government still refuses to fix our trade relationship with Europe and repair the £90bn Brexit black hole.

Brexit has cost each and every one of us £3,700 a year. But instead of solving the problem, Labour are using Brexit as an excuse to raise your taxes. My message ahead of the Budget: Stop blaming Brexit and start fixing it!

Who remembers that Brexit campaign slogan from 2016? 🤔

Remember when they said Brexit would save us £350m a week? Well, it has actually cost us £250m a day this year. And that goes a long way to explaining why our taxes are high why productivity low. It’s never been clearer that the key to growth is fixing our relationship with Europe.

Because people *still* don’t understand that overseas students subsidise home students. This is punishing everyone involved.

The UK is losing up to £250m a day in lost tax revenue due to the economic impact of Brexit, House of Commons Library analysis for the Lib Dems suggests. Brexit has blown a "black hole of [up to] £90 billion a year in the public finances" the party says. Even under lower estimates the hit is ~£65bn

Desire path, Ottery St Mary.

Getting there (if only I could find my soldering iron). New blog post from me - Pico MZ-700 progress. z80.timholyoake.uk/pico-mz-700-... #RetroComputing #Sharp #Pico

The worst possible Government at the worst possible time. All those lives lost, all those lives changed forever. Boris Johnson was not fit to be PM and the Conservatives should never be let anywhere near Government ever again.

Getting there (if only I could find my soldering iron). New blog post from me - Pico MZ-700 progress. z80.timholyoake.uk/pico-mz-700-... #RetroComputing #Sharp #Pico

Today’s awesome arrival, a huge lot of MZ tapes including some original Sharp User’s Club library tapes! I wonder what delights I’m going to find in this lot! :)

The #MZ700 emulation for the #Pico MZ is nearly finished! Documentation to write and update, plus testing on #RC2014 cards and #Pico2 hardware left to do. Hoping to have version 3.0.0 released by the end of the month. #RetroComputing

Today I met a woman who had come to live in Britain more than 30 years ago. She told me how her sons, now in their 40s, who had lived in Britain since they were 10 were worried about being made to leave the country. Reform, and the Labour government who pander to them, should be ashamed.

A great blog post and a salient reminder to me as to why I stick to doing software only rather than trying to design hardware!

You can't get more Labour than compulsory voluntary work.

they gleefully announce the llm solves a difficult problem and then you find out...they use it to respond to an email, format some python, arrange two meetings in an 8 hour period. we are going to let these people burn the planet because we are too nice to tell them they sound stupid.

Hopefully the BBC's response will be along the lines of "We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram".

"Research released this month by economists at the Bank of England, the Bundesbank, King’s College London and the universities of Stanford and Nottingham underscored the economic hit from leaving the EU. Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6-8%" on.ft.com/4p1NoHv

Whenever Reform are in control, their first instinct is to go after the most vulnerable. If this is what happens when they run a council, just imagine them running the country.

Finally: "PET Invaders" - Public Beta! My personal take on Space Invaders for the Commodre PET. Link to online-emulation: masswerk.at/pet/prgs/#pe... Beta testers and feedback welcome! #commodore #petscii #mos6502

Ottery St Mary evening #Devon #DevonLife

Sunday afternoon benchmarking session. A real MZ-700 vs my emulator. The emulator is currently 20% or so too fast when running on a 220MHz Pi Pico. Should be easy enough to slow down!! #RetroComputing #PicoMZ #Sharp #MZ700

I seem to be getting close to having a reasonable #M700 #emulator running. There are some oddities that I need to look into (e.g. keyboard handling for monitor in ROM seems different to monitor in RAM) and I need to retrieve my real MZ-700 to check various timings. #RetroComputing

Hi Lisa Nandy! I’m a BAFTA winner from a small town. Instead of asinine questions like this, why not tell us how we can continue to make a living in the eviscerated creative sector over which you notionally preside?

Liberal D66 party set to win Dutch parliamentary elections, exit poll suggests on.ft.com/47fiLIJ

Totally stunned that the Pico MZ-80K won the "general" category in last year's #RetroChallenge! Thank you to everyone who voted for me, followed the project, etc. etc. etc. #RetroComputing www.retrochallenge.org/2025/10/rc20...

Top of the Pops (26th October 1978). Elvis Costello and the Attractions kick things off with 'Radio Radio'.

I've got an original and challenging opinion that you won't here anywhere else. It's that this is the best film adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

It’s outrageous that many clinically vulnerable people, including those who have motor neurone disease, are not eligible for free COVID-19 booster jabs this autumn. Last week, I spoke with BBC Radio Surrey and wrote to the Health Secretary about this.

Please sign the petition to fund free COVID boosters for all vulnerable people this year: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

The Tories can shout at me all they like, but the truth is their Brexit deal it is hurting our country and Labour won’t do anything about it. Today I urged the Prime Minister to actually fix it.

Looking forward to witnessing this madness for the first time!

You may have heard about UK ministers' plan to double to 10 years the time needed to reached settled status in the UK. But did you realise that it threatened access to pensions for the 180,000 people who came from Hong Kong on the UK government's visa scheme? My dispatch: www.ft.com/content/8b91...

New from me: A Pico MZ-700 ? z80.timholyoake.uk/a-pico-mz-700/ #RetroComputing #Sharp #MZ700

Ottery St Mary morning

People who have come to the United Kingdom legally, played by the rules and made it their home do not need to “go home”. This is their home. I've written to Kemi Badenoch to give her the chance to reject these divisive calls from her frontbencher Katie Lam.