I’m still annoyed that the Daily Star keeps getting credit for this joke.

The joke about Truss’s premiership having the shelf life of a lettuce was from the Economist. And it wasn’t about the 49 days she was PM - it was referencing the seven days or so that Truss was actually in the driving seat, once you take away the mourning period around the Queen’s death when nothing could happen, and then the period after the mini-budget when Jeremy Hunt and the grown-ups took charge.

What the Star did was just riff on the Economist’s joke by setting up a webcam.

But the tribunal heard neither Ms Jones nor the customer was interviewed, no notes were produced by Mrs Smith and no written account of the decision was made.

[…]

The judge said: "The disciplinary process and the dismissal were a sham designed to placate the customer.

What I know about HR is that the employer actually has a tonne of leeway to get rid of people as long as they can demonstrate they have followed a proper process with an audit trail.

The reason this person was fired that’s mentioned in the headline (which I think isn’t unreasonable - of course you can’t call the customer a twat!) is kind of irrelevant here, it’s the fact the employer didn’t run a true process to back up the decision that has got them.

NIMBYs’ excuses are becoming more and more elaborate.

What I find so dumb about naming children Khaleesi is that:

a) It’s not the name of a character anyway. Apparently a lot of casual fans thought Dany’s actual name was Khaleesi because several other characters often addressed her by her title. So there’s a good chance that either these parents are casual fans who nonetheless then misnamed their child after a character, or they are serious fans who named their child in a way that will lead other people to infer her parents were casual fans. (Nothing wrong with being a casual fan, but I’d find it a bit dumb to name my child after an IP that I was only loosely into…)

b) The child is six years old. The final episode aired only five years ago. That means they named their child before Dany’s story had even concluded. George RR Martin had been dropping hints throughout the book series that Dany might or might not end up as a genocidal mad queen like her father (the TV show had laid the groundwork for this less effectively, which is in part why the abruptness of her turn was so unpopular) and I find it bizarre that a parent would name a kid after a character who might still end up as a murderous tyrant

I think about the amount of thought and research that many of my friends have conducted when naming their children (including looking up famous real and fictional people with that name, doing word associations, etc). Then these guys come along and just say ‘fuck it, let’s just call her after that blonde girl off TV, Khaleesi I think?’