A wilding

It is a while since I read those Rebus books. But basically it is difficult to discuss clues because of their spoilery nature. Feel free to come back if/when you have worked your way through Reginald Hill.

Personal opinion: classic Reginald Hill - say from Ruling Passion (1973) to Bones and Silence (1990) - is definitely worth trying. Later on he had obviously got a bit bored of police procedurals and his books got weirder and started genre hopping. Apart from anything else, one of his books contains possibly the single most audacious clue in the whole of crime fiction. Even to say which book it is in might be a slight spoiler:

Agreed that the world has a difficult problem that nobody appears to have any solution to at present. However there are plenty of unquestionably factually wrong things being put online these days, so I am inclined to think that, as long as the tech giants do stick to flagging only them, it is the least worst solution for now.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Sorry I can't agree. The internet is now full of extremely plausible and well thought out nonsense deliberately intended to sow confusion and to influence what people and governments do. In many cases lay people cannot judge just how nonsensical some of this stuff really is. So it is important to know where it comes from, so you can know how sceptically you should view it.

Bottom line is that they don't really know, The test and trace system in this country is a real mess. We have counts of positive tests by region and that is pretty much it. We should have been using the time gained from the last lockdown to set up a decent system, but instead the government just threw money at an assortment of favoured outsourcing companies (instead of building up the in house and NHS resources available) and has very little to show from doing so. Personally I am seriously concerned about what is likely to happen now (and with Brexit disruption coming up fast as well), despite being personally at low risk and not worried about my job. Far from untypical anecdote: A friend's daughter was sent home from school with a cough. The family went into isolation for a few days before they could get her tested. The test was negative, so they sent her back to school. A few days after that they got a message to say there had been an error and the test was invalid. So they have pulled her out of school again and are isolating again until they can get her tested again. And how many people would have even bothered to do that?

Sorry, that was mostly written for the benefit of @Ser Scot A Ellison who is interested in that sort of thing. I will cease my thread hijack.

And if you work in IT you will be well aware just how many tears of blood have been sweated because someone knocked something up in Excel that then got more and more complex and embedded into infrastructure too deeply to be wrinkled out.

While I do agree with your basic point, I was told AI would be doing basic coding work in 10 years time when I first started in IT 30+ years ago (4G languages were in then), and in my opinion it is no nearer now than it was then. Obviously computer languages and frameworks have become far more powerful than they were and, helped by Moore's law, we have got very good at AI than can "learn" to solve complex but well defined problems better than any human. However human understanding is required to convert specifications into software, and all attempts to write general purpose specification level languages have failed miserably. There are certain types of problem that the powerful but limited AI we have managed to develop cannot solve, and I personally am convinced that programming is one of them.

Wearing my IT hat: that is truly shocking. "Don't use Excel for proper databases" is pretty much IT development 101.

A fairly serious career actor from an upper class background at one point, perhaps best known as the sidekick sergeant in the TV detective series Lewis. More recently his acting career seems to have dropped off and he has reinvented himself as a right wing pundit railing against wokeness, political correctness, diversity, erosion of British culture, etc.. He is best known for complaining about the political correctness of the appearance of a Sikh character in a British WW1 film, apparently being genuinely unaware of the substantial number of Sikhs who actually did fight for the British. In consequence he is considered a bit of a joke in many circles. and I suppose there is an argument that the best way to deal with people like him is to laugh at them.

I think Bayaz still has the seed (it was last seen in its box under Sulphur's arm at the end of LAoK). As well has Ferro having no brothers, I don't see her having either the social & organisational skills or the patience to be Yuri. Also it appears that with the disappearance of Khalul his Eaters may have become free agents. So Yuri, while obviously an Eater, may perhaps have no particular secret agenda. I agree that Glotka went into retirement way too quietly and is likely up to something. I also agree that Clover must have been in communication with Rikke and probably Shivers, but I don't think that there were any clues to that in TWP. Orso did seem to grow in statue a great deal in this book and is now effectively the actual ruler of the Union, not just a figurehead. I wonder what Bayaz will make of that when he gets back. I did like the way that Leo's and Stour's fates mirrored each other at the end of TWP.

Not to mention the significant number of them who have committed suicide after benefits were withdrawn ...

Though re the skiing, there is one particular ski resort, Ischgl in the Austrian Tyrol, that has been accused of being an initial hotspot for the virus and of handling it very badly. Ischgl does have a reputation as an expensive upmarket resort.

On that note there is an interesting quote from the BBC: And the SNP are now calling for her to resign as an MP.

See my comment above "undermined by his choice of bills to block".