Best Of

Anyone wondering why Britain has fallen behind the world in SMRs may wish to consider the questions asked in the "Great British Nuclear SMR competition".

Bidders are asked to:

‘Tackle workforce inequality across characteristics such as gender, ethnic diversity, race, religious belief, sexual orientation, physical ability and marital status, and achieve 50 per cent gender balance by 2030 for the workforce employed on this TP Contract within the Contractor and its supply chain.’

Total gender parity is required not only within the bidder's own workforce but that of their suppliers.

Not only that:

At one point, the full question asks about employing ‘people seeking asylum’. This is a strange and, fundamentally, unachievable request: British law bans asylum seekers from working.

The asylum seeker requirement is straightforwardly impossible.

This shitshow has cost £22million so far.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-britain-trying-to-make-our-nuclear-reactors-woke/

Even PB's wokiest of wokesters must surely acknowledge that this shit needs to be removed from British public life.

Yeah, we did this earlier in the week and the conclusion was, rightly, it was the Tories fault. Will Sir Drear change it. Don’t put your mortgage on it.

I worked for a few companies that bid for public contracts. It was very time consuming and, consequently, alot of cost to bear when the work isn’t guaranteed.

If bidding stays this onerous why bother bidding ?

Red tape long predates 'woke'.
This is just more of the same problem that's afflicted government since forever.

'far superior D'Hondt system'?!?

Fuck the fuck off. Right off. D'Hondt is possibly the worst electoral system ever devised.

It creates arbitrary cliff-edges and almost always relies on fixed lists that can make it impossible to elect a candidate you like without also electing one you don't like, and the vote for the one you like risks electing the one you don't like but not the one you like!

Awful, awful, horrible manky system! It completely devalues the individual candidate; sacrificed upon the altar of party machine and pisses and shits upon all that is good about politics.

(And it's not even particularly proportional - in the last UK Euro-elections, the LibDems got twice as many votes as the Tories but four times as many seats under D'Hondt.)

I like Milei a lot, but I'd like him even more if he spared the poor Argentinians the abject nonsense of this apology for an electoral system.

STV is better still, but D'Hondt is better than FPTP in a multiparty system, particularly if there is an open Primary to set the order of candidates. I think this is the case in Argentina normally, but not this time for some reason. D'Hondt works best if there are larger constituencies, so more proportional in BA region than the smaller provinces.

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Rachel Reeves set to announce a Mansion Tax in the Budget and a charge of 1% on the value of all properties worth over £2 million
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15228277/Mervyn-King-Rachel-Reeves-incoherent-mansion-tax.html

The Government is also considering raising the top rate of income tax, with the additional rate possibly rising from 45p in the £ back to 50p as it was when Brown left office in 2010 or the threshold for the additional rate being reduced to £110k

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tax-budget-income-rachel-reeves-chancellor-b2847002.html

How do they intend to value houses to determine which are worth more than £2m?

My Dad bought a substantial house in London with his second wife in 1997 for £325k. The house next door sold for £1.88m in 2022, so my Dad's house could be worth £2m (but it probably isn't because it's not in as good internal condition, though that might not matter, depending on the method of valuation).

I reckon a £20k pa tax would actually cause him to seriously consider downsizing.

The proposal is a tax on the proportion of value above £2m, not the entire value.

That sounds like a now-classical Rachel Reeves de-minimus failure of making almost zero difference, whilst causing as much political self-damage as possible.

The Treasury Civil Servant said: "Bend Over, Bend Over", so RR Bent Over and ...

It would be far easier to roll it into a flat % of Value Council Tax, pump a little bit less extra money in to Councils from central funds, and make a move to restoring Stamp Duty to a lower level (say a reduction by 25-50%).

If a bit more is required, then put a 50p a day levy on supermarket and out of town centre car parking spaces, to incentivise their efficient use, increasing to £1 next year. That's perhaps £1-3 billion of low-hanging fruit, and would tip the balance towards town centres. There's a defensible case to hypothecate such finds to active travel and accessible public transport, as that would over time reduce the need for such spaces.

Since you can’t park in many town centres, due to restricted parking and high charges, this just raises the game. For online shopping.

In my town centre it is 30 or 60 minutes free in the most central Council owned car parks, which seems quite reasonable. That is a good balance between "pop in" and "take up too much time in the short stay". There are longer-stay spots around if required.

60 minutes would barely allow my wife to do a first sweep through one shop.

And then people wonder at the collapse on town shopping.

Or you can have 2 or 3 hours in Asda or Morrisons, or be 500m out and walk for unlimited.

I think that's a good setup - in the denser areas keep them moving.

Really, all a modest levy on out of town would be is a rebalancing, and some of the revenue could be used for town centre improvements or to reduce costs there.

My local shopping out of town centre has a turnover of £200 per day for each of their approx 2250 parking spaces (£150m per annum, around 5m visitors). A levy of of £1 per day is a rounding error, but would raise 800k per annum.

It's an ideal revenue stream - a modest impact, easy to collect, hard to avoid.

Ah yes, the belief that you can “just take some money and no one will notice or be affected”

I’ll just chuck some cattle grids on some footpaths. No-one will notice, eh?

@atrupar.com‬

Gallego on what the next Democratic president should do about Trump's ballroom: "To really mess with him, just name it the Barack Obama Ballroom, and I think that will take care of half the problem."

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3m444lbq3ma2t

I was watching Rick Wilson, and he said on the afternoon of the 20th January (in whatever year the next Dem President is elected) both the Epstein Ballroom and the (Rose) beer garden must be smashed and the debris tipped into the sea to prevent the spoil becoming a Maga shrine. He has even offered to help out destroying the Rose Garden plinth with his jack hammer.

Bessent is on TV right now saying maybe the East Wing had to be destroyed because it had asbestos in it

The ballroom needs to be destroyed because it had Trump in it

It probably did, but the whole point about asbestos is it's more or less harmless as long as you leave it where it is.

It only becomes dangerous if you smash it up, which would only happen if some useless knob end decided on a whim to demolish the building it was...oh dear.

Further, it would almost certainly be white asbestos. Which is about as bad for you as fibre glass fibres from lagging.

That is, both will give you lung cancer if you spend lots of time chopping it up and breathing the resultant airborne micro-fibres.

But if you leave them alone, they won’t.

So kids, don’t eat the lagging in the loft.

You actually don't need much of it. For my dad it was being supervising architect on one 6 week project (ie visiting for a short time once a day or so) which had asbestos insulation on ducting in around 1971 that got him with asbestosis in 2009. We analysed his career with the medics and the compensation scheme, and that was all we could find.

(The occurrence of lung injuries around here is why I think the Ref UK "open up the mines" proposals will not persuade. Here many have a family member or two who died from some industrial disease.)

@atrupar.com‬

Gallego on what the next Democratic president should do about Trump's ballroom: "To really mess with him, just name it the Barack Obama Ballroom, and I think that will take care of half the problem."

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3m444lbq3ma2t

I was watching Rick Wilson, and he said on the afternoon of the 20th January (in whatever year the next Dem President is elected) both the Epstein Ballroom and the (Rose) beer garden must be smashed and the debris tipped into the sea to prevent the spoil becoming a Maga shrine. He has even offered to help out destroying the Rose Garden plinth with his jack hammer.

Bessent is on TV right now saying maybe the East Wing had to be destroyed because it had asbestos in it

The ballroom needs to be destroyed because it had Trump in it

It probably did, but the whole point about asbestos is it's more or less harmless as long as you leave it where it is.

It only becomes dangerous if you smash it up, which would only happen if some useless knob end decided on a whim to demolish the building it was...oh dear.

Further, it would almost certainly be white asbestos. Which is about as bad for you as fibre glass fibres from lagging.

That is, both will give you lung cancer if you spend lots of time chopping it up and breathing the resultant airborne micro-fibres.

But if you leave them alone, they won’t.

So kids, don’t eat the lagging in the loft.

You actually don't need much of it. For my dad it was being supervising architect on one 6 week project (ie visiting for a short time once a day or so) which had asbestos insulation on ducting in around 1971 that got him with asbestosis in 2009. We analysed his career with the medics and the compensation scheme, and that was all we could find.

(The occurrence of lung injuries around here is why I think the Ref UK "open up the mines" proposals will not persuade. Here many have a family member or two who died from some industrial disease.)

My relative who runs a building business insists on proper protective gear for lagging, woodwork and painting. Real painting for woodwork involves multiple coats and sanding - lots of fine dust.

Masks are mandatory, disposable noddy suits for high dust confined spaces etc etc.

Some people have been working for him (on and off) for 20 years. You can easily tell them apart from the new guys. The old timers don’t have a 40-a-day-smokers cough.

Anyone wondering why Britain has fallen behind the world in SMRs may wish to consider the questions asked in the "Great British Nuclear SMR competition".

Bidders are asked to:

‘Tackle workforce inequality across characteristics such as gender, ethnic diversity, race, religious belief, sexual orientation, physical ability and marital status, and achieve 50 per cent gender balance by 2030 for the workforce employed on this TP Contract within the Contractor and its supply chain.’

Total gender parity is required not only within the bidder's own workforce but that of their suppliers.

Not only that:

At one point, the full question asks about employing ‘people seeking asylum’. This is a strange and, fundamentally, unachievable request: British law bans asylum seekers from working.

The asylum seeker requirement is straightforwardly impossible.

This shitshow has cost £22million so far.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-britain-trying-to-make-our-nuclear-reactors-woke/

Even PB's wokiest of wokesters must surely acknowledge that this shit needs to be removed from British public life.

This is a competition started in 2023 - when the Tories were in power

With the requirements inequality questions based on a 2012 law - again when the Tories were in power.

Now the requirements aren't great but Labour really isn't at fault her although once again you are trying to hint that they are the proble,..

Was this really the limit of Sunak's ambition ?
Why did he even bother.

Rishi Sunak to the Times: "Clearly, I miss the levers of power. I’m proud I brought in the smoking ban for the young. I miss playing cricket in the garden with the England cricket team and the staff. But not much else."
https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1982114041196609600

It was a nice interview piece but I thought that too about that bit. I'd have thought he'd be proud of steadying the ship after Truss pointed it at the rocks.

I suspect history will turn out to look more favourably on Sunak than it will on Truss, Johnson, May and Cameron.

Sunak screwed up HS2 which is going to have long term economic impact.

I suspect he won't be looked as favourably as Brown, Blair or Major..

Put those two together, and you get something approaching a truth. Top of the second division is still second division. (And I suspect that May's failure will be regarded with more sympathy in years to come, whereas Cameron and Sunak's reputations have a way to fall yet.)

Incidentally, isn't it still a bit early for the public to be interested in Rishi's wisdom on public affairs? He did fail really badly as PM, after all.

May's biggest mistake was calling and effectively losing that snap election. Most of her travails flowed from that. It was the first Get Brexit Done election but its outcome guaranteed the opposite. You couldn't have come up with a Commons composition more precisely designed for impasse if you sat there with a calculator for a hundred years.

Our 2017 GE was a bit like the Argentinian response to Milei. Vote for change, but the brakes on to prevent it being too radical.

It was 80%+ voting for parties who pledged to implement the referendum result, including the MP fir St Pancras and Holborn, who said it was “a matter of principle” that the result be enacted, who then didn’t two years filibustering to try and get another go at it

Sorry, auto correct

It was 80%+ voting for parties who pledged to implement the referendum result, including the MP for St Pancras and Holborn, who said it was “a matter of principle” that the result be enacted, and then spent two years filibustering to try and get another go at it

Was this really the limit of Sunak's ambition ?
Why did he even bother.

Rishi Sunak to the Times: "Clearly, I miss the levers of power. I’m proud I brought in the smoking ban for the young. I miss playing cricket in the garden with the England cricket team and the staff. But not much else."
https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1982114041196609600

It was a nice interview piece but I thought that too about that bit. I'd have thought he'd be proud of steadying the ship after Truss pointed it at the rocks.

I suspect history will turn out to look more favourably on Sunak than it will on Truss, Johnson, May and Cameron.

Sunak screwed up HS2 which is going to have long term economic impact.

I suspect he won't be looked as favourably as Brown, Blair or Major..

Put those two together, and you get something approaching a truth. Top of the second division is still second division. (And I suspect that May's failure will be regarded with more sympathy in years to come, whereas Cameron and Sunak's reputations have a way to fall yet.)

Incidentally, isn't it still a bit early for the public to be interested in Rishi's wisdom on public affairs? He did fail really badly as PM, after all.

May's biggest mistake was calling and effectively losing that snap election. Most of her travails flowed from that. It was the first Get Brexit Done election but its outcome guaranteed the opposite. You couldn't have come up with a Commons composition more precisely designed for impasse if you sat there with a calculator for a hundred years.

Our 2017 GE was a bit like the Argentinian response to Milei. Vote for change, but the brakes on to prevent it being too radical.

It was 80%+ voting for parties who pledged to implement the referendum result, including the MP fir St Pancras and Holborn, who said it was “a matter of principle” that the result be enacted, who then didn’t two years filibustering to try and get another go at it