Best Of

Only the past few weeks I have eaten goose, pig trotters, pig intestines, chicken gizzards...and they are just the things which were identified.

I had chicken gizzards when visiting a toolmaker in Portugal. Very nice it was too in a lovely tomato sauce.

Stuff like Trotters as well as haslet, pork belly and other foods were cheap foods back 30 or so years. Not these days.

Never had intestines. Sounds unpleasant.

A mates ex wife is Jamaica . She once cooked a dish for us with pigs tails in. Cannot say I enjoyed them but the rest of the dish was banging.

Had chicken feet once when exploring a Chinese dim sum menu ...

Very popular in Taiwan.
My students would frequently gnaw on one during break time.

Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified.
The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.

Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars

There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.

The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.

Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.

If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population

I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.

The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.

It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.

So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?

Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.

Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?

That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.

Very much so.

I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.

Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.

Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:

"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"

So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.

The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic

This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.

But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.

The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.

This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.

Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.

I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”

So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”

A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.

The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.

On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?

The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?

None of it should have come as a surprise

- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.

- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.

Etc.

The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.

As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”

The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.

Range is/was a function of battery cost.

The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.

This is what the graphs showed in 2000.

Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.

2015 called, it wants its fears back.

So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).

Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored

There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.

My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.

I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.

Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.

I would have thought this useless Labour government had more serious issues to deal with too than another act of class war against the supposed rural posh by trying to ban trail hunting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foxhound_packs_of_the_United_Kingdom

If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.

Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?

Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.

So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.

Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.

If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?

Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned

Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.

Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it

Hang on, we are going around in circles here. I assume you are saying the original purpose of the hunt was killing foxes. Well obviously. But if you can get the enjoyment and spectacle without killing foxes then what is the problem.

And if you say to control fox numbers I am likely to punch a wall because:

a) Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes anyway (so what is your point in not moving to drag hunting where you can get the same enjoyment and definitely not kill a fox))
b) Fox hunting did not control numbers. See my post where I showed that.

Some sick fuckers enjoy seeing animals suffer.

That is what fox hunting is all about.

I am surprised that a follower of the teachings of Jesus, such as HY, is on the side of cruelty.

Yes foxes, lovely cuddly things, never rip rabbits and chickens to pieces and kill lambs, certainly not

Getting into the realms of morality here but foxes don't rip apart chickens and kill lambs out of deliberate cruelty.

So why do they? It isn’t for food if you have ever seen a chicken coop after a fox has visited

Because evolution never prepared them for a situation where there would be so much defenseless food.

We are wrong to anthropomorphize their behavior.

More calm analysis in the Telegraph:

"Against this backdrop, thoughtful dissenters will consider whether an early election could be forced by via some kind of general strike blended with a dose of fuel and port blockades."

Britain is dangerously radicalised. Time is short to turn things round
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/29/britain-dangerously-radicalised-time-short-turn-round/

Little dig at the Telegraph there. Sure the article can’t be irrational and is well reasoned.

Clicks on article

Sees it’s Isobel Oakshott.

Clicks off promptly.

Reform know their only chance is to get an early election - within the next 12-18 months - while it is still Labour vs Not Labour and they can look an attractive and viable alternative to the current Government.

After that, it becomes more problematic as one of a number of things might happen (and I stress these are neither in order of likelihood nor desirability).

Labour gets its act together and economy starts improving
The Conservative messaging on the economy in particular starts to resonate
Reform's own internal contradictions start tearing it apart

1 won’t happen. Labours goose is cooked and any replacement for SKS and Reeves will be economically worse.

2 has started already. The Tories would be insane to get rid of her in my view.

3 given his track record I’d say there’s a strong chance of that but if it doesn’t happen then it’s game on.

We're a long way off an election and it's wishful thinking to imagine Labour can't or won't recover. In any case, IF economic perceptions change and people start to "feel" better (even if the truth is otherwise) that will lead a rebound in Labour polling numbers.

As for Badenoch, I've said on here a number of times she has had a good autumn but it's probable the May local elections will be painful and that will be the point of challenge. Don't underestimate the ability of people to do silly things and if 60 Conservative MPs see their seats going to Reform, that might be enough for a successful challenge.

As for Reform, the prospect of victory does wonders for party unity (look at how little trouble the "left" gave Blair after he became leader and started looking popular) so as long as they look the next Government internal dissent will be silenced but as soon as it starts becoming clear they won't win - let's say a winnable by-election isn't won - the knives will be out.

The window of opportunity for Reform isn't going to be open for ever but they are in no position to force an election and encouraging what amounts to civil insurrection to get one is ludicrous. The only way there would be an election is if Labour MPs wanted one and on most polling numbers most won't.

I voted for Labour. I’d love them to recover. If they recover and the economy picks up we all gain. I just cannot see it and I cannot see any replacements being an improvement.

We are a high tax, high welfare, high regulation, low growth economy and although they talk the talk on deregulation they have yet to walk the walk.

Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified.
The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.

Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars

There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.

The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.

Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.

If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population

I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.

The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.

It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.

So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?

Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.

Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?

That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.

Very much so.

I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.

Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.

Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:

"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"

So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.

The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic

This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.

But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.

The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.

This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.

Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.

I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”

So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”

A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.

The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.

On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?

The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?

None of it should have come as a surprise

- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.

- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.

Etc.

The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.

As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”

The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.

Range is/was a function of battery cost.

The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.

This is what the graphs showed in 2000.

Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.

We have decades of data.

Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.

Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.

It is also worth remembering that the efficiency of an ICE drops over time too, as any Top Gear viewer knows

More calm analysis in the Telegraph:

"Against this backdrop, thoughtful dissenters will consider whether an early election could be forced by via some kind of general strike blended with a dose of fuel and port blockades."

Britain is dangerously radicalised. Time is short to turn things round
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/29/britain-dangerously-radicalised-time-short-turn-round/

Little dig at the Telegraph there. Sure the article can’t be irrational and is well reasoned.

Clicks on article

Sees it’s Isobel Oakshott.

Clicks off promptly.

Reform know their only chance is to get an early election - within the next 12-18 months - while it is still Labour vs Not Labour and they can look an attractive and viable alternative to the current Government.

After that, it becomes more problematic as one of a number of things might happen (and I stress these are neither in order of likelihood nor desirability).

Labour gets its act together and economy starts improving
The Conservative messaging on the economy in particular starts to resonate
Reform's own internal contradictions start tearing it apart

1 won’t happen. Labours goose is cooked and any replacement for SKS and Reeves will be economically worse.

2 has started already. The Tories would be insane to get rid of her in my view.

3 given his track record I’d say there’s a strong chance of that but if it doesn’t happen then it’s game on.

We're a long way off an election and it's wishful thinking to imagine Labour can't or won't recover. In any case, IF economic perceptions change and people start to "feel" better (even if the truth is otherwise) that will lead a rebound in Labour polling numbers.

As for Badenoch, I've said on here a number of times she has had a good autumn but it's probable the May local elections will be painful and that will be the point of challenge. Don't underestimate the ability of people to do silly things and if 60 Conservative MPs see their seats going to Reform, that might be enough for a successful challenge.

As for Reform, the prospect of victory does wonders for party unity (look at how little trouble the "left" gave Blair after he became leader and started looking popular) so as long as they look the next Government internal dissent will be silenced but as soon as it starts becoming clear they won't win - let's say a winnable by-election isn't won - the knives will be out.

The window of opportunity for Reform isn't going to be open for ever but they are in no position to force an election and encouraging what amounts to civil insurrection to get one is ludicrous. The only way there would be an election is if Labour MPs wanted one and on most polling numbers most won't.

biggest wobble so far for reform was after they won a by-election and everyone started to pay attention to what their new MP had to say.

They need to get a handle on candidate vetting and selection.

No party seems to do the levels of checks, for candidates (or anything else) that are standard for junior bank employees.

These would be a trawl for convictions, court judgements, Companies House and social media. Done through a number of security companies at a fixed price per head.

Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.

Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.

Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.

Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.

I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building

To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.

Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.

https://thebanklowfell.co.uk/

When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.

You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.

I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.

I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍

Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified.
The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.

Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars

There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.

The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.

Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.

If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population

I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.

The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.

It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.

So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?

Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.

Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?

That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.

Very much so.

I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.

Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.

Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:

"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"

So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.

The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic

The annoying thing is, if we had made the right decisions 10-15 years ago on tidal and nuclear we would now be almost energy independent and could tell Putin to go fuck himself.

Oh, and energy would be a lot cheaper.

But we didn't (with the partial exception of Scotland which I think does produce all of its energy from renewable domestic sources but doesn't have the infrastructure to manage it independently).

We clearly aren't bothered about becoming energy independent. Otherwise,the government wouldn't be funding new-build CCGT and blue hydrogen capacity at the same time as blocking exploration and development of indigenous natural gas reserves.



I don't think I've mentioned this for at least a fortnight, so nice to give it another airing before the year is out.

That's because it's impossible for us to become energy independent with domestic gas generation. There simply isn't enough of it, even if we allowed everything and ploughed billions in subsidy for new development. If you're serious about energy independence, the quickest way to achieve that is to reduce our gas and oil consumption as quickly as possinle.

New CCGT still makes sense makes because we still don't have a solution to those cold and still weeks we get in the winter (like today). We need to couple with that with significantly increased gas storage to tide us over those periods. We'd still need it even if 90% of the time we aren't using any gas at all.

Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.

Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.

Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.

Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.

I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building

To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.

Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.

https://thebanklowfell.co.uk/

When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.

You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.