Best Of

"Farage: Ban second home owners from buying new-builds in beauty spots"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/second-homes/farage-only-locals-allowed-buy-houses-second-home-hotspots

Unless it is bought in a partner's name.

I would prohibit the purchase of any new home as a second home

Well you've just destroyed the profit of builders and so reduced the number of new homes being built.

There are parts of the country where this experiment has already been run, it's not a pretty end result...

To be fair in Wales the council tax uplift between 150% - 300% is having an effect with Estate Agents telling me many second homes are coming into the market

Indeed, our daughter following her recent divorce has just bought one

The Tories had a conference? Who knew?

I did, and I bothered to follow it. Especially with us both coming from areas of Scotland that have been devastated by poor SNP governance for years and now Labour policies that have really affected our areas too?! I am sorry, but that kind of cheap dig really gets me when I think of the fact that the only real effective opposition to the SNP & SGreens has been the Scottish Conservatives!! Thank god for Scottish Conservatives and the last Conservative government at Westminster when it came to protecting women's rights. And also after just a few days ago when Douglas Ross's Right to Recovery bill all about promoting wider drug rehabilatation was voted down by the SNP and SGreens in Holyrood and in the country with the biggest drug deaths, particularly in Dundee!

Also coming from the North East of Scotland, I remain really angry at the impact of the SNP, SGreens and now the Labour Government at Westminster's devasting impact on the North Sea Gas and Oil Industry here. So your flippant lads together comment really jarred with someone else who actually lives in the North East of Scotland right now! I am fed up watching the only Opposition party in Scotland knocking its head against a brick wall and getting dismissed in this way by a long time dismissive snobbish group on here! When I arrived on this site twenty years ago, I was out loud and a proud female Scottish Conservative and I remain so thanks to their bloody hard work protecting my rights as a biological woman here in Scotland!!

So Kemi, you go girl!

Morning! I encountered a very loyal Andrew Bowie voter in Banchory, because the "Tories protect my industry". We discussed the large numbers of job losses and the huge Tory flip flops on energy and Net Zero. He was resolute.

Point is, the Tories can hardly claim to have been stalwart defenders of an industry they have run down. And not just energy, as I pointed out earlier the local farmers are fuming at both their treatment by the party and by the rank arrogance of Bowie et al assuming their vote remains secure...

Your weakness on these policy issues in the North East of Scotland is showing, I have unlike you lived in the North East of Scotland and have been married to someone who has worked in the Oil and Gas industry here for 40 years, also now spent 20 years living in a rural area where many of our friends are farmers. There is a good reason why Andrew Bowie held onto his seat at the last GE and the fact he knows his constiuency both rural and industrial in Aberdeenshire and in Aberdeen helped a lot. So don't knock a bloody good local MP what ever his party colours!

There's certainly more chance of Andrew Bowie holding onto his seat than any other Tory in Scotland at present. Braemar and Royal Deeside (along with parts of Scottish Borders) are less vulnerable to the Ref UK surge

Charts of North Sea oil and gas production tell a national story. Combine these with windfalls from successive privatisations, the demographic gifts of a historically low dependency ratio, and the reduced need for defence spending from 1991 onwards, and it’s no wonder governments of the era were able to preside over boom times. In fact it’s a puzzle why we didn’t do even better in the 80s and 90s.

And since then we've had the financial crash, Brexit, the Covid pandemic, and now Trump2. Switch the political midgets of today for the giants of yesteryear, and vice versa, and how much difference would it really make or have made? You'd like to think plenty but I'm not so sure. It's an increasingly strong belief of mine that the ability of our politicians to create radical change in any sort of electoral timescale is skewed heavily to the negative variety. By which I mean they can't (quickly enough so you'd notice) make things much better but they can make things a whole lot worse. This is the number one reason to avoid populists of all stripes. Anyone promising speedy transformation of the country as a consequence of them being elected should on no account be elected.

This. Oh yes indeed.

Common ground between hard left social democrat and one nation tory 🙂

JD Vance calls Canterbury Cathedral exhibit 'ugly'
...
Mr Vance said: "It is weird to me that these people don't see the irony of honoring 'marginalized communities' by making a beautiful historical building really ugly."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly64e0v34jo

Trendy vicar.

He is actually right though, it looks absolutely hideous. Shockingly inappropriate and utterly without any feeling for the building.

I mean, I don't know that somebody who has a face like a smacked arse and the soul of a Mafia Don is in a position to lecture. But he does, for once, have a point.

JD Vance sounds quite like Mr Bufton-Tufton mowing his lawn in Tunbridge Wells on a Saturday afternoon, harrumphing in time to the Flymo. But I don't think he likes his Christianity escaping from the small box where he keeps it, and asking him awkward questions; we've seen that before with him. (Side note: that's a human characteristic, we all do it, and we all need challenging sometimes.)

I think it's a fascinating exhibit. I'm in that part of Kent for a few days in December, and I'll go and have a look. A cathedral is a place where it is appropriate to ask questions about God, and cathedrals are - and always have been - buildings for everyone, so I think it's a great idea to poke some assumptions. Some people will huff and puff, and others will have think a bit more deeply.

It was Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey who famously said "The duty of the church is to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable", which is hackneyed but a good aphorism.

We seem quite happy with Sheela-na-gigs, and this is far less provocative than those. I'd frame it far more as a Cathedral doing what cathedrals have always done.

Is this one of those exhibitions that tours round most cathedrals? Is each instance unique? How do they get the paint/medium off the stone?

(Addressed to anyone who knows, not to you specifically.)

I wonder how they'd feel if some unauthorised artist plastered graffiti on the outside walls!

The cathedral's page about it is here, but does not explain afaics:
https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/news/posts/delight-and-displeasure-art-installation-s-questions-to-god-divide-public-opinion/

I'd guess that it will be some peelable surface - which could be paint on or stick on.

I have used paint-on protection to pre-protect walls against graffiti (so you can just hose it all off and repaint to protect for next time), or once to waterproof a shower set against a stone house wall.

Amuses me that the link shows the explanation about the exhibition directly underneath their welcome to Sarah Mullaly, rather giving the impression that the exhibition is to welcome her.

Be interesting to hear if the exhibition does go on tour. Some of the exhibitions that tour cathedrals are amazing. I remember one about the moon.

FPT - I was startled to see in my Aeroplane Monthly that Rochester Cathedral recently put on show a locally made Shorts floatplane, showcasing the plane restoration volunteers' efforts and more generally engineering in the area (evidently from a local historical but also educational perspective with family activities, which usually means stuff for children).

https://www.rochestercathedral.org/floatplane

They thereby helped out the plane restorers by giving them a display venue to make their work known. Which is nice.

More generally a key point about temporary exhibitions is that they will not be there for long. Another point is that they exist to do different things, sometimes experimental. So grumping about them is pointless, especially if it is to do with the Christian message anyway.

I have some great photos of my son under the Earth at Ely Cathederal a few years back. I'm unsure what that had to do with the Christian message.

Likewise, Chester Cathedral has, for the past few years, had a large model railway in it for a few weeks in the summer. Again, this seems more to do with pulling in the punters than it does religion (although the link between vicars and railways are much stronger than just Rev Awdry).

I'm not a fan of graffiti. But it'll be temporary, and won't have damaged the cathedral's fabric. Sometimes people should just shrug and say "That's not for me".

It’s about finding ways to connect with people and bring them into a situation where they can hear the Christian message.

If only a handful of people who come to see the railway exhibition are inspired to ask why people spent so much time and effort building the cathedral and progress from that to faith it will have been worthwhile

I'm going to add a further perspective there. The first para is imo a bit too "them" and "us" - Church of England ecclesiology and theology is broader.

It is more inclusive, and the boundaries are blurred, and recognises on the one hand that people who are not "members" also have some orientation to spirituality, or the divine, or the numinous (choose your word), or the inspired by choral music, and welcome that. There are ancient and modern traditions (whether catholic, celtic, Orthodox, Benedictine, or others) which are very different to a transactional "I was saved" followed by a rationalistic religiosity. Close contact with many traditions is one of the advantages of the CofE.

On the other hand, the cathedral is part of the community, and the building is part of the town, looked after by the Cathedral Authorities, so model railways and so on are excellent. Ask nicely, and the choir will choose an appropriate song.

Cathedrals have always been at the centre of both sacred and secular (but not usually profane *) events, and have spent the last half century or more recovering that position. The "great unwashed" are welcome because

* Though from some particular perspectives some things may be perceived as profane. as the Celebration of the Car held in Coventry Cathedral some years ago by people with a green emphasis, or "Greens" seeing the opportunity for a PR stunt (there was a naked protest 'in the spirit of Lady Godiva').

That I think is the tenor of the attitude of the Telegraph coverage - Canterbury Cathedral is supposed to belong to "us" cultural conservatives (see Restore Trust), whilst Canterbury Cathedral would perhaps look more at the NT stories of JC being in company with tax collectors and other ne'er do wells, so having a responsibility to dialogue with all. That's also often the tenor of "Rave in the Nave" type events.

Good afternoon

Struggling today after covid and flu vaccinations yesterday but on @MoonRabbit two points I would say the following

Climate change is happening as recognised by Badenoch but my instinct is that any law that creates high energy prices and hits the poorest is bad law

The fact these laws have been signed by other countries does not make them good law and a responsible new look is welcome

As far as conservative immigration policy is concerned this is it as stated at the conference

It is rather a long read but largely makes sense

https://www.conservatives.com/news/conservatives-introduce-the-deportation-bill

Hi BigG - I had a very rough 24 hours after my flu and covid vaccination double whammy. Started 13 h after the jabs and wasn't really happy until 48 h. Stick with it, its worth the short dose of pain.

The rise in sea temperatures is largely due to the banning of sulphur in maritime fuels. This is widely recognised - part of Ed's crazy carbon capture scheme (a part that I support) is 'cloud brightening', to counteract the effects of this fuel change on the skies over the sea.

@MoonRabbit's attempt to use the rise in sea temperatures to defend Net Zero (which will do absolutely nothing to cool the seas), is fundamentally dishonest - something sadly very common in the Net Zero lobby.

Talking of fundamentally dishonest, here’s a global SSTA history from the 19th century to now.



The banning of marine sulphates occurred in 2020. It’s clearly had a very impressive retrospective effect on temperatures since 1900.

1900-2020 being of course a period during which marine sulphate emissions increased exponentially. Yet still the oceans warmed. Weird, eh! I wonder what on earth might have caused that?

I don't doubt the trend, but I do have some scepticism about data sets that proclaim accuracy back to the 1850s for this sort of data, especially globally.

If only the 19th Century had a global power stationing scientists all around the world. Oh wait, it did – Britain.

Indeed we did. They were not necessarily out at sea all the time measuring sea temperatures to within a fraction of a degree. And the people that were measuring water temperatures - e.g. steamships via the bucket method - were not interested in fractions of a degree. Or even to the nearest degree.

I am not saying that water temperatures are not increasing. I just wish there was some realism about historic data in this sort of context.

This is a *fascinating* study on the accuracy of bucket sampling.
https://os.copernicus.org/articles/9/683/2013/os-9-683-2013.pdf

From the conclusion:
"Accurate temperatures can be obtained with either the bucket or intake method. However, measurements cannot be expected to be of high accuracy or precision when obtained by untrained sailors using poorly-calibrated, low-resolution thermometers"

Does it matter exactly what the temperatures are? Surely it's the trend which matters?

Yes and no. The trend does indeed matter; but the trend can be obscured if the data is obtained by a different, more accurate method. That link's quite interesting for showing the way that buckets (including different bucket types) and engine intake temperatures can vary - and that's in a modernish context.

Again, I'm not saying ocean temperatures are not rising.

Partly it's a question of when people formed their ideas on all this climate stuff.

Until... 2000 or so? it was just about possible to squint at the data and say "variations, cycles, uncertainty" and conclude that there might not be a problem. (It was a stretch, but not an impossible one).

Add the points since then and that is infinitely less credible. Even if sulfate reduction has given a bit more of an uptick in the last few years.

Another thing. The Bjørn Lomborg thesis boiled down to the idea that the world should get richer, so it could afford to deal with global warming. Sort of arguable then, but less so now.

I've always been slightly sceptical, if only because of the political aspects that many (not all) 'green' lobbyists force into their arguments. But I'm intensely relaxed about it all now, as I see it as a great opportunity for the world. Yes, green policies cost money, but I reckon in the long run it may well not just improve the environment, but provide massive economic improvements. It may also make the world more stable.

It's a great opportunity.

That's the great point, as exemplified in a cartoon sometime ago. "What if we were all wrong about Global Warming/Climate and we ended up with a clean, sustainable planet, not pollution, renewable power etc for nothing".

I have huge issues with a very small number of climate scientists, who I am sure are not representative of the mass. An unwillingness to share data is a red flag. An extremely spiky attitude to legitimate criticism from other scientists is a red flag. And a failure to correct issues with data is a red flag.

I think also that what a lot of people get het up about is actually activism portrayed as science. Then there is the media's need to use the most extreme cases to get media attention.

And lastly there are some communists who have adopted the guise of greenery to try to achieve their political ends - the watermelon approach.