Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
I'm just wondering where you expect my dad to live to be able to give me my inheritance?
He would obviously be dead once you get your full inheritance
I've been following this random restaurant twitter account since @Leon (I think..) introduced us to it. When I see one of a nice looking restaurant in an interesting sounding place I know nothing about I like to investigate.
I looked up Akunk village, and it's got a cyclopean fort dating from around 5th Century BC. The region it's in, Gegharkunik Province on the Azerbaijan border, seems to have quite a few even older forts, and settlements found in archaeological digs.
The thing I really want to go there and see now, though, is only about a thousand years old. Noratus Cemetery was once used in to defend the region. The 14C army of Tamerlane that was ready to attack, was scared away by the khachkars (Armenian cross stones) that had been adorned with helmets and swords to look like soldiers from a distance.
It’s difficult, but necessary for those wanting change to bring along the general public with them.
As an example, we know that prettty much all of the delegates to the COP26 conference are going to turn up on private or government planes, then tell everyone how we all need to do less flying, swap our cars for electric ones and replace boilers with heat sinks at a cost of thousands - as China and Russia don’t even bother to show up, and the USA and India won’t implement an agreement to any meaningful degree.
The problem is, that for a huge number of people in the country, the cost of transport and energy are significant. Millions of people use old cars to get to minimum-wage jobs working antisocial hours. People advocating petrol being £3 a litre and petrol cars being banned don’t appear to have any understanding of the impact of those policies on the working classes.
Yes, agreed, except for people who combine a green agenda with a redistributive agenda, which is (even if completely thought out) a complex argument to put across.
I have the same problem in my day job. There isn't much dispute that factory farming produces cheap meat and lots of suffering and environmental damage. If we just argue against it on the grounds of the damage, it runs into the perfectly legitimate "but what about the impact on poorer people?" argument. As a non-political charity, we can't say "so combine it with higher universal credit and a wealth tax", so we argue that the answer is to tax meat to reflect the indirect costs but ring-fence the proceeds to subsidise healthy non-meat alternatives and high-welfare meat, so that people on low incomes have healthy affordable options with few downsides. But say the words "meat tax" and people just switch off before you finish the sentence.
That's why Henry Dimbleby's National Food strategy advocates a 30% reduction in meat consumption over 10 years (on sustainability grounds as well as welfare) but explicitly shies away from a meat tax, instead favouring vague things like higher procurement standards, which are a Good Thing but (a) probably won't achieve the 30% cut and (b) also have indirect effects, as it's school and hospital budgets you're hitting.
It's tricky, but of course unhelpful when people like Patrick Moore just throw out random sneers.
Yes, there’s an issue with many in the environmental movement being barely-disguised socialists, which I’m sure you’re happy with but many of us aren’t.
Those on the centre-right see improving technology as the answer, rather than higher taxes and increased state control, and will rally against those who see only increases in the cost of living as proposals put forward.
There’s also the hypocracy angle, with many of the socialist green advocates living very middle-class lifestyles, as we have seen with the road-closing protestors in recent weeks. They appear to have litttle intention to change their own behaviour, in the same way as they expect everyone else to do so. To be flippant, it won’t be long before someone writes a lengthy opinion piece in the Guardian, celebrating the fact that there’s now a much nicer crowd than there used to be on the Ryanair to Florence.
Yeah, well exactly. The climate crisis is real, but a lot of the solutions foisted upon us are actually middle class lifestyle/consumer preferences. The war on cheap petrol cars is nothing more than a class issue, an elite of EV drivers wanting to clear the roads of knackered old cars and white vans and the poor people in them to help them get around more quickly; whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that they are still driving a 1.5 tonne lump of metal with a giant battery to do journeys that largely completely unnecessary, or could be done on public transport, foot or bike.
My neighbour is seriously green, he votes green, recycles everything down to christmas wrapping paper, has never been on a plane as far as I know, goes on holiday camping. His carbon footprint is less than most people, but they are still a two car family (8 year old dacia sandero and a diesel van). Necessary in both cases to get to work - they could in one case switch to an ebike but the roads are too dangerous for cycling.
Sorry you're hopelessly mistaken about electric cars. Think about the first mobile phones, internet charges when new, almost all technology when it first comes out is expensive, not that feature rich and not 100% reliable. Adoption of new technologies follows an 'S' curve as more people buy into it. We are on the exponential rise part of the 'S' curve as far as electric cars are concerned and price parity of new cars is not far off. Given all the other advantages of electric cars including cost of ownership and fewer things to go wrong, it won't be long before sales of ICE cars start dipping (maybe that's already happening). As night follows day, new electric cars will become older and cheaper and available on the 2nd hand car market. We aren't there yet, so my 'new' car is a 6 year old Golf GTE which only does 28 miles on electricity, but that already means I use hardly any petrol and had no issues with the recent fuel availability problems. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/rising-speed-technological-adoption/
If you only need a 28 mile car do you really need a car at all?
Electric cars have 95% of the ecological disadvantages of ice - made of steel, need tarmac to run on, use up resources, difficult to dispose of. And I understand are so heavy you can't jack them up to change a wheel. They are feelgood toys. The future is localism and public transport.
Ok, let's unpack that a bit. I charge my car overnight (4 hours using 1/3 cost electricity) drive my daughter to work in the morning 32 miles (28 electric and 4 petrol), put it on charge when I get home and pick her up in the evening 32 miles (28 electric and 4 petrol). Because it's a hybrid even the 4 miles on petrol recovers some of the energy from braking. If I needed to drive further I could, so no range anxiety. Any local trips I make during the day are fully or mostly on electric depending on the when I go out. Electric cars and ICE cars both need to be manufactured, that's true, but the running costs and cost to the environment are nowhere near the 95% of ICE cars you claim. Localism and public transport are good, but for example on public transport it would take my daughter over 2 hours to get the 16 miles from home to her work and over 2 hours back.
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
I'm just wondering where you expect my dad to live to be able to give me my inheritance?
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
I don't know what world you live in HYUFD but my inheritance from my grandparents was: Nil, Nil, £500, £500.
For my children it is/will be Nil, Nil, £1000 and sometime in the future possibly £5000.
You are well over 60 and in your youth most grandparents rented they did not own, now the vast majority of grandparents own properties and have savings some of which will go to their children. That inheritance will then filter down to their grandchildren too when their children die in turn
@HYUFD 's Tory party flagship policy: Don't have grandparents with assets? Fuck you, here's some tax rises.
As I have posted below we are 33rd out of 37 OECD countries in terms of property taxes competitiveness now, ie we have much higher property taxes already than the OECD average.
By contrast we had relatively lower personal taxes at only 23rd out of 37 and even after the NI rise will be only 31st and in corporation taxes we are above average at 18th (11th with the super deduction for capital investment). So if anything we have more room to shift from property taxes to corporation taxes, given we have higher than average taxes on the former but lower than average taxes on the latter.
Plus most people have grandparents with assets now.
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do Britons want to see the return of COVID-19 restrictions?
Compulsory face masks in shops/on public transport: 76% Govt advice to work from home where possible: 69% Vaccine passports for large events: 69% Pubs/restaurants closed: 22% Schools closed: 19%
Translates as 'restrictions on other people' with a middle class side of 'I want the same money for doing less work and fewer hours'.
Does it? You feel that middle-class respondents never go shopping or attend large events, and cheat on working hours by doing it from home? It's a view. In the middle-class working environments that I'm familiar with (IT, charities, medical research, Parliament), you're measured by results anyway - "but I was at the keyboard all day" wouldn't be an excuse if you failed to deliver the goods, and conversely if you deliver the goods who cares if you take teabreaks.
I've done a couple of Opinium polls recently on employer supervision of wfh - requiring the camera show the person at work all day, monitoring frequency of keystrokes, etc. I gather this is actually commonplace in the supposedly freedom-loving US, but I've never met anyone in Britain who mentioned it. Is it creeping in?
It’s difficult, but necessary for those wanting change to bring along the general public with them.
As an example, we know that prettty much all of the delegates to the COP26 conference are going to turn up on private or government planes, then tell everyone how we all need to do less flying, swap our cars for electric ones and replace boilers with heat sinks at a cost of thousands - as China and Russia don’t even bother to show up, and the USA and India won’t implement an agreement to any meaningful degree.
The problem is, that for a huge number of people in the country, the cost of transport and energy are significant. Millions of people use old cars to get to minimum-wage jobs working antisocial hours. People advocating petrol being £3 a litre and petrol cars being banned don’t appear to have any understanding of the impact of those policies on the working classes.
Yes, agreed, except for people who combine a green agenda with a redistributive agenda, which is (even if completely thought out) a complex argument to put across.
I have the same problem in my day job. There isn't much dispute that factory farming produces cheap meat and lots of suffering and environmental damage. If we just argue against it on the grounds of the damage, it runs into the perfectly legitimate "but what about the impact on poorer people?" argument. As a non-political charity, we can't say "so combine it with higher universal credit and a wealth tax", so we argue that the answer is to tax meat to reflect the indirect costs but ring-fence the proceeds to subsidise healthy non-meat alternatives and high-welfare meat, so that people on low incomes have healthy affordable options with few downsides. But say the words "meat tax" and people just switch off before you finish the sentence.
That's why Henry Dimbleby's National Food strategy advocates a 30% reduction in meat consumption over 10 years (on sustainability grounds as well as welfare) but explicitly shies away from a meat tax, instead favouring vague things like higher procurement standards, which are a Good Thing but (a) probably won't achieve the 30% cut and (b) also have indirect effects, as it's school and hospital budgets you're hitting.
It's tricky, but of course unhelpful when people like Patrick Moore just throw out random sneers.
Yes, there’s an issue with many in the environmental movement being barely-disguised socialists, which I’m sure you’re happy with but many of us aren’t.
Those on the centre-right see improving technology as the answer, rather than higher taxes and increased state control, and will rally against those who see only increases in the cost of living as proposals put forward.
There’s also the hypocracy angle, with many of the socialist green advocates living very middle-class lifestyles, as we have seen with the road-closing protestors in recent weeks. They appear to have litttle intention to change their own behaviour, in the same way as they expect everyone else to do so. To be flippant, it won’t be long before someone writes a lengthy opinion piece in the Guardian, celebrating the fact that there’s now a much nicer crowd than there used to be on the Ryanair to Florence.
Yeah, well exactly. The climate crisis is real, but a lot of the solutions foisted upon us are actually middle class lifestyle/consumer preferences. The war on cheap petrol cars is nothing more than a class issue, an elite of EV drivers wanting to clear the roads of knackered old cars and white vans and the poor people in them to help them get around more quickly; whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that they are still driving a 1.5 tonne lump of metal with a giant battery to do journeys that largely completely unnecessary, or could be done on public transport, foot or bike.
My neighbour is seriously green, he votes green, recycles everything down to christmas wrapping paper, has never been on a plane as far as I know, goes on holiday camping. His carbon footprint is less than most people, but they are still a two car family (8 year old dacia sandero and a diesel van). Necessary in both cases to get to work - they could in one case switch to an ebike but the roads are too dangerous for cycling.
Sorry you're hopelessly mistaken about electric cars. Think about the first mobile phones, internet charges when new, almost all technology when it first comes out is expensive, not that feature rich and not 100% reliable. Adoption of new technologies follows an 'S' curve as more people buy into it. We are on the exponential rise part of the 'S' curve as far as electric cars are concerned and price parity of new cars is not far off. Given all the other advantages of electric cars including cost of ownership and fewer things to go wrong, it won't be long before sales of ICE cars start dipping (maybe that's already happening). As night follows day, new electric cars will become older and cheaper and available on the 2nd hand car market. We aren't there yet, so my 'new' car is a 6 year old Golf GTE which only does 28 miles on electricity, but that already means I use hardly any petrol and had no issues with the recent fuel availability problems. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/rising-speed-technological-adoption/
If you only need a 28 mile car do you really need a car at all?
Electric cars have 95% of the ecological disadvantages of ice - made of steel, need tarmac to run on, use up resources, difficult to dispose of. And I understand are so heavy you can't jack them up to change a wheel. They are feelgood toys. The future is localism and public transport.
Ok, let's unpack that a bit. I charge my car overnight (4 hours using 1/3 cost electricity) drive my daughter to work in the morning 32 miles (28 electric and 4 petrol), put it on charge when I get home and pick her up in the evening 32 miles (28 electric and 4 petrol). Because it's a hybrid even the 4 miles on petrol recovers some of the energy from braking. If I needed to drive further I could, so no range anxiety. Any local trips I make during the day are fully or mostly on electric depending on the when I go out. Electric cars and ICE cars both need to be manufactured, that's true, but the running costs and cost to the environment are nowhere near the 95% of ICE cars you claim. Localism and public transport are good, but for example on public transport it would take my daughter over 2 hours to get the 16 miles from home to her work and over 2 hours back.
I am not saying you should change here and now. Public transport should. Changing fuel is fine and dandy but has zero effect on the fact that a car is 2 tons of scarce resources per couple of people, another5 sq m of concrete it needs to be parked on, etc etc
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
Well I have around £400 in savings, so probably.
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
What an utterly objectionable post
My children will still receive an inheritance depending on the care we may need but you seem to think inheritance is a divine right and parents must protect this in favour of their descendants
You also have no idea how difficult it is for young people to buy homes here in North Wales and I might tell you home prices have rocketed since covid and are astonishing
Indeed we are now seeing many more one million pound homes
You do yourself no favours trying to justify your selfish self interest
Yes, there’s an issue with many in the environmental movement being barely-disguised socialists, which I’m sure you’re happy with but many of us aren’t.
Those on the centre-right see improving technology as the answer, rather than higher taxes and increased state control, and will rally against those who see only increases in the cost of living as proposals put forward.
There’s also the hypocracy angle, with many of the socialist green advocates living very middle-class lifestyles, as we have seen with the road-closing protestors in recent weeks. They appear to have litttle intention to change their own behaviour, in the same way as they expect everyone else to do so. To be flippant, it won’t be long before someone writes a lengthy opinion piece in the Guardian, celebrating the fact that there’s now a much nicer crowd than there used to be on the Ryanair to Florence.
Yes, as a charity we have to be careful not to let personal political leanings creep in. I assume anyway that some colleagues vote Conservative, and I'm absolutely certain that many supporters do. But to be taken seriously we do have to suggest viable options rather than just say "Stop this cruel practice" and skate over the fact that stopping it means higher cost. Farmers don't put hens in crowded cages for the fun of it - it's more efficient and hence produces slightly cheaper (a few pence) eggs. I'm not sure there is really a tech solution, though the Kipster system is pretty good. Proposing that farm subsidies (which are substantial already) be slanted to higher-welfare systems is part of our solutions - that's not a novel socialist thing to do, just a policy choice about what sort of farms Defra wants to encourage.
(Always interesting to discuss anything with you - would be nice to meet sometime.)
Good luck with it, it’s great to see people who actually care to understand the issues and come up with viable proposals, rather than simply shouting slogans from the sidelines.
You have been complimentary in the past about Conservative ministers who have engaged positively - better treatment of animals is generally not something that people are instinctively against, as you say there’s usually reasons behind poor treatment so it’s better to look for and address the root causes.
This site is one of very few places on the internet where the conversations are mostly civil, and where people of different opinions can debate news and politics without things becoming too tribal. @MikeSmithson and his team should be very proud of what they have created. I shall try and make my next trip to the UK co-incident with a PB meetup, would definitely be good to put faces to names!
On that note, catch you all later. Off to the cricket, come on England! 🏏
Do Britons want to see the return of COVID-19 restrictions?
Compulsory face masks in shops/on public transport: 76% Govt advice to work from home where possible: 69% Vaccine passports for large events: 69% Pubs/restaurants closed: 22% Schools closed: 19%
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
Well I have around £400 in savings, so probably.
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
Far easier to steel tax cash savings than property. Presumably you don’t think you should be taxed on the value of your property, but on the part that you own?
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
Well I have around £400 in savings, so probably.
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
Of course I will have even less savings in the future if the government starts demanding that I repay my student loan even faster.
Surely this suggests that AUUUKUS is finished should Trump - or indeed any GOP candidate - prevail in 2024.
AUKUS has really upset you hasn't it
I'm just peering deep into the GOP soul. It's clear that they now see Australia as a libtard, Bidenite tyranny. AUUKUS will be seen as a sinister Democrat ruse to facilitate that. I can therefore imagine Trump rescinding AUUUKUS purely to spite Biden and energize the base.
He could easily do that and if he decides he hates Biden's guts for beating him he probably will. A less-widely-than-it-ought-to-be appreciated driver of his behaviour in office was a determination to undo everything, large and small, that President Obama had done in office. Nothing to do with ideology or the practical merits of it, just quite simply 'guy took the piss out of me, can't bear that, gonna trash his legacy'.
One cannot stress enough the monumental pettiness and venality of this man. If he gets back in his decisions will be made on the basis of what satisfies his 'urges' (for revenge and gratification), what enriches & empowers himself and his family, and absolutely nothing else. It's a fools errand to look for 'beyond himself' sense or strategy in anything he does as a politician. That's how it was last time and that's (in spades) how it would be next time.
I do think this aspect of Donald Trump should be more recognized. I see far too much stuff said or written, on TV and radio, in the papers, even quality papers, that imply he has political goals, strategies, priorities etc. He does not. He is devoid of all that. To fail to see this is to imbue him with a gravitas that's wholly unmerited. It's a dreadfully bad take, and one which shouldn't be seen outside of alt-right chatrooms.
Do Britons want to see the return of COVID-19 restrictions?
Compulsory face masks in shops/on public transport: 76% Govt advice to work from home where possible: 69% Vaccine passports for large events: 69% Pubs/restaurants closed: 22% Schools closed: 19%
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
Well I have around £400 in savings, so probably.
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
Far easier to steel tax cash savings than property. Presumably you don’t think you should be taxed on the value of your property, but on the part that you own?
Depends on the percentage, I guess? I could pay 0.1% of the whole property value, perhaps higher, if the tax system was organised to tax hoarded wealth rather than income.
0.1% would come in around double the annual council tax bill.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
am a Tory and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales when most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and the South East so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
And yet a graduate on 25k is taxed the same in North Wales as they are in London
So no difference then. The cost of living will be far lower in North Wales and even if earnings are a bit higher in London all but the highest earners would have more disposable income in North Wales than in London with lower commute costs, lower costs on food and drink and going out, lower rents and lower mortgages.
Plenty of higher earning apprentices too who never went to university and have no studgarbaeent loans to repay
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
What an utterly objectionable post
My children will still receive an inheritance depending on the care we may need but you seem to think inheritance is a divine right and parents must protect this in favour of their descendants
You also have no idea how difficult it is for young people to buy homes here in North Wales and I might tell you home prices have rocketed since covid and are astonishing
Indeed we are now seeing many more one million pound homes
You do yourself no favours trying to justify your selfish self interest
Most parents who are prudent do try and preserve some inheritance for their family if they can but again that is personal choice and glad to see you too are planning on giving your children some of your estate.
Average house prices in North Wales are below the UK average and certainly below the UK average in terms of ratio of average earnings to house prices (house prices in London and the Home Counties by contrast are well above the UK average with a far higher average earnings to average house price ratio).
There may be a few million pound homes in the most pleasant parts of North Wales but still nowhere near the number of million pound plus homes in London, Buckinghamshire, Surrey etc
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
Well I have around £400 in savings, so probably.
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
Far easier to steel tax cash savings than property. Presumably you don’t think you should be taxed on the value of your property, but on the part that you own?
Depends on the percentage, I guess? I could pay 0.1% of the whole property value, perhaps higher, if the tax system was organised to tax hoarded wealth rather than income.
0.1% would come in around double the annual council tax bill.
Right, that sounds like council tax reform, which is a bit different.
It’s difficult, but necessary for those wanting change to bring along the general public with them.
As an example, we know that prettty much all of the delegates to the COP26 conference are going to turn up on private or government planes, then tell everyone how we all need to do less flying, swap our cars for electric ones and replace boilers with heat sinks at a cost of thousands - as China and Russia don’t even bother to show up, and the USA and India won’t implement an agreement to any meaningful degree.
The problem is, that for a huge number of people in the country, the cost of transport and energy are significant. Millions of people use old cars to get to minimum-wage jobs working antisocial hours. People advocating petrol being £3 a litre and petrol cars being banned don’t appear to have any understanding of the impact of those policies on the working classes.
Yes, agreed, except for people who combine a green agenda with a redistributive agenda, which is (even if completely thought out) a complex argument to put across.
I have the same problem in my day job. There isn't much dispute that factory farming produces cheap meat and lots of suffering and environmental damage. If we just argue against it on the grounds of the damage, it runs into the perfectly legitimate "but what about the impact on poorer people?" argument. As a non-political charity, we can't say "so combine it with higher universal credit and a wealth tax", so we argue that the answer is to tax meat to reflect the indirect costs but ring-fence the proceeds to subsidise healthy non-meat alternatives and high-welfare meat, so that people on low incomes have healthy affordable options with few downsides. But say the words "meat tax" and people just switch off before you finish the sentence.
That's why Henry Dimbleby's National Food strategy advocates a 30% reduction in meat consumption over 10 years (on sustainability grounds as well as welfare) but explicitly shies away from a meat tax, instead favouring vague things like higher procurement standards, which are a Good Thing but (a) probably won't achieve the 30% cut and (b) also have indirect effects, as it's school and hospital budgets you're hitting.
It's tricky, but of course unhelpful when people like Patrick Moore just throw out random sneers.
Yes, there’s an issue with many in the environmental movement being barely-disguised socialists, which I’m sure you’re happy with but many of us aren’t.
Those on the centre-right see improving technology as the answer, rather than higher taxes and increased state control, and will rally against those who see only increases in the cost of living as proposals put forward.
There’s also the hypocracy angle, with many of the socialist green advocates living very middle-class lifestyles, as we have seen with the road-closing protestors in recent weeks. They appear to have litttle intention to change their own behaviour, in the same way as they expect everyone else to do so. To be flippant, it won’t be long before someone writes a lengthy opinion piece in the Guardian, celebrating the fact that there’s now a much nicer crowd than there used to be on the Ryanair to Florence.
Yeah, well exactly. The climate crisis is real, but a lot of the solutions foisted upon us are actually middle class lifestyle/consumer preferences. The war on cheap petrol cars is nothing more than a class issue, an elite of EV drivers wanting to clear the roads of knackered old cars and white vans and the poor people in them to help them get around more quickly; whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that they are still driving a 1.5 tonne lump of metal with a giant battery to do journeys that largely completely unnecessary, or could be done on public transport, foot or bike.
My neighbour is seriously green, he votes green, recycles everything down to christmas wrapping paper, has never been on a plane as far as I know, goes on holiday camping. His carbon footprint is less than most people, but they are still a two car family (8 year old dacia sandero and a diesel van). Necessary in both cases to get to work - they could in one case switch to an ebike but the roads are too dangerous for cycling.
Sorry you're hopelessly mistaken about electric cars. Think about the first mobile phones, internet charges when new, almost all technology when it first comes out is expensive, not that feature rich and not 100% reliable. Adoption of new technologies follows an 'S' curve as more people buy into it. We are on the exponential rise part of the 'S' curve as far as electric cars are concerned and price parity of new cars is not far off. Given all the other advantages of electric cars including cost of ownership and fewer things to go wrong, it won't be long before sales of ICE cars start dipping (maybe that's already happening). As night follows day, new electric cars will become older and cheaper and available on the 2nd hand car market. We aren't there yet, so my 'new' car is a 6 year old Golf GTE which only does 28 miles on electricity, but that already means I use hardly any petrol and had no issues with the recent fuel availability problems. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/rising-speed-technological-adoption/
If you only need a 28 mile car do you really need a car at all?
Electric cars have 95% of the ecological disadvantages of ice - made of steel, need tarmac to run on, use up resources, difficult to dispose of. And I understand are so heavy you can't jack them up to change a wheel. They are feelgood toys. The future is localism and public transport.
Ok, let's unpack that a bit. I charge my car overnight (4 hours using 1/3 cost electricity) drive my daughter to work in the morning 32 miles (28 electric and 4 petrol), put it on charge when I get home and pick her up in the evening 32 miles (28 electric and 4 petrol). Because it's a hybrid even the 4 miles on petrol recovers some of the energy from braking. If I needed to drive further I could, so no range anxiety. Any local trips I make during the day are fully or mostly on electric depending on the when I go out. Electric cars and ICE cars both need to be manufactured, that's true, but the running costs and cost to the environment are nowhere near the 95% of ICE cars you claim. Localism and public transport are good, but for example on public transport it would take my daughter over 2 hours to get the 16 miles from home to her work and over 2 hours back.
I am not saying you should change here and now. Public transport should. Changing fuel is fine and dandy but has zero effect on the fact that a car is 2 tons of scarce resources per couple of people, another5 sq m of concrete it needs to be parked on, etc etc
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
Well I have around £400 in savings, so probably.
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
Far easier to steel tax cash savings than property. Presumably you don’t think you should be taxed on the value of your property, but on the part that you own?
Depends on the percentage, I guess? I could pay 0.1% of the whole property value, perhaps higher, if the tax system was organised to tax hoarded wealth rather than income.
0.1% would come in around double the annual council tax bill.
Right, that sounds like council tax reform, which is a bit different.
Not really, a wealth tax wouldn't be on top of everything else, it would have to be part of a wholesale rethink of the whole taxation system.
Hopefully involving the abolishment of the total waste of space that is national insurance.
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
Well I have around £400 in savings, so probably.
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
Far easier to steel tax cash savings than property. Presumably you don’t think you should be taxed on the value of your property, but on the part that you own?
Depends on the percentage, I guess? I could pay 0.1% of the whole property value, perhaps higher, if the tax system was organised to tax hoarded wealth rather than income.
0.1% would come in around double the annual council tax bill.
(effectively) Doubling council tax for people who have just got on the property ladder seems a bit unfair. Taxing a larger fraction of the owned portion would be better. Those that don't have to pay a mortgage could more easily afford it.
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
Well I have around £400 in savings, so probably.
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
Far easier to steel tax cash savings than property. Presumably you don’t think you should be taxed on the value of your property, but on the part that you own?
Depends on the percentage, I guess? I could pay 0.1% of the whole property value, perhaps higher, if the tax system was organised to tax hoarded wealth rather than income.
0.1% would come in around double the annual council tax bill.
(effectively) Doubling council tax for people who have just got on the property ladder seems a bit unfair. Taxing a larger fraction of the owned portion would be better. Those that don't have to pay a mortgage could more easily afford it.
The trade off would be lower income tax/abolishment of NI.
Of course taxing the owned portion would be better but I'm thinking ease of administration.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
I don't know what world you live in HYUFD but my inheritance from my grandparents was: Nil, Nil, £500, £500.
For my children it is/will be Nil, Nil, £1000 and sometime in the future possibly £5000.
You are well over 60 and in your youth most grandparents rented they did not own, now the vast majority of grandparents own properties and have savings some of which will go to their children. That inheritance will then filter down to their grandchildren too when their children die in turn
@HYUFD 's Tory party flagship policy: Don't have grandparents with assets? Fuck you, here's some tax rises.
As I have posted below we are 33rd out of 37 OECD countries in terms of property taxes competitiveness now, ie we have much higher property taxes already than the OECD average.
By contrast we had relatively lower personal taxes at only 23rd out of 37 and even after the NI rise will be only 31st and in corporation taxes we are above average at 18th (11th with the super deduction for capital investment). So if anything we have more room to shift from property taxes to corporation taxes, given we have higher than average taxes on the former but lower than average taxes on the latter.
Plus most people have grandparents with assets now.
We currently levy two major taxes on property - stamp duty and council tax - which together yield about £50bn and are equivalent to a 1% tax on net property wealth. They are both problematic - stamp duty discourages transactions and so leads to too little mobility. Council tax is only loosely related to property valuations not least as the valuations are so out of date. It would make a lot of sense to replace both with either a property or a land value tax. A land value tax would probably be easiest to administer because valuations would be simpler to calculate.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
I'm just wondering where you expect my dad to live to be able to give me my inheritance?
He would obviously be dead once you get your full inheritance
You didn't get the point. I, like most will be old then (going around in circles)
I'm 67 in a few weeks. I am also considerably more wealthy than my father so the inheritance is pointless. As so many have already pointed out, will be the case for most people. And as already pointed out, mainly by people posting piss taking posts, normal people do not inherit anything significant from grandparents.
Unless your parents die when you are 30 - 40 this is cloud cuckoo land stuff and even then if such a sad thing happens a mortgage is likely to need paying off.
1. Decide to run again 2. Win the nomination 3. Beat Harris or whatever's left of Biden
That all seems very possible and even likely.
I think we can talk about one in the past tense: ‘He has decided to run again.’
Trump doesn't even particularly need to win the election to be POTUS if he has a GOP Congress.
Yes, when placing bets with your bookie it needs to be clear who will be paid out on if Biden gets sufficient ECVs to be the president but the GOP through enough shithousing actually installs Trump as a dictator.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
What an utterly objectionable post
My children will still receive an inheritance depending on the care we may need but you seem to think inheritance is a divine right and parents must protect this in favour of their descendants
You also have no idea how difficult it is for young people to buy homes here in North Wales and I might tell you home prices have rocketed since covid and are astonishing
Indeed we are now seeing many more one million pound homes
You do yourself no favours trying to justify your selfish self interest
Most parents who are prudent do try and preserve some inheritance for their family if they can but again that is personal choice and glad to see you too are planning on giving your children some of your estate.
Average house prices in North Wales are below the UK average and certainly below the UK average in terms of ratio of average earnings to house prices (house prices in London and the Home Counties by contrast are well above the UK average with a far higher average earnings to average house price ratio).
There may be a few million pound homes in the most pleasant parts of North Wales but still nowhere near the number of million pound plus homes in London, Buckinghamshire, Surrey etc
Your last sentence is so obviously stupid, of course there are not
And you have no idea how young people struggle here
Another example of 'Mr Know All' spouting about things that are very real to my family and everyone here in North Wales while living in S E England
It’s difficult, but necessary for those wanting change to bring along the general public with them.
As an example, we know that prettty much all of the delegates to the COP26 conference are going to turn up on private or government planes, then tell everyone how we all need to do less flying, swap our cars for electric ones and replace boilers with heat sinks at a cost of thousands - as China and Russia don’t even bother to show up, and the USA and India won’t implement an agreement to any meaningful degree.
The problem is, that for a huge number of people in the country, the cost of transport and energy are significant. Millions of people use old cars to get to minimum-wage jobs working antisocial hours. People advocating petrol being £3 a litre and petrol cars being banned don’t appear to have any understanding of the impact of those policies on the working classes.
Yes, agreed, except for people who combine a green agenda with a redistributive agenda, which is (even if completely thought out) a complex argument to put across.
I have the same problem in my day job. There isn't much dispute that factory farming produces cheap meat and lots of suffering and environmental damage. If we just argue against it on the grounds of the damage, it runs into the perfectly legitimate "but what about the impact on poorer people?" argument. As a non-political charity, we can't say "so combine it with higher universal credit and a wealth tax", so we argue that the answer is to tax meat to reflect the indirect costs but ring-fence the proceeds to subsidise healthy non-meat alternatives and high-welfare meat, so that people on low incomes have healthy affordable options with few downsides. But say the words "meat tax" and people just switch off before you finish the sentence.
That's why Henry Dimbleby's National Food strategy advocates a 30% reduction in meat consumption over 10 years (on sustainability grounds as well as welfare) but explicitly shies away from a meat tax, instead favouring vague things like higher procurement standards, which are a Good Thing but (a) probably won't achieve the 30% cut and (b) also have indirect effects, as it's school and hospital budgets you're hitting.
It's tricky, but of course unhelpful when people like Patrick Moore just throw out random sneers.
Yes, there’s an issue with many in the environmental movement being barely-disguised socialists, which I’m sure you’re happy with but many of us aren’t.
Those on the centre-right see improving technology as the answer, rather than higher taxes and increased state control, and will rally against those who see only increases in the cost of living as proposals put forward.
There’s also the hypocracy angle, with many of the socialist green advocates living very middle-class lifestyles, as we have seen with the road-closing protestors in recent weeks. They appear to have litttle intention to change their own behaviour, in the same way as they expect everyone else to do so. To be flippant, it won’t be long before someone writes a lengthy opinion piece in the Guardian, celebrating the fact that there’s now a much nicer crowd than there used to be on the Ryanair to Florence.
Yeah, well exactly. The climate crisis is real, but a lot of the solutions foisted upon us are actually middle class lifestyle/consumer preferences. The war on cheap petrol cars is nothing more than a class issue, an elite of EV drivers wanting to clear the roads of knackered old cars and white vans and the poor people in them to help them get around more quickly; whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that they are still driving a 1.5 tonne lump of metal with a giant battery to do journeys that largely completely unnecessary, or could be done on public transport, foot or bike.
My neighbour is seriously green, he votes green, recycles everything down to christmas wrapping paper, has never been on a plane as far as I know, goes on holiday camping. His carbon footprint is less than most people, but they are still a two car family (8 year old dacia sandero and a diesel van). Necessary in both cases to get to work - they could in one case switch to an ebike but the roads are too dangerous for cycling.
Sorry you're hopelessly mistaken about electric cars. Think about the first mobile phones, internet charges when new, almost all technology when it first comes out is expensive, not that feature rich and not 100% reliable. Adoption of new technologies follows an 'S' curve as more people buy into it. We are on the exponential rise part of the 'S' curve as far as electric cars are concerned and price parity of new cars is not far off. Given all the other advantages of electric cars including cost of ownership and fewer things to go wrong, it won't be long before sales of ICE cars start dipping (maybe that's already happening). As night follows day, new electric cars will become older and cheaper and available on the 2nd hand car market. We aren't there yet, so my 'new' car is a 6 year old Golf GTE which only does 28 miles on electricity, but that already means I use hardly any petrol and had no issues with the recent fuel availability problems. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/rising-speed-technological-adoption/
If you only need a 28 mile car do you really need a car at all?
Electric cars have 95% of the ecological disadvantages of ice - made of steel, need tarmac to run on, use up resources, difficult to dispose of. And I understand are so heavy you can't jack them up to change a wheel. They are feelgood toys. The future is localism and public transport.
Ok, let's unpack that a bit. I charge my car overnight (4 hours using 1/3 cost electricity) drive my daughter to work in the morning 32 miles (28 electric and 4 petrol), put it on charge when I get home and pick her up in the evening 32 miles (28 electric and 4 petrol). Because it's a hybrid even the 4 miles on petrol recovers some of the energy from braking. If I needed to drive further I could, so no range anxiety. Any local trips I make during the day are fully or mostly on electric depending on the when I go out. Electric cars and ICE cars both need to be manufactured, that's true, but the running costs and cost to the environment are nowhere near the 95% of ICE cars you claim. Localism and public transport are good, but for example on public transport it would take my daughter over 2 hours to get the 16 miles from home to her work and over 2 hours back.
I am not saying you should change here and now. Public transport should. Changing fuel is fine and dandy but has zero effect on the fact that a car is 2 tons of scarce resources per couple of people, another5 sq m of concrete it needs to be parked on, etc etc
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
I'm just wondering where you expect my dad to live to be able to give me my inheritance?
Well unless he's planning on living forever...
In response to we will all be old before we get it HYUFD suggests parents give it out earlier. I'm sure some well off people do. Most can't do anything significant.
Though in recent weeks we've had people raging at the possibility of higher pay for abattoir workers because it might lead to higher meat prices.
People who would, I suspect, be happy for meat prices to rise for environmental or animal welfare reasons.
Serious question, Nick.
Is the non-political bit viewed as a legal requirement or a choice that you make?
We seem to have plenty of 'political charities'.
Charities are not allowed to favour any political party, or pursue political aims unrelated to the objectives of the charity. so it's OK for Age Concern to call for better elderly care or Greenpeace to demand a zero-carbon economy by 2030, but would be against the law to say "and nationalise the rail network". There are of course grey areas.
Since the charity that I work for exists to promote farm animal welfare, we can make a "political" demand to end hen cages, but I think it would be such a grey area if we said "and raise Universal Credit to cover any possible price rises that followed". We can I think reasonably say "We expect any Government to ensure that the consequences do not harm poorer families", without saying what the Government should specifically do.
Even if it wasn't the law, we need to respect the right of supporters to disagree on unrelated issues. We ask people to contribute on the basis that they're helping farm animals, and they trust us not to let that morph into a political agenda. If all supporters had to agree with my personal views on everything ("and you've got to like Abba") merely because I run the UK arm, we'd have zero supporters. Ironically, I personally think the current Government is better on farm animal welfare than the Labour governments 1997-2010, but I'm not telling supporters they have to vote Tory, either.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
I'm just wondering where you expect my dad to live to be able to give me my inheritance?
Well unless he's planning on living forever...
In response to we will all be old before we get it HYUFD suggests parents give it out earlier. I'm sure some well off people do. Most can't do anything significant.
Maintenance out of income is not taxable (as I understand it) so regular standing orders of income to your children and/or grandchildren is probably the best way to dispose of it before it 'accumulates' as capital.
Do Britons want to see the return of COVID-19 restrictions?
Compulsory face masks in shops/on public transport: 76% Govt advice to work from home where possible: 69% Vaccine passports for large events: 69% Pubs/restaurants closed: 22% Schools closed: 19%
Translates as 'restrictions on other people' with a middle class side of 'I want the same money for doing less work and fewer hours'.
Does it? You feel that middle-class respondents never go shopping or attend large events, and cheat on working hours by doing it from home? It's a view. In the middle-class working environments that I'm familiar with (IT, charities, medical research, Parliament), you're measured by results anyway - "but I was at the keyboard all day" wouldn't be an excuse if you failed to deliver the goods, and conversely if you deliver the goods who cares if you take teabreaks.
I've done a couple of Opinium polls recently on employer supervision of wfh - requiring the camera show the person at work all day, monitoring frequency of keystrokes, etc. I gather this is actually commonplace in the supposedly freedom-loving US, but I've never met anyone in Britain who mentioned it. Is it creeping in?
From personal experience middle class office workers at a workplace suspect that those wfh are cheating on work hours.
Perhaps because they would do so themselves if given the chance I'd hate to think what my productivity would be like if I didn't have the limited discipline being at the office brings.
I'll point out there's no shortage of working age PBers who seem to be on PB during the 9-5.
Irrespective of work rates, the opportunity to wfh gives a definite benefit in the ending of travel time and cost and potentially other things such as childcare.
As to your monitoring question I've never heard anything like it and it certainly wouldn't be appropriate at my workplace - it does sound more like a thing for 'white collar wage slaves', call centres and the like.
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
Well I have around £400 in savings, so probably.
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
Far easier to steel tax cash savings than property. Presumably you don’t think you should be taxed on the value of your property, but on the part that you own?
Depends on the percentage, I guess? I could pay 0.1% of the whole property value, perhaps higher, if the tax system was organised to tax hoarded wealth rather than income.
0.1% would come in around double the annual council tax bill.
By that calculation my house would need to be worth 10M for me to ante up twice my council tax, whereas it is more like 250K, so would raise 250 quid at 0.1%
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
am a Tory and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales when most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and the South East so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
And yet a graduate on 25k is taxed the same in North Wales as they are in London
So no difference then. The cost of living will be far lower in North Wales and even if earnings are a bit higher in London all but the highest earners would have more disposable income in North Wales than in London with lower commute costs, lower costs on food and drink and going out, lower rents and lower mortgages.
Plenty of higher earning apprentices too who never went to university and have no student loans to repay
Question 2 aspects of that.
You do not need a car in London (far lower ownership), plus of course there are things like the London weighting, regional rail passes etc far more than outside London. Even in London cycling 5-8 miles to work is perhaps more viable - more people do it.
1. Decide to run again 2. Win the nomination 3. Beat Harris or whatever's left of Biden
That all seems very possible and even likely.
4. Not have a fatal stroke or similar between now and then.
If you're sure I'm wrong, there's plenty of betting firms out there who'll take your stake money, but my advice is only back Trump with money you can afford to say goodbye to.
I wouldn't bet on it because the outcome is going to be bitterly contested and subject to interpretation.
Trump dying or succumbing to Ariel Sharon type incapacity would be a laugh but the actuarial chances of that must 5-10% at best.
I am still angry about these rumours re. the Government messing with the student loan repayment thresholds to pay for protecting the wealthy, property owning older generation.
The deal was we paid X% over Y for 30 years. That was bad enough, never mind extending the term by a third and reducing Y when it suits.
Tax the f*cking wealth ffs, not 20 something people getting by on circa 25-30k a year.
Would the retrospective nature of such a thing even be legal ? (Of course Parliament can legislate to make it so, but it would be astonishingly bad policy.)
I’d argue a wealth tax is a retrospective tax.
If you tax people on the wealth they had in previous years, yes. If it's based on current wealth, obviously not.
If the government helps itself to people’s savings, then that’s a tax on past income.
So what? VAT is a tax on past income, STLT is a tax on past income, fuel duty is a tax on past income, the list goes on.
Those are taxes on current expenditure/consumption.
And? It's still a tax on past income, just as taxing people's savings is a tax on past income. One may be consumption, one may be non-consumption, but the principle is the same.
Do you think you’ll be exempt from any wealth tax?
Well I have around £400 in savings, so probably.
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
Far easier to steel tax cash savings than property. Presumably you don’t think you should be taxed on the value of your property, but on the part that you own?
Depends on the percentage, I guess? I could pay 0.1% of the whole property value, perhaps higher, if the tax system was organised to tax hoarded wealth rather than income.
0.1% would come in around double the annual council tax bill.
By that calculation my house would need to be worth 10M for me to ante up twice my council tax, whereas it is more like 250K, so would raise 250 quid at 0.1%
It’s difficult, but necessary for those wanting change to bring along the general public with them.
As an example, we know that prettty much all of the delegates to the COP26 conference are going to turn up on private or government planes, then tell everyone how we all need to do less flying, swap our cars for electric ones and replace boilers with heat sinks at a cost of thousands - as China and Russia don’t even bother to show up, and the USA and India won’t implement an agreement to any meaningful degree.
The problem is, that for a huge number of people in the country, the cost of transport and energy are significant. Millions of people use old cars to get to minimum-wage jobs working antisocial hours. People advocating petrol being £3 a litre and petrol cars being banned don’t appear to have any understanding of the impact of those policies on the working classes.
Yes, agreed, except for people who combine a green agenda with a redistributive agenda, which is (even if completely thought out) a complex argument to put across.
I have the same problem in my day job. There isn't much dispute that factory farming produces cheap meat and lots of suffering and environmental damage. If we just argue against it on the grounds of the damage, it runs into the perfectly legitimate "but what about the impact on poorer people?" argument. As a non-political charity, we can't say "so combine it with higher universal credit and a wealth tax", so we argue that the answer is to tax meat to reflect the indirect costs but ring-fence the proceeds to subsidise healthy non-meat alternatives and high-welfare meat, so that people on low incomes have healthy affordable options with few downsides. But say the words "meat tax" and people just switch off before you finish the sentence.
That's why Henry Dimbleby's National Food strategy advocates a 30% reduction in meat consumption over 10 years (on sustainability grounds as well as welfare) but explicitly shies away from a meat tax, instead favouring vague things like higher procurement standards, which are a Good Thing but (a) probably won't achieve the 30% cut and (b) also have indirect effects, as it's school and hospital budgets you're hitting.
It's tricky, but of course unhelpful when people like Patrick Moore just throw out random sneers.
Yes, there’s an issue with many in the environmental movement being barely-disguised socialists, which I’m sure you’re happy with but many of us aren’t.
Those on the centre-right see improving technology as the answer, rather than higher taxes and increased state control, and will rally against those who see only increases in the cost of living as proposals put forward.
There’s also the hypocracy angle, with many of the socialist green advocates living very middle-class lifestyles, as we have seen with the road-closing protestors in recent weeks. They appear to have litttle intention to change their own behaviour, in the same way as they expect everyone else to do so. To be flippant, it won’t be long before someone writes a lengthy opinion piece in the Guardian, celebrating the fact that there’s now a much nicer crowd than there used to be on the Ryanair to Florence.
Yeah, well exactly. The climate crisis is real, but a lot of the solutions foisted upon us are actually middle class lifestyle/consumer preferences. The war on cheap petrol cars is nothing more than a class issue, an elite of EV drivers wanting to clear the roads of knackered old cars and white vans and the poor people in them to help them get around more quickly; whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that they are still driving a 1.5 tonne lump of metal with a giant battery to do journeys that largely completely unnecessary, or could be done on public transport, foot or bike.
My neighbour is seriously green, he votes green, recycles everything down to christmas wrapping paper, has never been on a plane as far as I know, goes on holiday camping. His carbon footprint is less than most people, but they are still a two car family (8 year old dacia sandero and a diesel van). Necessary in both cases to get to work - they could in one case switch to an ebike but the roads are too dangerous for cycling.
Sorry you're hopelessly mistaken about electric cars. Think about the first mobile phones, internet charges when new, almost all technology when it first comes out is expensive, not that feature rich and not 100% reliable. Adoption of new technologies follows an 'S' curve as more people buy into it. We are on the exponential rise part of the 'S' curve as far as electric cars are concerned and price parity of new cars is not far off. Given all the other advantages of electric cars including cost of ownership and fewer things to go wrong, it won't be long before sales of ICE cars start dipping (maybe that's already happening). As night follows day, new electric cars will become older and cheaper and available on the 2nd hand car market. We aren't there yet, so my 'new' car is a 6 year old Golf GTE which only does 28 miles on electricity, but that already means I use hardly any petrol and had no issues with the recent fuel availability problems. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/rising-speed-technological-adoption/
I don't have any objection to EVs, just the associated sneering at people who drive petrol/diesel cars. If you are an environmentalist, the actual answer is to stop driving. Walk to the shops. Cycle. That is net zero. Don't go on ridiculous trips. These massive EV's still have a major environmental impact in construction, mining the battery, and the electricity they use up, which has to come from somewhere. If you wanted to be a purist about it, you could stop building them completely, and just keep old cars running as they have lots of embodied energy within them, just use them for fewer miles, and only for essential trips.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
I don't know what world you live in HYUFD but my inheritance from my grandparents was: Nil, Nil, £500, £500.
For my children it is/will be Nil, Nil, £1000 and sometime in the future possibly £5000.
You are well over 60 and in your youth most grandparents rented they did not own, now the vast majority of grandparents own properties and have savings some of which will go to their children. That inheritance will then filter down to their grandchildren too when their children die in turn
@HYUFD 's Tory party flagship policy: Don't have grandparents with assets? Fuck you, here's some tax rises.
As I have posted below we are 33rd out of 37 OECD countries in terms of property taxes competitiveness now, ie we have much higher property taxes already than the OECD average.
By contrast we had relatively lower personal taxes at only 23rd out of 37 and even after the NI rise will be only 31st and in corporation taxes we are above average at 18th (11th with the super deduction for capital investment). So if anything we have more room to shift from property taxes to corporation taxes, given we have higher than average taxes on the former but lower than average taxes on the latter.
Plus most people have grandparents with assets now.
We currently levy two major taxes on property - stamp duty and council tax - which together yield about £50bn and are equivalent to a 1% tax on net property wealth. They are both problematic - stamp duty discourages transactions and so leads to too little mobility. Council tax is only loosely related to property valuations not least as the valuations are so out of date. It would make a lot of sense to replace both with either a property or a land value tax. A land value tax would probably be easiest to administer because valuations would be simpler to calculate.
The big differences with council tax, is that the value scales are local, so each council looks at the mix of properties in each band, and sets CT and their budget accordingly.
If you move to a national scale of house prices, then there will be huge local imbalances - some parts of the country will have everyone paying massively higher property taxes.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
I don't know what world you live in HYUFD but my inheritance from my grandparents was: Nil, Nil, £500, £500.
For my children it is/will be Nil, Nil, £1000 and sometime in the future possibly £5000.
You are well over 60 and in your youth most grandparents rented they did not own, now the vast majority of grandparents own properties and have savings some of which will go to their children. That inheritance will then filter down to their grandchildren too when their children die in turn
@HYUFD 's Tory party flagship policy: Don't have grandparents with assets? Fuck you, here's some tax rises.
As I have posted below we are 33rd out of 37 OECD countries in terms of property taxes competitiveness now, ie we have much higher property taxes already than the OECD average.
By contrast we had relatively lower personal taxes at only 23rd out of 37 and even after the NI rise will be only 31st and in corporation taxes we are above average at 18th (11th with the super deduction for capital investment). So if anything we have more room to shift from property taxes to corporation taxes, given we have higher than average taxes on the former but lower than average taxes on the latter.
Plus most people have grandparents with assets now.
We currently levy two major taxes on property - stamp duty and council tax - which together yield about £50bn and are equivalent to a 1% tax on net property wealth. They are both problematic - stamp duty discourages transactions and so leads to too little mobility. Council tax is only loosely related to property valuations not least as the valuations are so out of date. It would make a lot of sense to replace both with either a property or a land value tax. A land value tax would probably be easiest to administer because valuations would be simpler to calculate.
The big differences with council tax, is that the value scales are local, so each council looks at the mix of properties in each band, and sets CT and their budget accordingly.
If you move to a national scale of house prices, then there will be huge local imbalances - some parts of the country will have everyone paying massively higher property taxes.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
I'm just wondering where you expect my dad to live to be able to give me my inheritance?
Well unless he's planning on living forever...
In response to we will all be old before we get it HYUFD suggests parents give it out earlier. I'm sure some well off people do. Most can't do anything significant.
Maintenance out of income is not taxable (as I understand it) so regular standing orders of income to your children and/or grandchildren is probably the best way to dispose of it before it 'accumulates' as capital.
Most retired people have modest incomes and capital tied up in a house so most can't give away substantial sums, at least not at the level HYUFD is talking about to buy a home. Most give generously but not at the level HYUFD is talking about until they die, by which time it's too late to be of use in the way HYUFD proposes. He then falls back on grandparents who will die when the children are young, but the inheritance will be even more limited.
1. Decide to run again 2. Win the nomination 3. Beat Harris or whatever's left of Biden
That all seems very possible and even likely.
4. Not have a fatal stroke or similar between now and then.
If you're sure I'm wrong, there's plenty of betting firms out there who'll take your stake money, but my advice is only back Trump with money you can afford to say goodbye to.
I wouldn't bet on it because the outcome is going to be bitterly contested and subject to interpretation.
Trump dying or succumbing to Ariel Sharon type incapacity would be a laugh but the actuarial chances of that must 5-10% at best.
Has everyone given up on the idea of the ur-fat lying sack of jizz going to jail?
But you're right, the chances of death are non-negligibly low. He will probably be alive to see the swearing in of Someone Else come January 2025. If his prison privileges allow him TV access.
He's not going to prison. There's only 26 months until the Iowa Caucus. That's nowhere near enough time to get an indictment, convict and exhaust all appeals.
What's the source of your certainty? Do you think he won't run, will be beaten to the nomination or will be beaten in the election and fail in the subsequent and inevitable coup attempt?
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
One really does need a Brexiteer to explain rationality and export markets. What size is the export market from England to Scotland?
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
I don't know what world you live in HYUFD but my inheritance from my grandparents was: Nil, Nil, £500, £500.
For my children it is/will be Nil, Nil, £1000 and sometime in the future possibly £5000.
You are well over 60 and in your youth most grandparents rented they did not own, now the vast majority of grandparents own properties and have savings some of which will go to their children. That inheritance will then filter down to their grandchildren too when their children die in turn
@HYUFD 's Tory party flagship policy: Don't have grandparents with assets? Fuck you, here's some tax rises.
As I have posted below we are 33rd out of 37 OECD countries in terms of property taxes competitiveness now, ie we have much higher property taxes already than the OECD average.
By contrast we had relatively lower personal taxes at only 23rd out of 37 and even after the NI rise will be only 31st and in corporation taxes we are above average at 18th (11th with the super deduction for capital investment). So if anything we have more room to shift from property taxes to corporation taxes, given we have higher than average taxes on the former but lower than average taxes on the latter.
Plus most people have grandparents with assets now.
We currently levy two major taxes on property - stamp duty and council tax - which together yield about £50bn and are equivalent to a 1% tax on net property wealth. They are both problematic - stamp duty discourages transactions and so leads to too little mobility. Council tax is only loosely related to property valuations not least as the valuations are so out of date. It would make a lot of sense to replace both with either a property or a land value tax. A land value tax would probably be easiest to administer because valuations would be simpler to calculate.
The big differences with council tax, is that the value scales are local, so each council looks at the mix of properties in each band, and sets CT and their budget accordingly.
If you move to a national scale of house prices, then there will be huge local imbalances - some parts of the country will have everyone paying massively higher property taxes.
That's a feature, not a bug.
And it’s not strictly true - or rather it is true, but somewhat misleading, since when the tax was originally set up, such imbalances were supposed to be smoothed out by the balance of government funding (now redistributed from business rates). Of course it was crudely done and isn’t now being updated, but were that not the case, council tax rates in areas with mostly poor housing would be astronomic.
The big differences with council tax, is that the value scales are local, so each council looks at the mix of properties in each band, and sets CT and their budget accordingly.
If you move to a national scale of house prices, then there will be huge local imbalances - some parts of the country will have everyone paying massively higher property taxes.
Yes, but remember that councils are not permitted to vary the amount that each band is taxed. So by squeezing local government (as I think even Conservatives will agree has happened), nearly all councils are forced to increase CT each year by something close to the limit, and to do it in terms precisely laid down by Government (and if that's not irrational enough, they are based on valuations in 1992).
1. Decide to run again 2. Win the nomination 3. Beat Harris or whatever's left of Biden
That all seems very possible and even likely.
4. Not have a fatal stroke or similar between now and then.
If you're sure I'm wrong, there's plenty of betting firms out there who'll take your stake money, but my advice is only back Trump with money you can afford to say goodbye to.
I wouldn't bet on it because the outcome is going to be bitterly contested and subject to interpretation.
Trump dying or succumbing to Ariel Sharon type incapacity would be a laugh but the actuarial chances of that must 5-10% at best.
Has everyone given up on the idea of the ur-fat lying sack of jizz going to jail?
Johnson in prison would be like Mr. Bridger in The Italian Job.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
I don't know what world you live in HYUFD but my inheritance from my grandparents was: Nil, Nil, £500, £500.
For my children it is/will be Nil, Nil, £1000 and sometime in the future possibly £5000.
You are well over 60 and in your youth most grandparents rented they did not own, now the vast majority of grandparents own properties and have savings some of which will go to their grandchildren. The rest of that inheritance will then filter down to their grandchildren too when their children die in turn (and indeed plenty of parents now use inheritances from their own parents to fund their childrens' first deposit to buy a property).
Well there is an assumption that was spectacular wrong. One of my sets of grandparents owned a shop and 2 houses. They lived off these until they died. They had 5 children and lots of grandchildren. Death duties, then split 5 ways and each grandchild got £500 from each, after that what my dad inherited contributed to the mortgage on his semi detached.
My other grandparents were dead before I was born so inheritance by me was nothing and anyway they were poor. Re my children one set of their grandparents were dead before they were born and my wife inherited next to nothing.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
One really does need a Brexiteer to explain rationality and export markets. What size is the export market from England to Scotland?
Don't know. In 2018 the rUK exports to Scotland were £63.91 bn and I expect them to have increased in 2019 so we are running a very serious trade deficit with them. This just reinforces the importance of the SM with rUK for Scotland in that it is inconceivable that we have trade barriers for such a volume of imports as would happen, of course, if we joined the EU SM.
And thus we find ourselves in the same murky water of judging what is acceptable and what is to be suppressed. I'm not keen on these kinds of rules. Not keen at all. To the extent that I'm even wondering whether charitable status is a thing we should do away with completely. Or just live with the idea that charities can be as political as they like.
The present situation is too close to the idea of giving tax breaks in exchange for silence on certain topics. That kind of thing is plainly open to threats and abuse from authoritarian-minded governments.
I actually quite like the system that was introduced in the Soviet bloc era in many East European countries and still survives, that you can determine that a % of your taxes go to specified charities. Thus when I was last in Poland there were lots of adverts from charities putting the case for their causes to be the one you favour. That gives an indirect government support to charities without any of the downsides that you're suggesting, and has the side-effect of people feeling a bit happier about paying tax.
Of course, under both the current and the past authoritarian communist governments, organisations that challenge the government will tend to find themselves in trouble, whether they're charities or not. But that's a separate problem.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thankys to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
You are very kind but our travels are over as we could not travel carefree anymore and we more importantly our health is not upto it
We daily thank the ' Good Lord ' for having given us the time and ability to travel to the four corners of our world and I would encourage everyone to travel as much as they can while they can and certainly have no heed to money they may hand down to their family at some time in the future
Life is to be lived and travel really does broaden the mind
If going on cruise ships broadens the mind, I can’t help but wonder what some of them must have like before they started….
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thankys to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
You are very kind but our travels are over as we could not travel carefree anymore and we more importantly our health is not upto it
We daily thank the ' Good Lord ' for having given us the time and ability to travel to the four corners of our world and I would encourage everyone to travel as much as they can while they can and certainly have no heed to money they may hand down to their family at some time in the future
Life is to be lived and travel really does broaden the mind
If going on cruise ships broadens the mind, I can’t help but wonder what some of them must have like before they started….
I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that traveling to other places broadens the mind.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
One really does need a Brexiteer to explain rationality and export markets. What size is the export market from England to Scotland?
Don't know. In 2018 the rUK exports to Scotland were £63.91 bn and I expect them to have increased in 2019 so we are running a very serious trade deficit with them. This just reinforces the importance of the SM with rUK for Scotland in that it is inconceivable that we have trade barriers for such a volume of imports as would happen, of course, if we joined the EU SM.
How much did the UK export market to the EU figure in your journey to becoming a Brexiteer?
Anyone know anywhere good online I could get a birch plywood sheet (circa 35mm thickness) cut to size for a reasonable price? Size around 1050 x 400.
EBay might be worth a look. I got good quality phenolic trailer board cut to size off eBay delivered.
Thoughts. HTH.
35mm ply sounds specialist and difficult. Is there a possibility of getting standard 2x18mm and screwing them together? 30mm screws from the back for a clean face.
Online I would be looking for something perhaps via Amazon Prime, or a local supplier who would deliver for free or £5 with their own van on their own delivery round. Travis Perkins in my area have a low fee (whilst Wickes screw you on small orders).
B&Q usually cut it to size for free if you have bought it there (see branches with the service), depending on how the prices balance out vs the cost of cutting. I have had 8x4 boards cut into about 10 shelves before now free. Their prices tend to be a little high, though - unless there is an offer on.
Often timber merchants will do it at say £0.50 or £1.00 per cut.
If you have the sheet already, then I would take the opportunity to buy an inexpensive cordless jigsaw (remember to standardise on the brand or buy a cheap disposable one from Aldi etc), a couple of trellises (about £10 each), and a couple of clamps (about £5 each) to hold your straight edge in place.
You can take your tools with you and cut it up in the car park, then it will go in your car. Requires a car- yours or a friend.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thankys to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
You are very kind but our travels are over as we could not travel carefree anymore and we more importantly our health is not upto it
We daily thank the ' Good Lord ' for having given us the time and ability to travel to the four corners of our world and I would encourage everyone to travel as much as they can while they can and certainly have no heed to money they may hand down to their family at some time in the future
Life is to be lived and travel really does broaden the mind
If going on cruise ships broadens the mind, I can’t help but wonder what some of them must have like before they started….
I know many people enjoy cruises including my parents who did many and the stories they told convinces me never to do it. One reason being the food. If I didn't explode they would have to roll me off.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
I don't know what world you live in HYUFD but my inheritance from my grandparents was: Nil, Nil, £500, £500.
For my children it is/will be Nil, Nil, £1000 and sometime in the future possibly £5000.
You are well over 60 and in your youth most grandparents rented they did not own, now the vast majority of grandparents own properties and have savings some of which will go to their children. That inheritance will then filter down to their grandchildren too when their children die in turn
@HYUFD 's Tory party flagship policy: Don't have grandparents with assets? Fuck you, here's some tax rises.
As I have posted below we are 33rd out of 37 OECD countries in terms of property taxes competitiveness now, ie we have much higher property taxes already than the OECD average.
By contrast we had relatively lower personal taxes at only 23rd out of 37 and even after the NI rise will be only 31st and in corporation taxes we are above average at 18th (11th with the super deduction for capital investment). So if anything we have more room to shift from property taxes to corporation taxes, given we have higher than average taxes on the former but lower than average taxes on the latter.
Plus most people have grandparents with assets now.
We currently levy two major taxes on property - stamp duty and council tax - which together yield about £50bn and are equivalent to a 1% tax on net property wealth. They are both problematic - stamp duty discourages transactions and so leads to too little mobility. Council tax is only loosely related to property valuations not least as the valuations are so out of date. It would make a lot of sense to replace both with either a property or a land value tax. A land value tax would probably be easiest to administer because valuations would be simpler to calculate.
The big differences with council tax, is that the value scales are local, so each council looks at the mix of properties in each band, and sets CT and their budget accordingly.
If you move to a national scale of house prices, then there will be huge local imbalances - some parts of the country will have everyone paying massively higher property taxes.
If you wish to base it on house values why shouldn't the areas with higher prices pay more?
Plus it will give an incentive not to be NIMBYs. Constrain supply of housing and your valuation will go up, but you'll pay for it. Encourage more supply and your valuation will go down but there'll be more people paying a smaller amount each and you'll owe less.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thankys to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
You are very kind but our travels are over as we could not travel carefree anymore and we more importantly our health is not upto it
We daily thank the ' Good Lord ' for having given us the time and ability to travel to the four corners of our world and I would encourage everyone to travel as much as they can while they can and certainly have no heed to money they may hand down to their family at some time in the future
Life is to be lived and travel really does broaden the mind
If going on cruise ships broadens the mind, I can’t help but wonder what some of them must have like before they started….
I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that traveling to other places broadens the mind.
It's true! I've travelled far and wide. Banff, Fraserburgh, Ellon. Once, I even went to Crathie! But I didn't like it, so I came home again.
When I was a kid my parents had a phrase "away to Banff" which basically meant that I was behaving even more daftly than normal. I was somewhat disappointed when attending Banff Sheriff court some years ago to find that the overwhelming impression of the town was dullness rather than an interesting and exotic range of loons. Did I miss something?
And thus we find ourselves in the same murky water of judging what is acceptable and what is to be suppressed. I'm not keen on these kinds of rules. Not keen at all. To the extent that I'm even wondering whether charitable status is a thing we should do away with completely. Or just live with the idea that charities can be as political as they like.
The present situation is too close to the idea of giving tax breaks in exchange for silence on certain topics. That kind of thing is plainly open to threats and abuse from authoritarian-minded governments.
I actually quite like the system that was introduced in the Soviet bloc era in many East European countries and still survives, that you can determine that a % of your taxes go to specified charities. Thus when I was last in Poland there were lots of adverts from charities putting the case for their causes to be the one you favour. That gives an indirect government support to charities without any of the downsides that you're suggesting, and has the side-effect of people feeling a bit happier about paying tax.
Of course, under both the current and the past authoritarian communist governments, organisations that challenge the government will tend to find themselves in trouble, whether they're charities or not. But that's a separate problem.
Surely, we already have a far better version of that in that you make a donation, and the tax on that goes to the charity.
I'm not really sure about a cost-free version of that.
But you're right, the chances of death are non-negligibly low. He will probably be alive to see the swearing in of Someone Else come January 2025. If his prison privileges allow him TV access.
He's not going to prison. There's only 26 months until the Iowa Caucus. That's nowhere near enough time to get an indictment, convict and exhaust all appeals.
What's the source of your certainty? Do you think he won't run, will be beaten to the nomination or will be beaten in the election and fail in the subsequent and inevitable coup attempt?
I think he'll be the GOP candidate but he'll get an almighty kicking at the ballot box, and there won't be enough acolytes to waive the democratic process on his behalf. I think this will happen anyway, but it'll be especially pronounced if a Never Trump Republican stands in the election on a right-wing-but-not-him ticket. My hunch at this stage is that 2024 will be like 1983 in the UK, with the incumbent re-elected thanks to a horrifically split opposition.
Liz Cheney is as right wing as they come, but her Never Trumpness has seen her fully ostracized. We have a good measure of how many non-acolytes among the House Republicans by the second impeachment vote and by how many voted to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress. It's about 10.
Anyone know anywhere good online I could get a birch plywood sheet (circa 35mm thickness) cut to size for a reasonable price? Size around 1050 x 400.
EBay might be worth a look. I got good quality phenolic trailer board cut to size off eBay delivered.
Thoughts. HTH.
35mm ply sounds specialist and difficult. Is there a possibility of getting standard 2x18mm and screwing them together? 30mm screws from the back for a clean face.
Online I would be looking for something perhaps via Amazon Prime, or a local supplier who would deliver for free or £5 with their own van on their own delivery round. Travis Perkins in my area have a low fee (whilst Wickes screw you on small orders).
B&Q usually cut it to size for free if you have bought it there (see branches with the service), depending on how the prices balance out vs the cost of cutting. I have had 8x4 boards cut into about 10 shelves before now free. Their prices tend to be a little high, though - unless there is an offer on.
Often timber merchants will do it at say £0.50 or £1.00 per cut.
If you have the sheet already, then I would take the opportunity to buy an inexpensive cordless jigsaw (remember to standardise on the brand or buy a cheap disposable one from Aldi etc), a couple of trellises (about £10 each), and a couple of clamps (about £5 each) to hold your straight edge in place.
You can take your tools with you and cut it up in the car park, then it will go in your car. Requires a car- yours or a friend.
Thanks for this. It's for a small desk. 2 x 18mm may work quite well - I'll look into that...
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
I don't know what world you live in HYUFD but my inheritance from my grandparents was: Nil, Nil, £500, £500.
For my children it is/will be Nil, Nil, £1000 and sometime in the future possibly £5000.
You are well over 60 and in your youth most grandparents rented they did not own, now the vast majority of grandparents own properties and have savings some of which will go to their children. That inheritance will then filter down to their grandchildren too when their children die in turn
@HYUFD 's Tory party flagship policy: Don't have grandparents with assets? Fuck you, here's some tax rises.
As I have posted below we are 33rd out of 37 OECD countries in terms of property taxes competitiveness now, ie we have much higher property taxes already than the OECD average.
By contrast we had relatively lower personal taxes at only 23rd out of 37 and even after the NI rise will be only 31st and in corporation taxes we are above average at 18th (11th with the super deduction for capital investment). So if anything we have more room to shift from property taxes to corporation taxes, given we have higher than average taxes on the former but lower than average taxes on the latter.
Plus most people have grandparents with assets now.
We currently levy two major taxes on property - stamp duty and council tax - which together yield about £50bn and are equivalent to a 1% tax on net property wealth. They are both problematic - stamp duty discourages transactions and so leads to too little mobility. Council tax is only loosely related to property valuations not least as the valuations are so out of date. It would make a lot of sense to replace both with either a property or a land value tax. A land value tax would probably be easiest to administer because valuations would be simpler to calculate.
The big differences with council tax, is that the value scales are local, so each council looks at the mix of properties in each band, and sets CT and their budget accordingly.
If you move to a national scale of house prices, then there will be huge local imbalances - some parts of the country will have everyone paying massively higher property taxes.
If you wish to base it on house values why shouldn't the areas with higher prices pay more?
Plus it will give an incentive not to be NIMBYs. Constrain supply of housing and your valuation will go up, but you'll pay for it. Encourage more supply and your valuation will go down but there'll be more people paying a smaller amount each and you'll owe less.
Given that council tax in London is actually lower than the surrounding areas, there’s zero chance of Labour reforming it.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
One really does need a Brexiteer to explain rationality and export markets. What size is the export market from England to Scotland?
Don't know. In 2018 the rUK exports to Scotland were £63.91 bn and I expect them to have increased in 2019 so we are running a very serious trade deficit with them. This just reinforces the importance of the SM with rUK for Scotland in that it is inconceivable that we have trade barriers for such a volume of imports as would happen, of course, if we joined the EU SM.
How much did the UK export market to the EU figure in your journey to becoming a Brexiteer?
Not sure I understand the question. But if you mean how much did I worry about a possible reduction in exports to the EU as a result of Brexit the answer is not much. This was firstly because we run a serious and frankly unsustainable deficit with the EU so free trade has not been in our interests. Secondly because other exports to faster growing parts of the world were increasing more rapidly and thirdly because the UK as a whole has a large enough internal market to make the change of smaller importance. Only 1 of these 3 factors can possibly apply to Scotland.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thankys to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
You are very kind but our travels are over as we could not travel carefree anymore and we more importantly our health is not upto it
We daily thank the ' Good Lord ' for having given us the time and ability to travel to the four corners of our world and I would encourage everyone to travel as much as they can while they can and certainly have no heed to money they may hand down to their family at some time in the future
Life is to be lived and travel really does broaden the mind
If going on cruise ships broadens the mind, I can’t help but wonder what some of them must have like before they started….
I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that traveling to other places broadens the mind.
It's true! I've travelled far and wide. Banff, Fraserburgh, Ellon. Once, I even went to Crathie! But I didn't like it, so I came home again.
Can you imagine how dull life would be if you stayed in your small village/town (or immediate vicinity if you are in a big city) all of your life?
Anyone know anywhere good online I could get a birch plywood sheet (circa 35mm thickness) cut to size for a reasonable price? Size around 1050 x 400.
EBay might be worth a look. I got good quality phenolic trailer board cut to size off eBay delivered.
Thoughts. HTH.
35mm ply sounds specialist and difficult. Is there a possibility of getting standard 2x18mm and screwing them together? 30mm screws from the back for a clean face.
Online I would be looking for something perhaps via Amazon Prime, or a local supplier who would deliver for free or £5 with their own van on their own delivery round. Travis Perkins in my area have a low fee (whilst Wickes screw you on small orders).
B&Q usually cut it to size for free if you have bought it there (see branches with the service), depending on how the prices balance out vs the cost of cutting. I have had 8x4 boards cut into about 10 shelves before now free. Their prices tend to be a little high, though - unless there is an offer on.
Often timber merchants will do it at say £0.50 or £1.00 per cut.
If you have the sheet already, then I would take the opportunity to buy an inexpensive cordless jigsaw (remember to standardise on the brand or buy a cheap disposable one from Aldi etc), a couple of trellises (about £10 each), and a couple of clamps (about £5 each) to hold your straight edge in place.
You can take your tools with you and cut it up in the car park, then it will go in your car. Requires a car- yours or a friend.
No idea if it is relevant for this project, but as a matter of general interest; I have found mybuilder.com is good for finding tradesmen for small jobs. Infinitely better than google, or waiting endlessly for people to get back to you.
1. Decide to run again 2. Win the nomination 3. Beat Harris or whatever's left of Biden
That all seems very possible and even likely.
4. Not have a fatal stroke or similar between now and then.
If you're sure I'm wrong, there's plenty of betting firms out there who'll take your stake money, but my advice is only back Trump with money you can afford to say goodbye to.
I wouldn't bet on it because the outcome is going to be bitterly contested and subject to interpretation.
Trump dying or succumbing to Ariel Sharon type incapacity would be a laugh but the actuarial chances of that must 5-10% at best.
It'd be more than a laugh, it might just be a best thing that ever happened. Picture him dying and then still winning the election. How much of a flint-hearted monk would you need to be not to find that hugely enjoyable? But you're right, the chances of death are non-negligibly low. He will probably be alive to see the swearing in of Someone Else come January 2025. If his prison privileges allow him TV access.
No chance he'll be in prison.
He should be, but no "jury of his peers" will convict.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thankys to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
You are very kind but our travels are over as we could not travel carefree anymore and we more importantly our health is not upto it
We daily thank the ' Good Lord ' for having given us the time and ability to travel to the four corners of our world and I would encourage everyone to travel as much as they can while they can and certainly have no heed to money they may hand down to their family at some time in the future
Life is to be lived and travel really does broaden the mind
If going on cruise ships broadens the mind, I can’t help but wonder what some of them must have like before they started….
I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that traveling to other places broadens the mind.
It's true! I've travelled far and wide. Banff, Fraserburgh, Ellon. Once, I even went to Crathie! But I didn't like it, so I came home again.
When I was a kid my parents had a phrase "away to Banff" which basically meant that I was behaving even more daftly than normal. I was somewhat disappointed when attending Banff Sheriff court some years ago to find that the overwhelming impression of the town was dullness rather than an interesting and exotic range of loons. Did I miss something?
I think you'd do better to go to the OTHER Banff, the one in Alberta. I've not been to the Canada one, but it looks a shit-load more interesting than Banff Banff. From Banff, head east for beaches or west for whisky. But there's good coastal walks to be had from Banff, so there's that.
So basically its a good place to start from if you are going somewhere else. That was very much my impression.
1. Decide to run again 2. Win the nomination 3. Beat Harris or whatever's left of Biden
That all seems very possible and even likely.
4. Not have a fatal stroke or similar between now and then.
If you're sure I'm wrong, there's plenty of betting firms out there who'll take your stake money, but my advice is only back Trump with money you can afford to say goodbye to.
I wouldn't bet on it because the outcome is going to be bitterly contested and subject to interpretation.
Trump dying or succumbing to Ariel Sharon type incapacity would be a laugh but the actuarial chances of that must 5-10% at best.
It'd be more than a laugh, it might just be a best thing that ever happened. Picture him dying and then still winning the election. How much of a flint-hearted monk would you need to be not to find that hugely enjoyable? But you're right, the chances of death are non-negligibly low. He will probably be alive to see the swearing in of Someone Else come January 2025. If his prison privileges allow him TV access.
No chance he'll be in prison.
He should be, but no "jury of his peers" will convict.
He won't be in prison, but I think he will have some judgement against him.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thankys to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
You are very kind but our travels are over as we could not travel carefree anymore and we more importantly our health is not upto it
We daily thank the ' Good Lord ' for having given us the time and ability to travel to the four corners of our world and I would encourage everyone to travel as much as they can while they can and certainly have no heed to money they may hand down to their family at some time in the future
Life is to be lived and travel really does broaden the mind
If going on cruise ships broadens the mind, I can’t help but wonder what some of them must have like before they started….
I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that traveling to other places broadens the mind.
It's true! I've travelled far and wide. Banff, Fraserburgh, Ellon. Once, I even went to Crathie! But I didn't like it, so I came home again.
When I was a kid my parents had a phrase "away to Banff" which basically meant that I was behaving even more daftly than normal. I was somewhat disappointed when attending Banff Sheriff court some years ago to find that the overwhelming impression of the town was dullness rather than an interesting and exotic range of loons. Did I miss something?
I think you'd do better to go to the OTHER Banff, the one in Alberta. I've not been to the Canada one, but it looks a shit-load more interesting than Banff Banff. From Banff, head east for beaches or west for whisky. But there's good coastal walks to be had from Banff, so there's that.
Oh, when the northern lights are putting on a show, you can do a lot worse than Aberdeenshire north coast, because you get decent dark skies once you're a little way out of town. There have been some decent displays recently, visible this far south, but the last month has been pretty cloudy and rainy, so you need a fair slice of luck. Still, better than the west coast where I think it's been raining since 1848.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
Exactly David, EU every time, just look at Ireland and any other normal small independent countries. They Are not colonies but can trade freely with who they wish and do not have massive hurdles put up to prevent them.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
Exactly David, EU every time, just look at Ireland and any other normal small independent countries. They Are not colonies but can trade freely with who they wish and do not have massive hurdles put up to prevent them.
Maybe you've missed it Malcolm but the trading relationship between Ireland and Ulster has not exactly been straightforward, largely because Ireland is bound by SM rules and cannot trade "freely" on whatever terms suit them.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
One really does need a Brexiteer to explain rationality and export markets. What size is the export market from England to Scotland?
Don't know. In 2018 the rUK exports to Scotland were £63.91 bn and I expect them to have increased in 2019 so we are running a very serious trade deficit with them. This just reinforces the importance of the SM with rUK for Scotland in that it is inconceivable that we have trade barriers for such a volume of imports as would happen, of course, if we joined the EU SM.
How much did the UK export market to the EU figure in your journey to becoming a Brexiteer?
Not sure I understand the question. But if you mean how much did I worry about a possible reduction in exports to the EU as a result of Brexit the answer is not much. This was firstly because we run a serious and frankly unsustainable deficit with the EU so free trade has not been in our interests. Secondly because other exports to faster growing parts of the world were increasing more rapidly and thirdly because the UK as a whole has a large enough internal market to make the change of smaller importance. Only 1 of these 3 factors can possibly apply to Scotland.
You make the mistake of answering your own Tory question there David, unlike you to try and mimic Carlotta , ie Scotland bad. It is totally irrelevant as you say and not many in Scotland will be fooled with Tory lies.
1. Decide to run again 2. Win the nomination 3. Beat Harris or whatever's left of Biden
That all seems very possible and even likely.
4. Not have a fatal stroke or similar between now and then.
If you're sure I'm wrong, there's plenty of betting firms out there who'll take your stake money, but my advice is only back Trump with money you can afford to say goodbye to.
I wouldn't bet on it because the outcome is going to be bitterly contested and subject to interpretation.
Trump dying or succumbing to Ariel Sharon type incapacity would be a laugh but the actuarial chances of that must 5-10% at best.
Has everyone given up on the idea of the ur-fat lying sack of jizz going to jail?
Johnson in prison would be like Mr. Bridger in The Italian Job.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thankys to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
You are very kind but our travels are over as we could not travel carefree anymore and we more importantly our health is not upto it
We daily thank the ' Good Lord ' for having given us the time and ability to travel to the four corners of our world and I would encourage everyone to travel as much as they can while they can and certainly have no heed to money they may hand down to their family at some time in the future
Life is to be lived and travel really does broaden the mind
If going on cruise ships broadens the mind, I can’t help but wonder what some of them must have like before they started….
I know many people enjoy cruises including my parents who did many and the stories they told convinces me never to do it. One reason being the food. If I didn't explode they would have to roll me off.
Also there is a significant risk in the opposite direction, ie an unwanted slimming course. I suspect it's because the ships are so big now - greater chance of someone with rotavirus coming on board and infecting everyone else.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thankys to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
You are very kind but our travels are over as we could not travel carefree anymore and we more importantly our health is not upto it
We daily thank the ' Good Lord ' for having given us the time and ability to travel to the four corners of our world and I would encourage everyone to travel as much as they can while they can and certainly have no heed to money they may hand down to their family at some time in the future
Life is to be lived and travel really does broaden the mind
If going on cruise ships broadens the mind, I can’t help but wonder what some of them must have like before they started….
I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that traveling to other places broadens the mind.
It's true! I've travelled far and wide. Banff, Fraserburgh, Ellon. Once, I even went to Crathie! But I didn't like it, so I came home again.
Can you imagine how dull life would be if you stayed in your small village/town (or immediate vicinity if you are in a big city) all of your life?
I still meet people on the island who talk of their last visit to North Island, many years previous.
Travel broadens the mind, for sure. Especially independent travel.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
Exactly David, EU every time, just look at Ireland and any other normal small independent countries. They Are not colonies but can trade freely with who they wish and do not have massive hurdles put up to prevent them.
Ireland has been a special case for the EU just because it undermines the UK. Scotland might also benefit from that.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
What an utterly objectionable post
My children will still receive an inheritance depending on the care we may need but you seem to think inheritance is a divine right and parents must protect this in favour of their descendants
You also have no idea how difficult it is for young people to buy homes here in North Wales and I might tell you home prices have rocketed since covid and are astonishing
Indeed we are now seeing many more one million pound homes
You do yourself no favours trying to justify your selfish self interest
Most parents who are prudent do try and preserve some inheritance for their family if they can but again that is personal choice and glad to see you too are planning on giving your children some of your estate.
Average house prices in North Wales are below the UK average and certainly below the UK average in terms of ratio of average earnings to house prices (house prices in London and the Home Counties by contrast are well above the UK average with a far higher average earnings to average house price ratio).
There may be a few million pound homes in the most pleasant parts of North Wales but still nowhere near the number of million pound plus homes in London, Buckinghamshire, Surrey etc
Your last sentence is so obviously stupid, of course there are not
And you have no idea how young people struggle here
Another example of 'Mr Know All' spouting about things that are very real to my family and everyone here in North Wales while living in S E England
Well, he's urging UK wide policies on the basis of that understanding.
1. Decide to run again 2. Win the nomination 3. Beat Harris or whatever's left of Biden
That all seems very possible and even likely.
4. Not have a fatal stroke or similar between now and then.
If you're sure I'm wrong, there's plenty of betting firms out there who'll take your stake money, but my advice is only back Trump with money you can afford to say goodbye to.
I wouldn't bet on it because the outcome is going to be bitterly contested and subject to interpretation.
Trump dying or succumbing to Ariel Sharon type incapacity would be a laugh but the actuarial chances of that must 5-10% at best.
It'd be more than a laugh, it might just be a best thing that ever happened. Picture him dying and then still winning the election. How much of a flint-hearted monk would you need to be not to find that hugely enjoyable? But you're right, the chances of death are non-negligibly low. He will probably be alive to see the swearing in of Someone Else come January 2025. If his prison privileges allow him TV access.
No chance he'll be in prison.
He should be, but no "jury of his peers" will convict.
He should have been jailed for arranging to have that journalist beaten up, years back.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
Exactly David, EU every time, just look at Ireland and any other normal small independent countries. They Are not colonies but can trade freely with who they wish and do not have massive hurdles put up to prevent them.
Maybe you've missed it Malcolm but the trading relationship between Ireland and Ulster has not exactly been straightforward, largely because Ireland is bound by SM rules and cannot trade "freely" on whatever terms suit them.
Well England would have a major issue as well, worst case it would hasten us putting infrastructure in place and exporting direct , rather than having to trail through England as at present. If Brexit is good for rUK then it is just as good for us. Sunny uplands await for both, think of all those Faroes Isles and New Zealand exports to come.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thankys to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
You are very kind but our travels are over as we could not travel carefree anymore and we more importantly our health is not upto it
We daily thank the ' Good Lord ' for having given us the time and ability to travel to the four corners of our world and I would encourage everyone to travel as much as they can while they can and certainly have no heed to money they may hand down to their family at some time in the future
Life is to be lived and travel really does broaden the mind
If going on cruise ships broadens the mind, I can’t help but wonder what some of them must have like before they started….
I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that traveling to other places broadens the mind.
It's true! I've travelled far and wide. Banff, Fraserburgh, Ellon. Once, I even went to Crathie! But I didn't like it, so I came home again.
Can you imagine how dull life would be if you stayed in your small village/town (or immediate vicinity if you are in a big city) all of your life?
I still meet people on the island who talk of their last visit to North Island, many years previous.
Travel broadens the mind, for sure. Especially independent travel.
Being on a cruise ship, perhaps not so much.
I can see that. Those double ender boats don't have much to excite the mind.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
Exactly David, EU every time, just look at Ireland and any other normal small independent countries. They Are not colonies but can trade freely with who they wish and do not have massive hurdles put up to prevent them.
Maybe you've missed it Malcolm but the trading relationship between Ireland and Ulster has not exactly been straightforward, largely because Ireland is bound by SM rules and cannot trade "freely" on whatever terms suit them.
Well England would have a major issue as well, worst case it would hasten us putting infrastructure in place and exporting direct , rather than having to trail through England as at present. If Brexit is good for rUK then it is just as good for us. Sunny uplands await for both, think of all those Faroes Isles and New Zealand exports to come.
Hello Malky - it's anice example of the assumption thast everything must be as it is today under imperial rule, isn't it?
But it's Saturday afternnon so I am off in a little while. Dry but windy over here, anyway.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
Exactly David, EU every time, just look at Ireland and any other normal small independent countries. They Are not colonies but can trade freely with who they wish and do not have massive hurdles put up to prevent them.
Maybe you've missed it Malcolm but the trading relationship between Ireland and Ulster has not exactly been straightforward, largely because Ireland is bound by SM rules and cannot trade "freely" on whatever terms suit them.
You were saying David............... and working both ways as well
Brexit Protocol brings huge cross-border trade boost with Northern Ireland exports up 61%
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
One really does need a Brexiteer to explain rationality and export markets. What size is the export market from England to Scotland?
Don't know. In 2018 the rUK exports to Scotland were £63.91 bn and I expect them to have increased in 2019 so we are running a very serious trade deficit with them. This just reinforces the importance of the SM with rUK for Scotland in that it is inconceivable that we have trade barriers for such a volume of imports as would happen, of course, if we joined the EU SM.
How much did the UK export market to the EU figure in your journey to becoming a Brexiteer?
Not sure I understand the question. But if you mean how much did I worry about a possible reduction in exports to the EU as a result of Brexit the answer is not much. This was firstly because we run a serious and frankly unsustainable deficit with the EU so free trade has not been in our interests. Secondly because other exports to faster growing parts of the world were increasing more rapidly and thirdly because the UK as a whole has a large enough internal market to make the change of smaller importance. Only 1 of these 3 factors can possibly apply to Scotland.
Yuoi make the mistake of answering your own Tory question there David, unlike you to try and mimic Carlotta , ie Scotland bad. It is totally irrelevant as you say and not many in Scotland will be fooled with Tory lies.
I am not saying Scotland bad, I would never say that.
I am saying that our trading relationship with rUK is more than 3x as important to us as our trading relationship with the EU.
I am saying that the vast majority of our imports also come from rUK and any trade barriers in relation to that would be extremely damaging..
I am saying that Scotland is running a serious trade deficit (as is the UK in fairness) which would not be viable in the medium term and would require significant reductions in consumption.
I am saying that these latter factors are more important for a small economy like Scotland than they are for a larger economy such as the UK and are likely to come to a head faster.
I would also say that if Scotland seriously wants independence the first priority has to be to build a viable and self sustaining economy which lives within its means both in terms of public spending and balance of trade. It is unfortunate that this has been such a low priority for the Scottish government over the last 10 years. Their road to independence is paved with unsustainable freebies when it should have been focused on making us more competitive.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
Exactly David, EU every time, just look at Ireland and any other normal small independent countries. They Are not colonies but can trade freely with who they wish and do not have massive hurdles put up to prevent them.
Maybe you've missed it Malcolm but the trading relationship between Ireland and Ulster has not exactly been straightforward, largely because Ireland is bound by SM rules and cannot trade "freely" on whatever terms suit them.
Well England would have a major issue as well, worst case it would hasten us putting infrastructure in place and exporting direct , rather than having to trail through England as at present. If Brexit is good for rUK then it is just as good for us. Sunny uplands await for both, think of all those Faroes Isles and New Zealand exports to come.
Hello Malky - it's anice example of the assumption thast everything must be as it is today under imperial rule, isn't it?
But it's Saturday afternnon so I am off in a little while. Dry but windy over here, anyway.
Hi Carnyx, pleasant here and no wind, enjoy your afternoon.
Watching this makes me feel pity for Greta. Who could let this happen to a little girl?
Must say, I do quite like the Australian style points based response to the "selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds"
Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow Watch as Sky News Australia rips a new one for Greta. This would never happen in Canada, USA, or Europe. Three Cheers!
Haven't followed the link as I'm immune to Blimpish clickbait. But it's interesting what hostility Greta arouses. Nearly everyone agrees she's got a point, though we can debate how far we need to go to turn the ship round before it hits the rocks. Instead of discussing that, let's have a go at a teenager...
But he wasn't having a go at a teenager, Greta.
He was having a go at teenagers, Australian teenagers.
Nick’s comment still applies.
It doesn't.
Modern western middle class teenagers have a very indulged and pampered lifestyle and most will struggle to maintain that when they have to fund it themselves.
Its not really their fault but rather that of their parents, who would be better advised saving money for their kids rather than spending so much on them.
It does - and your response is any event directed at their parents.
As far as Australia’s CO2 output is concerned, this has little or nothing to do with teenagers and their mobile phone usage - indeed there is already one state (Tasmania) with 100% renewable electricity. Being one of the world’s largest coal producers is rather more germane.
It is blimpish clickbait par excellence, and frankly embarrassing to watch.
Embarrassing because he points out some inconvenient truths ?
Without watching it again didn't he make points about aircon usage and travel by cars.
A more UK or US equivalent could also mention the amount of air travel the modern lifestyle includes.
If he feels so strongly about a consumerist lifestyle then surely he ought to be agreeing with their sentiments while fulminating about their behaviour ? No, it's just ignorant dyspepsia.
Oh I'm sure he lives it up and that his own upbringing wasn't something out of an Australian Hovis advert.
But so what - few of us fully match our deeds to our thoughts - and the fundamental point remains that the modern middle class teenager has a pampered, privileged lifestyle, A lifestyle, at least in the UK, they will struggle to maintain when they have to fund it themselves.
A lifestyle they will struggle to maintain after their rentier parents and grandparents have extorted sufficient rents and taxes from them.
Indeed.
Their parents and grandparents generations are indulging them at the wrong time and will exploit them at the wrong time.
The younger generation are having their current expectations raised and their future means reduced.
The younger generation will inherit more than any generation before them thanks to the assets and savings their parents and grandparents have built up
The expected age for someone born in the 1980s to lose their last parent is 64. Only in Tory HQ would that be considered young.
Don't forget they will also likely inherit something from their grandparents too in their teens, twenties or thirties
Not if their grandparents spaff it all on strippers and blow, oh and cruises
@HYUFD is single minded in protecting his inheritance but in our case we spent a lot of money on cruises and 7 round the world trips over the last 15 years with no thought to our family's hope of inheritance
Furthermore demanding one million inheritance tax free so you can buy a house in the south us the ultimate in selfish self interest
I am a conservative not a liberal and not a socialist and family is important to me. If you wish to spend all your children and grandchildrens' inheritance away that is your affair, however you live in North Wales where most young people on average incomes can afford to buy a house without assistance. That is not the case for those on average incomes in London and most of the South East and Home Counties so parents tend to be more prudent there in protecting the family savings and assets
What an utterly objectionable post
My children will still receive an inheritance depending on the care we may need but you seem to think inheritance is a divine right and parents must protect this in favour of their descendants
You also have no idea how difficult it is for young people to buy homes here in North Wales and I might tell you home prices have rocketed since covid and are astonishing
Indeed we are now seeing many more one million pound homes
You do yourself no favours trying to justify your selfish self interest
Most parents who are prudent do try and preserve some inheritance for their family if they can but again that is personal choice and glad to see you too are planning on giving your children some of your estate.
Average house prices in North Wales are below the UK average and certainly below the UK average in terms of ratio of average earnings to house prices (house prices in London and the Home Counties by contrast are well above the UK average with a far higher average earnings to average house price ratio).
There may be a few million pound homes in the most pleasant parts of North Wales but still nowhere near the number of million pound plus homes in London, Buckinghamshire, Surrey etc
Your last sentence is so obviously stupid, of course there are not
And you have no idea how young people struggle here
Another example of 'Mr Know All' spouting about things that are very real to my family and everyone here in North Wales while living in S E England
Well, he's urging UK wide policies on the basis of that understanding.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
One really does need a Brexiteer to explain rationality and export markets. What size is the export market from England to Scotland?
Don't know. In 2018 the rUK exports to Scotland were £63.91 bn and I expect them to have increased in 2019 so we are running a very serious trade deficit with them. This just reinforces the importance of the SM with rUK for Scotland in that it is inconceivable that we have trade barriers for such a volume of imports as would happen, of course, if we joined the EU SM.
How much did the UK export market to the EU figure in your journey to becoming a Brexiteer?
Not sure I understand the question. But if you mean how much did I worry about a possible reduction in exports to the EU as a result of Brexit the answer is not much. This was firstly because we run a serious and frankly unsustainable deficit with the EU so free trade has not been in our interests. Secondly because other exports to faster growing parts of the world were increasing more rapidly and thirdly because the UK as a whole has a large enough internal market to make the change of smaller importance. Only 1 of these 3 factors can possibly apply to Scotland.
Yuoi make the mistake of answering your own Tory question there David, unlike you to try and mimic Carlotta , ie Scotland bad. It is totally irrelevant as you say and not many in Scotland will be fooled with Tory lies.
I am not saying Scotland bad, I would never say that.
I am saying that our trading relationship with rUK is more than 3x as important to us as our trading relationship with the EU.
I am saying that the vast majority of our imports also come for rUK and any trade barriers in relation to that would be extremely damaging..
I am saying that Scotland is running a serious trade deficit (as is the UK in fairness) which would not be viable in the medium term and would require significant reductions in consumption.
I am saying that these latter factors are more important for a small economy like Scotland than they are for a larger economy such as the UK and are likely to come to a head faster.
I would also say that if Scotland seriously wants independence the first priority has to be to build a viable and self sustaining economy which lives within its means both in terms of public spending and balance of trade. It is unfortunate that this has been such a low priority for the Scottish government over the last 10 years. Their road to independence is paved with unsustainable freebies when it should have been focused on making us more competitive.
We agree on some points, though current Scottish Government being in any way interested in independence is not one of them. Just as you would not give your pay packet to your neighbour to run your family affairs it is unbelievable that in this day and age Scotland is still a colony being run by England. You only need to look to COP26 in coming weeks where the FM of Scotland will not be allowed into any of the discussions because we are not deemed to be a country and Bozo will select other people from England to accompany him , including the Queen of England to boot. You could not make it up , we will have despots , clowns and comic singers attending but Scotland is barred. We just get the inconvenience of traffic jams and our noses being rubbed in it every day. You may think that is great but I for one am not happy being a serf.
Some interesting numbers on Scotland's 2019 exports yesterday. Overall exports increased by £3.6bn which is pretty good but the breakdown is also interesting. Exports to rUK increased by £2.5bn to £52bn, an increase of 5%. Exports to the EU also increased by £420m to £16.4bn, an increase of 2.5%, which is less than those to the rest of the world which increased by £730m, an increase of 3.9%.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
Exactly David, EU every time, just look at Ireland and any other normal small independent countries. They Are not colonies but can trade freely with who they wish and do not have massive hurdles put up to prevent them.
Maybe you've missed it Malcolm but the trading relationship between Ireland and Ulster has not exactly been straightforward, largely because Ireland is bound by SM rules and cannot trade "freely" on whatever terms suit them.
You were saying David............... and working both ways as well
Brexit Protocol brings huge cross-border trade boost with Northern Ireland exports up 61%
Anyone know anywhere good online I could get a birch plywood sheet (circa 35mm thickness) cut to size for a reasonable price? Size around 1050 x 400.
EBay might be worth a look. I got good quality phenolic trailer board cut to size off eBay delivered.
Thoughts. HTH.
35mm ply sounds specialist and difficult. Is there a possibility of getting standard 2x18mm and screwing them together? 30mm screws from the back for a clean face.
Online I would be looking for something perhaps via Amazon Prime, or a local supplier who would deliver for free or £5 with their own van on their own delivery round. Travis Perkins in my area have a low fee (whilst Wickes screw you on small orders).
B&Q usually cut it to size for free if you have bought it there (see branches with the service), depending on how the prices balance out vs the cost of cutting. I have had 8x4 boards cut into about 10 shelves before now free. Their prices tend to be a little high, though - unless there is an offer on.
Often timber merchants will do it at say £0.50 or £1.00 per cut.
If you have the sheet already, then I would take the opportunity to buy an inexpensive cordless jigsaw (remember to standardise on the brand or buy a cheap disposable one from Aldi etc), a couple of trellises (about £10 each), and a couple of clamps (about £5 each) to hold your straight edge in place.
You can take your tools with you and cut it up in the car park, then it will go in your car. Requires a car- yours or a friend.
No idea if it is relevant for this project, but as a matter of general interest; I have found mybuilder.com is good for finding tradesmen for small jobs. Infinitely better than google, or waiting endlessly for people to get back to you.
I tend to differ on that one - most such portals seem to prune poor reviews.
Comments
This was one of those..
Random Restaurant
@_restaurant_bot
Akunki Drakht Restaurant; Armenia, Kotayk Marz, Akunk village, Ակունք, Armenia https://google.com/maps/place/?q=place_id:ChIJz1vVgPugakARVDVYZOdZyN8
https://twitter.com/_restaurant_bot/status/1451841351553781768
I looked up Akunk village, and it's got a cyclopean fort dating from around 5th Century BC. The region it's in, Gegharkunik Province on the Azerbaijan border, seems to have quite a few even older forts, and settlements found in archaeological digs.
The thing I really want to go there and see now, though, is only about a thousand years old. Noratus Cemetery was once used in to defend the region. The 14C army of Tamerlane that was ready to attack, was scared away by the khachkars (Armenian cross stones) that had been adorned with helmets and swords to look like soldiers from a distance.
I charge my car overnight (4 hours using 1/3 cost electricity) drive my daughter to work in the morning 32 miles (28 electric and 4 petrol), put it on charge when I get home and pick her up in the evening 32 miles (28 electric and 4 petrol). Because it's a hybrid even the 4 miles on petrol recovers some of the energy from braking. If I needed to drive further I could, so no range anxiety. Any local trips I make during the day are fully or mostly on electric depending on the when I go out.
Electric cars and ICE cars both need to be manufactured, that's true, but the running costs and cost to the environment are nowhere near the 95% of ICE cars you claim.
Localism and public transport are good, but for example on public transport it would take my daughter over 2 hours to get the 16 miles from home to her work and over 2 hours back.
1. Decide to run again
2. Win the nomination
3. Beat Harris or whatever's left of Biden
That all seems very possible and even likely.
By contrast we had relatively lower personal taxes at only 23rd out of 37 and even after the NI rise will be only 31st and in corporation taxes we are above average at 18th (11th with the super deduction for capital investment). So if anything we have more room to shift from property taxes to corporation taxes, given we have higher than average taxes on the former but lower than average taxes on the latter.
Plus most people have grandparents with assets now.
I've done a couple of Opinium polls recently on employer supervision of wfh - requiring the camera show the person at work all day, monitoring frequency of keystrokes, etc. I gather this is actually commonplace in the supposedly freedom-loving US, but I've never met anyone in Britain who mentioned it. Is it creeping in?
Would probably have to pay a % of my mortgaged house value, which is fine.
My children will still receive an inheritance depending on the care we may need but you seem to think inheritance is a divine right and parents must protect this in favour of their descendants
You also have no idea how difficult it is for young people to buy homes here in North Wales and I might tell you home prices have rocketed since covid and are astonishing
Indeed we are now seeing many more one million pound homes
You do yourself no favours trying to justify your selfish self interest
You have been complimentary in the past about Conservative ministers who have engaged positively - better treatment of animals is generally not something that people are instinctively against, as you say there’s usually reasons behind poor treatment so it’s better to look for and address the root causes.
This site is one of very few places on the internet where the conversations are mostly civil, and where people of different opinions can debate news and politics without things becoming too tribal. @MikeSmithson and his team should be very proud of what they have created. I shall try and make my next trip to the UK co-incident with a PB meetup, would definitely be good to put faces to names!
On that note, catch you all later. Off to the cricket, come on England! 🏏
I don't think one is inherently more worthy than the other.
Cheers Rishi!
One cannot stress enough the monumental pettiness and venality of this man. If he gets back in his decisions will be made on the basis of what satisfies his 'urges' (for revenge and gratification), what enriches & empowers himself and his family, and absolutely nothing else. It's a fools errand to look for 'beyond himself' sense or strategy in anything he does as a politician. That's how it was last time and that's (in spades) how it would be next time.
I do think this aspect of Donald Trump should be more recognized. I see far too much stuff said or written, on TV and radio, in the papers, even quality papers, that imply he has political goals, strategies, priorities etc. He does not. He is devoid of all that. To fail to see this is to imbue him with a gravitas that's wholly unmerited. It's a dreadfully bad take, and one which shouldn't be seen outside of alt-right chatrooms.
We haven't one it. Other places have.
0.1% would come in around double the annual council tax bill.
Average house prices in North Wales are below the UK average and certainly below the UK average in terms of ratio of average earnings to house prices (house prices in London and the Home Counties by contrast are well above the UK average with a far higher average earnings to average house price ratio).
There may be a few million pound homes in the most pleasant parts of North Wales but still nowhere near the number of million pound plus homes in London, Buckinghamshire, Surrey etc
https://www.businessinsider.com/robocabs-are-the-solution-to-all-our-transportation-problems-2015-7?r=US&IR=T
Personally I think that level 5 autonomy is a few decades away at the earliest.
https://insideevs.com/news/540150/tesla-fsd-betav102-drive-impressions/
Hopefully involving the abolishment of the total waste of space that is national insurance.
Of course taxing the owned portion would be better but I'm thinking ease of administration.
I'm 67 in a few weeks. I am also considerably more wealthy than my father so the inheritance is pointless. As so many have already pointed out, will be the case for most people. And as already pointed out, mainly by people posting piss taking posts, normal people do not inherit anything significant from grandparents.
Unless your parents die when you are 30 - 40 this is cloud cuckoo land stuff and even then if such a sad thing happens a mortgage is likely to need paying off.
And you have no idea how young people struggle here
Another example of 'Mr Know All' spouting about things that are very real to my family and everyone here in North Wales while living in S E England
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/speaking-out-guidance-on-campaigning-and-political-activity-by-charities-cc9/speaking-out-guidance-on-campaigning-and-political-activity-by-charities
Since the charity that I work for exists to promote farm animal welfare, we can make a "political" demand to end hen cages, but I think it would be such a grey area if we said "and raise Universal Credit to cover any possible price rises that followed". We can I think reasonably say "We expect any Government to ensure that the consequences do not harm poorer families", without saying what the Government should specifically do.
Even if it wasn't the law, we need to respect the right of supporters to disagree on unrelated issues. We ask people to contribute on the basis that they're helping farm animals, and they trust us not to let that morph into a political agenda. If all supporters had to agree with my personal views on everything ("and you've got to like Abba") merely because I run the UK arm, we'd have zero supporters. Ironically, I personally think the current Government is better on farm animal welfare than the Labour governments 1997-2010, but I'm not telling supporters they have to vote Tory, either.
Perhaps because they would do so themselves if given the chance
I'll point out there's no shortage of working age PBers who seem to be on PB during the 9-5.
Irrespective of work rates, the opportunity to wfh gives a definite benefit in the ending of travel time and cost and potentially other things such as childcare.
As to your monitoring question I've never heard anything like it and it certainly wouldn't be appropriate at my workplace - it does sound more like a thing for 'white collar wage slaves', call centres and the like.
You do not need a car in London (far lower ownership), plus of course there are things like the London weighting, regional rail passes etc far more than outside London. Even in London cycling 5-8 miles to work is perhaps more viable - more people do it.
Trump dying or succumbing to Ariel Sharon type incapacity would be a laugh but the actuarial chances of that must 5-10% at best.
So, in the year before Brexit the rUK market became an even larger share of our exports and is now comfortably more than 3x the exports to the whole of the EU, a situation which is likely to have increased since. If you think about a choice between a SM with the EU and a SM with rUk there really isn't a rational choice.
If you move to a national scale of house prices, then there will be huge local imbalances - some parts of the country will have everyone paying massively higher property taxes.
*depressed face*
What's the source of your certainty? Do you think he won't run, will be beaten to the nomination or will be beaten in the election and fail in the subsequent and inevitable coup attempt?
What size is the export market from England to Scotland?
So, while he might be right about 2024, he was very wrong last time.
My other grandparents were dead before I was born so inheritance by me was nothing and anyway they were poor. Re my children one set of their grandparents were dead before they were born and my wife inherited next to nothing.
You are not living in the real world.
Of course, under both the current and the past authoritarian communist governments, organisations that challenge the government will tend to find themselves in trouble, whether they're charities or not. But that's a separate problem.
35mm ply sounds specialist and difficult. Is there a possibility of getting standard 2x18mm and screwing them together? 30mm screws from the back for a clean face.
The delivery costs may be the killer, but at that size you could potentially walk it home with a barrow or something like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roughneck-ROU32025-Plasterboard-Carrier/dp/B003CT4DAE.
Online I would be looking for something perhaps via Amazon Prime, or a local supplier who would deliver for free or £5 with their own van on their own delivery round. Travis Perkins in my area have a low fee (whilst Wickes screw you on small orders).
B&Q usually cut it to size for free if you have bought it there (see branches with the service), depending on how the prices balance out vs the cost of cutting. I have had 8x4 boards cut into about 10 shelves before now free. Their prices tend to be a little high, though - unless there is an offer on.
Often timber merchants will do it at say £0.50 or £1.00 per cut.
If you have the sheet already, then I would take the opportunity to buy an inexpensive cordless jigsaw (remember to standardise on the brand or buy a cheap disposable one from Aldi etc), a couple of trellises (about £10 each), and a couple of clamps (about £5 each) to hold your straight edge in place.
You can take your tools with you and cut it up in the car park, then it will go in your car. Requires a car- yours or a friend.
Plus it will give an incentive not to be NIMBYs. Constrain supply of housing and your valuation will go up, but you'll pay for it. Encourage more supply and your valuation will go down but there'll be more people paying a smaller amount each and you'll owe less.
I'm not really sure about a cost-free version of that.
He should be, but no "jury of his peers" will convict.
Travel broadens the mind, for sure. Especially independent travel.
Being on a cruise ship, perhaps not so much.
Depends what you want as an outcome.
We'll have you voting PC yet.
But it's Saturday afternnon so I am off in a little while. Dry but windy over here, anyway.
Brexit Protocol brings huge cross-border trade boost with Northern Ireland exports up 61%
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/brexit/brexit-protocol-brings-hugecross-border-trade-boost-withnorthern-ireland-exports-up-61-40560446.html
I am saying that our trading relationship with rUK is more than 3x as important to us as our trading relationship with the EU.
I am saying that the vast majority of our imports also come from rUK and any trade barriers in relation to that would be extremely damaging..
I am saying that Scotland is running a serious trade deficit (as is the UK in fairness) which would not be viable in the medium term and would require significant reductions in consumption.
I am saying that these latter factors are more important for a small economy like Scotland than they are for a larger economy such as the UK and are likely to come to a head faster.
I would also say that if Scotland seriously wants independence the first priority has to be to build a viable and self sustaining economy which lives within its means both in terms of public spending and balance of trade. It is unfortunate that this has been such a low priority for the Scottish government over the last 10 years. Their road to independence is paved with unsustainable freebies when it should have been focused on making us more competitive.
You only need to look to COP26 in coming weeks where the FM of Scotland will not be allowed into any of the discussions because we are not deemed to be a country and Bozo will select other people from England to accompany him , including the Queen of England to boot. You could not make it up , we will have despots , clowns and comic singers attending but Scotland is barred. We just get the inconvenience of traffic jams and our noses being rubbed in it every day.
You may think that is great but I for one am not happy being a serf.
And it costs trades a fortune to be listed.