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Climate change: The huge opinion gap in the US – politicalbetting.com

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  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,934
    edited November 2021
    Sandpit said:

    My local city is planning its transition away from oil: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/01/the-road-to-net-zero-aberdeen-looks-to-a-future-without-oil

    The shift to renewables is already on, and Aberdeen is already a hydrogen hub. Note the last paragraph: “It is, I expect, a huge political regret that we missed out on a manufacturing windfall from wind. We have massively invested in wind but we don’t make a lot of the kit here,”

    How is it we missed out on this? Half our energy generated by wind yesterday and all the turbines are imported. Subsidy is/was needed to get that industry going, we're supposedly hosing money at all kinds of fripperies so how about cash to get the Renewable UK sector competitive? Then we can be an exporter of our own technology instead of increasingly reliant on imports.

    That is right but it will take joined-up thinking from government (and banks) if we are to develop new industries here rather than in China, Germany or the United States because in the short term, imports will be cheaper and easier. I have made the same observation about government use of cloud computing where it feels like Jeff Bezos' mum must have a senior job in Whitehall. It goes back, perhaps, to the 1980s pivot to services and away from manufacturing. We do not need to make everything but we do need to make some things.
    Licensing data centre technology from Amazon is probably a good thing at the moment, the data centre itself will be in the UK and isolated from the wider Internet, and it’s a proven platform.

    The French, well they’re trying to roll their own government cloud computing platform, I’m going to take a random guess that they can’t find enough good people for the offered salaries, and that the project runs very late and very over budget.

    Doesn’t mean government shouldnt be investing in this sort of thing though, but as a longer-term project rather than to satisfy an immediate need.
    In the short term, there is nothing very difficult about running a basic cloud. It takes commodity hardware and open source software. The twiddly bits (which conveniently give AWS vendor lock-in) can wait for the long term, and the French can use this to kick-start a domestic cloud industry. Like we should.

    Quite separate from that is the security argument that we should not put our secrets on foreign platforms.

    Government policy at the moment seems to be cloud-first, if not cloud-only, and on American platforms, for MI5, your local municipal art gallery, and everything in between.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    edited November 2021
    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Wasn't there also some suggestions about what exactly he had said to the Board, as well?

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    I'm updating my CV as we speak.
    Get in line!

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Never ever piss off the regulators, much like never piss off the TSA staff, both can probe you senseless.
    Pfft ..... see my earlier post about the pathetic way the FCA dealt with Staley last time.

    The financial relationship Epstein had with people interests me rather more than his sexual horrors, TBH. It is not looked into or talked about as much as it should be.
    Indeed. Where did all his money come from? How did he keep his scams going for so long and on such a scale? Was it blackmail, extortion, fraud or all of the above? And what was the nature of the blackmail or extortion?
    Money laundering is my guess.
  • Good morning, everyone.

    Miss Cyclefree, read a fascinating article once suggesting that psychopathology, and other psych disorders, arose because they're helpful (on the whole) for society. Psychopaths make great leaders, between charm, ruthlessness, high intelligence, and not letting emotions get in the way.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
  • I have to tell you now no such undertaking has been received, and consequently..

    https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1455079284285087747?s=21

    I am glad they are focused on making COP26 a success.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    It's a pity rain can't be turned into power in some way. (Or maybe it can.)

    There is plenty of it here in Cumbria at the moment.
  • Cyclefree said:

    BTW for anyone who hasn't heard Alan Little's series on This Union: Two Kingdoms on BBC Sounds - about England and Scotland - it is a must listen. Very interesting.

    I'd be curious to hear what our Scottish posters make of it.

    I recommended it a few weeks ago.
    One of Little’s virtues is that you’d be hard pressed to work out his own view on the subject from his programmes/output (though I have my suspicions).
  • I see the snowflakes were triggered by the opening number on Strictly this weekend.

    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/tv/strictly-come-dancing-brexit-row-22025494
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited November 2021

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883
    darkage said:



    For me the decisive point about EV's is how long they last. In our experience, the expense with fixing up old cars comes with electrical issues where you have to take them to the main dealer to sort out. After a certain point it becomes uneconomic to fix them and they need to be scrapped. However, this is not much of a problem on old ICE cars where most issues can be patched up adequately by the garage on the local industrial estate.

    There are very few electrical problems that absolutely require main stealer attention. Almost all of them can be diagnosed with OBD2. The recent proliferation of apps like Carly has greatly empowered the independent repairer.
  • darkage said:

    Sandpit said:

    One of the nasty things about the obsession with climate change are older people, who have spent the last four or five decades travelling freely around the world, stating that 'we' (i.e. the young) have to travel less, to not have the same advantages they had. Often the same people who complain that Brexit means 'we' cannot travel as much ...

    I'm not someone particularly fond of flying, so it doesn't affect me much. But it might my son: and seeing people who have contributed to the mess now pretending to be environmentally conscious is a bit amusing.

    Like people who have the wealth to buy electric cars (and gaining from hefty subsidies from the government), sneering at poorer people who can only afford ICE cars. TBF, not an attitude seen much on here, but I've seen it a lot elsewhere.

    To be fair me keeping my 2007 Ford Fiesta on the road is doing more for climate change than someone who has had 4 new cars in the same time period, even if they are more marginally more fuel efficient.
    Absolutely. Apart from the worst of the cheating diesels, keeping old cars running is better for the planet than buying new cars. Not that you’d know that from government actions like ULEZ.
    Until recently we had a 15 year old toyota that did 40mpg - sold it on and I have no doubt it will probably keep going for another 10 years. The MPG is similar to the marginally cleaner car we replaced it with.

    For me the decisive point about EV's is how long they last. In our experience, the expense with fixing up old cars comes with electrical issues where you have to take them to the main dealer to sort out. After a certain point it becomes uneconomic to fix them and they need to be scrapped. However, this is not much of a problem on old ICE cars where most issues can be patched up adequately by the garage on the local industrial estate.

    With EV's, as far as I can see, after the manufacturers warranty expires you are at the mercy of the main dealer who has no incentive to provide cheap repairs; they exist to sell new cars.
    Lets make the difference between electronics and electrics. The drive part of an EV is very simple and should run for a long time. The electronics are no different to any other car - I would expect the fancydan huge touch screen and associated gubbins (technical term) will be the death of most new cars, EVs no exception.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Cookie said:

    How interesting that Republican college grads and Democrat college grads are each representing extremes of their particular position. A sampling quirk, perhaps?

    I was thinking about my views on climate change the other day. My view is that it's happening, and it's man made. Of course that's my view. But it's a view which is increasingly challenging to hold in the face of the messianic fervour of its most vocal exponents. I don't think I'm alone in being generally suspicious of people trying to make me feel an emotion. I can't help wishing the climate change lobby would tone it down a bit.

    Absolutely. Less emotion, much less virtue signalling and a lot more science.
    The problem is the science and technology isn't with the zealots though.

    They are a great example of the fallacy "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done".

    Thankfully after a false-start in Blair's years in putting everything into taxation that actually led to no real fall in CO2 at all, simply exporting our CO2 to other nations instead, we've in recent years got things more on a sensible footing both in this country and abroad.

    Investing in clean technologies that work is the only fix, not wasting our time yammering about people taking flights.
    I don't see these as alternatives Philip. We need both.
    I do see them as alternatives.

    If we do find a clean alternative way to power aviation then stopping aviation becomes pointless.
    If we don't find a cleal alternative way to power aviation then dropping our own personal demand is meaningless on a global scale.

    The Chinese aren't going to stop flying just because we stop flyiing. They will adopt a clean alternative if we discover it and make it affordable.

    We emit next to nothing in this country on a global scale. What we do help lead on is science and technology. That needs to be our sole overriding focus.
    Its a matter of timing. If and when we develop a clear alternative to aviation fuel we can do it again. Right now we can't. Hopefully severe restrictions on aviation will accelerate development of an alternative but its a tricky one.
  • Cookie said:

    How interesting that Republican college grads and Democrat college grads are each representing extremes of their particular position. A sampling quirk, perhaps?

    I was thinking about my views on climate change the other day. My view is that it's happening, and it's man made. Of course that's my view. But it's a view which is increasingly challenging to hold in the face of the messianic fervour of its most vocal exponents. I don't think I'm alone in being generally suspicious of people trying to make me feel an emotion. I can't help wishing the climate change lobby would tone it down a bit.

    The language used is unhelpful - "deniers" - that's from the world of religion and faith - not science - "there is but one true faith" - "sceptics" (a few of whom have some points) - but it doesn't help persuade.

    I grew up in the seventies when The Club of Rome was predicting imminent exhaustion of natural resources - while the sceptics were pointing out that humans adapt and develop - as proved to be the case.

    I've no doubt man-made climate change is real, but am optimistic that we'll find a way of muddling through. I've just moved into a new flat and replaced all the halogen bulbs with LEDs - cutting power consumption from lighting to one tenth its previous level.

    The most shocking thing about that polling is presumably Republican High School/less are more inclined to believe climate change is real than Rep graduates.
  • I'm really loving the Republican Liz Truss.

    Liz Truss has privately accused China of committing genocide in a marked change from her predecessor as foreign secretary, The Times has been told.

    Dominic Raab stopped short of describing China’s persecution of the Uighur Muslims as genocide when he was foreign secretary, insisting the international community had to be “careful” before making such claims.

    Truss is seen as more hawkish on China than both Raab and Boris Johnson and let her views be known in a meeting with Caroline Wilson, the UK ambassador to China.

    When Wilson was appointed in October last year she discussed Britain’s relationship with Beijing in a meeting with Truss in her role as international trade secretary. According to an ally of Truss, Wilson ended their discussion by asking why the UK couldn’t treat China “like we treat the French”. According to the source, Truss said: “Because the French aren’t committing genocide.”

    The meeting then ended abruptly, the source said. The exchange has been corroborated by a second source close to the foreign secretary.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-pulls-no-punches-about-genocide-of-uighurs-by-china-q8z90l798
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Wasn't there also some suggestions about what exactly he had said to the Board, as well?

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    I'm updating my CV as we speak.
    Get in line!

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Never ever piss off the regulators, much like never piss off the TSA staff, both can probe you senseless.
    Pfft ..... see my earlier post about the pathetic way the FCA dealt with Staley last time.

    The financial relationship Epstein had with people interests me rather more than his sexual horrors, TBH. It is not looked into or talked about as much as it should be.
    Indeed. Where did all his money come from? How did he keep his scams going for so long and on such a scale? Was it blackmail, extortion, fraud or all of the above? And what was the nature of the blackmail or extortion?
    Mossad
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate got 893,051 votes in London for Mayor to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful
    the idea that Shaun Bailey is 18x better than someone..... ouch!
  • Dura_Ace said:



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
    You think the Chinese and the Americans are going to restrict access? Hah! Even if we in the UK did it won't do an iota of difference for global emissions.

    But if we develop a clean alternative then that will make a difference. I think that's achievable to be developed and rolled out by 2050 for net zero by then. If it takes decades it takes decades, and if it doesn't then we will have to learn to live with it and invest in mitigation instead.
  • DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Cookie said:

    How interesting that Republican college grads and Democrat college grads are each representing extremes of their particular position. A sampling quirk, perhaps?

    I was thinking about my views on climate change the other day. My view is that it's happening, and it's man made. Of course that's my view. But it's a view which is increasingly challenging to hold in the face of the messianic fervour of its most vocal exponents. I don't think I'm alone in being generally suspicious of people trying to make me feel an emotion. I can't help wishing the climate change lobby would tone it down a bit.

    Absolutely. Less emotion, much less virtue signalling and a lot more science.
    The problem is the science and technology isn't with the zealots though.

    They are a great example of the fallacy "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done".

    Thankfully after a false-start in Blair's years in putting everything into taxation that actually led to no real fall in CO2 at all, simply exporting our CO2 to other nations instead, we've in recent years got things more on a sensible footing both in this country and abroad.

    Investing in clean technologies that work is the only fix, not wasting our time yammering about people taking flights.
    I don't see these as alternatives Philip. We need both.
    I do see them as alternatives.

    If we do find a clean alternative way to power aviation then stopping aviation becomes pointless.
    If we don't find a cleal alternative way to power aviation then dropping our own personal demand is meaningless on a global scale.

    The Chinese aren't going to stop flying just because we stop flyiing. They will adopt a clean alternative if we discover it and make it affordable.

    We emit next to nothing in this country on a global scale. What we do help lead on is science and technology. That needs to be our sole overriding focus.
    Its a matter of timing. If and when we develop a clear alternative to aviation fuel we can do it again. Right now we can't. Hopefully severe restrictions on aviation will accelerate development of an alternative but its a tricky one.
    And how pray tell are you going to get the Chinese who are opening a new airport every day (from memory) to suddenly implement severe restrictions on aviation? Or the Americans, for whom domestic flights can be much more common than taking a bus?

    The UK could choose to close all airports and the rest of the world would keep flying without us. But if the UK discovers clean jet fuel, then the rest ofthe world can adopt that.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    I'm really loving the Republican Liz Truss.

    Liz Truss has privately accused China of committing genocide in a marked change from her predecessor as foreign secretary, The Times has been told.

    Dominic Raab stopped short of describing China’s persecution of the Uighur Muslims as genocide when he was foreign secretary, insisting the international community had to be “careful” before making such claims.

    Truss is seen as more hawkish on China than both Raab and Boris Johnson and let her views be known in a meeting with Caroline Wilson, the UK ambassador to China.

    When Wilson was appointed in October last year she discussed Britain’s relationship with Beijing in a meeting with Truss in her role as international trade secretary. According to an ally of Truss, Wilson ended their discussion by asking why the UK couldn’t treat China “like we treat the French”. According to the source, Truss said: “Because the French aren’t committing genocide.”

    The meeting then ended abruptly, the source said. The exchange has been corroborated by a second source close to the foreign secretary.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-pulls-no-punches-about-genocide-of-uighurs-by-china-q8z90l798

    Truss is right to press China on human rights.

    She has also dialled down her republicanism in recent years, even calling the Queen's broadcast last year 'inspiring.'

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/1246884603857637376?s=20

    She has realised she is now in the monarchist Tory party, she is no longer a LD like you
  • Cyclefree said:

    It's a pity rain can't be turned into power in some way. (Or maybe it can.)

    There is plenty of it here in Cumbria at the moment.

    Pump-storage power station. Plenty of them in Scotland.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited November 2021

    I'm really loving the Republican Liz Truss.

    Liz Truss has privately accused China of committing genocide in a marked change from her predecessor as foreign secretary, The Times has been told.

    Dominic Raab stopped short of describing China’s persecution of the Uighur Muslims as genocide when he was foreign secretary, insisting the international community had to be “careful” before making such claims.

    Truss is seen as more hawkish on China than both Raab and Boris Johnson and let her views be known in a meeting with Caroline Wilson, the UK ambassador to China.

    When Wilson was appointed in October last year she discussed Britain’s relationship with Beijing in a meeting with Truss in her role as international trade secretary. According to an ally of Truss, Wilson ended their discussion by asking why the UK couldn’t treat China “like we treat the French”. According to the source, Truss said: “Because the French aren’t committing genocide.”

    The meeting then ended abruptly, the source said. The exchange has been corroborated by a second source close to the foreign secretary.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-pulls-no-punches-about-genocide-of-uighurs-by-china-q8z90l798

    The Conservatives have already had the first 'ethnic minority' Prime Minister and the first female Prime Minister. It wouldn't surprise me at all, much to a certain someone's horror, if they had the first republican one too.

    After Truss, maybe Dehenna Davison willl become the countries first LGBT one as well as the fourth female one, before Labour have had any female ones?
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883

    Dura_Ace said:



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
    You think the Chinese and the Americans are going to restrict access? Hah! Even if we in the UK did it won't do an iota of difference for global emissions.

    But if we develop a clean alternative then that will make a difference. I think that's achievable to be developed and rolled out by 2050 for net zero by then. If it takes decades it takes decades, and if it doesn't then we will have to learn to live with it and invest in mitigation instead.
    Thank Gaia you're not in charge.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,462
    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    I’m with @Philip_Thompson on this unfortunately. I think it’s middle class elitism to suggest we should limit consumption to “approved consumption”. Especially things like travel.

    Pour money into generating cheap renewable electricity. That is the golden ticket, not cycling to Tesco on occasion.
  • Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
    You think the Chinese and the Americans are going to restrict access? Hah! Even if we in the UK did it won't do an iota of difference for global emissions.

    But if we develop a clean alternative then that will make a difference. I think that's achievable to be developed and rolled out by 2050 for net zero by then. If it takes decades it takes decades, and if it doesn't then we will have to learn to live with it and invest in mitigation instead.
    Thank Gaia you're not in charge.
    And thank goodness any clown who refers to Gaia isn't in charge!
  • Cyclefree said:

    It's a pity rain can't be turned into power in some way. (Or maybe it can.)

    There is plenty of it here in Cumbria at the moment.

    Hydroelectricity. Any deep valleys in Cumbria you wouldn’t mind seeing permanently flooded to a depth of tens of meters?
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Good morning, everyone.

    Miss Cyclefree, read a fascinating article once suggesting that psychopathology, and other psych disorders, arose because they're helpful (on the whole) for society. Psychopaths make great leaders, between charm, ruthlessness, high intelligence, and not letting emotions get in the way.

    Well, that could describe me! But the problem is not these characteristics - but the lack of integrity and moral courage. That is IMO at the heart of what goes wrong.

    Cyclefree said:

    BTW for anyone who hasn't heard Alan Little's series on This Union: Two Kingdoms on BBC Sounds - about England and Scotland - it is a must listen. Very interesting.

    I'd be curious to hear what our Scottish posters make of it.

    I recommended it a few weeks ago.
    One of Little’s virtues is that you’d be hard pressed to work out his own view on the subject from his programmes/output (though I have my suspicions).
    You did. It was your recommendation that made me listen. Thank you.

    I have recently become interested in learning more about Scottish history, a subject I really did not know anything about. There are some good podcasts and introductory books. When weather and work permits Mr Cyclefree and I have a plan to do a walking tour of Scotland. It is only a couple of hours away and while I did a lot of exploring there when younger, especially with a previous Scottish boyfriend, and on family holidays, it is time for another extended trip.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited November 2021

    I'm really loving the Republican Liz Truss.

    Liz Truss has privately accused China of committing genocide in a marked change from her predecessor as foreign secretary, The Times has been told.

    Dominic Raab stopped short of describing China’s persecution of the Uighur Muslims as genocide when he was foreign secretary, insisting the international community had to be “careful” before making such claims.

    Truss is seen as more hawkish on China than both Raab and Boris Johnson and let her views be known in a meeting with Caroline Wilson, the UK ambassador to China.

    When Wilson was appointed in October last year she discussed Britain’s relationship with Beijing in a meeting with Truss in her role as international trade secretary. According to an ally of Truss, Wilson ended their discussion by asking why the UK couldn’t treat China “like we treat the French”. According to the source, Truss said: “Because the French aren’t committing genocide.”

    The meeting then ended abruptly, the source said. The exchange has been corroborated by a second source close to the foreign secretary.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-pulls-no-punches-about-genocide-of-uighurs-by-china-q8z90l798

    The Conservatives have already had the first 'ethnic minority' Prime Minister and the first female Prime Minister. It wouldn't surprise me at all, much to a certain someone's horror, if they had the first republican one too.
    As I have already posted while Truss was a republican in her misspent LD youth there is no evidence she is now and even if she is still she is sensible to keep quiet about it and not push her private views on an overwhelmingly monarchist Tory Party membership and Tory voter base.

    Though she is still a long way behind Sunak as potential next Tory leader anyway and Boris is still going to be leader for some time to come
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Whatever you make of the substance here, just imagine how it will go down with the UK’s ambassadors around the world to learn that their private conversations with the Foreign Secretary are now regarded as fair game for briefings to the newspapers. https://twitter.com/DPMcBride/status/1455091576087134212/photo/1
  • Cyclefree said:

    It's a pity rain can't be turned into power in some way. (Or maybe it can.)

    There is plenty of it here in Cumbria at the moment.

    Hydroelectricity. Any deep valleys in Cumbria you wouldn’t mind seeing permanently flooded to a depth of tens of meters?
    Perhaps we have found a use for Carlisle after all.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,094
    edited November 2021

    Cyclefree said:

    It's a pity rain can't be turned into power in some way. (Or maybe it can.)

    There is plenty of it here in Cumbria at the moment.

    Hydroelectricity. Any deep valleys in Cumbria you wouldn’t mind seeing permanently flooded to a depth of tens of meters?
    That would be run of river turbines.

    But in the UK any contribution would be a rounding error in the overall game.
  • It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Proof that it is possible to be wrong about everything.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Cookie said:

    How interesting that Republican college grads and Democrat college grads are each representing extremes of their particular position. A sampling quirk, perhaps?

    I was thinking about my views on climate change the other day. My view is that it's happening, and it's man made. Of course that's my view. But it's a view which is increasingly challenging to hold in the face of the messianic fervour of its most vocal exponents. I don't think I'm alone in being generally suspicious of people trying to make me feel an emotion. I can't help wishing the climate change lobby would tone it down a bit.

    Absolutely. Less emotion, much less virtue signalling and a lot more science.
    The problem is the science and technology isn't with the zealots though.

    They are a great example of the fallacy "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done".

    Thankfully after a false-start in Blair's years in putting everything into taxation that actually led to no real fall in CO2 at all, simply exporting our CO2 to other nations instead, we've in recent years got things more on a sensible footing both in this country and abroad.

    Investing in clean technologies that work is the only fix, not wasting our time yammering about people taking flights.
    I don't see these as alternatives Philip. We need both.
    I do see them as alternatives.

    If we do find a clean alternative way to power aviation then stopping aviation becomes pointless.
    If we don't find a cleal alternative way to power aviation then dropping our own personal demand is meaningless on a global scale.

    The Chinese aren't going to stop flying just because we stop flyiing. They will adopt a clean alternative if we discover it and make it affordable.

    We emit next to nothing in this country on a global scale. What we do help lead on is science and technology. That needs to be our sole overriding focus.
    Its a matter of timing. If and when we develop a clear alternative to aviation fuel we can do it again. Right now we can't. Hopefully severe restrictions on aviation will accelerate development of an alternative but its a tricky one.
    And how pray tell are you going to get the Chinese who are opening a new airport every day (from memory) to suddenly implement severe restrictions on aviation? Or the Americans, for whom domestic flights can be much more common than taking a bus?

    The UK could choose to close all airports and the rest of the world would keep flying without us. But if the UK discovers clean jet fuel, then the rest ofthe world can adopt that.
    The lack of participation of China in COP26 in any meaningful way is a major part of the problem. We may have to apply carbon duties to all of their products equivalent to their production. The economic disruption would be immense but we are running out of alternatives.

    I don't believe the airport thing btw.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,462

    I see the snowflakes were triggered by the opening number on Strictly this weekend.

    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/tv/strictly-come-dancing-brexit-row-22025494

    This is really pathetic, and people complain about remainers.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Proof that it is possible to be wrong about everything.
    There are a number of reason not like Prince Charles.

    His very long running commitments to ecology, race relations and housing are not the reasons that any republican I have met would pick....
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
    You think the Chinese and the Americans are going to restrict access? Hah! Even if we in the UK did it won't do an iota of difference for global emissions.

    But if we develop a clean alternative then that will make a difference. I think that's achievable to be developed and rolled out by 2050 for net zero by then. If it takes decades it takes decades, and if it doesn't then we will have to learn to live with it and invest in mitigation instead.
    Thank Gaia you're not in charge.
    So Billy cant fly to Benidorm but you can knob about in a Porsche?
    I didn't say anybody couldn't do anything. I was just making a prediction that governments will start to make air travel very expensive in order to curtail CO2 emissions from it.

    I've driven 1,800 miles this year, cycled 6,400 and flown zero.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,343
    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Cookie said:

    How interesting that Republican college grads and Democrat college grads are each representing extremes of their particular position. A sampling quirk, perhaps?

    I was thinking about my views on climate change the other day. My view is that it's happening, and it's man made. Of course that's my view. But it's a view which is increasingly challenging to hold in the face of the messianic fervour of its most vocal exponents. I don't think I'm alone in being generally suspicious of people trying to make me feel an emotion. I can't help wishing the climate change lobby would tone it down a bit.

    Understandable, but completely illogical.
    I think David Hume would disagree there, even if Mr Spock wouldn’t.

    Climate change is actually a pretty good example of where passion tends to rule ahead of reason, on both sides. Otherwise you wouldn’t have Greta Thunberg and Donald Trump involved in the debate.
    Hume on the subject:

    In the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume says: "Tis not unreasonable for me to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger."

  • Oh well, glad that that’s been cleared up.

    https://twitter.com/paulbernaluk/status/1455080062680772611?s=21
  • O/T The YouGov question is poor because it is not framed around the actual issue of whether dangerous climate change is likely to be caused by continuing human CO2 emissions. I suspect that many responding no were answering the question behind the question which I also suspect is the case with many opinion polls. Virtually all academically respectable critics of the IPCC (despite attempts to deny that they exist , there are a significant number) would agree with the statement. Is the question badly phrased on purpose?
  • kjh said:

    I see the snowflakes were triggered by the opening number on Strictly this weekend.

    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/tv/strictly-come-dancing-brexit-row-22025494

    This is really pathetic, and people complain about remainers.
    Indeed, stupid Brexiteers don't realise that Ode to Joy is more associated with that non Christmas film, Die Hard, than the EU.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited November 2021
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
  • Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
    You think the Chinese and the Americans are going to restrict access? Hah! Even if we in the UK did it won't do an iota of difference for global emissions.

    But if we develop a clean alternative then that will make a difference. I think that's achievable to be developed and rolled out by 2050 for net zero by then. If it takes decades it takes decades, and if it doesn't then we will have to learn to live with it and invest in mitigation instead.
    Thank Gaia you're not in charge.
    So Billy cant fly to Benidorm but you can knob about in a Porsche?
    I didn't say anybody couldn't do anything. I was just making a prediction that governments will start to make air travel very expensive in order to curtail CO2 emissions from it.

    I've driven 1,800 miles this year, cycled 6,400 and flown zero.
    I hope every one of those 1,800 miles involved knobbing about.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Cyclefree said:

    It's a pity rain can't be turned into power in some way. (Or maybe it can.)

    There is plenty of it here in Cumbria at the moment.

    Hydroelectricity. Any deep valleys in Cumbria you wouldn’t mind seeing permanently flooded to a depth of tens of meters?
    That seems to be happening already without any human intervention!

    I'd happily see the offices of Cumbria County Council buried. An utterly useless organisation which is fortunately going to disappear. Not a moment too soon.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    Sandpit said:

    My local city is planning its transition away from oil: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/01/the-road-to-net-zero-aberdeen-looks-to-a-future-without-oil

    The shift to renewables is already on, and Aberdeen is already a hydrogen hub. Note the last paragraph: “It is, I expect, a huge political regret that we missed out on a manufacturing windfall from wind. We have massively invested in wind but we don’t make a lot of the kit here,”

    How is it we missed out on this? Half our energy generated by wind yesterday and all the turbines are imported. Subsidy is/was needed to get that industry going, we're supposedly hosing money at all kinds of fripperies so how about cash to get the Renewable UK sector competitive? Then we can be an exporter of our own technology instead of increasingly reliant on imports.

    That is right but it will take joined-up thinking from government (and banks) if we are to develop new industries here rather than in China, Germany or the United States because in the short term, imports will be cheaper and easier. I have made the same observation about government use of cloud computing where it feels like Jeff Bezos' mum must have a senior job in Whitehall. It goes back, perhaps, to the 1980s pivot to services and away from manufacturing. We do not need to make everything but we do need to make some things.
    Licensing data centre technology from Amazon is probably a good thing at the moment, the data centre itself will be in the UK and isolated from the wider Internet, and it’s a proven platform.

    The French, well they’re trying to roll their own government cloud computing platform, I’m going to take a random guess that they can’t find enough good people for the offered salaries, and that the project runs very late and very over budget.

    Doesn’t mean government shouldnt be investing in this sort of thing though, but as a longer-term project rather than to satisfy an immediate need.
    In the short term, there is nothing very difficult about running a basic cloud. It takes commodity hardware and open source software. The twiddly bits (which conveniently give AWS vendor lock-in) can wait for the long term, and the French can use this to kick-start a domestic cloud industry. Like we should.

    Quite separate from that is the security argument that we should not put our secrets on foreign platforms.

    Government policy at the moment seems to be cloud-first, if not cloud-only, and on American platforms, for MI5, your local municipal art gallery, and everything in between.
    "is nothing very difficult about running a basic cloud" - I think you'll find that running a cloud that is beyond a single rack demo require quite a bit of sophistication. Even just running a K8s setup requires a fair bit of effort and kill.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,934
    edited November 2021
    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Wasn't there also some suggestions about what exactly he had said to the Board, as well?

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    I'm updating my CV as we speak.
    Get in line!

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Never ever piss off the regulators, much like never piss off the TSA staff, both can probe you senseless.
    Pfft ..... see my earlier post about the pathetic way the FCA dealt with Staley last time.

    The financial relationship Epstein had with people interests me rather more than his sexual horrors, TBH. It is not looked into or talked about as much as it should be.
    Indeed. Where did all his money come from? How did he keep his scams going for so long and on such a scale? Was it blackmail, extortion, fraud or all of the above? And what was the nature of the blackmail or extortion?
    Money laundering is my guess.
    Surely more likely is the mundane suggestion that Epstein was just tracking the market. This meant he returned a profit which was a good enough reason (and cover) for other fund managers to invest with him. Happy endings all round. :wink:
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,530
    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
    You think the Chinese and the Americans are going to restrict access? Hah! Even if we in the UK did it won't do an iota of difference for global emissions.

    But if we develop a clean alternative then that will make a difference. I think that's achievable to be developed and rolled out by 2050 for net zero by then. If it takes decades it takes decades, and if it doesn't then we will have to learn to live with it and invest in mitigation instead.
    Thank Gaia you're not in charge.
    So Billy cant fly to Benidorm but you can knob about in a Porsche?
    I didn't say anybody couldn't do anything. I was just making a prediction that governments will start to make air travel very expensive in order to curtail CO2 emissions from it.

    I've driven 1,800 miles this year, cycled 6,400 and flown zero.
    The fact that aircraft fuel is not taxed should be the first thing to go: although that would probably need worldwide agreement. Airlines save billions a year from that in the UK alone: and it makes it much harder for coach and train operators to compete.

    The EU might be leading the way on this:
    https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/eu-axes-airlines-fuel-tax-exemption-in-drive-for-greener-fuels/
  • kjh said:

    I see the snowflakes were triggered by the opening number on Strictly this weekend.

    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/tv/strictly-come-dancing-brexit-row-22025494

    This is really pathetic, and people complain about remainers.
    Indeed, stupid Brexiteers don't realise that Ode to Joy is more associated with that non Christmas film, Die Hard, than the EU.
    Don’t forget A Clockwork Orange.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,094
    Morning all.

    One interesting item this morning is Ryanair's threat to withdraw their SE listing from London.

    Whether this the usual megaphoning, or something else, remains to be seen.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,972
    edited November 2021
    More wokeist virtue signalling, is she a member of Insulate Britain?

    SHOPPERS should be prepared to boycott firms who fail to go green, a minister has said.

    In an unusual swipe at small businesses still reeling from the shock of the pandemic, Anne Marie Trevelyan urged Brits to vote with their wallets if firms are big polluters.


    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16593812/boycott-companies-not-green/?utm_source=native_share&utm_medium=sharebar_native&utm_campaign=sharebaramp
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883
    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Are there any "out" republican tory MPs?
  • Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
    You think the Chinese and the Americans are going to restrict access? Hah! Even if we in the UK did it won't do an iota of difference for global emissions.

    But if we develop a clean alternative then that will make a difference. I think that's achievable to be developed and rolled out by 2050 for net zero by then. If it takes decades it takes decades, and if it doesn't then we will have to learn to live with it and invest in mitigation instead.
    Thank Gaia you're not in charge.
    So Billy cant fly to Benidorm but you can knob about in a Porsche?
    I didn't say anybody couldn't do anything. I was just making a prediction that governments will start to make air travel very expensive in order to curtail CO2 emissions from it.

    I've driven 1,800 miles this year, cycled 6,400 and flown zero.
    The fact that aircraft fuel is not taxed should be the first thing to go: although that would probably need worldwide agreement. Airlines save billions a year from that in the UK alone: and it makes it much harder for coach and train operators to compete.

    The EU might be leading the way on this:
    https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/eu-axes-airlines-fuel-tax-exemption-in-drive-for-greener-fuels/
    I think that is enshrined in a treaty, so it would require a large number of countries to agree. Getting it past the US Senate might be a challenge…
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    MattW said:

    Cyclefree said:

    It's a pity rain can't be turned into power in some way. (Or maybe it can.)

    There is plenty of it here in Cumbria at the moment.

    Hydroelectricity. Any deep valleys in Cumbria you wouldn’t mind seeing permanently flooded to a depth of tens of meters?
    That would be run of river turbines.

    But in the UK any contribution would be a rounding error in the overall game.
    It is interesting that in many water and wind mills, at the end of their real working lives (as opposed to restored as museums) the power was replaced with a very small steam engine or sometimes an early ICE.

    Your car engine be insanely overpowered to run most of them....
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,462
    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
  • kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
    Adam Tompkins is openly Republican, albeit he was an MSP until this May.
  • Sandpit said:

    My local city is planning its transition away from oil: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/01/the-road-to-net-zero-aberdeen-looks-to-a-future-without-oil

    The shift to renewables is already on, and Aberdeen is already a hydrogen hub. Note the last paragraph: “It is, I expect, a huge political regret that we missed out on a manufacturing windfall from wind. We have massively invested in wind but we don’t make a lot of the kit here,”

    How is it we missed out on this? Half our energy generated by wind yesterday and all the turbines are imported. Subsidy is/was needed to get that industry going, we're supposedly hosing money at all kinds of fripperies so how about cash to get the Renewable UK sector competitive? Then we can be an exporter of our own technology instead of increasingly reliant on imports.

    That is right but it will take joined-up thinking from government (and banks) if we are to develop new industries here rather than in China, Germany or the United States because in the short term, imports will be cheaper and easier. I have made the same observation about government use of cloud computing where it feels like Jeff Bezos' mum must have a senior job in Whitehall. It goes back, perhaps, to the 1980s pivot to services and away from manufacturing. We do not need to make everything but we do need to make some things.
    Licensing data centre technology from Amazon is probably a good thing at the moment, the data centre itself will be in the UK and isolated from the wider Internet, and it’s a proven platform.

    The French, well they’re trying to roll their own government cloud computing platform, I’m going to take a random guess that they can’t find enough good people for the offered salaries, and that the project runs very late and very over budget.

    Doesn’t mean government shouldnt be investing in this sort of thing though, but as a longer-term project rather than to satisfy an immediate need.
    In the short term, there is nothing very difficult about running a basic cloud. It takes commodity hardware and open source software. The twiddly bits (which conveniently give AWS vendor lock-in) can wait for the long term, and the French can use this to kick-start a domestic cloud industry. Like we should.

    Quite separate from that is the security argument that we should not put our secrets on foreign platforms.

    Government policy at the moment seems to be cloud-first, if not cloud-only, and on American platforms, for MI5, your local municipal art gallery, and everything in between.
    "is nothing very difficult about running a basic cloud" - I think you'll find that running a cloud that is beyond a single rack demo require quite a bit of sophistication. Even just running a K8s setup requires a fair bit of effort and kill.
    I spent several years in the cloud game. Commodity hardware and open source software will get you an awful long way, and writing a front end to automatic provisioning and network control is straightforward and pre-dates the cloud. You can learn kubernetes quite easily, even assuming you need it.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    IshmaelZ said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Wasn't there also some suggestions about what exactly he had said to the Board, as well?

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    I'm updating my CV as we speak.
    Get in line!

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Never ever piss off the regulators, much like never piss off the TSA staff, both can probe you senseless.
    Pfft ..... see my earlier post about the pathetic way the FCA dealt with Staley last time.

    The financial relationship Epstein had with people interests me rather more than his sexual horrors, TBH. It is not looked into or talked about as much as it should be.
    Indeed. Where did all his money come from? How did he keep his scams going for so long and on such a scale? Was it blackmail, extortion, fraud or all of the above? And what was the nature of the blackmail or extortion?
    Mossad
    Epstein was a client of JP Morgan's Private Banking Arm, where Staley was his banker.

    Now there is - and has been for a while - a charming concept in finance known as "Know Your Customer". You need to know how they make their money, where it comes from etc. You can't just take their word for it and so on.

    More honoured in the breach than in the observance IMO. Still, it would be interesting to know exactly how this bank satisfied themselves. I'm guessing that they did so in the same way as all those other banks with crooks as clients - by ticking a lot of boxes and collecting lots of paper and conveniently rationalising away anything which didn't fit with the rosy picture of a long and profitable relationship. See also Archegos, Wirecard and many many others.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
    That's neither reasonable nor pragmatic! He's literally talking about cancelling views he doesn't agree with and purging people who hold them. HYUFD is a Stalinist nightmare of a politician and almost everyone, Conservatives included, would fail his ridiculous purity tests.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,403
    On topic, plenty of Americans believe all kinds of nonsense. Like God, for example.
  • On topic, plenty of Americans believe all kinds of nonsense. Like God, for example.

    Worse, they believe in Donald Trump.
  • MattW said:

    Morning all.

    One interesting item this morning is Ryanair's threat to withdraw their SE listing from London.

    Whether this the usual megaphoning, or something else, remains to be seen.

    O'Leary is probably annoyed that Frodon beat his Delta Work in the big race on Saturday.
  • On topic, plenty of Americans believe all kinds of nonsense. Like God, for example.

    God is an American?!
    I did have my suspicions..
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,461

    Regarding the previous thread, I never knew so many people got triggered by the clocks going forwards/backwards.

    If a country as vast as China can have one time zone then so can Europe.

    Well, I was triggered because I switched on the TV at 11am to watch Afghanistan v. Namibia, only to realise I'd missed the first hour.

    Talking of which, apparently referring to a Pakistani-origin player as a P**i is just light-hearted banter, according to Yorkshire CCC. This report is depressing:

    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/yorkshire-racism-report-ruled-azeem-rafiq-being-called-p-i-was-banter-1286449

    I think you said you'd resigned your membership over this; I'd have done the same if I were still a member.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
    You think the Chinese and the Americans are going to restrict access? Hah! Even if we in the UK did it won't do an iota of difference for global emissions.

    But if we develop a clean alternative then that will make a difference. I think that's achievable to be developed and rolled out by 2050 for net zero by then. If it takes decades it takes decades, and if it doesn't then we will have to learn to live with it and invest in mitigation instead.
    Thank Gaia you're not in charge.
    So Billy cant fly to Benidorm but you can knob about in a Porsche?
    I didn't say anybody couldn't do anything. I was just making a prediction that governments will start to make air travel very expensive in order to curtail CO2 emissions from it.

    I've driven 1,800 miles this year, cycled 6,400 and flown zero.
    I hope every one of those 1,800 miles involved knobbing about.
    Hooliganism has been curtailed this year but I did recently do a 100mph+ reverse entry drift on a dual carriageway in my (not a Porsche) F80 M3. I had my solicitor in the car just in case...
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
    You think the Chinese and the Americans are going to restrict access? Hah! Even if we in the UK did it won't do an iota of difference for global emissions.

    But if we develop a clean alternative then that will make a difference. I think that's achievable to be developed and rolled out by 2050 for net zero by then. If it takes decades it takes decades, and if it doesn't then we will have to learn to live with it and invest in mitigation instead.
    Thank Gaia you're not in charge.
    So Billy cant fly to Benidorm but you can knob about in a Porsche?
    I didn't say anybody couldn't do anything. I was just making a prediction that governments will start to make air travel very expensive in order to curtail CO2 emissions from it.

    I've driven 1,800 miles this year, cycled 6,400 and flown zero.
    I think what is needed is a "Journey to Net Zero" menu. With prices.

    At present it seems that the govt is hoping that technology will catch up with their stated intentions (Truss was lauding a ten grand EV from Tata today).

    If it doesn't then there will be a very large bill and it is important that people know how just how large it will be.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Wasn't there also some suggestions about what exactly he had said to the Board, as well?

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    I'm updating my CV as we speak.
    Get in line!

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Never ever piss off the regulators, much like never piss off the TSA staff, both can probe you senseless.
    Pfft ..... see my earlier post about the pathetic way the FCA dealt with Staley last time.

    The financial relationship Epstein had with people interests me rather more than his sexual horrors, TBH. It is not looked into or talked about as much as it should be.
    Indeed. Where did all his money come from? How did he keep his scams going for so long and on such a scale? Was it blackmail, extortion, fraud or all of the above? And what was the nature of the blackmail or extortion?
    Money laundering is my guess.
    Surely more likely is the mundane suggestion that Epstein was just tracking the market. This meant he returned a profit which was a good enough reason (and cover) for other fund managers to invest with him. Happy endings all round. :wink:
    A look at what is already known about his financial past suggests this is not how he made his money - certainly not at the start.
  • More wokeist virtue signalling, is she a member of Insulate Britain?

    SHOPPERS should be prepared to boycott firms who fail to go green, a minister has said.

    In an unusual swipe at small businesses still reeling from the shock of the pandemic, Anne Marie Trevelyan urged Brits to vote with their wallets if firms are big polluters.


    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16593812/boycott-companies-not-green/?utm_source=native_share&utm_medium=sharebar_native&utm_campaign=sharebaramp

    Not just woke virtue signalling but using the favoured tactic of calling for a consumer boycott of any firm that offends the woke zeitgeist. Which is not to say she is wrong.
  • Regarding the previous thread, I never knew so many people got triggered by the clocks going forwards/backwards.

    If a country as vast as China can have one time zone then so can Europe.

    Well, I was triggered because I switched on the TV at 11am to watch Afghanistan v. Namibia, only to realise I'd missed the first hour.

    Talking of which, apparently referring to a Pakistani-origin player as a P**i is just light-hearted banter, according to Yorkshire CCC. This report is depressing:

    https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/yorkshire-racism-report-ruled-azeem-rafiq-being-called-p-i-was-banter-1286449

    I think you said you'd resigned your membership over this; I'd have done the same if I were still a member.
    I have. It is doubly depressing for me as I know Roger Hutton from his McCormick's days.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    MattW said:

    Morning all.

    One interesting item this morning is Ryanair's threat to withdraw their SE listing from London.

    Whether this the usual megaphoning, or something else, remains to be seen.

    Not surprising at all. Amsterdam overtook London early this year as the largest trading centre (haven't looked at current stats). Companies want to go where the greatest liquidity is.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Wasn't there also some suggestions about what exactly he had said to the Board, as well?

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    I'm updating my CV as we speak.
    Get in line!

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Never ever piss off the regulators, much like never piss off the TSA staff, both can probe you senseless.
    Pfft ..... see my earlier post about the pathetic way the FCA dealt with Staley last time.

    The financial relationship Epstein had with people interests me rather more than his sexual horrors, TBH. It is not looked into or talked about as much as it should be.
    Indeed. Where did all his money come from? How did he keep his scams going for so long and on such a scale? Was it blackmail, extortion, fraud or all of the above? And what was the nature of the blackmail or extortion?
    Money laundering is my guess.
    My theory is that he started out as a mathematical trader - he was there when Black-Scholes was awesome new tech. He had some maths knowledge, but not enough to keep up in the mathematical arms race that trading became.

    So he leveraged his reputation as a star trader to try and start managing funds. Which is where it gets hazy...

    It has been claimed that in the case of at least one billionaire, Epstein was managing all his money. Why?

    There also, so far, seems to be very little evidence of Epstein actually being in the market - was he stealing (Madoff) or was he running a feeder fund (outsourcing all the investment work to a real fund)?

    I think his evil activities interacted with his money schemes - a system of blackmail/leverage/access where people he invited served as

    - Cover. Uninvolved people would, in effect be tying their reputations up with his. If powerful, this would then create a massive dis-incentive for anything to happen to Epstein
    - Participants
    - Blackmailable - not so much victims as people to be recycled into participants. Invite them to a party, once they are guilty, a soft sell "If you put some money with me...."

    The money, I think, was tied up in all this. Very easy to collect payment/blackmail as a "fee" for "money management", "business introductions" etc.
  • kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
    Adam Tompkins is openly Republican, albeit he was an MSP until this May.
    I thought he’d renounced his republicanism in the whole Damascene adoption of Conservatism, Unionism and supporting Rangers thing?
  • More wokeist virtue signalling, is she a member of Insulate Britain?

    SHOPPERS should be prepared to boycott firms who fail to go green, a minister has said.

    In an unusual swipe at small businesses still reeling from the shock of the pandemic, Anne Marie Trevelyan urged Brits to vote with their wallets if firms are big polluters.


    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16593812/boycott-companies-not-green/?utm_source=native_share&utm_medium=sharebar_native&utm_campaign=sharebaramp

    Not just woke virtue signalling but using the favoured tactic of calling for a consumer boycott of any firm that offends the woke zeitgeist. Which is not to say she is wrong.
    Not sure what climate change has to do with being woke or non woke? Woke is about identity issues.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,265
    Farooq said:

    kjh said:



    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?

    That's neither reasonable nor pragmatic! He's literally talking about cancelling views he doesn't agree with and purging people who hold them. HYUFD is a Stalinist nightmare of a politician and almost everyone, Conservatives included, would fail his ridiculous purity tests.
    I'm not entirely convinced that HYUFD is genuine. Would a party office-holder really go out of his way to drive sympathisers away from the party and urge them to vote Labour, or talk of "cancelling" people (surely the kind of language that right-wingers accuse lefties of using)? He's often interesting and well-informed on polling, and always polite, but politically he doesn't seem quite credible - but no offence if that's how he really feels.
  • kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
    Adam Tompkins is openly Republican, albeit he was an MSP until this May.
    I thought he’d renounced his republicanism in the whole Damascene adoption of Conservatism, Unionism and supporting Rangers thing?
    Pass.
  • Farooq said:

    kjh said:



    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?

    That's neither reasonable nor pragmatic! He's literally talking about cancelling views he doesn't agree with and purging people who hold them. HYUFD is a Stalinist nightmare of a politician and almost everyone, Conservatives included, would fail his ridiculous purity tests.
    I'm not entirely convinced that HYUFD is genuine. Would a party office-holder really go out of his way to drive sympathisers away from the party and urge them to vote Labour, or talk of "cancelling" people (surely the kind of language that right-wingers accuse lefties of using)? He's often interesting and well-informed on polling, and always polite, but politically he doesn't seem quite credible - but no offence if that's how he really feels.
    Perhaps like on Scooby Doo there will eventually be a big reveal and we'll find out that HYUFD is really Richard Burgon.
  • kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    According to @HYUFD he has excommunicated me and most every moderate conservative who does not subscribe to his narrow 1950s style Little Englander attitudes

    He is no advert for the conservative party
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,265
    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Surely a true monarchist would take the rough with the smooth? - sometimes the monarch will have views or actions that one doesn't like, but that comes with the territory of delegating the choice of head of state to random genetics. It seems an utterly bizarre idea, mitigated only by the fact that the last couple of incumbents have happened to be good at the job. Will the monarchy survive a really unpopular monarch when one comes along?
  • Farooq said:

    kjh said:



    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?

    That's neither reasonable nor pragmatic! He's literally talking about cancelling views he doesn't agree with and purging people who hold them. HYUFD is a Stalinist nightmare of a politician and almost everyone, Conservatives included, would fail his ridiculous purity tests.
    I'm not entirely convinced that HYUFD is genuine. Would a party office-holder really go out of his way to drive sympathisers away from the party and urge them to vote Labour, or talk of "cancelling" people (surely the kind of language that right-wingers accuse lefties of using)? He's often interesting and well-informed on polling, and always polite, but politically he doesn't seem quite credible - but no offence if that's how he really feels.
    You and I must have different definitions of polite.

    I'm not sure how telling people like Big_G and I (and many others) to fuck off and join the Lib Dems is polite.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,004
    edited November 2021
    Farooq said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
    That's neither reasonable nor pragmatic! He's literally talking about cancelling views he doesn't agree with and purging people who hold them. HYUFD is a Stalinist nightmare of a politician and almost everyone, Conservatives included, would fail his ridiculous purity tests.
    He is in a party of one

    His own, and from someone who has supported and voted conservative since 1962 (apart from Blair twice) he embarrasses himself and shows himself as an intolerant and prejudiced individual
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,094

    More wokeist virtue signalling, is she a member of Insulate Britain?

    SHOPPERS should be prepared to boycott firms who fail to go green, a minister has said.

    In an unusual swipe at small businesses still reeling from the shock of the pandemic, Anne Marie Trevelyan urged Brits to vote with their wallets if firms are big polluters.


    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16593812/boycott-companies-not-green/?utm_source=native_share&utm_medium=sharebar_native&utm_campaign=sharebaramp

    Bit of a false equivalence there.

    Boycotts are fine; blocking patients in ambulances from getting their needed emergency hospital treatment is not.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Wasn't there also some suggestions about what exactly he had said to the Board, as well?

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    I'm updating my CV as we speak.
    Get in line!

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Never ever piss off the regulators, much like never piss off the TSA staff, both can probe you senseless.
    Pfft ..... see my earlier post about the pathetic way the FCA dealt with Staley last time.

    The financial relationship Epstein had with people interests me rather more than his sexual horrors, TBH. It is not looked into or talked about as much as it should be.
    Indeed. Where did all his money come from? How did he keep his scams going for so long and on such a scale? Was it blackmail, extortion, fraud or all of the above? And what was the nature of the blackmail or extortion?
    Money laundering is my guess.
    Surely more likely is the mundane suggestion that Epstein was just tracking the market. This meant he returned a profit which was a good enough reason (and cover) for other fund managers to invest with him. Happy endings all round. :wink:
    A look at what is already known about his financial past suggests this is not how he made his money - certainly not at the start.
    Tracking the market - there isn't evidence of the fair sized operation that would be required to do something a simple as track the market with billions. Where was the back/middle/front office?

    Either he was running a Madoff style operation or he was operating a very simple feeder fund.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Wasn't there also some suggestion about what exactly he had said to the Board, as well?

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    I'm updating my CV as we speak.
    Get in line!

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Well, well. Barclays' chief, Jess Staley, leaving following an FCA investigation into what he said about his relationship with Epstein.

    He should IMO have been booted out over his conduct over a Barclays whistleblower a few years back.

    Who would have thought lying mischaracterising the facts to a regulator was a bad idea?
    Never ever piss off the regulators, much like never piss off the TSA staff, both can probe you senseless.
    Pfft ..... see my earlier post about the pathetic way the FCA dealt with Staley last time.

    The financial relationship Epstein had with people interests me rather more than his sexual horrors, TBH. It is not looked into or talked about as much as it should be.
    Yes. I’m not normally a conspiracy theorist, but I suspect there a lot we will never know about Epstein

    I believe his first “break” was effectively warehousing someone else’s wealth (and house in NY), but that’s not a very profitable activity so there must have been more too it. And he was very very well connected, and involved in activities that were seedy and close to the line (no idea which side of the line!)
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    MattW said:

    More wokeist virtue signalling, is she a member of Insulate Britain?

    SHOPPERS should be prepared to boycott firms who fail to go green, a minister has said.

    In an unusual swipe at small businesses still reeling from the shock of the pandemic, Anne Marie Trevelyan urged Brits to vote with their wallets if firms are big polluters.


    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16593812/boycott-companies-not-green/?utm_source=native_share&utm_medium=sharebar_native&utm_campaign=sharebaramp

    Bit of a false equivalence there.

    Boycotts are fine; blocking patients in ambulances from getting their needed emergency hospital treatment is not.
    Voting with your wallet isn't necessarily a boycott either. Unless things like Green Tariffs for electricity are considered boycotts?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,092
    edited November 2021

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    According to @HYUFD he has excommunicated me and most every moderate conservative who does not subscribe to his narrow 1950s style Little Englander attitudes

    He is no advert for the conservative party
    The counter-argument is that quite possibly, he is?

    Parties change, and often older members don't keep up with the times and think they are supporting some image of how the party was, once upon a time, rather than how it is now.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,094
    edited November 2021
    TOPPING said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    No "people" are not going to be taking less flights. Even if everyone in the UK never left our island, the trajectory of the number of people taking flights is only going up.

    Of course they are. Governments are going to restrict access via legislation and taxation.

    How long do you think it's going to take to replace all commercial aviation with a renewable alternative that, as yet, does not exist beyond the realm of PowerPoint? Many decades, if ever.
    You think the Chinese and the Americans are going to restrict access? Hah! Even if we in the UK did it won't do an iota of difference for global emissions.

    But if we develop a clean alternative then that will make a difference. I think that's achievable to be developed and rolled out by 2050 for net zero by then. If it takes decades it takes decades, and if it doesn't then we will have to learn to live with it and invest in mitigation instead.
    Thank Gaia you're not in charge.
    So Billy cant fly to Benidorm but you can knob about in a Porsche?
    I didn't say anybody couldn't do anything. I was just making a prediction that governments will start to make air travel very expensive in order to curtail CO2 emissions from it.

    I've driven 1,800 miles this year, cycled 6,400 and flown zero.
    I think what is needed is a "Journey to Net Zero" menu. With prices.

    At present it seems that the govt is hoping that technology will catch up with their stated intentions (Truss was lauding a ten grand EV from Tata today).

    If it doesn't then there will be a very large bill and it is important that people know how just how large it will be.
    4 million vehicles in Mumbai, of which quite a few are large and spend a lot of time in jams. Seems like a good idea. 2020 Times of India:


  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited November 2021
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
    Being a republican is incompatible with being a Tory. Support for constitutional monarchy has always been a defining feature of British Toryism.

    Belief in the free market and small state for example is shared with Orange Book LDs and indeed Tories have often been protectionist and big government like Boris. Belief in Brexit was shared with UKIP and the Brexit Party, however the Tories have often been pro EU like Heath and still some Remainers who accept Brexit are in the Tories today. However support for constitutional monarchy and inherited wealth is what has defined Toryism and the Conservative Party and what almost all Tories have always agreed on
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,722

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
    Adam Tompkins is openly Republican, albeit he was an MSP until this May.
    I thought he’d renounced his republicanism in the whole Damascene adoption of Conservatism, Unionism and supporting Rangers thing?
    I didn't think one could be a Republican and a Rangers fan!
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    Farooq said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
    That's neither reasonable nor pragmatic! He's literally talking about cancelling views he doesn't agree with and purging people who hold them. HYUFD is a Stalinist nightmare of a politician and almost everyone, Conservatives included, would fail his ridiculous purity tests.
    He is in a party of one

    His own, and from someone who has supported and voted conservative since 1962 (apart from Blair twice) he embarrasses himself and shows himself as an intolerant and prejudiced individual
    You voted for Blair twice yes, when a third of voters still voted Tory (including me), hence you are not a Tory merely a swing voter who is not a socialist
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,722
    edited November 2021

    Farooq said:

    kjh said:



    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?

    That's neither reasonable nor pragmatic! He's literally talking about cancelling views he doesn't agree with and purging people who hold them. HYUFD is a Stalinist nightmare of a politician and almost everyone, Conservatives included, would fail his ridiculous purity tests.
    I'm not entirely convinced that HYUFD is genuine. Would a party office-holder really go out of his way to drive sympathisers away from the party and urge them to vote Labour, or talk of "cancelling" people (surely the kind of language that right-wingers accuse lefties of using)? He's often interesting and well-informed on polling, and always polite, but politically he doesn't seem quite credible - but no offence if that's how he really feels.
    Was talking to a lurker the other day who was saying much the same. Can't be real. Also seems, for a youngish person, to have a lot of time to comment here.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    My local city is planning its transition away from oil: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/01/the-road-to-net-zero-aberdeen-looks-to-a-future-without-oil

    The shift to renewables is already on, and Aberdeen is already a hydrogen hub. Note the last paragraph: “It is, I expect, a huge political regret that we missed out on a manufacturing windfall from wind. We have massively invested in wind but we don’t make a lot of the kit here,”

    How is it we missed out on this? Half our energy generated by wind yesterday and all the turbines are imported. Subsidy is/was needed to get that industry going, we're supposedly hosing money at all kinds of fripperies so how about cash to get the Renewable UK sector competitive? Then we can be an exporter of our own technology instead of increasingly reliant on imports.

    Isn’t that what the Freeport in your old stomping ground is focused on? Not sure when Demark started focusing on wind, but I suspect that around when we missed a trick
    I am sure that there will be some wind there. Problem is:
    1. We missed the boat so to speak, our competitors did this years ago
    2. You don't need a Freeport to do so
    3. Even their own report shows that Freeports move jobs rather than creating jobs
    So because we missed a trick in the past we should butch and whine about attempts to do something now?

    What a strange philosophy
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Surely a true monarchist would take the rough with the smooth? - sometimes the monarch will have views or actions that one doesn't like, but that comes with the territory of delegating the choice of head of state to random genetics. It seems an utterly bizarre idea, mitigated only by the fact that the last couple of incumbents have happened to be good at the job. Will the monarchy survive a really unpopular monarch when one comes along?
    It will as it has always done over the centuries but the fact we have a constitutional monarchy not an absolute monarchy means Parliament decides our laws anyway, the monarchy will not go against Parliament on a popular issue.
  • IanB2 said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    According to @HYUFD he has excommunicated me and most every moderate conservative who does not subscribe to his narrow 1950s style Little Englander attitudes

    He is no advert for the conservative party
    The counter-argument is that quite possibly, he is?

    Parties change, and often older members don't keep up with the times and think they are supporting some image of how the party was, once upon a time, rather than how it is now.
    No he isn't. He operates on an unchanged prejudice of what the Tories from the past were rather than keeping up with what they really are.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    IanB2 said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    According to @HYUFD he has excommunicated me and most every moderate conservative who does not subscribe to his narrow 1950s style Little Englander attitudes

    He is no advert for the conservative party
    The counter-argument is that quite possibly, he is?

    Parties change, and often older members don't keep up with the times and think they are supporting some image of how the party was, once upon a time, rather than how it is now.
    No he isn't. He operates on an unchanged prejudice of what the Tories from the past were rather than keeping up with what they really are.
    You are not a Tory now either, indeed you even did a thread header a few weeks ago saying why you had left the party (as well of course as the fact you voted for Blair like BigG in 2001 when genuine Tories like me were still voting Tory).

    You are a centre right liberal, you are not a Tory
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,004
    edited November 2021
    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
    That's neither reasonable nor pragmatic! He's literally talking about cancelling views he doesn't agree with and purging people who hold them. HYUFD is a Stalinist nightmare of a politician and almost everyone, Conservatives included, would fail his ridiculous purity tests.
    He is in a party of one

    His own, and from someone who has supported and voted conservative since 1962 (apart from Blair twice) he embarrasses himself and shows himself as an intolerant and prejudiced individual
    You voted for Blair twice yes, when a third of voters still voted Tory (including me), hence you are not a Tory merely a swing voter who is not a socialist
    You do not to seem to understand that your attitude would result in the conservative party ever gaining office
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    My local city is planning its transition away from oil: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/01/the-road-to-net-zero-aberdeen-looks-to-a-future-without-oil

    The shift to renewables is already on, and Aberdeen is already a hydrogen hub. Note the last paragraph: “It is, I expect, a huge political regret that we missed out on a manufacturing windfall from wind. We have massively invested in wind but we don’t make a lot of the kit here,”

    How is it we missed out on this? Half our energy generated by wind yesterday and all the turbines are imported. Subsidy is/was needed to get that industry going, we're supposedly hosing money at all kinds of fripperies so how about cash to get the Renewable UK sector competitive? Then we can be an exporter of our own technology instead of increasingly reliant on imports.

    Isn’t that what the Freeport in your old stomping ground is focused on? Not sure when Demark started focusing on wind, but I suspect that around when we missed a trick
    I am sure that there will be some wind there. Problem is:
    1. We missed the boat so to speak, our competitors did this years ago
    2. You don't need a Freeport to do so
    3. Even their own report shows that Freeports move jobs rather than creating jobs
    So because we missed a trick in the past we should butch and whine about attempts to do something now?

    What a strange philosophy
    But curiously traditional.

    In the early 1960s, it was becoming clear that computer controlled machine tools were essential for a modern aircraft industry. The Americans were charging ahead with this. Some of the civil service minutes at Kew show the following attitude - "We're behind. And absolutely no effort should be spent on investing in catching up. Buy the tooling from America, and don't try to make any ourselves".
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    Truss has never on a Conservative platform called for a republic, the only time she did so was in her youth at a Liberal Democrat conference when she was still a LD.

    If she started calling for a republic on a Tory platform then yes I would have serious reservations about her staying a Minister or even being allowed to remain a Tory MP. Her private views are her own, if she is still a republican 'a don't ask, don't tell' policy for her in terms of her views on the monarchy are fine by me as long as she does not start to push republicanism in public
    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?
    That's neither reasonable nor pragmatic! He's literally talking about cancelling views he doesn't agree with and purging people who hold them. HYUFD is a Stalinist nightmare of a politician and almost everyone, Conservatives included, would fail his ridiculous purity tests.
    He is in a party of one

    His own, and from someone who has supported and voted conservative since 1962 (apart from Blair twice) he embarrasses himself and shows himself as an intolerant and prejudiced individual
    You voted for Blair twice yes, when a third of voters still voted Tory (including me), hence you are not a Tory merely a swing voter who is not a socialist
    This spiel you repeat on a daily basis is so tiresome.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,722
    To be fair to HYUFD, I suspect that there are divisions in his mind between Conservative Party members, Conservative party voters and Tories.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    Farooq said:

    kjh said:



    Ok. That's a reasonable pragmatic view. I got the impression from your previous posts you could not be a republican and a conservative. Are there really no openly republican Tories?

    That's neither reasonable nor pragmatic! He's literally talking about cancelling views he doesn't agree with and purging people who hold them. HYUFD is a Stalinist nightmare of a politician and almost everyone, Conservatives included, would fail his ridiculous purity tests.
    I'm not entirely convinced that HYUFD is genuine. Would a party office-holder really go out of his way to drive sympathisers away from the party and urge them to vote Labour, or talk of "cancelling" people (surely the kind of language that right-wingers accuse lefties of using)? He's often interesting and well-informed on polling, and always polite, but politically he doesn't seem quite credible - but no offence if that's how he really feels.
    Was talking to a lurker the other day who was saying much the same. Can't be real. Also seems, for a youngish person, to have a lot of time to comment here.
    Bit like Farmer Tupac, then.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    It has finally happened, Laurence Fox has come out with a good idea.

    'No more Charles!' Laurence Fox makes brutal dig as he claims Queen should be last monarch

    https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1514370/Laurence-Fox-twitter-prince-charles-queen-G20-summit-rome-speech-cop26-news

    Only because he thinks Prince Charles is pushing climate change too hard (as he thinks are William and Harry). Hence Fox can never be a Tory or British conservative because he does not support our constitutional monarchy, all he can ever be is an extreme libertarian anti wokeist.

    However given Khan won the London Mayoralty as the Labour candidate pushing action on climate change hard and Shaun Bailey as the Conservative candidate, also pro action on climate change, got 893,051 votes to just 47,634 for Fox as the Reclaim candidate it is pretty clear which route is more successful.

    Should Truss be kicked out of the conservative party then?
    According to @HYUFD he has excommunicated me and most every moderate conservative who does not subscribe to his narrow 1950s style Little Englander attitudes

    He is no advert for the conservative party
    The counter-argument is that quite possibly, he is?

    Parties change, and often older members don't keep up with the times and think they are supporting some image of how the party was, once upon a time, rather than how it is now.
    No he isn't. He operates on an unchanged prejudice of what the Tories from the past were rather than keeping up with what they really are.
    You are not a Tory now either, indeed you even did a thread header a few weeks ago saying why you had left the party (as well of course as the fact you voted for Blair like BigG in 2001 when genuine Tories like me were still voting Tory).

    You are a centre right liberal, you are not a Tory
    No Tory doesn't believe in Brexit.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072

    To be fair to HYUFD, I suspect that there are divisions in his mind between Conservative Party members, Conservative party voters and Tories.

    Which ones are the scum? I lose track.
This discussion has been closed.