Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

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

1457910

Comments

  • kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    I have long thought that Johnson is a stupid person's idea of what an intelligent person looks like.
  • DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    And every single one of those turbines was imported. We need to design and manufacture and then export, not buy from Vestas.
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346

    TOPPING said:

    tlg86 said:

    That Razzell case sounds very odd:

    https://insidetime.org/the-case-of-glyn-razzell/

    Either the switching of cars was part of a very cunning plan, or the police stitched him up good and proper.

    It is completely bizarre, he managed to drive past 25 CCTV cameras both ways and was never caught on any of them.

    He managed to abduct his wife from a busy walkway at 9 a.m. on a workday morning with no one seeing him or the car before, after or during the abduction.

    If he was as cunning as they say then he would have made sure there was no blood left and would never have abducted her in his friends car (he owned up to the police staright away that he had borrowed his friends car on the day of the abduction)

    And police scientists took three attempts to find blood that was easily seen with the naked eye in a car that had been valetted after the police's first two attempts to find stuff had yielded nothing.
    And yet the BBC researcher who examined the case later expressed herself satisfied. I certainly feel that there's more than was reported in the piece you posted.
    There is more but nothing that benefits the prosecution case. If he did do it he pulled off an incredible series of events.
    One of the reports said he was jailed for "a minimum of 16 years". Will he ever get out if he doesn't say where the body is? Surely there is a defined jail term isn't there?
    I dont think he will ever get out, he has to admit he did it to get parole, and he won't. He has been a model prisoner and has been in a open prison for a while now, which indicates that the Prison service do not see him as a threat. If he did admit it and give the location of the body then he would get released pretty quickly.

    If he didn't kill her then he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

    There is an excellent book The Nicholas Cases: Casualties of Justice by Bob Woffinden. Glyn Razzell's case is chapter 1
    I've read your posts on this, including the blog you linked to.

    It looks very dodgy to me. But surely, if what you've posted/I've read is totally accurate, the judge would have directed the jury that the evidence for murder is just too thin to convict? I feel as if there is something missing, though obviously I don't know what.
    The blood convicted him, without that there is nothing. The story that the prosecution went with is just not possible. Someone or a camera would have seen him or the car. To abduct someone from a busy street in broad daylight and drive away leaving absolutely no record of the event and to have your car back on your driveway 20 minutes later when it is at least a 20 minute drive away is fantasy land.

    Another thing that was ignored was that his wife's friend testified that she saw her and waved at her the day after her disappearance.

    Two other very strange murder convictions in Hampshire are Roger Kearney and Matthew Hamlen (who was the first case of double jeopardy).
  • DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    And every single one of those turbines was imported. We need to design and manufacture and then export, not buy from Vestas.
    From the point of view of our economy I agree. From the point of view of reducing our CO2 production, why does it matter?
  • TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,387
    edited November 2021

    Cookie said:

    DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    Yes, I get slightly irritated by the 'nothing is being done' meme. The progress of the UK over the last 20-odd years has been extraordinary, and is to the credit of the governments of all hues who have achieved it. There are trade offs, and it has led to more expensive and less reliable electricity than might otherwise be the case, but to deny the progress that has been made is daft. And further developments are in the pipeline.
    We will have a day in the next few years where we need no gas at all.
    Sigh.

    It's Tory Progress. Which doesn't count.
    Well, not really. Since the Conservatives took sole control of government in 2015, the rate at which CO2 emissions have been falling has flattened out somewhat (aside from Covid-hit 2020). The real foundations for emissions reduction were set by the Labour and Con/LD governments (to, at times, great opposition from the right wingers). The Conservatives have been largely reaping the benefits since then.
    Do you have the data for that?

    The ONS' capture of territorial omissions suggests that these have declined at a steady rate from 2007/08, that is, Lab, Coalition, and Conservative.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/972583/2020_Provisional_emissions_statistics_report.pdf

    If the extra-territorial omissions did not do likewise that would be interesting in and of itself I think.
    The graph on that link illustrates my point exactly. Note how the downward-pointing bars have been shrinking over the past few years (aside from 2020).
    I downloaded the figures.

    If you give the election year to both governments
    :
    -1.0% T (1991-7)
    -1.7% L
    -2.5% Co
    -2.9% T

    To the Incoming gov't only

    T -0.6%
    L -2.0%
    Co -2.3%
    T -2.9%

    Outgoing:

    T -1.0%
    L -1.6%
    Co -3.4%
    T -2.8%


    You can do Q figures if you want, but I can't see much that supports your point
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    It wouldn't. We do not have a written constitution, our constitution is based on the sovereignty of Crown in Parliament in lawmaking.

    The English civil war and the glorious revolution merely asserted that Parliament had to be used to make laws and raise taxes and make wars, we could not be governed by the divine right of Kings alone.

    However it did not mean that the monarch could have no role in lawmaking whatsoever. If the monarch vetoed a bill which was not in the manifesto of the elected government it would not be unconstitutional even if maybe not advisable. Whatever the parties in Parliament thought about it they could not stop it.

    However even if Charles is unlikely to do even that there is certainly absolutely nothing in our constitution to stop the monarch giving their personal views on matters of policy or politics, which was my original point
    I think you're confusing what is technically the case with what would be an acceptable basis for the monarchy to continue.
    You are technically correct that King Charles III could make whatever pronouncements he likes.

    But if he does start to go off the nuttier end of the spectrum, support for the concept of the monarchy would be bound to fall. And if it fell below a certain point, the monarchy ends.
    There may be no specific mechanism for abolishing the British monarchy, but that doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. Realistically - whatever the law may say - the monarchy only persists with the consent of the people.
  • DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    And every single one of those turbines was imported. We need to design and manufacture and then export, not buy from Vestas.
    From the point of view of our economy I agree. From the point of view of reducing our CO2 production, why does it matter?
    I suppose it depends on where they are being imported from and what their environmental standards are like. The EU or US etc probably fine - except of course for the transport environmental costs - but if they are coming from some other countries with poor environmental and social controls then that would be a cause for concern.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,775
    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    Like it.
    A basket of Neanderthals*; they're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.

    *though I get that they have received a very bad 'winners' press
    Now there's a killer line for Harris when she battles Trump for WH24!
    Of course it worked so well for Hillary in 2016, she is now in her second term!
    Well, there's this view that it cost her, but I don't know. Sometimes you have to be brave, and maybe next time, if it's Harris, she'll double down and hit the jackpot.
    The way to excise Trumpism from the body politic is for Democrats to split the Republicans and win the support of the third of Republicans who accept the democratic process.

    If I knew how to pull off a political manoeuvre like that then I'd have been giving the opening address to COP 26, but I would guess that a strong component would have to be revulsion at the anti-democratic behaviour of the Trumpists. Though you have to add something welcoming into the mix too.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    Carnyx said:

    TimT said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    Don't be absurd. Not everyone can afford to have their Aston Martin converted to electric. Monarchs are not allowed to advocate anything that might increase costs for the nation.
    But the Duchy of Cornwall is profitable. How is that increasing the costs for the nation?
    Depends on how much subsidy he gets, e.g. for farming. (OK, if he didn't, others would, but the same logic applies across the board ...).
    The point I am making is that going organic does not require subsidy. I have a friend locally who became the first organic tree nursery in the USA. He grows both organic and not organic trees on his farm. And he found that his organic trees are way more profitable. Yes, he can charge a premium (note, that is a market price, not a subsidy). But he also found that the practices that made the growing organic we just good practices in general, leading to healthier, faster growing trees. Even if he only charged the non-organic price for those trees grown organically, he'd be making more money than on the non-organic trees.

    People have this view that doing things in a morally or environmentally right way is necessarily more expensive and a drag on the economy. It is simply not true as a blanket statement.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    Aslan said:

    Carnyx said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    And HYUFD is also advocating the Divine Right of Kings, too. See my post a moment ago.
    He has also supported Northern Irish Protestant population taking up arms in the event of a border poll not going their way. And the Republican House majority overruling a presidential election that doesn't go their way.
    No, I merely stated peace in Northern Ireland will not come with direct rule from Dublin over Antrim anymore than it did with direct rule from London over Nationalist areas of NI before the GFA.

    I did not advocate overturning an EC result, I merely pointed out it would not be unconstitutional for both the elected House and elected Senate to object to EC results and it needs objections from both chambers to sustain them, not just one
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    Like it.
    A basket of Neanderthals*; they're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.

    *though I get that they have received a very bad 'winners' press
    Now there's a killer line for Harris when she battles Trump for WH24!
    Of course it worked so well for Hillary in 2016, she is now in her second term!
    Well, there's this view that it cost her, but I don't know. Sometimes you have to be brave, and maybe next time, if it's Harris, she'll double down and hit the jackpot.
    The way to excise Trumpism from the body politic is for Democrats to split the Republicans and win the support of the third of Republicans who accept the democratic process.

    If I knew how to pull off a political manoeuvre like that then I'd have been giving the opening address to COP 26, but I would guess that a strong component would have to be revulsion at the anti-democratic behaviour of the Trumpists. Though you have to add something welcoming into the mix too.
    If they did that then the AOC and Bernie Sanders wing of the Democrats would also split off and form their own party
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,310
    I don't understand the empty stadiums at the T20s

    Is this Covid? Or just apathy? Or are tickets £400?

    I can't imagine a nicer thing to do of a warm Emirates evening than going to see some lively international cricket...

  • DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    And every single one of those turbines was imported. We need to design and manufacture and then export, not buy from Vestas.
    From the point of view of our economy I agree. From the point of view of reducing our CO2 production, why does it matter?
    Because once you become reliant on somewhere else for strategic infrastructure you are at their mercy. You get what they want to sell you at the price they are willing to sell at.

    Anyway, this is about global CO2. Which means much much more clean energy production globally. Should we be a passenger and let other countries grow rich off that? Or use our local wind and tide resources combined with our formerly world-class engineering resources to develop leading edge technology that can make us rich?

    Britain used to be the R&D heart of so many industries. Then from the 70s onwards we threw it all away and find ourselves in a bizarre world where the kind of long-term subsidised investment offered by the people who have replaced us as world-leaders is seen as akin to communism.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328

    Cookie said:

    DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    Yes, I get slightly irritated by the 'nothing is being done' meme. The progress of the UK over the last 20-odd years has been extraordinary, and is to the credit of the governments of all hues who have achieved it. There are trade offs, and it has led to more expensive and less reliable electricity than might otherwise be the case, but to deny the progress that has been made is daft. And further developments are in the pipeline.
    We will have a day in the next few years where we need no gas at all.
    Sigh.

    It's Tory Progress. Which doesn't count.
    Well, not really. Since the Conservatives took sole control of government in 2015, the rate at which CO2 emissions have been falling has flattened out somewhat (aside from Covid-hit 2020). The real foundations for emissions reduction were set by the Labour and Con/LD governments (to, at times, great opposition from the right wingers). The Conservatives have been largely reaping the benefits since then.
    Do you have the data for that?

    The ONS' capture of territorial omissions suggests that these have declined at a steady rate from 2007/08, that is, Lab, Coalition, and Conservative.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/972583/2020_Provisional_emissions_statistics_report.pdf

    If the extra-territorial omissions did not do likewise that would be interesting in and of itself I think.
    The graph on that link illustrates my point exactly. Note how the downward-pointing bars have been shrinking over the past few years (aside from 2020).
    Hmmm

    image

    The data on percentage change peer year (which I think you are referring to) looks rather random to be drawing such a conclusion.
    But he is a feersum enjineeya. He must know what he is talking about and you must be mistaken.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,631

    Cookie said:

    DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    Yes, I get slightly irritated by the 'nothing is being done' meme. The progress of the UK over the last 20-odd years has been extraordinary, and is to the credit of the governments of all hues who have achieved it. There are trade offs, and it has led to more expensive and less reliable electricity than might otherwise be the case, but to deny the progress that has been made is daft. And further developments are in the pipeline.
    We will have a day in the next few years where we need no gas at all.
    Sigh.

    It's Tory Progress. Which doesn't count.
    Well, not really. Since the Conservatives took sole control of government in 2015, the rate at which CO2 emissions have been falling has flattened out somewhat (aside from Covid-hit 2020). The real foundations for emissions reduction were set by the Labour and Con/LD governments (to, at times, great opposition from the right wingers). The Conservatives have been largely reaping the benefits since then.
    Do you have the data for that?

    The ONS' capture of territorial omissions suggests that these have declined at a steady rate from 2007/08, that is, Lab, Coalition, and Conservative.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/972583/2020_Provisional_emissions_statistics_report.pdf

    If the extra-territorial omissions did not do likewise that would be interesting in and of itself I think.
    The graph on that link illustrates my point exactly. Note how the downward-pointing bars have been shrinking over the past few years (aside from 2020).
    I downloaded the figures.

    If you give the election year to both governments
    :
    -1.0% T (1991-7)
    -1.7% L
    -2.5% Co
    -2.9% T

    To the Incoming gov't only

    T -0.6%
    L -2.0%
    Co -2.3%
    T -2.9%

    Outgoing:

    T -1.0%
    L -1.6%
    Co -3.4%
    T -2.8%


    You can do Q figures if you want, but I can't see much that supports your point
    Further, since all the reductions relate to decisions made years before....

    My main take away from that report is that reductions have been happening since the 90s. Which given that all governments since then have had CO2 reduction as policy is not especially surprising.
  • DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    And every single one of those turbines was imported. We need to design and manufacture and then export, not buy from Vestas.
    From the point of view of our economy I agree. From the point of view of reducing our CO2 production, why does it matter?
    I suppose it depends on where they are being imported from and what their environmental standards are like. The EU or US etc probably fine - except of course for the transport environmental costs - but if they are coming from some other countries with poor environmental and social controls then that would be a cause for concern.
    I suspect that the CO2 cost of transporting the turbines to the site are a tiny fraction of the CO2 saved over the course of their useful lives, probably offset by making sure you get the most efficient ones you can, from where ever the source is.

    I am guessing though, and am willing to be corrected by anyone with an actual link to the figures.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    edited November 2021
    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    It wouldn't. We do not have a written constitution, our constitution is based on the sovereignty of Crown in Parliament in lawmaking.

    The English civil war and the glorious revolution merely asserted that Parliament had to be used to make laws and raise taxes and make wars, we could not be governed by the divine right of Kings alone.

    However it did not mean that the monarch could have no role in lawmaking whatsoever. If the monarch vetoed a bill which was not in the manifesto of the elected government it would not be unconstitutional even if maybe not advisable. Whatever the parties in Parliament thought about it they could not stop it.

    However even if Charles is unlikely to do even that there is certainly absolutely nothing in our constitution to stop the monarch giving their personal views on matters of policy or politics, which was my original point
    I think you're confusing what is technically the case with what would be an acceptable basis for the monarchy to continue.
    You are technically correct that King Charles III could make whatever pronouncements he likes.

    But if he does start to go off the nuttier end of the spectrum, support for the concept of the monarchy would be bound to fall. And if it fell below a certain point, the monarchy ends.
    There may be no specific mechanism for abolishing the British monarchy, but that doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. Realistically - whatever the law may say - the monarchy only persists with the consent of the people.
    Only if the monarchy tried to veto manifesto commitments being passed into law or advocated constantly unpopular policies.

    If the monarch vetoed unpopular bills not in the manifesto of the elected government or advocated popular things like tackling climate change as Charles is doing there would be nothing to stop that at all. Indeed the monarchy may become even more popular even if politicians dislike it
  • JohnOJohnO Posts: 4,211
    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    It wouldn't. We do not have a written constitution, our constitution is based on the sovereignty of Crown in Parliament in lawmaking.

    The English civil war and the glorious revolution merely asserted that Parliament had to be used to make laws and raise taxes and make wars, we could not be governed by the divine right of Kings alone.

    However it did not mean that the monarch could have no role in lawmaking whatsoever. If the monarch vetoed a bill which was not in the manifesto of the elected government it would not be unconstitutional even if maybe not advisable. Whatever the parties in Parliament thought about it they could not stop it.

    However even if Charles is unlikely to do even that there is certainly absolutely nothing in our constitution to stop the monarch giving their personal views on matters of policy or politics, which was my original point
    We do have a constitution albeit an unwritten one. Numerous learned tomes have been written on it: you could make an easy and readable start with Walter Bagehot.

    It would be a truly moronic Monarch who started pontificating on poitically contentious or partisan issues. And a very short-lived reign too.

    With the best will in the world, don't you ever pause and reflect on the implications of some of your outlandish assertions? On this one, Republicans couldn't have a better friend and ally than you. We Tory patriots, who genuinely cherish our constiutional monarchy, recoil in horror.

  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,775
    Cookie said:

    DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    Yes, I get slightly irritated by the 'nothing is being done' meme. The progress of the UK over the last 20-odd years has been extraordinary, and is to the credit of the governments of all hues who have achieved it. There are trade offs, and it has led to more expensive and less reliable electricity than might otherwise be the case, but to deny the progress that has been made is daft. And further developments are in the pipeline.
    We will have a day in the next few years where we need no gas at all.
    I think we're much more likely to build confidence in finishing the job if we celebrate the progress we've made to date.
  • Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    Hmm, the Romans had a rather better organised response to mass immigration if they didn't like it. Vide C. Julius Caesar and many others, re: crossings of the Rhine and Danube. Not to mention T. Aelius Hadrianus.
    For be it for me to argue with a classical scholar like our glorious leader but I was under the impression that it was pretty much only large scale migration and the use of foederati imported from the rest of the Empire and beyond that kept Britannia in the Empire for the last half century or more.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    Leon said:

    I don't understand the empty stadiums at the T20s

    Is this Covid? Or just apathy? Or are tickets £400?

    I can't imagine a nicer thing to do of a warm Emirates evening than going to see some lively international cricket...

    I assume they are all watching COP26!
  • DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    And every single one of those turbines was imported. We need to design and manufacture and then export, not buy from Vestas.
    From the point of view of our economy I agree. From the point of view of reducing our CO2 production, why does it matter?
    Because once you become reliant on somewhere else for strategic infrastructure you are at their mercy. You get what they want to sell you at the price they are willing to sell at.

    Anyway, this is about global CO2. Which means much much more clean energy production globally. Should we be a passenger and let other countries grow rich off that? Or use our local wind and tide resources combined with our formerly world-class engineering resources to develop leading edge technology that can make us rich?

    Britain used to be the R&D heart of so many industries. Then from the 70s onwards we threw it all away and find ourselves in a bizarre world where the kind of long-term subsidised investment offered by the people who have replaced us as world-leaders is seen as akin to communism.
    I basically agree with all you say here, but I don't want to make the best the enemy of the good.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,310
    England in a spot of bother here
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    moonshine said:

    dixiedean said:

    World is screwed. Will continue to be screwed. We have,no right to survive.

    World is not screwed. World will be fine, at least until the sun gets too hot.

    500 million years ago, the Earth was almost entirely covered in ice. If it hadn't been for a few volcanoes emitting CO2, it would have been stuck as an ice world pretty much forever.

    50 million years ago, there was a period when it was about 10 degrees warmer than the present day. The _increase_ in biological activity this caused eventually brought the temperature down by dumping carbon in the deep oceans.

    There's no runaway happening here - either way - otherwise such a thing would already have happened.


    The big issue for _us_ is what happens when a large proportion of the world's cities are flooded and lots of people have to move.

    Perhaps the empty spaces of Siberia will become easier to live in...
    Something which is going to be a problem fairly soon (historically speaking) with or without man doing anything.

    We suffer from having short racial memories and a short history. We have lived through a relatively stable period that has allowed civilisation to grow in an extremely unusual period of climate stability. This has meant we have planted much of our population in places where we should not have done. Places that would flood in the not too distant future even if man had never appeared on the planet. Moreover our failure to understand or ignore processes such as isostatic readjustment - and to take steps that have made it even worse in places like New Orleans means that we have simply added to our woes.

    We are a short lived species lacking a proper sense of how much the world changes of its own accord. As such we will continue to believe we can do something to change it and will remain woefully unprepared for when it is finally realised that we can't.
    There are sound economic reasons why human society has developed largely around coasts and rivers. How exactly do you propose to undo that?
    You can't. We just have to accept that natural processes will eventually undo it for us with or without our agreement.
    So what? Natural processes will eventually undo you and me and everybody else. That isn't generally regarded as an argument against the practise of medicine, which is merely a huge exercise in delaying the inevitable.
    The point being argued is that it is possible to prevent either isostatic or eustatic sea level changes. It isn't. So your medicine argument is a straw man with nothing to do with this discussion.
    Utter nonsense. Eustatics includes the melting of the ice caps and glaciers. Are you seriously claiming we have no influence on that?
    I am claiming that whether we do anything now or not it will still happen in the not too distant future as a natural process. As it has on so many occasions before. Even someone as slow and scientifically illiterate as you should be able to grasp that basic concept.
    Yes, thank you for illustrating my point for me. Your position is exactly that of a doctor saying "this man has cancer, but at his age he is bound to pop his clogs in the not too distant future as a natural process, so let's not bother with him." If there's a difference what is it please?
  • DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    And every single one of those turbines was imported. We need to design and manufacture and then export, not buy from Vestas.
    From the point of view of our economy I agree. From the point of view of reducing our CO2 production, why does it matter?
    I suppose it depends on where they are being imported from and what their environmental standards are like. The EU or US etc probably fine - except of course for the transport environmental costs - but if they are coming from some other countries with poor environmental and social controls then that would be a cause for concern.
    I suspect that the CO2 cost of transporting the turbines to the site are a tiny fraction of the CO2 saved over the course of their useful lives, probably offset by making sure you get the most efficient ones you can, from where ever the source is.

    I am guessing though, and am willing to be corrected by anyone with an actual link to the figures.
    Yep generally I am with you on that.
  • Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    It isn't that odd. The British crown unites the old crowns of England and Scotland. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the English crown title applies in England & Wakes, and the Scottish crown title applies in Scotland.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,842

    Aslan said:

    HYUFD said:

    Aslan said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    At some point, millions of years ago, a few pieces of stinking slime crawled from the Sea and shouted to the Heavens "I am Man!"

    Much more recently than that.
    And wasn't it "...Trump !" ?
    A couple of years ago, a friend of mine went to a Republican barbecue in Texas, thinking it would be much the same as a Conservative barbecue in this country.

    Wrong! He said that almost every conversation he had with them was completely outlandish.
    Large elements of the party are in danger of becoming an American Taliban.

    Stunning survey gives grim view of flourishing anti-democratic opinions
    https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579160-stunning-survey-gives-grim-view-of-flourishing-anti-democratic-opinions
    Those who buy into former President Trump’s lies over the 2020 election and those who watch the far-right channels that amplify his rhetoric are increasingly embracing anti-democratic opinions and even contemplating political violence, according to a new poll.

    The poll from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute paints a troubling portrait of a growing segment of the public that is increasingly unmoored from reality as it embraces conspiracy theories about child abduction and stolen elections.

    It found a deep divide between those who trust right-wing media outlets and the rest of the nation — and even a divide between those who trust Fox News and those who trust outlets like One America Network and Newsmax.

    The poll found about three in ten Americans, 31 percent, believe the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, including two-thirds of Republicans and a whopping 82 percent of those who trust Fox News more than any other media outlet.

    Among those who trust far-right outlets like One America Network and Newsmax, 97 percent say they believe the election — which even Trump’s own cybersecurity and election security officials agreed was the safest and most secure ever conducted in the United States — was stolen.

    One in five Americans believe in the core tenet of the QAnon conspiracy that “there is a storm coming soon,” while one in six believe the United States government is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking ring.

    The same share, 18 percent, say they agree with the statement that America has gotten so far off track that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”...
    And it's all evangelicals too. Once you start believing in stuff without evidence, you can be fed any lie. Despite the US being founded on Enlightenment principles, the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment never took deep root in the US population as it did in Western Europe.
    Not all evangelicals are QAnon though and indeed plenty of black evangelicals will have voted for Biden-Harris.

    30-35% of the US population are evangelical Christians ie about a third, only 20% believe in QAnon theories and 18% believe in potential use of violence based on the above
    https://web.archive.org/web/20160130062242/http://www.wheaton.edu/ISAE/Defining-Evangelicalism/How-Many-Are-There
    While an authoritarian like yourself may regard a fifth of a group willing to use violence as small, that is a crazy high number to those of us that value democracy. It is getting up towards numbers in the Muslim world.
    Sorry to interject some realism into the discussion, but when asked the question "How much do you feel it is justifed for people to use violence to pursue their political goals in this country?" the groups most likely to say "Not at all" are white people and Republicans. In fact, under Trump's presidency conservatives became more likely to say "Not at all" and liberals less likely - though ironically this was almost all down to white liberals becoming radicalised.
    As the foundation of the USA was a bloody revolution, rejecting the use of violence to pursue political goals is an interesting point of view, suggesting that the whole idea was a mistake...
    Given that the question is "in this country," presumably they don't believe that a "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism," but do believe that "Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes".
    Well there was also that little scuffle over whether it was legal for states to suceed (sp?) from the union back in the 1860s. I think that counts as "using violence to pursue political goals". (The fact that I agree with the Union's war aims are not important here).
    The entire nation was settled on a genocide, and enriched through the theft and working to death of other human beings. The rest is detail.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,100
    edited November 2021
    Aslan said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    At some point, millions of years ago, a few pieces of stinking slime crawled from the Sea and shouted to the Heavens "I am Man!"

    Much more recently than that.
    And wasn't it "...Trump !" ?
    A couple of years ago, a friend of mine went to a Republican barbecue in Texas, thinking it would be much the same as a Conservative barbecue in this country.

    Wrong! He said that almost every conversation he had with them was completely outlandish.
    Large elements of the party are in danger of becoming an American Taliban.

    Stunning survey gives grim view of flourishing anti-democratic opinions
    https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579160-stunning-survey-gives-grim-view-of-flourishing-anti-democratic-opinions
    Those who buy into former President Trump’s lies over the 2020 election and those who watch the far-right channels that amplify his rhetoric are increasingly embracing anti-democratic opinions and even contemplating political violence, according to a new poll.

    The poll from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute paints a troubling portrait of a growing segment of the public that is increasingly unmoored from reality as it embraces conspiracy theories about child abduction and stolen elections.

    It found a deep divide between those who trust right-wing media outlets and the rest of the nation — and even a divide between those who trust Fox News and those who trust outlets like One America Network and Newsmax.

    The poll found about three in ten Americans, 31 percent, believe the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, including two-thirds of Republicans and a whopping 82 percent of those who trust Fox News more than any other media outlet.

    Among those who trust far-right outlets like One America Network and Newsmax, 97 percent say they believe the election — which even Trump’s own cybersecurity and election security officials agreed was the safest and most secure ever conducted in the United States — was stolen.

    One in five Americans believe in the core tenet of the QAnon conspiracy that “there is a storm coming soon,” while one in six believe the United States government is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking ring.

    The same share, 18 percent, say they agree with the statement that America has gotten so far off track that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”...
    And it's all evangelicals too. Once you start believing in stuff without evidence, you can be fed any lie. Despite the US being founded on Enlightenment principles, the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment never took deep root in the US population as it did in Western Europe.
    Hmm. Rather simplistic about evangelicals. Based on Trump:Biden numbers it varies by eg ethnic group.

    Depends if by "all evangelicals" you mean "all of the evangelicals in the USA", or "all of the evangelicals who voted for trump", or even "this group consists entirely of evangelicals".

    White VI at the last Presidential Election evangelicals split about 70%:20% Trump:Biden. Black Evangelicals about 20%:70% Trump:Biden. Other ethnic groups split about 58%:32% Trump:Biden.
    https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/september/evangelical-white-black-ethnic-vote-trump-biden-lifeway-sur.html

    I'd welcome other numbers if anyone has relevant into.


    >Once you start believing in stuff without evidence, you can be fed any lie. Despite the US being founded on Enlightenment principles, the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment never took deep root in the US population as it did in Western Europe.

    This is mainly just prejudice speaking, based on a value-judgement you have chosen to apply about who is 'rational' and who is not.

    One interesting interpretation of Christian Fundamentalism is that it is Rationalism overapplied inappropriately to religion - hence the obsession with a literal interpreetation of the OT etc. This is where Dawkinsites (not applying that to you) tend to trip over themselves - they imagine that their particular dominant mode of understanding is the only one that can be acknowledged.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,631

    DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    And every single one of those turbines was imported. We need to design and manufacture and then export, not buy from Vestas.
    From the point of view of our economy I agree. From the point of view of reducing our CO2 production, why does it matter?
    I suppose it depends on where they are being imported from and what their environmental standards are like. The EU or US etc probably fine - except of course for the transport environmental costs - but if they are coming from some other countries with poor environmental and social controls then that would be a cause for concern.
    I suspect that the CO2 cost of transporting the turbines to the site are a tiny fraction of the CO2 saved over the course of their useful lives, probably offset by making sure you get the most efficient ones you can, from where ever the source is.

    I am guessing though, and am willing to be corrected by anyone with an actual link to the figures.
    Yep generally I am with you on that.
    The strategic security issue comes up with respect to batteries for cars.

    The difference between batteries and turbines vs oil and coal imports is that if someone shuts off lithium supplies or wind turbines, the effects are much much slower than cutting off primary energy sources.

    In addition, the spread of sources globally would mean that anyone trying to OPEC either item, would rapidly find that they were simply shutting themselves out of growing marketplace.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    edited November 2021
    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    It wouldn't. We do not have a written constitution, our constitution is based on the sovereignty of Crown in Parliament in lawmaking.

    The English civil war and the glorious revolution merely asserted that Parliament had to be used to make laws and raise taxes and make wars, we could not be governed by the divine right of Kings alone.

    However it did not mean that the monarch could have no role in lawmaking whatsoever. If the monarch vetoed a bill which was not in the manifesto of the elected government it would not be unconstitutional even if maybe not advisable. Whatever the parties in Parliament thought about it they could not stop it.

    However even if Charles is unlikely to do even that there is certainly absolutely nothing in our constitution to stop the monarch giving their personal views on matters of policy or politics, which was my original point
    We do have a constitution albeit an unwritten one. Numerous learned tomes have been written on it: you could make an easy and readable start with Walter Bagehot.

    It would be a truly moronic Monarch who started pontificating on poitically contentious or partisan issues. And a very short-lived reign too.

    With the best will in the world, don't you ever pause and reflect on the implications of some of your outlandish assertions? On this one, Republicans couldn't have a better friend and ally than you. We Tory patriots, who genuinely cherish our constiutional monarchy, recoil in horror.

    Bagehot is merely giving his opinion of what it is, it is still Crown in Parliament on which our constitution is based and Crown in Parliament alone.

    You need both Parliament's support and the Crown's agreement to make laws.

    You can rant as much as you want and try and muzzle Prince Charles speaking on climate change. However constitutionally there is nothing whatsoever to stop it.

    I already said if the monarch continually said very unpopular things or vetoed manifesto commitments and popular things becoming law there would be a problem.

    If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public
  • DavidL said:

    Nothing wrong with the PM aspiring to be a global leader in wind power generation. So what is he going to do to advance that? We need to R&D the shit out this thing so that we can design build and export.

    Start? We are generating 12.5GW of wind power right now.
    And every single one of those turbines was imported. We need to design and manufacture and then export, not buy from Vestas.
    From the point of view of our economy I agree. From the point of view of reducing our CO2 production, why does it matter?
    Because once you become reliant on somewhere else for strategic infrastructure you are at their mercy. You get what they want to sell you at the price they are willing to sell at.

    Anyway, this is about global CO2. Which means much much more clean energy production globally. Should we be a passenger and let other countries grow rich off that? Or use our local wind and tide resources combined with our formerly world-class engineering resources to develop leading edge technology that can make us rich?

    Britain used to be the R&D heart of so many industries. Then from the 70s onwards we threw it all away and find ourselves in a bizarre world where the kind of long-term subsidised investment offered by the people who have replaced us as world-leaders is seen as akin to communism.
    I basically agree with all you say here, but I don't want to make the best the enemy of the good.
    Agree with that - turbines built abroad better than no turbines at all. Its just such an obvious thing to fix yet a succession of PMs have paid no attention to it at all. If the Tories want to regain some credibility with the business community again, commit to supporting green energy. The switch to renewables should be a hugely profitable enterprise, yet all anyone can do is whine on about the costs.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,865
    TOPPING said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    Evolution is a ruthlessly eugenic process; it is more the differential extermination of the unfit than the survival of the fit. Characteristics are preserved and transmitted only by individuals who survive to adulthood, and breed. We all survive to adulthood these days because Our Wonderful NHS so that filter goes out of the window. That leaves breeding, so if we are evolving at all it should be in the direction of being sexier, more prolific etc. Even that doesn't work very well because there is no marked imbalance of the sexes, here at any rate.
    Still I do like the idea of us in the future becoming creatures who will look back at us and go, "aw sweet". Such an interesting topic, evolution. My sense is it's one of those understood by relatively few but often kind of misrepresented because many more than those few are also interested - since it IS so interesting - and think they have the gist of it when they haven't, quite. (Don't mean you, btw, I mean everyone). I really am tempted to devote some proper time to it rather than using a 10 minute skim surf to write a sideways PB post. If I devote some proper time to it, I reckon I can get to a point where I think I've got the gist of it and almost certainly haven't, quite.
    Have you read this book? I found it utterly thrilling, and still the best book I have read on evolution with a particular focus on how humans came about.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancestor's_Tale
    No, I haven't. Thanks for the tip.
    It's OK, but I would strongly recommend https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Watchmaker-Richard-Dawkins-ebook/dp/B00DH4VZG4 for more and better argued theory
    Ta. If I can rediscover the reading habit - which is a goal - it'll be no problem to include that one. I read his God Delusion a few years ago. Polemic not science, that, though. Enjoyed it but found it a bit 'breaking butterfly on wheel' if you know what I mean.
    Interesting that people read those books. I think we are all aware of the role that religion has played throughout history but to read a book about the existence of god is strange.

    If you believe, then you wouldn't read it because god exists and if you don't believe, then you wouldn't read it because god doesn't exist.

    A 500-page book wouldn't work in either case.
    It was an ok book but in essence what it was was him, the Prof, bringing all of his considerable powers of logic to bear on showing how something that's clearly illogical violates all the rules of logic. It was a bit gratuitous. Also not very deep since it just set the thing up on his plane and his terms and then knocked it down in about a hundred different ways when just one would have done the job, or rather that job.
  • dixiedean said:

    Aslan said:

    HYUFD said:

    Aslan said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    At some point, millions of years ago, a few pieces of stinking slime crawled from the Sea and shouted to the Heavens "I am Man!"

    Much more recently than that.
    And wasn't it "...Trump !" ?
    A couple of years ago, a friend of mine went to a Republican barbecue in Texas, thinking it would be much the same as a Conservative barbecue in this country.

    Wrong! He said that almost every conversation he had with them was completely outlandish.
    Large elements of the party are in danger of becoming an American Taliban.

    Stunning survey gives grim view of flourishing anti-democratic opinions
    https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579160-stunning-survey-gives-grim-view-of-flourishing-anti-democratic-opinions
    Those who buy into former President Trump’s lies over the 2020 election and those who watch the far-right channels that amplify his rhetoric are increasingly embracing anti-democratic opinions and even contemplating political violence, according to a new poll.

    The poll from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute paints a troubling portrait of a growing segment of the public that is increasingly unmoored from reality as it embraces conspiracy theories about child abduction and stolen elections.

    It found a deep divide between those who trust right-wing media outlets and the rest of the nation — and even a divide between those who trust Fox News and those who trust outlets like One America Network and Newsmax.

    The poll found about three in ten Americans, 31 percent, believe the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, including two-thirds of Republicans and a whopping 82 percent of those who trust Fox News more than any other media outlet.

    Among those who trust far-right outlets like One America Network and Newsmax, 97 percent say they believe the election — which even Trump’s own cybersecurity and election security officials agreed was the safest and most secure ever conducted in the United States — was stolen.

    One in five Americans believe in the core tenet of the QAnon conspiracy that “there is a storm coming soon,” while one in six believe the United States government is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking ring.

    The same share, 18 percent, say they agree with the statement that America has gotten so far off track that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”...
    And it's all evangelicals too. Once you start believing in stuff without evidence, you can be fed any lie. Despite the US being founded on Enlightenment principles, the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment never took deep root in the US population as it did in Western Europe.
    Not all evangelicals are QAnon though and indeed plenty of black evangelicals will have voted for Biden-Harris.

    30-35% of the US population are evangelical Christians ie about a third, only 20% believe in QAnon theories and 18% believe in potential use of violence based on the above
    https://web.archive.org/web/20160130062242/http://www.wheaton.edu/ISAE/Defining-Evangelicalism/How-Many-Are-There
    While an authoritarian like yourself may regard a fifth of a group willing to use violence as small, that is a crazy high number to those of us that value democracy. It is getting up towards numbers in the Muslim world.
    Sorry to interject some realism into the discussion, but when asked the question "How much do you feel it is justifed for people to use violence to pursue their political goals in this country?" the groups most likely to say "Not at all" are white people and Republicans. In fact, under Trump's presidency conservatives became more likely to say "Not at all" and liberals less likely - though ironically this was almost all down to white liberals becoming radicalised.
    As the foundation of the USA was a bloody revolution, rejecting the use of violence to pursue political goals is an interesting point of view, suggesting that the whole idea was a mistake...
    Given that the question is "in this country," presumably they don't believe that a "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism," but do believe that "Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes".
    Well there was also that little scuffle over whether it was legal for states to suceed (sp?) from the union back in the 1860s. I think that counts as "using violence to pursue political goals". (The fact that I agree with the Union's war aims are not important here).
    The entire nation was settled on a genocide, and enriched through the theft and working to death of other human beings. The rest is detail.
    My part in the thread started with me commenting on how using violence to pursue a political goal was not something alien to the US and using first the War of Independence and then the American Civil War as examples. Lincoln went to war to stop the Confederate States from leaving; the reason they wanted to leave in the first place was to preserve the practice of slavery (accurately summarised in your comment). Unless the nation you are talking about is the CSA then by the 1860s I'm not sure you can say they whole nation was settled on it.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    dixiedean said:

    Aslan said:

    HYUFD said:

    Aslan said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    At some point, millions of years ago, a few pieces of stinking slime crawled from the Sea and shouted to the Heavens "I am Man!"

    Much more recently than that.
    And wasn't it "...Trump !" ?
    A couple of years ago, a friend of mine went to a Republican barbecue in Texas, thinking it would be much the same as a Conservative barbecue in this country.

    Wrong! He said that almost every conversation he had with them was completely outlandish.
    Large elements of the party are in danger of becoming an American Taliban.

    Stunning survey gives grim view of flourishing anti-democratic opinions
    https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579160-stunning-survey-gives-grim-view-of-flourishing-anti-democratic-opinions
    Those who buy into former President Trump’s lies over the 2020 election and those who watch the far-right channels that amplify his rhetoric are increasingly embracing anti-democratic opinions and even contemplating political violence, according to a new poll.

    The poll from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute paints a troubling portrait of a growing segment of the public that is increasingly unmoored from reality as it embraces conspiracy theories about child abduction and stolen elections.

    It found a deep divide between those who trust right-wing media outlets and the rest of the nation — and even a divide between those who trust Fox News and those who trust outlets like One America Network and Newsmax.

    The poll found about three in ten Americans, 31 percent, believe the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, including two-thirds of Republicans and a whopping 82 percent of those who trust Fox News more than any other media outlet.

    Among those who trust far-right outlets like One America Network and Newsmax, 97 percent say they believe the election — which even Trump’s own cybersecurity and election security officials agreed was the safest and most secure ever conducted in the United States — was stolen.

    One in five Americans believe in the core tenet of the QAnon conspiracy that “there is a storm coming soon,” while one in six believe the United States government is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking ring.

    The same share, 18 percent, say they agree with the statement that America has gotten so far off track that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”...
    And it's all evangelicals too. Once you start believing in stuff without evidence, you can be fed any lie. Despite the US being founded on Enlightenment principles, the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment never took deep root in the US population as it did in Western Europe.
    Not all evangelicals are QAnon though and indeed plenty of black evangelicals will have voted for Biden-Harris.

    30-35% of the US population are evangelical Christians ie about a third, only 20% believe in QAnon theories and 18% believe in potential use of violence based on the above
    https://web.archive.org/web/20160130062242/http://www.wheaton.edu/ISAE/Defining-Evangelicalism/How-Many-Are-There
    While an authoritarian like yourself may regard a fifth of a group willing to use violence as small, that is a crazy high number to those of us that value democracy. It is getting up towards numbers in the Muslim world.
    Sorry to interject some realism into the discussion, but when asked the question "How much do you feel it is justifed for people to use violence to pursue their political goals in this country?" the groups most likely to say "Not at all" are white people and Republicans. In fact, under Trump's presidency conservatives became more likely to say "Not at all" and liberals less likely - though ironically this was almost all down to white liberals becoming radicalised.
    As the foundation of the USA was a bloody revolution, rejecting the use of violence to pursue political goals is an interesting point of view, suggesting that the whole idea was a mistake...
    Given that the question is "in this country," presumably they don't believe that a "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism," but do believe that "Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes".
    Well there was also that little scuffle over whether it was legal for states to suceed (sp?) from the union back in the 1860s. I think that counts as "using violence to pursue political goals". (The fact that I agree with the Union's war aims are not important here).
    The entire nation was settled on a genocide, and enriched through the theft and working to death of other human beings. The rest is detail.
    And the nation most to blame for that is...?
    You have to ask, incidentally, why enslaving the natives wasn't a logical move. Ease of transport by sea vs overland? Clever marketing by the English traders?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Cookie said:

    tlg86 said:

    Someone arriving from New Foundland...

    https://www.flightradar24.com/N122GB/29b4fbc1

    Via quite a strange route. That's not a great circle.
    That aircraft is now at Biggin Hill. Who was on it, possibly US or UN security services?
  • On Betfair is it possible to check what commission percentage you're currently due to pay if you win a bet?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,161

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    Hmm, the Romans had a rather better organised response to mass immigration if they didn't like it. Vide C. Julius Caesar and many others, re: crossings of the Rhine and Danube. Not to mention T. Aelius Hadrianus.
    For be it for me to argue with a classical scholar like our glorious leader but I was under the impression that it was pretty much only large scale migration and the use of foederati imported from the rest of the Empire and beyond that kept Britannia in the Empire for the last half century or more.
    Quite so. Not to mention keeping most of the empire in the empire, too.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,865
    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    Hmm, the Romans had a rather better organised response to mass immigration if they didn't like it. Vide C. Julius Caesar and many others, re: crossings of the Rhine and Danube. Not to mention T. Aelius Hadrianus.
    Yes, I bet they did. Can't imagine them sitting around and debating a "Carthage style points system".
  • JohnOJohnO Posts: 4,211
    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    It wouldn't. We do not have a written constitution, our constitution is based on the sovereignty of Crown in Parliament in lawmaking.

    The English civil war and the glorious revolution merely asserted that Parliament had to be used to make laws and raise taxes and make wars, we could not be governed by the divine right of Kings alone.

    However it did not mean that the monarch could have no role in lawmaking whatsoever. If the monarch vetoed a bill which was not in the manifesto of the elected government it would not be unconstitutional even if maybe not advisable. Whatever the parties in Parliament thought about it they could not stop it.

    However even if Charles is unlikely to do even that there is certainly absolutely nothing in our constitution to stop the monarch giving their personal views on matters of policy or politics, which was my original point
    We do have a constitution albeit an unwritten one. Numerous learned tomes have been written on it: you could make an easy and readable start with Walter Bagehot.

    It would be a truly moronic Monarch who started pontificating on poitically contentious or partisan issues. And a very short-lived reign too.

    With the best will in the world, don't you ever pause and reflect on the implications of some of your outlandish assertions? On this one, Republicans couldn't have a better friend and ally than you. We Tory patriots, who genuinely cherish our constiutional monarchy, recoil in horror.

    Bagehot is merely giving his opinion of what it is, it is still Crown in Parliament on which our constitution is based and Crown in Parliament alone.

    You need both Parliament's support and the Crown's agreement to make laws.

    You can rant as much as you want and try and muzzle Prince Charles speaking on climate change. However constitutionally there is nothing whatsoever to stop it.

    I already said if the monarch continually said very unpopular things or vetoed manifesto commitments and popular things becoming law there would be a problem.

    If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public
    "If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public".

    Utterly and tragically delusional. Stick to the park benches and the allotments.
  • TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,387
    edited November 2021

    On Betfair is it possible to check what commission percentage you're currently due to pay if you win a bet?

    The way I do it is to set my settings to "winnings after Commission".

    ETA: The "Rules" button does give this but always get worried it doesn't take account of my opt-out of bonuses.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,842

    dixiedean said:

    Aslan said:

    HYUFD said:

    Aslan said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    At some point, millions of years ago, a few pieces of stinking slime crawled from the Sea and shouted to the Heavens "I am Man!"

    Much more recently than that.
    And wasn't it "...Trump !" ?
    A couple of years ago, a friend of mine went to a Republican barbecue in Texas, thinking it would be much the same as a Conservative barbecue in this country.

    Wrong! He said that almost every conversation he had with them was completely outlandish.
    Large elements of the party are in danger of becoming an American Taliban.

    Stunning survey gives grim view of flourishing anti-democratic opinions
    https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579160-stunning-survey-gives-grim-view-of-flourishing-anti-democratic-opinions
    Those who buy into former President Trump’s lies over the 2020 election and those who watch the far-right channels that amplify his rhetoric are increasingly embracing anti-democratic opinions and even contemplating political violence, according to a new poll.

    The poll from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute paints a troubling portrait of a growing segment of the public that is increasingly unmoored from reality as it embraces conspiracy theories about child abduction and stolen elections.

    It found a deep divide between those who trust right-wing media outlets and the rest of the nation — and even a divide between those who trust Fox News and those who trust outlets like One America Network and Newsmax.

    The poll found about three in ten Americans, 31 percent, believe the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, including two-thirds of Republicans and a whopping 82 percent of those who trust Fox News more than any other media outlet.

    Among those who trust far-right outlets like One America Network and Newsmax, 97 percent say they believe the election — which even Trump’s own cybersecurity and election security officials agreed was the safest and most secure ever conducted in the United States — was stolen.

    One in five Americans believe in the core tenet of the QAnon conspiracy that “there is a storm coming soon,” while one in six believe the United States government is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking ring.

    The same share, 18 percent, say they agree with the statement that America has gotten so far off track that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”...
    And it's all evangelicals too. Once you start believing in stuff without evidence, you can be fed any lie. Despite the US being founded on Enlightenment principles, the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment never took deep root in the US population as it did in Western Europe.
    Not all evangelicals are QAnon though and indeed plenty of black evangelicals will have voted for Biden-Harris.

    30-35% of the US population are evangelical Christians ie about a third, only 20% believe in QAnon theories and 18% believe in potential use of violence based on the above
    https://web.archive.org/web/20160130062242/http://www.wheaton.edu/ISAE/Defining-Evangelicalism/How-Many-Are-There
    While an authoritarian like yourself may regard a fifth of a group willing to use violence as small, that is a crazy high number to those of us that value democracy. It is getting up towards numbers in the Muslim world.
    Sorry to interject some realism into the discussion, but when asked the question "How much do you feel it is justifed for people to use violence to pursue their political goals in this country?" the groups most likely to say "Not at all" are white people and Republicans. In fact, under Trump's presidency conservatives became more likely to say "Not at all" and liberals less likely - though ironically this was almost all down to white liberals becoming radicalised.
    As the foundation of the USA was a bloody revolution, rejecting the use of violence to pursue political goals is an interesting point of view, suggesting that the whole idea was a mistake...
    Given that the question is "in this country," presumably they don't believe that a "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism," but do believe that "Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes".
    Well there was also that little scuffle over whether it was legal for states to suceed (sp?) from the union back in the 1860s. I think that counts as "using violence to pursue political goals". (The fact that I agree with the Union's war aims are not important here).
    The entire nation was settled on a genocide, and enriched through the theft and working to death of other human beings. The rest is detail.
    My part in the thread started with me commenting on how using violence to pursue a political goal was not something alien to the US and using first the War of Independence and then the American Civil War as examples. Lincoln went to war to stop the Confederate States from leaving; the reason they wanted to leave in the first place was to preserve the practice of slavery (accurately summarised in your comment). Unless the nation you are talking about is the CSA then by the 1860s I'm not sure you can say they whole nation was settled on it.
    Certainly the elimination of the native people through slaughter and starvation and habitat destruction was a widely supported goal. I think I intended a full stop then.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    moonshine said:

    dixiedean said:

    World is screwed. Will continue to be screwed. We have,no right to survive.

    World is not screwed. World will be fine, at least until the sun gets too hot.

    500 million years ago, the Earth was almost entirely covered in ice. If it hadn't been for a few volcanoes emitting CO2, it would have been stuck as an ice world pretty much forever.

    50 million years ago, there was a period when it was about 10 degrees warmer than the present day. The _increase_ in biological activity this caused eventually brought the temperature down by dumping carbon in the deep oceans.

    There's no runaway happening here - either way - otherwise such a thing would already have happened.


    The big issue for _us_ is what happens when a large proportion of the world's cities are flooded and lots of people have to move.

    Perhaps the empty spaces of Siberia will become easier to live in...
    Something which is going to be a problem fairly soon (historically speaking) with or without man doing anything.

    We suffer from having short racial memories and a short history. We have lived through a relatively stable period that has allowed civilisation to grow in an extremely unusual period of climate stability. This has meant we have planted much of our population in places where we should not have done. Places that would flood in the not too distant future even if man had never appeared on the planet. Moreover our failure to understand or ignore processes such as isostatic readjustment - and to take steps that have made it even worse in places like New Orleans means that we have simply added to our woes.

    We are a short lived species lacking a proper sense of how much the world changes of its own accord. As such we will continue to believe we can do something to change it and will remain woefully unprepared for when it is finally realised that we can't.
    There are sound economic reasons why human society has developed largely around coasts and rivers. How exactly do you propose to undo that?
    You can't. We just have to accept that natural processes will eventually undo it for us with or without our agreement.
    So what? Natural processes will eventually undo you and me and everybody else. That isn't generally regarded as an argument against the practise of medicine, which is merely a huge exercise in delaying the inevitable.
    The point being argued is that it is possible to prevent either isostatic or eustatic sea level changes. It isn't. So your medicine argument is a straw man with nothing to do with this discussion.
    Utter nonsense. Eustatics includes the melting of the ice caps and glaciers. Are you seriously claiming we have no influence on that?
    I am claiming that whether we do anything now or not it will still happen in the not too distant future as a natural process. As it has on so many occasions before. Even someone as slow and scientifically illiterate as you should be able to grasp that basic concept.
    Yes, thank you for illustrating my point for me. Your position is exactly that of a doctor saying "this man has cancer, but at his age he is bound to pop his clogs in the not too distant future as a natural process, so let's not bother with him." If there's a difference what is it please?
    Nope my position is one of saying that this man has lung cancer and even if we cure him of that he will get it again and die of it because he refuses stop smoking. Stopping the cancer serves no purpose if the root cause is not dealt with. In this case the root cause is the fact that much of our populations live too close to sea level. Absolutely nothing we can do can stop that sea level rising at some point in the not too distant future - unless of course you are proposing we can stop the glaciation cycle - so we should be looking to move those people away from the danger zone before it is too late.

    New Orleans is a classic example although that is a case of Isostatic rather than Eustatic change. The whole basin is sinking due to the amount of sediment input. To try and combat the increased flooding they build levees which have the side effect of pushing the sediment further out into the basin which serves to actually increase the rate of basin sinking and increase the flooding risk. The correct solution is abandon New Orleans but we are so hooked on this idea that this is a solvable problem if only we take certain, utterly pointless, action that we are condemning people to more deadly floods.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,161

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    Hmm, the Romans had a rather better organised response to mass immigration if they didn't like it. Vide C. Julius Caesar and many others, re: crossings of the Rhine and Danube. Not to mention T. Aelius Hadrianus.
    Who paid for Hadrians... wall? :-)
    I'm not sure anyone did, in a sense: apart from work corvees of course (there is a stone from the Durotriges in Dorset upside down, IIRC, in a farmhouse just a few hundred yards east of where the Wall crosses the Irthing under Birdoswald). The Roman Army were there anyway so it kept the squaddies out of mischief building the frontier complex (and no doubt also painting it white: a relic of this practice is surely the British Army habit of painting paving kerbs and coal stacks white).
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,865
    Cookie said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    Evolution is a ruthlessly eugenic process; it is more the differential extermination of the unfit than the survival of the fit. Characteristics are preserved and transmitted only by individuals who survive to adulthood, and breed. We all survive to adulthood these days because Our Wonderful NHS so that filter goes out of the window. That leaves breeding, so if we are evolving at all it should be in the direction of being sexier, more prolific etc. Even that doesn't work very well because there is no marked imbalance of the sexes, here at any rate.
    Still I do like the idea of us in the future becoming creatures who will look back at us and go, "aw sweet". Such an interesting topic, evolution. My sense is it's one of those understood by relatively few but often kind of misrepresented because many more than those few are also interested - since it IS so interesting - and think they have the gist of it when they haven't, quite. (Don't mean you, btw, I mean everyone). I really am tempted to devote some proper time to it rather than using a 10 minute skim surf to write a sideways PB post. If I devote some proper time to it, I reckon I can get to a point where I think I've got the gist of it and almost certainly haven't, quite.
    Have you read this book? I found it utterly thrilling, and still the best book I have read on evolution with a particular focus on how humans came about.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancestor's_Tale
    No, I haven't. Thanks for the tip.
    It's OK, but I would strongly recommend https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Watchmaker-Richard-Dawkins-ebook/dp/B00DH4VZG4 for more and better argued theory
    Yes, the blind watchmaker is stronger on the theory - the ancestor's tale has more of a narrative.
    I preferred the latter perhaps only because I read it first. I remember I was listening to a lot of Nick Cave at the time, which seemed to be a good soundtrack to discussions of events far, far away in history.
    Murder Ballads is one of my all time fave albums. You wouldn't have thought you could make up compelling songs on the subjects he covers but he manages to.
  • dixiedean said:

    dixiedean said:

    Aslan said:

    HYUFD said:

    Aslan said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    At some point, millions of years ago, a few pieces of stinking slime crawled from the Sea and shouted to the Heavens "I am Man!"

    Much more recently than that.
    And wasn't it "...Trump !" ?
    A couple of years ago, a friend of mine went to a Republican barbecue in Texas, thinking it would be much the same as a Conservative barbecue in this country.

    Wrong! He said that almost every conversation he had with them was completely outlandish.
    Large elements of the party are in danger of becoming an American Taliban.

    Stunning survey gives grim view of flourishing anti-democratic opinions
    https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579160-stunning-survey-gives-grim-view-of-flourishing-anti-democratic-opinions
    Those who buy into former President Trump’s lies over the 2020 election and those who watch the far-right channels that amplify his rhetoric are increasingly embracing anti-democratic opinions and even contemplating political violence, according to a new poll.

    The poll from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute paints a troubling portrait of a growing segment of the public that is increasingly unmoored from reality as it embraces conspiracy theories about child abduction and stolen elections.

    It found a deep divide between those who trust right-wing media outlets and the rest of the nation — and even a divide between those who trust Fox News and those who trust outlets like One America Network and Newsmax.

    The poll found about three in ten Americans, 31 percent, believe the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, including two-thirds of Republicans and a whopping 82 percent of those who trust Fox News more than any other media outlet.

    Among those who trust far-right outlets like One America Network and Newsmax, 97 percent say they believe the election — which even Trump’s own cybersecurity and election security officials agreed was the safest and most secure ever conducted in the United States — was stolen.

    One in five Americans believe in the core tenet of the QAnon conspiracy that “there is a storm coming soon,” while one in six believe the United States government is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking ring.

    The same share, 18 percent, say they agree with the statement that America has gotten so far off track that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”...
    And it's all evangelicals too. Once you start believing in stuff without evidence, you can be fed any lie. Despite the US being founded on Enlightenment principles, the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment never took deep root in the US population as it did in Western Europe.
    Not all evangelicals are QAnon though and indeed plenty of black evangelicals will have voted for Biden-Harris.

    30-35% of the US population are evangelical Christians ie about a third, only 20% believe in QAnon theories and 18% believe in potential use of violence based on the above
    https://web.archive.org/web/20160130062242/http://www.wheaton.edu/ISAE/Defining-Evangelicalism/How-Many-Are-There
    While an authoritarian like yourself may regard a fifth of a group willing to use violence as small, that is a crazy high number to those of us that value democracy. It is getting up towards numbers in the Muslim world.
    Sorry to interject some realism into the discussion, but when asked the question "How much do you feel it is justifed for people to use violence to pursue their political goals in this country?" the groups most likely to say "Not at all" are white people and Republicans. In fact, under Trump's presidency conservatives became more likely to say "Not at all" and liberals less likely - though ironically this was almost all down to white liberals becoming radicalised.
    As the foundation of the USA was a bloody revolution, rejecting the use of violence to pursue political goals is an interesting point of view, suggesting that the whole idea was a mistake...
    Given that the question is "in this country," presumably they don't believe that a "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism," but do believe that "Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes".
    Well there was also that little scuffle over whether it was legal for states to suceed (sp?) from the union back in the 1860s. I think that counts as "using violence to pursue political goals". (The fact that I agree with the Union's war aims are not important here).
    The entire nation was settled on a genocide, and enriched through the theft and working to death of other human beings. The rest is detail.
    My part in the thread started with me commenting on how using violence to pursue a political goal was not something alien to the US and using first the War of Independence and then the American Civil War as examples. Lincoln went to war to stop the Confederate States from leaving; the reason they wanted to leave in the first place was to preserve the practice of slavery (accurately summarised in your comment). Unless the nation you are talking about is the CSA then by the 1860s I'm not sure you can say they whole nation was settled on it.
    Certainly the elimination of the native people through slaughter and starvation and habitat destruction was a widely supported goal. I think I intended a full stop then.
    Oh! Well I can't disagree with you on that then. In fact, I think one of the less spoken about causes of the American Revolution in the first place was because they thought that the British were too soft on the native peoples.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,631
    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    Hmm, the Romans had a rather better organised response to mass immigration if they didn't like it. Vide C. Julius Caesar and many others, re: crossings of the Rhine and Danube. Not to mention T. Aelius Hadrianus.
    Yes, I bet they did. Can't imagine them sitting around and debating a "Carthage style points system".
    Well, you could argue that Marius & Caesar implemented a "Carthage style points system" for a couple of immigrant communities.

    - You have no points, being Gauls or Germans.
    - No points, we kill or enslave you.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673
    IshmaelZ said:

    dixiedean said:

    Aslan said:

    HYUFD said:

    Aslan said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    At some point, millions of years ago, a few pieces of stinking slime crawled from the Sea and shouted to the Heavens "I am Man!"

    Much more recently than that.
    And wasn't it "...Trump !" ?
    A couple of years ago, a friend of mine went to a Republican barbecue in Texas, thinking it would be much the same as a Conservative barbecue in this country.

    Wrong! He said that almost every conversation he had with them was completely outlandish.
    Large elements of the party are in danger of becoming an American Taliban.

    Stunning survey gives grim view of flourishing anti-democratic opinions
    https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579160-stunning-survey-gives-grim-view-of-flourishing-anti-democratic-opinions
    Those who buy into former President Trump’s lies over the 2020 election and those who watch the far-right channels that amplify his rhetoric are increasingly embracing anti-democratic opinions and even contemplating political violence, according to a new poll.

    The poll from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute paints a troubling portrait of a growing segment of the public that is increasingly unmoored from reality as it embraces conspiracy theories about child abduction and stolen elections.

    It found a deep divide between those who trust right-wing media outlets and the rest of the nation — and even a divide between those who trust Fox News and those who trust outlets like One America Network and Newsmax.

    The poll found about three in ten Americans, 31 percent, believe the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, including two-thirds of Republicans and a whopping 82 percent of those who trust Fox News more than any other media outlet.

    Among those who trust far-right outlets like One America Network and Newsmax, 97 percent say they believe the election — which even Trump’s own cybersecurity and election security officials agreed was the safest and most secure ever conducted in the United States — was stolen.

    One in five Americans believe in the core tenet of the QAnon conspiracy that “there is a storm coming soon,” while one in six believe the United States government is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking ring.

    The same share, 18 percent, say they agree with the statement that America has gotten so far off track that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”...
    And it's all evangelicals too. Once you start believing in stuff without evidence, you can be fed any lie. Despite the US being founded on Enlightenment principles, the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment never took deep root in the US population as it did in Western Europe.
    Not all evangelicals are QAnon though and indeed plenty of black evangelicals will have voted for Biden-Harris.

    30-35% of the US population are evangelical Christians ie about a third, only 20% believe in QAnon theories and 18% believe in potential use of violence based on the above
    https://web.archive.org/web/20160130062242/http://www.wheaton.edu/ISAE/Defining-Evangelicalism/How-Many-Are-There
    While an authoritarian like yourself may regard a fifth of a group willing to use violence as small, that is a crazy high number to those of us that value democracy. It is getting up towards numbers in the Muslim world.
    Sorry to interject some realism into the discussion, but when asked the question "How much do you feel it is justifed for people to use violence to pursue their political goals in this country?" the groups most likely to say "Not at all" are white people and Republicans. In fact, under Trump's presidency conservatives became more likely to say "Not at all" and liberals less likely - though ironically this was almost all down to white liberals becoming radicalised.
    As the foundation of the USA was a bloody revolution, rejecting the use of violence to pursue political goals is an interesting point of view, suggesting that the whole idea was a mistake...
    Given that the question is "in this country," presumably they don't believe that a "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism," but do believe that "Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes".
    Well there was also that little scuffle over whether it was legal for states to suceed (sp?) from the union back in the 1860s. I think that counts as "using violence to pursue political goals". (The fact that I agree with the Union's war aims are not important here).
    The entire nation was settled on a genocide, and enriched through the theft and working to death of other human beings. The rest is detail.
    And the nation most to blame for that is...?
    You have to ask, incidentally, why enslaving the natives wasn't a logical move. Ease of transport by sea vs overland? Clever marketing by the English traders?
    Natives tend to be rather good at escaping and disappearing into the local environment, which they know better than you and have friends and relatives in.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,161
    TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    TimT said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    Don't be absurd. Not everyone can afford to have their Aston Martin converted to electric. Monarchs are not allowed to advocate anything that might increase costs for the nation.
    But the Duchy of Cornwall is profitable. How is that increasing the costs for the nation?
    Depends on how much subsidy he gets, e.g. for farming. (OK, if he didn't, others would, but the same logic applies across the board ...).
    The point I am making is that going organic does not require subsidy. I have a friend locally who became the first organic tree nursery in the USA. He grows both organic and not organic trees on his farm. And he found that his organic trees are way more profitable. Yes, he can charge a premium (note, that is a market price, not a subsidy). But he also found that the practices that made the growing organic we just good practices in general, leading to healthier, faster growing trees. Even if he only charged the non-organic price for those trees grown organically, he'd be making more money than on the non-organic trees.

    People have this view that doing things in a morally or environmentally right way is necessarily more expensive and a drag on the economy. It is simply not true as a blanket statement.
    If he can do it without a subsidy or with less subsidy then that's excellent - no complaints.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Aslan said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    dixiedean said:

    Aslan said:

    HYUFD said:

    Aslan said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    At some point, millions of years ago, a few pieces of stinking slime crawled from the Sea and shouted to the Heavens "I am Man!"

    Much more recently than that.
    And wasn't it "...Trump !" ?
    A couple of years ago, a friend of mine went to a Republican barbecue in Texas, thinking it would be much the same as a Conservative barbecue in this country.

    Wrong! He said that almost every conversation he had with them was completely outlandish.
    Large elements of the party are in danger of becoming an American Taliban.

    Stunning survey gives grim view of flourishing anti-democratic opinions
    https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579160-stunning-survey-gives-grim-view-of-flourishing-anti-democratic-opinions
    Those who buy into former President Trump’s lies over the 2020 election and those who watch the far-right channels that amplify his rhetoric are increasingly embracing anti-democratic opinions and even contemplating political violence, according to a new poll.

    The poll from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute paints a troubling portrait of a growing segment of the public that is increasingly unmoored from reality as it embraces conspiracy theories about child abduction and stolen elections.

    It found a deep divide between those who trust right-wing media outlets and the rest of the nation — and even a divide between those who trust Fox News and those who trust outlets like One America Network and Newsmax.

    The poll found about three in ten Americans, 31 percent, believe the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, including two-thirds of Republicans and a whopping 82 percent of those who trust Fox News more than any other media outlet.

    Among those who trust far-right outlets like One America Network and Newsmax, 97 percent say they believe the election — which even Trump’s own cybersecurity and election security officials agreed was the safest and most secure ever conducted in the United States — was stolen.

    One in five Americans believe in the core tenet of the QAnon conspiracy that “there is a storm coming soon,” while one in six believe the United States government is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking ring.

    The same share, 18 percent, say they agree with the statement that America has gotten so far off track that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”...
    And it's all evangelicals too. Once you start believing in stuff without evidence, you can be fed any lie. Despite the US being founded on Enlightenment principles, the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment never took deep root in the US population as it did in Western Europe.
    Not all evangelicals are QAnon though and indeed plenty of black evangelicals will have voted for Biden-Harris.

    30-35% of the US population are evangelical Christians ie about a third, only 20% believe in QAnon theories and 18% believe in potential use of violence based on the above
    https://web.archive.org/web/20160130062242/http://www.wheaton.edu/ISAE/Defining-Evangelicalism/How-Many-Are-There
    While an authoritarian like yourself may regard a fifth of a group willing to use violence as small, that is a crazy high number to those of us that value democracy. It is getting up towards numbers in the Muslim world.
    Sorry to interject some realism into the discussion, but when asked the question "How much do you feel it is justifed for people to use violence to pursue their political goals in this country?" the groups most likely to say "Not at all" are white people and Republicans. In fact, under Trump's presidency conservatives became more likely to say "Not at all" and liberals less likely - though ironically this was almost all down to white liberals becoming radicalised.
    As the foundation of the USA was a bloody revolution, rejecting the use of violence to pursue political goals is an interesting point of view, suggesting that the whole idea was a mistake...
    Given that the question is "in this country," presumably they don't believe that a "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism," but do believe that "Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes".
    Well there was also that little scuffle over whether it was legal for states to suceed (sp?) from the union back in the 1860s. I think that counts as "using violence to pursue political goals". (The fact that I agree with the Union's war aims are not important here).
    The entire nation was settled on a genocide, and enriched through the theft and working to death of other human beings. The rest is detail.
    And the nation most to blame for that is...?
    You have to ask, incidentally, why enslaving the natives wasn't a logical move. Ease of transport by sea vs overland? Clever marketing by the English traders?
    Natives tend to be rather good at escaping and disappearing into the local environment, which they know better than you and have friends and relatives in.
    Yes. The answer to that in Africa was to enlist one lot of natives as allies/vendors.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    I have long thought that Johnson is a stupid person's idea of what an intelligent person looks like.
    Have heard this phrase before. What is the intelligent person's idea of what an intelligent person look like?
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    Hmm, the Romans had a rather better organised response to mass immigration if they didn't like it. Vide C. Julius Caesar and many others, re: crossings of the Rhine and Danube. Not to mention T. Aelius Hadrianus.
    Yes, I bet they did. Can't imagine them sitting around and debating a "Carthage style points system".
    Well, you could argue that Marius & Caesar implemented a "Carthage style points system" for a couple of immigrant communities.

    - You have no points, being Gauls or Germans.
    - No points, we kill or enslave you.
    Caesar boasted of killing 450,000, mostly women and children, who tried to cross the Rhine. I can well imagine his response to people trying to cross the Channel.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328

    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    It isn't that odd. The British crown unites the old crowns of England and Scotland. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the English crown title applies in England & Wakes, and the Scottish crown title applies in Scotland.
    Indeed, weren't there three kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland) and one Principality?
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,100
    edited November 2021
    Aslan said:

    "Temporary"
    This is stuff that was in place in iirc the middle of last week.

    The temporary licenses are those that have supplied some evidence but not enough, and have been given some extra times. No change except restating the position.

    As it says "as announced on the 28 October".

    Explained here:
    https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/opinion/analysis-lost-translation-or-wilfully-deaf-ears/
  • kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    I have long thought that Johnson is a stupid person's idea of what an intelligent person looks like.
    Have heard this phrase before. What is the intelligent person's idea of what an intelligent person look like?
    What we see in the mirror? :smiley:
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,780

    On Betfair is it possible to check what commission percentage you're currently due to pay if you win a bet?

    That's a complicated question, because commission is not charged on a per bet basis, but a per market basis. So if you win GBP10 on one bet, and lose GBP8 on another, you will only be charged commission on your GBP2 net winnings.

    Roughly speaking, if you're a small scale gambler (like most of us), you will pay 5% on commission on your winnings. Professional gamblers who actively market make can get rates as low as 2% (official), and probably close to 1% under certain circumstances.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    moonshine said:

    dixiedean said:

    World is screwed. Will continue to be screwed. We have,no right to survive.

    World is not screwed. World will be fine, at least until the sun gets too hot.

    500 million years ago, the Earth was almost entirely covered in ice. If it hadn't been for a few volcanoes emitting CO2, it would have been stuck as an ice world pretty much forever.

    50 million years ago, there was a period when it was about 10 degrees warmer than the present day. The _increase_ in biological activity this caused eventually brought the temperature down by dumping carbon in the deep oceans.

    There's no runaway happening here - either way - otherwise such a thing would already have happened.


    The big issue for _us_ is what happens when a large proportion of the world's cities are flooded and lots of people have to move.

    Perhaps the empty spaces of Siberia will become easier to live in...
    Something which is going to be a problem fairly soon (historically speaking) with or without man doing anything.

    We suffer from having short racial memories and a short history. We have lived through a relatively stable period that has allowed civilisation to grow in an extremely unusual period of climate stability. This has meant we have planted much of our population in places where we should not have done. Places that would flood in the not too distant future even if man had never appeared on the planet. Moreover our failure to understand or ignore processes such as isostatic readjustment - and to take steps that have made it even worse in places like New Orleans means that we have simply added to our woes.

    We are a short lived species lacking a proper sense of how much the world changes of its own accord. As such we will continue to believe we can do something to change it and will remain woefully unprepared for when it is finally realised that we can't.
    There are sound economic reasons why human society has developed largely around coasts and rivers. How exactly do you propose to undo that?
    You can't. We just have to accept that natural processes will eventually undo it for us with or without our agreement.
    So what? Natural processes will eventually undo you and me and everybody else. That isn't generally regarded as an argument against the practise of medicine, which is merely a huge exercise in delaying the inevitable.
    The point being argued is that it is possible to prevent either isostatic or eustatic sea level changes. It isn't. So your medicine argument is a straw man with nothing to do with this discussion.
    Utter nonsense. Eustatics includes the melting of the ice caps and glaciers. Are you seriously claiming we have no influence on that?
    I am claiming that whether we do anything now or not it will still happen in the not too distant future as a natural process. As it has on so many occasions before. Even someone as slow and scientifically illiterate as you should be able to grasp that basic concept.
    Yes, thank you for illustrating my point for me. Your position is exactly that of a doctor saying "this man has cancer, but at his age he is bound to pop his clogs in the not too distant future as a natural process, so let's not bother with him." If there's a difference what is it please?
    Nope my position is one of saying that this man has lung cancer and even if we cure him of that he will get it again and die of it because he refuses stop smoking. Stopping the cancer serves no purpose if the root cause is not dealt with. In this case the root cause is the fact that much of our populations live too close to sea level. Absolutely nothing we can do can stop that sea level rising at some point in the not too distant future - unless of course you are proposing we can stop the glaciation cycle - so we should be looking to move those people away from the danger zone before it is too late.

    New Orleans is a classic example although that is a case of Isostatic rather than Eustatic change. The whole basin is sinking due to the amount of sediment input. To try and combat the increased flooding they build levees which have the side effect of pushing the sediment further out into the basin which serves to actually increase the rate of basin sinking and increase the flooding risk. The correct solution is abandon New Orleans but we are so hooked on this idea that this is a solvable problem if only we take certain, utterly pointless, action that we are condemning people to more deadly floods.
    The pace of sea level rise makes a huge difference. And sea level rises are not the only issue with mass carbon pollution. But it is interesting how the pro-pollution types have moved from "it's definitely not happening" to "it probably isn't happening" to "maybe it's happening but we should wait for more evidence before we stop polluting" to "its so definitely happening that even if we stopped polluting it wouldn't help".
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,631
    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    Hmm, the Romans had a rather better organised response to mass immigration if they didn't like it. Vide C. Julius Caesar and many others, re: crossings of the Rhine and Danube. Not to mention T. Aelius Hadrianus.
    Yes, I bet they did. Can't imagine them sitting around and debating a "Carthage style points system".
    Well, you could argue that Marius & Caesar implemented a "Carthage style points system" for a couple of immigrant communities.

    - You have no points, being Gauls or Germans.
    - No points, we kill or enslave you.
    Caesar boasted of killing 450,000, mostly women and children, who tried to cross the Rhine. I can well imagine his response to people trying to cross the Channel.
    Making a lot of money selling them? That was where he vast fortune from conquering Gaul came from, after all.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,780
    TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    It isn't that odd. The British crown unites the old crowns of England and Scotland. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the English crown title applies in England & Wakes, and the Scottish crown title applies in Scotland.
    Indeed, weren't there three kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland) and one Principality?
    I don't think Wales is technically a Principality. I think the Head of State in Wales is the Monarch of England & Wales.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673
    TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    It isn't that odd. The British crown unites the old crowns of England and Scotland. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the English crown title applies in England & Wakes, and the Scottish crown title applies in Scotland.
    Indeed, weren't there three kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland) and one Principality?
    The principality was part of the Kingdom of England so not separate.
  • Aslan said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    moonshine said:

    dixiedean said:

    World is screwed. Will continue to be screwed. We have,no right to survive.

    World is not screwed. World will be fine, at least until the sun gets too hot.

    500 million years ago, the Earth was almost entirely covered in ice. If it hadn't been for a few volcanoes emitting CO2, it would have been stuck as an ice world pretty much forever.

    50 million years ago, there was a period when it was about 10 degrees warmer than the present day. The _increase_ in biological activity this caused eventually brought the temperature down by dumping carbon in the deep oceans.

    There's no runaway happening here - either way - otherwise such a thing would already have happened.


    The big issue for _us_ is what happens when a large proportion of the world's cities are flooded and lots of people have to move.

    Perhaps the empty spaces of Siberia will become easier to live in...
    Something which is going to be a problem fairly soon (historically speaking) with or without man doing anything.

    We suffer from having short racial memories and a short history. We have lived through a relatively stable period that has allowed civilisation to grow in an extremely unusual period of climate stability. This has meant we have planted much of our population in places where we should not have done. Places that would flood in the not too distant future even if man had never appeared on the planet. Moreover our failure to understand or ignore processes such as isostatic readjustment - and to take steps that have made it even worse in places like New Orleans means that we have simply added to our woes.

    We are a short lived species lacking a proper sense of how much the world changes of its own accord. As such we will continue to believe we can do something to change it and will remain woefully unprepared for when it is finally realised that we can't.
    There are sound economic reasons why human society has developed largely around coasts and rivers. How exactly do you propose to undo that?
    You can't. We just have to accept that natural processes will eventually undo it for us with or without our agreement.
    So what? Natural processes will eventually undo you and me and everybody else. That isn't generally regarded as an argument against the practise of medicine, which is merely a huge exercise in delaying the inevitable.
    The point being argued is that it is possible to prevent either isostatic or eustatic sea level changes. It isn't. So your medicine argument is a straw man with nothing to do with this discussion.
    Utter nonsense. Eustatics includes the melting of the ice caps and glaciers. Are you seriously claiming we have no influence on that?
    I am claiming that whether we do anything now or not it will still happen in the not too distant future as a natural process. As it has on so many occasions before. Even someone as slow and scientifically illiterate as you should be able to grasp that basic concept.
    Yes, thank you for illustrating my point for me. Your position is exactly that of a doctor saying "this man has cancer, but at his age he is bound to pop his clogs in the not too distant future as a natural process, so let's not bother with him." If there's a difference what is it please?
    Nope my position is one of saying that this man has lung cancer and even if we cure him of that he will get it again and die of it because he refuses stop smoking. Stopping the cancer serves no purpose if the root cause is not dealt with. In this case the root cause is the fact that much of our populations live too close to sea level. Absolutely nothing we can do can stop that sea level rising at some point in the not too distant future - unless of course you are proposing we can stop the glaciation cycle - so we should be looking to move those people away from the danger zone before it is too late.

    New Orleans is a classic example although that is a case of Isostatic rather than Eustatic change. The whole basin is sinking due to the amount of sediment input. To try and combat the increased flooding they build levees which have the side effect of pushing the sediment further out into the basin which serves to actually increase the rate of basin sinking and increase the flooding risk. The correct solution is abandon New Orleans but we are so hooked on this idea that this is a solvable problem if only we take certain, utterly pointless, action that we are condemning people to more deadly floods.
    The pace of sea level rise makes a huge difference. And sea level rises are not the only issue with mass carbon pollution. But it is interesting how the pro-pollution types have moved from "it's definitely not happening" to "it probably isn't happening" to "maybe it's happening but we should wait for more evidence before we stop polluting" to "its so definitely happening that even if we stopped polluting it wouldn't help".
    Is that a Yes Minister reference?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    edited November 2021
    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    It wouldn't. We do not have a written constitution, our constitution is based on the sovereignty of Crown in Parliament in lawmaking.

    The English civil war and the glorious revolution merely asserted that Parliament had to be used to make laws and raise taxes and make wars, we could not be governed by the divine right of Kings alone.

    However it did not mean that the monarch could have no role in lawmaking whatsoever. If the monarch vetoed a bill which was not in the manifesto of the elected government it would not be unconstitutional even if maybe not advisable. Whatever the parties in Parliament thought about it they could not stop it.

    However even if Charles is unlikely to do even that there is certainly absolutely nothing in our constitution to stop the monarch giving their personal views on matters of policy or politics, which was my original point
    We do have a constitution albeit an unwritten one. Numerous learned tomes have been written on it: you could make an easy and readable start with Walter Bagehot.

    It would be a truly moronic Monarch who started pontificating on poitically contentious or partisan issues. And a very short-lived reign too.

    With the best will in the world, don't you ever pause and reflect on the implications of some of your outlandish assertions? On this one, Republicans couldn't have a better friend and ally than you. We Tory patriots, who genuinely cherish our constiutional monarchy, recoil in horror.

    Bagehot is merely giving his opinion of what it is, it is still Crown in Parliament on which our constitution is based and Crown in Parliament alone.

    You need both Parliament's support and the Crown's agreement to make laws.

    You can rant as much as you want and try and muzzle Prince Charles speaking on climate change. However constitutionally there is nothing whatsoever to stop it.

    I already said if the monarch continually said very unpopular things or vetoed manifesto commitments and popular things becoming law there would be a problem.

    If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public
    "If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public".

    Utterly and tragically delusional. Stick to the park benches and the allotments.
    Is it? If a future government passed a deeply unpopular bill through Parliament to, say, allow development in our National Parks beyond in just exceptional circumstances which was not in its manifesto and which by then King Charles vetoed I expect he would have the full support of most of the public on that even if it annoyed senior politicians
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257
    TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    TimT said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    Don't be absurd. Not everyone can afford to have their Aston Martin converted to electric. Monarchs are not allowed to advocate anything that might increase costs for the nation.
    But the Duchy of Cornwall is profitable. How is that increasing the costs for the nation?
    Depends on how much subsidy he gets, e.g. for farming. (OK, if he didn't, others would, but the same logic applies across the board ...).
    The point I am making is that going organic does not require subsidy. I have a friend locally who became the first organic tree nursery in the USA. He grows both organic and not organic trees on his farm. And he found that his organic trees are way more profitable. Yes, he can charge a premium (note, that is a market price, not a subsidy). But he also found that the practices that made the growing organic we just good practices in general, leading to healthier, faster growing trees. Even if he only charged the non-organic price for those trees grown organically, he'd be making more money than on the non-organic trees.

    People have this view that doing things in a morally or environmentally right way is necessarily more expensive and a drag on the economy. It is simply not true as a blanket statement.
    Might be a stupid question, but if that is the case, why does he still grow non-organic trees? It would be more profitable to go all organic, even if selling some at non-organic prices?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,161

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    Hmm, the Romans had a rather better organised response to mass immigration if they didn't like it. Vide C. Julius Caesar and many others, re: crossings of the Rhine and Danube. Not to mention T. Aelius Hadrianus.
    Yes, I bet they did. Can't imagine them sitting around and debating a "Carthage style points system".
    Well, you could argue that Marius & Caesar implemented a "Carthage style points system" for a couple of immigrant communities.

    - You have no points, being Gauls or Germans.
    - No points, we kill or enslave you.
    They wouldn't call it a Carthage style system. That'd be like Ms Patel cooing approvingly about an "EU style points system". And a Greek system wouldn't do - those odd eastern types with their learning and dodgy bedtime habits - might as well call it a 'Cambridge University system'. Just plain old fashioned 'Roman system'. But if you were to invoke the way things were always done properlyl, the mos maiorum, and you went back far enough, Rome was a bunch of immigrant refugees from the east and then another bunch of assorted immigrants and criminals when the City was founded by the Twins.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,865

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    I have long thought that Johnson is a stupid person's idea of what an intelligent person looks like.
    Yep, kind of that. I'd like to see him do an in-depth, unhurried interview where he demonstrates some sincerity and intellect and emotional authenticity - dropping this trivial, relentlessly facetious "persona" he has going - and until I see this, I'm afraid I'm going to have to assume he can't, since it's not there, there's nothing there.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,096
    So the clown continues to embarrass our country on the world stage.

    I do hope Big_G and his ilk are happy.

    These ilk are always the ones to watch for.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    DavidL said:

    darkage said:

    Charles said:

    Totally O/T, I see Glyn Razzell has had his parole request turned down under Helen's Law as he would not identify where he buried his wife's body as he continues to plead his innocence and states he does not know where she is.

    This is truly one of the oddest cases in legal history as there is no evidence that his wife is in fact dead. The only thing that convicted him was that police found her blood in a car he was using, but only found it on their third look. They had it for four days on the 2nd time they looked and returned the car to the owner, who then had it valetted due to the state the police left it in with fingerprint powder everywhere. When they took it in for the third time they found a few bloodspots that was visible to the naked eye in the boot. There is no explanation as to how the police missed these in their first 2 looks. No other DNA from his wife was found.

    No one saw him abduct her from a busy Swindon street, none of the 25 CCTV cameras videoed his vehicle on his drive to the abduction site, and none videoed him on his drive to whereever he buried her. His neighbour confirmed that the vehicle was on Razell's driveway just 45 minutes after the alleged abduction.

    Razzell also provided a decent alibi to the police. He claimed to have walked by a police station at the time of the abduction which had numerous CCTV cameras that would have videoed him. All were out of order (which Razzell would not have known).

    If he gave up the place he buried his wife he would probably be realeased by now as he has been a model prisoner.

    Just imagine if he has not killed her, he will not know where her body is and therefore will probably never be released.

    http://www.mojuk.org.uk/Portia/archive 12/razzell.html

    Juries have their own dynamic but I suspect there was more to the story than you have just laid out otherwise I don’t think there would have been a conviction
    This is a thought process we are all guilty of - ah, it is probably more complicated than it looks, lets move on. Juries are not infallible, there are lots of dodgy convictions.

    There are positives and negatives to this. On the one hand, the law will motivate murderers to reveal what actually happened after they have given up on appealing their convictions, but this is at the expense of the genuinely innocent who get a defacto whole life sentence, unless they give a false confession or make up a story about where the body is in order to eventually get out of jail.

    I would argue that the negatives outweigh the positives, but it was clearly a politically irresistable law. There will be lots of perverse and unfair outcomes.
    We had a case locally where the police failed to notice the body chopped up in the bath whilst searching a 1 bedroom flat. It was only when the bits had been taken out of the bath and put in black plastic bags for collection on the curb that someone else noted that there was something rather odd about them. So missing blood stains in the boot is maybe not that surprising.
    I “liked” that post because it was interesting and informative. But I’m definitely conflicted about liking it!
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,161
    Selebian said:

    TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    TimT said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    Don't be absurd. Not everyone can afford to have their Aston Martin converted to electric. Monarchs are not allowed to advocate anything that might increase costs for the nation.
    But the Duchy of Cornwall is profitable. How is that increasing the costs for the nation?
    Depends on how much subsidy he gets, e.g. for farming. (OK, if he didn't, others would, but the same logic applies across the board ...).
    The point I am making is that going organic does not require subsidy. I have a friend locally who became the first organic tree nursery in the USA. He grows both organic and not organic trees on his farm. And he found that his organic trees are way more profitable. Yes, he can charge a premium (note, that is a market price, not a subsidy). But he also found that the practices that made the growing organic we just good practices in general, leading to healthier, faster growing trees. Even if he only charged the non-organic price for those trees grown organically, he'd be making more money than on the non-organic trees.

    People have this view that doing things in a morally or environmentally right way is necessarily more expensive and a drag on the economy. It is simply not true as a blanket statement.
    Might be a stupid question, but if that is the case, why does he still grow non-organic trees? It would be more profitable to go all organic, even if selling some at non-organic prices?
    Market segmentation/differential saturation? If you can only sell n organic trees (or the remaining punters are republicans) then any more sales are from inorganic [sic] trees.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,631
    edited November 2021
    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    Hmm, the Romans had a rather better organised response to mass immigration if they didn't like it. Vide C. Julius Caesar and many others, re: crossings of the Rhine and Danube. Not to mention T. Aelius Hadrianus.
    Yes, I bet they did. Can't imagine them sitting around and debating a "Carthage style points system".
    Well, you could argue that Marius & Caesar implemented a "Carthage style points system" for a couple of immigrant communities.

    - You have no points, being Gauls or Germans.
    - No points, we kill or enslave you.
    They wouldn't call it a Carthage style system. That'd be like Ms Patel cooing approvingly about an "EU style points system". And a Greek system wouldn't do - those odd eastern types with their learning and dodgy bedtime habits - might as well call it a 'Cambridge University system'. Just plain old fashioned 'Roman system'. But if you were to invoke the way things were always done properlyl, the mos maiorum, and you went back far enough, Rome was a bunch of immigrant refugees from the east and then another bunch of assorted immigrants and criminals when the City was founded by the Twins.
    If you started saying stuff like that (Romans being immigrants) etc they'd be passing a Senatus consultum ultimum with your name on it, in about 10 minutes.....

    Even Cato admitted that Mos Maiorum had a wiff of bullshit to it...
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    tlg86 said:

    Well..


    To be fair, they have gathered in Scotland. He just happens to be in a different bit of it.

    Edit to add: to Americans the 40 or so miles that he is out by might seem trivial.
    I wonder how many delegates are staying in Edinburgh? Must be tempting.
    Quite a lot. Not enough accommodation in Glasgow.
    I am supposed to be doing a proof in Glasgow for the next 2 days. I was quoted around £1000 for 2 nights so its an early train journey for me.
    I'm debating going to a gig in Glasgow tomorrow night. Would stay over but every hotel in the central belt is full of COPpers.
    I honestly wouldn't. It looks like there are going to be streets shut off and lots of self important people posturing everywhere.
    So a bit like PB with extra traffic jams?
  • rcs1000 said:

    On Betfair is it possible to check what commission percentage you're currently due to pay if you win a bet?

    That's a complicated question, because commission is not charged on a per bet basis, but a per market basis. So if you win GBP10 on one bet, and lose GBP8 on another, you will only be charged commission on your GBP2 net winnings.

    Roughly speaking, if you're a small scale gambler (like most of us), you will pay 5% on commission on your winnings. Professional gamblers who actively market make can get rates as low as 2% (official), and probably close to 1% under certain circumstances.
    Thanks. I chose under My Betfair Rewards to go to the "basic plan" with 2% commission as the promotions don't seem to be much use and I've been gubbed so I'm not getting the Sportsbook promotions anyway. But if I look at a market I have a bet on it that says that gross winnings on the market (if I win) would be £9.58 but net of commission would be £9.01

    That's higher than 5% let alone 2%
  • TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    It isn't that odd. The British crown unites the old crowns of England and Scotland. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the English crown title applies in England & Wakes, and the Scottish crown title applies in Scotland.
    Indeed, weren't there three kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland) and one Principality?
    Yes and no. Ireland was a client state of England, so the English crown held the Irish one by right.
  • I don't know what is more staggering, the police saying this was a civil matter until the BBC put pressure on them and it was upgraded to a criminal matter, or the solicitors who have well and truly screwed up.

    A man has described his shock at returning to his house and finding it stripped of all furnishings after it was sold without his knowledge.

    Having been alerted by neighbours, the Reverend Mike Hall drove to Luton and found building work under way and a new owner who said he had bought the house.

    A BBC investigation found Mr Hall's identity had been stolen and used to sell the house and bank the proceeds.

    Police initially told him it was not fraud but are now investigating.

    Mr Hall, who was away from the property and working in north Wales, said he received a call from his neighbours on 20 August, saying that someone was in the house and all the lights were on.

    The following morning, he drove there.

    "I went to the front door, tried my key in the front door, it didn't work and a man opened the front door to me," he told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours.

    "I pushed him to one side and got in the property. I really didn't know what he was doing there.

    "The shock of seeing the house completely stripped of furniture; all furnishings, carpet, curtains - everything - was out of the property."

    The man said he was doing building work, to which Mr Hall replied: "I haven't sold the house. This is still my property."

    Mr Hall phoned the police, but the builder left and returned with the new owner's father, who said he had bought the terraced house in July, adding: "It is now my property. You are now trespassing. Get out."


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-59069662
  • IanB2 said:

    So the clown continues to embarrass our country on the world stage.

    I do hope Big_G and his ilk are happy.

    These ilk are always the ones to watch for.

    How are we "embarrassed"?

    Hosting the climate conference and every speaker I saw was thanking the PM for doing so. Not seen any embarrassment.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257
    edited November 2021
    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    Hmm, the Romans had a rather better organised response to mass immigration if they didn't like it. Vide C. Julius Caesar and many others, re: crossings of the Rhine and Danube. Not to mention T. Aelius Hadrianus.
    Yes, I bet they did. Can't imagine them sitting around and debating a "Carthage style points system".
    Well, you could argue that Marius & Caesar implemented a "Carthage style points system" for a couple of immigrant communities.

    - You have no points, being Gauls or Germans.
    - No points, we kill or enslave you.
    They wouldn't call it a Carthage style system. That'd be like Ms Patel cooing approvingly about an "EU style points system". And a Greek system wouldn't do - those odd eastern types with their learning and dodgy bedtime habits - might as well call it a 'Cambridge University system'. Just plain old fashioned 'Roman system'. But if you were to invoke the way things were always done properlyl, the mos maiorum, and you went back far enough, Rome was a bunch of immigrant refugees from the east and then another bunch of assorted immigrants and criminals when the City was founded by the Twins.
    I'd go for a binary-style points system. Being alive gets you 1 point. Understanding binary gets you 1 point. Nothing else counts. You're allowed in when you have 10 points.
  • Aslan said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    moonshine said:

    dixiedean said:

    World is screwed. Will continue to be screwed. We have,no right to survive.

    World is not screwed. World will be fine, at least until the sun gets too hot.

    500 million years ago, the Earth was almost entirely covered in ice. If it hadn't been for a few volcanoes emitting CO2, it would have been stuck as an ice world pretty much forever.

    50 million years ago, there was a period when it was about 10 degrees warmer than the present day. The _increase_ in biological activity this caused eventually brought the temperature down by dumping carbon in the deep oceans.

    There's no runaway happening here - either way - otherwise such a thing would already have happened.


    The big issue for _us_ is what happens when a large proportion of the world's cities are flooded and lots of people have to move.

    Perhaps the empty spaces of Siberia will become easier to live in...
    Something which is going to be a problem fairly soon (historically speaking) with or without man doing anything.

    We suffer from having short racial memories and a short history. We have lived through a relatively stable period that has allowed civilisation to grow in an extremely unusual period of climate stability. This has meant we have planted much of our population in places where we should not have done. Places that would flood in the not too distant future even if man had never appeared on the planet. Moreover our failure to understand or ignore processes such as isostatic readjustment - and to take steps that have made it even worse in places like New Orleans means that we have simply added to our woes.

    We are a short lived species lacking a proper sense of how much the world changes of its own accord. As such we will continue to believe we can do something to change it and will remain woefully unprepared for when it is finally realised that we can't.
    There are sound economic reasons why human society has developed largely around coasts and rivers. How exactly do you propose to undo that?
    You can't. We just have to accept that natural processes will eventually undo it for us with or without our agreement.
    So what? Natural processes will eventually undo you and me and everybody else. That isn't generally regarded as an argument against the practise of medicine, which is merely a huge exercise in delaying the inevitable.
    The point being argued is that it is possible to prevent either isostatic or eustatic sea level changes. It isn't. So your medicine argument is a straw man with nothing to do with this discussion.
    Utter nonsense. Eustatics includes the melting of the ice caps and glaciers. Are you seriously claiming we have no influence on that?
    I am claiming that whether we do anything now or not it will still happen in the not too distant future as a natural process. As it has on so many occasions before. Even someone as slow and scientifically illiterate as you should be able to grasp that basic concept.
    Yes, thank you for illustrating my point for me. Your position is exactly that of a doctor saying "this man has cancer, but at his age he is bound to pop his clogs in the not too distant future as a natural process, so let's not bother with him." If there's a difference what is it please?
    Nope my position is one of saying that this man has lung cancer and even if we cure him of that he will get it again and die of it because he refuses stop smoking. Stopping the cancer serves no purpose if the root cause is not dealt with. In this case the root cause is the fact that much of our populations live too close to sea level. Absolutely nothing we can do can stop that sea level rising at some point in the not too distant future - unless of course you are proposing we can stop the glaciation cycle - so we should be looking to move those people away from the danger zone before it is too late.

    New Orleans is a classic example although that is a case of Isostatic rather than Eustatic change. The whole basin is sinking due to the amount of sediment input. To try and combat the increased flooding they build levees which have the side effect of pushing the sediment further out into the basin which serves to actually increase the rate of basin sinking and increase the flooding risk. The correct solution is abandon New Orleans but we are so hooked on this idea that this is a solvable problem if only we take certain, utterly pointless, action that we are condemning people to more deadly floods.
    The pace of sea level rise makes a huge difference. And sea level rises are not the only issue with mass carbon pollution. But it is interesting how the pro-pollution types have moved from "it's definitely not happening" to "it probably isn't happening" to "maybe it's happening but we should wait for more evidence before we stop polluting" to "its so definitely happening that even if we stopped polluting it wouldn't help".
    The pace of rise makes bugger all difference if you are not even going to consider moving the population. In relative terms they just drown quickly instead of slowly.

    And in case you missed it with your blinkered views, I have argued for stopping polluting including burning fossil fuels since long before global warming was even considered a mainstream issue. So your facile arguments help no one.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,310
    TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    It isn't that odd. The British crown unites the old crowns of England and Scotland. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the English crown title applies in England & Wakes, and the Scottish crown title applies in Scotland.
    Indeed, weren't there three kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland) and one Principality?

    Also, comfusingly, the Duchy of Cornwall and the Prince-Bishopric of Durham
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    MattW said:

    I hope you are all up to date with the Cod War going on between the European Commission and Norway:

    https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-norway-arctic-fishing-post-brexit-rights/

    Any update since august?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,865

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    Like it.
    A basket of Neanderthals*; they're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.

    *though I get that they have received a very bad 'winners' press
    Now there's a killer line for Harris when she battles Trump for WH24!
    Of course it worked so well for Hillary in 2016, she is now in her second term!
    Well, there's this view that it cost her, but I don't know. Sometimes you have to be brave, and maybe next time, if it's Harris, she'll double down and hit the jackpot.
    The way to excise Trumpism from the body politic is for Democrats to split the Republicans and win the support of the third of Republicans who accept the democratic process.

    If I knew how to pull off a political manoeuvre like that then I'd have been giving the opening address to COP 26, but I would guess that a strong component would have to be revulsion at the anti-democratic behaviour of the Trumpists. Though you have to add something welcoming into the mix too.
    Yes, MAGA can't win without getting votes from lots of people who KNOW it's a bad bad thing that they do that day when they give those votes. I personally, as I've posted a few times, remain confident America won't go that route. They'll find a way not to. Can't say exactly how, can only offer a hackneyed saying - Necessity is the Mother of Invention - which in this case I think will prove apposite.
  • IanB2 said:

    So the clown continues to embarrass our country on the world stage.

    I do hope Big_G and his ilk are happy.

    These ilk are always the ones to watch for.

    Boris spoke well and far better than I expected

    He did not embarrass and you are showing your political bias
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Wasn’t this just 2 more Permanent licenses and 18 more temporary ones with 55 still denied?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    HYUFD said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    The Prince of Wales also has a house in Wales,Llwynywermod, near Llandovery in Carmarthenshire.

    Prince Charles also studied at Aberystwyth University for a period
    He did indeed. He spent half a year learning Welsh, within the Welsh-speaking Pantycelyn Hall in Aberystwyth, in advance of his investiture.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257
    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    TimT said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    Don't be absurd. Not everyone can afford to have their Aston Martin converted to electric. Monarchs are not allowed to advocate anything that might increase costs for the nation.
    But the Duchy of Cornwall is profitable. How is that increasing the costs for the nation?
    Depends on how much subsidy he gets, e.g. for farming. (OK, if he didn't, others would, but the same logic applies across the board ...).
    The point I am making is that going organic does not require subsidy. I have a friend locally who became the first organic tree nursery in the USA. He grows both organic and not organic trees on his farm. And he found that his organic trees are way more profitable. Yes, he can charge a premium (note, that is a market price, not a subsidy). But he also found that the practices that made the growing organic we just good practices in general, leading to healthier, faster growing trees. Even if he only charged the non-organic price for those trees grown organically, he'd be making more money than on the non-organic trees.

    People have this view that doing things in a morally or environmentally right way is necessarily more expensive and a drag on the economy. It is simply not true as a blanket statement.
    Might be a stupid question, but if that is the case, why does he still grow non-organic trees? It would be more profitable to go all organic, even if selling some at non-organic prices?
    Market segmentation/differential saturation? If you can only sell n organic trees (or the remaining punters are republicans) then any more sales are from inorganic [sic] trees.
    Yep, but that can be done at the sales desk, as required (you don't have to explicitly say this tree is not organic, you just don't label it as such and put a cheaper price on?). If organic methods give more yield, then do it all hte more efficient way and differentiate at pricing point only? I think I'm probably misunderstanding the OP.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Can Bozo deliver a speech to COP without being an embarrassment to the nation?

    Hope he doesn't start waffling on about the Roman Empire. WTF was that about? Guy seems to think he's some 'amusing' raconteur down the pub half the time. You know the type. Mile wide, inch deep.
    It was a dog whistle to all those kipper types who fetishise Rome and think that complex multi-generation historical events can be explained by saying "forrners bad". He knows what he's doing and he is an arsehole for doing it.
    In the interview I saw he was referencing "open door immigration" in Rome's fall. Free movement. So, yes, now we've tightened up on that, we can return to our Glory Days. Oh dear.

    In general, what I hate is this patina of cod "ancient learning" he sprays about. Guess some like it, find it illuminating or impressive, but I'm totally Shania Twain about it - and him.
    I have long thought that Johnson is a stupid person's idea of what an intelligent person looks like.
    Have heard this phrase before. What is the intelligent person's idea of what an intelligent person look like?
    Looking in the mirror probably
  • Morgan's got 9 off 20 balls.

    He should either retire, or start bloody hitting it.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,780
    Selebian said:

    TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    TimT said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    Don't be absurd. Not everyone can afford to have their Aston Martin converted to electric. Monarchs are not allowed to advocate anything that might increase costs for the nation.
    But the Duchy of Cornwall is profitable. How is that increasing the costs for the nation?
    Depends on how much subsidy he gets, e.g. for farming. (OK, if he didn't, others would, but the same logic applies across the board ...).
    The point I am making is that going organic does not require subsidy. I have a friend locally who became the first organic tree nursery in the USA. He grows both organic and not organic trees on his farm. And he found that his organic trees are way more profitable. Yes, he can charge a premium (note, that is a market price, not a subsidy). But he also found that the practices that made the growing organic we just good practices in general, leading to healthier, faster growing trees. Even if he only charged the non-organic price for those trees grown organically, he'd be making more money than on the non-organic trees.

    People have this view that doing things in a morally or environmentally right way is necessarily more expensive and a drag on the economy. It is simply not true as a blanket statement.
    Might be a stupid question, but if that is the case, why does he still grow non-organic trees? It would be more profitable to go all organic, even if selling some at non-organic prices?
    I will only buy inorganic trees. Can't stand the organic ones.
  • HYUFD said:

    Aslan said:

    Carnyx said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    And HYUFD is also advocating the Divine Right of Kings, too. See my post a moment ago.
    He has also supported Northern Irish Protestant population taking up arms in the event of a border poll not going their way. And the Republican House majority overruling a presidential election that doesn't go their way.
    No, I merely stated peace in Northern Ireland will not come with direct rule from Dublin over Antrim anymore than it did with direct rule from London over Nationalist areas of NI before the GFA.
    Down is more Protestant and less Catholic than Antrim.

    2011 Census for all wards that were part of historic Antrim:

    Protestant 53.1%
    Catholic 38.7%
    Other 1.2%
    None/not stated 7.0%

    2011 Census for all wards that were part of historic Down:

    Protestant 60.3%
    Catholic 31.3%
    Other 0.9%
    None/not stated 7.5%

  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,100
    edited November 2021
    Charles said:

    MattW said:

    I hope you are all up to date with the Cod War going on between the European Commission and Norway:

    https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-norway-arctic-fishing-post-brexit-rights/

    Any update since august?
    Loads:

    EU has filed a lawsuit, and Norway has declared Game over.

    So it will be resurfacing sometime between December and March.

    21/9
    The EU has threatened Norway with “all necessary means” and Norway has threatened to arrest EU fishing vessels overfishing their quota around the Svalbard Zone, according to Norwegian media outlet Aftenposten.no.

    As the discord deepens between the EU and Norway over the cod quota in the Svalbard Zone both sides are refusing to alter their stance, which means they are heading for war or a stand-off.

    On Thursday, Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries issued J-165-2021: Regulation on stopping cod fishing for vessels flying the flag of Member States of the European Union (EU) in the fisheries protection zone off Svalbard in 2021.

    The regulation means that the EU fleet can continue fishing in the Svalbard Zone, but any cod caught will be deducted from the quota set aside in the Norwegian economic zone.

    According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, it is in line with the Norwegian regulation of cod in the fisheries protection zone that the NØS quota can be fished at Svalbard.

    https://thefishingdaily.com/norway-fishing-industry-blog/norway-calls-time-on-eu-cod-quota-in-svalbard-zone-eu-threatens-action/

  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Morning all, that's shocking data in the header, isn't it? Or maybe not, because I recall something similar on evolution. Lots of Republicans in the US don't believe in that either. And speaking of evolution, I think there may lie the answer.

    In my (new) quest to become more generally knowledgeable (not hard given my startpoint) I was brushing up yesterday on how we humans came to be. Turns out it was a longish process, about 10 million years, soup to nuts, where the earliest uprights were the soup and we are the nuts. This is how it read to me anyway. We have Got Evolution Done. That the process is ongoing, that we are still evolving, didn't seem to feature, but I'd have thought we are. Or at least we might be.

    In which case, why should there not be a repeat of something that has happened before and which was key to us being what we are today? I refer to the Big Fork, when our lineage split into 2 streams, one (I forget the exact name) went with bigger jaws and the other with bigger brains, the latter further evolving over deep time into us, the former into something else. We then achieved dominance due to that "choice". It was the brains wot won it. Hard to credit, looking at much of what goes on, but there you go. Still true.

    So, what I'm wondering, seeing these bizarre (to me) mindsets on climate change, is whether we might be seeing the very first inklings of such a seismic event taking place now and, like the financial crisis, like most things, starting in America. If this is the case, the schism between these 2 "tribes", Democrats and Republicans, takes on a much deeper significance than just its potential impact on next year's midterms and the betting implications thereof.

    Like it.
    A basket of Neanderthals*; they're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.

    *though I get that they have received a very bad 'winners' press
    Now there's a killer line for Harris when she battles Trump for WH24!
    Of course it worked so well for Hillary in 2016, she is now in her second term!
    Well, there's this view that it cost her, but I don't know. Sometimes you have to be brave, and maybe next time, if it's Harris, she'll double down and hit the jackpot.
    The way to excise Trumpism from the body politic is for Democrats to split the Republicans and win the support of the third of Republicans who accept the democratic process.

    If I knew how to pull off a political manoeuvre like that then I'd have been giving the opening address to COP 26, but I would guess that a strong component would have to be revulsion at the anti-democratic behaviour of the Trumpists. Though you have to add something welcoming into the mix too.
    Yes, MAGA can't win without getting votes from lots of people who KNOW it's a bad bad thing that they do that day when they give those votes. I personally, as I've posted a few times, remain confident America won't go that route. They'll find a way not to. Can't say exactly how, can only offer a hackneyed saying - Necessity is the Mother of Invention - which in this case I think will prove apposite.
    Yes, but the reason the hold-the-nose-but-Trump-anyway voters voted as such is because they perceived the alternative as worse. 'All' the Democrats have to do is offer a not-terrible candidate. Even someone as bad as Biden could beat Trump purely by not alienating half the country before he'd started.

    Should also be noted that the Democrats haven't been exactly flawless in accepting the democratic process when it goes against them - from allegations about Russian influence to suggestions of illegality right up to threats of insurrection.

    I agree with your optimism though. America will find a way.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited November 2021

    I don't know what is more staggering, the police saying this was a civil matter until the BBC put pressure on them and it was upgraded to a criminal matter, or the solicitors who have well and truly screwed up.

    A man has described his shock at returning to his house and finding it stripped of all furnishings after it was sold without his knowledge.

    Having been alerted by neighbours, the Reverend Mike Hall drove to Luton and found building work under way and a new owner who said he had bought the house.

    A BBC investigation found Mr Hall's identity had been stolen and used to sell the house and bank the proceeds.

    Police initially told him it was not fraud but are now investigating.

    Mr Hall, who was away from the property and working in north Wales, said he received a call from his neighbours on 20 August, saying that someone was in the house and all the lights were on.

    The following morning, he drove there.

    "I went to the front door, tried my key in the front door, it didn't work and a man opened the front door to me," he told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours.

    "I pushed him to one side and got in the property. I really didn't know what he was doing there.

    "The shock of seeing the house completely stripped of furniture; all furnishings, carpet, curtains - everything - was out of the property."

    The man said he was doing building work, to which Mr Hall replied: "I haven't sold the house. This is still my property."

    Mr Hall phoned the police, but the builder left and returned with the new owner's father, who said he had bought the terraced house in July, adding: "It is now my property. You are now trespassing. Get out."


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-59069662

    The problem is that I don't think the solicitor screwed up - as the person would have provided everything needed to confirm his ID (driving licence photo id and various bits of paperwork bills) - now chances are the solicitor failed to match the id to the actual person but I can see ways round that as well.

    So the question comes down to what do you need to get a replacement driving licence which appears to little more than 3 years of previous addresses (which you can get from knowing the name of the owner and the fact their bought it more than 3 years ago).

    I saw the story earlier and I'm still trying to work out how you can fix it because the way the scammer pulled it off is very easy to work out, incredibly easy to pull off and very hard to pull off unless you actually went for ID cards with a backend validation system (which would never occur here for multiple reasons).
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,631
    rcs1000 said:

    Selebian said:

    TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    TimT said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    Don't be absurd. Not everyone can afford to have their Aston Martin converted to electric. Monarchs are not allowed to advocate anything that might increase costs for the nation.
    But the Duchy of Cornwall is profitable. How is that increasing the costs for the nation?
    Depends on how much subsidy he gets, e.g. for farming. (OK, if he didn't, others would, but the same logic applies across the board ...).
    The point I am making is that going organic does not require subsidy. I have a friend locally who became the first organic tree nursery in the USA. He grows both organic and not organic trees on his farm. And he found that his organic trees are way more profitable. Yes, he can charge a premium (note, that is a market price, not a subsidy). But he also found that the practices that made the growing organic we just good practices in general, leading to healthier, faster growing trees. Even if he only charged the non-organic price for those trees grown organically, he'd be making more money than on the non-organic trees.

    People have this view that doing things in a morally or environmentally right way is necessarily more expensive and a drag on the economy. It is simply not true as a blanket statement.
    Might be a stupid question, but if that is the case, why does he still grow non-organic trees? It would be more profitable to go all organic, even if selling some at non-organic prices?
    I will only buy inorganic trees. Can't stand the organic ones.
    Too right. I machine all my plants from solid beryllium. Own The Libs.

    {cough, cough, cough.....}
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Selebian said:

    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    Not just that anymore..

    His Royal Highness The Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Chester, Earl of Carrick, Earl of Merioneth, Baron of Renfrew, Baron Greenwich, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, CC, PC, ADC
    And here was me thinking Lord of the Isles was just a ferry!
    Nooo. Ships are female, Lady of the Isles could be a ferry.
  • Sandpit said:

    Selebian said:

    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    Not just that anymore..

    His Royal Highness The Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Chester, Earl of Carrick, Earl of Merioneth, Baron of Renfrew, Baron Greenwich, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, CC, PC, ADC
    And here was me thinking Lord of the Isles was just a ferry!
    Nooo. Ships are female, Lady of the Isles could be a ferry.
    Tell that to the Duke of Normandy
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    edited November 2021
    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    It wouldn't. We do not have a written constitution, our constitution is based on the sovereignty of Crown in Parliament in lawmaking.

    The English civil war and the glorious revolution merely asserted that Parliament had to be used to make laws and raise taxes and make wars, we could not be governed by the divine right of Kings alone.

    However it did not mean that the monarch could have no role in lawmaking whatsoever. If the monarch vetoed a bill which was not in the manifesto of the elected government it would not be unconstitutional even if maybe not advisable. Whatever the parties in Parliament thought about it they could not stop it.

    However even if Charles is unlikely to do even that there is certainly absolutely nothing in our constitution to stop the monarch giving their personal views on matters of policy or politics, which was my original point
    We do have a constitution albeit an unwritten one. Numerous learned tomes have been written on it: you could make an easy and readable start with Walter Bagehot.

    It would be a truly moronic Monarch who started pontificating on poitically contentious or partisan issues. And a very short-lived reign too.

    With the best will in the world, don't you ever pause and reflect on the implications of some of your outlandish assertions? On this one, Republicans couldn't have a better friend and ally than you. We Tory patriots, who genuinely cherish our constiutional monarchy, recoil in horror.

    Bagehot is merely giving his opinion of what it is, it is still Crown in Parliament on which our constitution is based and Crown in Parliament alone.

    You need both Parliament's support and the Crown's agreement to make laws.

    You can rant as much as you want and try and muzzle Prince Charles speaking on climate change. However constitutionally there is nothing whatsoever to stop it.

    I already said if the monarch continually said very unpopular things or vetoed manifesto commitments and popular things becoming law there would be a problem.

    If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public
    "If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public".

    Utterly and tragically delusional. Stick to the park benches and the allotments.
    Is it? If a future government passed a deeply unpopular bill through Parliament to, say, allow development in our National Parks beyond just exceptional circumstances which was not in its manifesto and which Prince Charles vetoed I expect he would have the full support of most of the public on that even if it annoyed senior politicians
    One final go and that's it from me. I can only do so much for King, country, party and pb.

    So, let's take your example. Suppose this was a Tory govt with a Commons majority who passed such legislation and the King vetoed it. The Government would of course resign and its MPs and party activists would be outraged. That's TORY activists. Now, would Labour take office in these circumstances? Absolutely not, and indeed the veto would be grist to the mill of their Republicanism.

    So off we jolly well go to a general election with ALL parties (including LibDems, SNP, Greens, SDLP - I'll possibly give you the DUP) fighting it on the platform of unelected, unaccountable monarch vs Parliamentary democracy. So, whoever wins, the King loses with abdication at best and abolition altogether most likely.

    It is quite absurd that this has to be explained to you. And of course it will never, ever happen.
    If a Tory government tried to pass expanded development in National Parks it would no doubt have faced a big rebellion from its backbenchers and anger from its membership and core vote over such potential destruction of the countryside anyway. However it may have scraped it through via a whipped vote only to see it fail via King Charles' veto (it need not be a Tory government, it could equally be a future Labour government more aligned to New Labour style politics).

    Given however most likely the opposition parties would have voted against the Bill anyway, as indeed would a sizeable proportion of backbenchers on the government benches they obviously would not support abolition or abdication, indeed they would have been cheering the King on in his veto exercise, as would most of the public. That would have given Charles cover for his veto.

    If we went to a general election then most likely a new government would be elected which would dump this unpopular bill and King Charles would continue in office more popular than he has ever been.

    So it could well happen, as I have just outlined above
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,161

    Sandpit said:

    Selebian said:

    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    Not just that anymore..

    His Royal Highness The Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Chester, Earl of Carrick, Earl of Merioneth, Baron of Renfrew, Baron Greenwich, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, CC, PC, ADC
    And here was me thinking Lord of the Isles was just a ferry!
    Nooo. Ships are female, Lady of the Isles could be a ferry.
    Tell that to the Duke of Normandy
    Self-declaration innit.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,964
    Sandpit said:

    Selebian said:

    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    Not just that anymore..

    His Royal Highness The Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Chester, Earl of Carrick, Earl of Merioneth, Baron of Renfrew, Baron Greenwich, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, CC, PC, ADC
    And here was me thinking Lord of the Isles was just a ferry!
    Nooo. Ships are female, Lady of the Isles could be a ferry.
    Who dictates this? Can't ships self-identify how they want?
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    Selebian said:

    TimT said:

    Carnyx said:

    TimT said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    Don't be absurd. Not everyone can afford to have their Aston Martin converted to electric. Monarchs are not allowed to advocate anything that might increase costs for the nation.
    But the Duchy of Cornwall is profitable. How is that increasing the costs for the nation?
    Depends on how much subsidy he gets, e.g. for farming. (OK, if he didn't, others would, but the same logic applies across the board ...).
    The point I am making is that going organic does not require subsidy. I have a friend locally who became the first organic tree nursery in the USA. He grows both organic and not organic trees on his farm. And he found that his organic trees are way more profitable. Yes, he can charge a premium (note, that is a market price, not a subsidy). But he also found that the practices that made the growing organic we just good practices in general, leading to healthier, faster growing trees. Even if he only charged the non-organic price for those trees grown organically, he'd be making more money than on the non-organic trees.

    People have this view that doing things in a morally or environmentally right way is necessarily more expensive and a drag on the economy. It is simply not true as a blanket statement.
    Might be a stupid question, but if that is the case, why does he still grow non-organic trees? It would be more profitable to go all organic, even if selling some at non-organic prices?
    Because some people will not buy organic, and he still makes a profit on the non-organic trees, albeit at smaller margins. You want to maximize total profit, not profit margin.
  • HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    It wouldn't. We do not have a written constitution, our constitution is based on the sovereignty of Crown in Parliament in lawmaking.

    The English civil war and the glorious revolution merely asserted that Parliament had to be used to make laws and raise taxes and make wars, we could not be governed by the divine right of Kings alone.

    However it did not mean that the monarch could have no role in lawmaking whatsoever. If the monarch vetoed a bill which was not in the manifesto of the elected government it would not be unconstitutional even if maybe not advisable. Whatever the parties in Parliament thought about it they could not stop it.

    However even if Charles is unlikely to do even that there is certainly absolutely nothing in our constitution to stop the monarch giving their personal views on matters of policy or politics, which was my original point
    We do have a constitution albeit an unwritten one. Numerous learned tomes have been written on it: you could make an easy and readable start with Walter Bagehot.

    It would be a truly moronic Monarch who started pontificating on poitically contentious or partisan issues. And a very short-lived reign too.

    With the best will in the world, don't you ever pause and reflect on the implications of some of your outlandish assertions? On this one, Republicans couldn't have a better friend and ally than you. We Tory patriots, who genuinely cherish our constiutional monarchy, recoil in horror.

    Bagehot is merely giving his opinion of what it is, it is still Crown in Parliament on which our constitution is based and Crown in Parliament alone.

    You need both Parliament's support and the Crown's agreement to make laws.

    You can rant as much as you want and try and muzzle Prince Charles speaking on climate change. However constitutionally there is nothing whatsoever to stop it.

    I already said if the monarch continually said very unpopular things or vetoed manifesto commitments and popular things becoming law there would be a problem.

    If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public
    "If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public".

    Utterly and tragically delusional. Stick to the park benches and the allotments.
    Is it? If a future government passed a deeply unpopular bill through Parliament to, say, allow development in our National Parks beyond just exceptional circumstances which was not in its manifesto and which Prince Charles vetoed I expect he would have the full support of most of the public on that even if it annoyed senior politicians
    One final go and that's it from me. I can only do so much for King, country, party and pb.

    So, let's take your example. Suppose this was a Tory govt with a Commons majority who passed such legislation and the King vetoed it. The Government would of course resign and its MPs and party activists would be outraged. That's TORY activists. Now, would Labour take office in these circumstances? Absolutely not, and indeed the veto would be grist to the mill of their Republicanism.

    So off we jolly well go to a general election with ALL parties (including LibDems, SNP, Greens, SDLP - I'll possibly give you the DUP) fighting it on the platform of unelected, unaccountable monarch vs Parliamentary democracy. So, whoever wins, the King loses with abdication at best and abolition altogether most likely.

    It is quite absurd that this has to be explained to you. And of course it will never, ever happen.
    If a Tory government tried to pass expanded development in National Parks it would no doubt have faced a big rebellion from its backbenchers and anger from its membership and core vote over such potential destruction of the countryside anyway. However it may have scraped it through via a whipped vote only to see it fail via King Charles' veto (it need not be a Tory government, it could equally be a future Labour government more aligned to New Labour style politics).

    Given however most likely the opposition parties would have voted against the Bill anyway, as indeed would a sizeable proportion of backbenchers on the government benches they obviously would not support abolition, indeed they would have been cheering the King on in his veto exercise, as would most of the public. That would have given Charles cover for his veto.

    If we went to a general election then most likely a new government would be elected which would dump this unpopular bill and King Charles would continue in office more popular than he has ever been.

    So it could well happen, as I have just outlined above
    You take 'havering' to world class levels
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    edited November 2021
    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    HYUFD said:

    JohnO said:

    The inescapable conclusion from his comments is that HYFUD is arguably the site's most fervent republican.

    The notion that the Crown could veto legislation, irrespective of manifesto contents, beyond defending our democracy in extremis (govt extending life of a Parliament except in war, declaring one party state etc) is bewilderingly grotesque. There's a reason why the last veto was in 1708.

    Such an action would be a direct assault on our constitution. No party would even conceive of supporting it: a Republic established within 12 months max. It ain't going to happen.

    Charles will be a model constitutional monarch. That really is the end of it.

    It wouldn't. We do not have a written constitution, our constitution is based on the sovereignty of Crown in Parliament in lawmaking.

    The English civil war and the glorious revolution merely asserted that Parliament had to be used to make laws and raise taxes and make wars, we could not be governed by the divine right of Kings alone.

    However it did not mean that the monarch could have no role in lawmaking whatsoever. If the monarch vetoed a bill which was not in the manifesto of the elected government it would not be unconstitutional even if maybe not advisable. Whatever the parties in Parliament thought about it they could not stop it.

    However even if Charles is unlikely to do even that there is certainly absolutely nothing in our constitution to stop the monarch giving their personal views on matters of policy or politics, which was my original point
    We do have a constitution albeit an unwritten one. Numerous learned tomes have been written on it: you could make an easy and readable start with Walter Bagehot.

    It would be a truly moronic Monarch who started pontificating on poitically contentious or partisan issues. And a very short-lived reign too.

    With the best will in the world, don't you ever pause and reflect on the implications of some of your outlandish assertions? On this one, Republicans couldn't have a better friend and ally than you. We Tory patriots, who genuinely cherish our constiutional monarchy, recoil in horror.

    Bagehot is merely giving his opinion of what it is, it is still Crown in Parliament on which our constitution is based and Crown in Parliament alone.

    You need both Parliament's support and the Crown's agreement to make laws.

    You can rant as much as you want and try and muzzle Prince Charles speaking on climate change. However constitutionally there is nothing whatsoever to stop it.

    I already said if the monarch continually said very unpopular things or vetoed manifesto commitments and popular things becoming law there would be a problem.

    If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public
    "If the monarch says things most agree with, like on climate change, or even if they vetoed unpopular bills not in the government's manifesto, there would be no problem whatsoever. Either constitutionally or with the public".

    Utterly and tragically delusional. Stick to the park benches and the allotments.
    Is it? If a future government passed a deeply unpopular bill through Parliament to, say, allow development in our National Parks beyond just exceptional circumstances which was not in its manifesto and which Prince Charles vetoed I expect he would have the full support of most of the public on that even if it annoyed senior politicians
    One final go and that's it from me. I can only do so much for King, country, party and pb.

    So, let's take your example. Suppose this was a Tory govt with a Commons majority who passed such legislation and the King vetoed it. The Government would of course resign and its MPs and party activists would be outraged. That's TORY activists. Now, would Labour take office in these circumstances? Absolutely not, and indeed the veto would be grist to the mill of their Republicanism.

    So off we jolly well go to a general election with ALL parties (including LibDems, SNP, Greens, SDLP - I'll possibly give you the DUP) fighting it on the platform of unelected, unaccountable monarch vs Parliamentary democracy. So, whoever wins, the King loses with abdication at best and abolition altogether most likely.

    It is quite absurd that this has to be explained to you. And of course it will never, ever happen.
    If a Tory government tried to pass expanded development in National Parks it would no doubt have faced a big rebellion from its backbenchers and anger from its membership and core vote over such potential destruction of the countryside anyway. However it may have scraped it through via a whipped vote only to see it fail via King Charles' veto (it need not be a Tory government, it could equally be a future Labour government more aligned to New Labour style politics).

    Given however most likely the opposition parties would have voted against the Bill anyway, as indeed would a sizeable proportion of backbenchers on the government benches they obviously would not support abolition or abdication, indeed they would have been cheering the King on in his veto exercise, as would most of the public. That would have given Charles cover for his veto.

    If we went to a general election then most likely a new government would be elected which would dump this unpopular bill and King Charles would continue in office more popular than he has ever been.

    So it could well happen, as I have just outlined above
    Don't you stop being you.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,981
    edited November 2021

    Sandpit said:

    Selebian said:

    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS 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

    I agree. If the royals can't stay out of politics, we might as well have an elected president instead.
    I disagree, there is nothing wrong with the royals speaking on matters where there is general agreement, like tackling climate change.

    Indeed Prince Charles has been campaigning for the environment for decades, even before it was fashionable.

    I have no problem with Charles speaking out a bit more on issues than his mother did when he takes the throne, Parliament still decides and makes the laws but no reason the Head of State cannot make remarks on issues like climate change.

    The difference with an elected Head of State like the French or US President however is they directly propose legislation to their legislature and send troops to war and in the US of course the President can veto and amend legislation passed by Congress, even popular bills.

    The monarch in the UK has not done that since the English civil war and glorious revolution
    Nope.

    Our monarch is not allowed to opine on anyone's lifestyle especially if they are advocating a lifestyle which is likely to increase costs or deny certain people access on account of financial privation.
    They are.

    The Prince of Wales practices what he preaches, he produces organic food, the Duchy of Cornwall creates communities like Pundbury based on traditional architecture and employing local people.

    There is, though, a certain irony to a Prince of Wales committed to employing local people while he himself is English and lives in England. The Royal Family even went for overseas talent for the Duchess of Sussex and then proceeded to offshore that entire operation.
    He's called the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, oddly enough. Not very logical that he has the same name in 2 out of the three GB nations but a different name in the third. One title or three titles would make better sense.
    Not just that anymore..

    His Royal Highness The Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Chester, Earl of Carrick, Earl of Merioneth, Baron of Renfrew, Baron Greenwich, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, CC, PC, ADC
    And here was me thinking Lord of the Isles was just a ferry!
    Nooo. Ships are female, Lady of the Isles could be a ferry.
    Who dictates this? Can't ships self-identify how they want?
    Submarines are definitely male.

    Long, hard, and full of seamen.
This discussion has been closed.