"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
And what's really appalling is that the incompetence at Fujitsu-ICL was so severe that a number of postmasters went to prison for crimes they did not commit. And Fujitsu-UCL tried to cover it up.
Not only that people took their own lives.
It was not only Fujitsu, the high ups in the Post Office also knew but still allowed prosecutions to take place.
Absolutely disgusting. These people allowed lives to be lost and ruined for a failed IT system they knew about.
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
What a total sh!t-show of a project from start to finish. Those in charge, from PO and the suppliers, need to be held accountable for the failure.
Senior people at the PO knew the project was a bug-riddled disaster, yet proceeded to hold this sub-postmasters, small business franchisees, legally liable for the accounting errors it was generating.
That the result was a number of these small businesssmen ending up in prison, and others committing suicide, really needs a public enquiry.
I disagree.
It needs a criminal inquiry, followed by prosecutions.
What baffles me about the behaviour of the PO management is the apparent lack of common sense.
They recruited staff from a very wide range of backgrounds, few if any of whom had any kind of criminal record. Yet the sheer number the PO was accusing implied that they had somehow managed to corner the market in crooked staff. Surely somebody at some point must have said 'This can't be right'. How could any organisation manage to recruit so many fraudelent staff? It would be very difficult even if that's what they were trying to do.
Never mind all the other obvious failures. The failure to apply common sense seems to be one of the most obvious, extreme and inexplicable.
Although it does rather presuppose these people had common sense.
Mr P-t-P makes a very good point. Not only did these people not have any kind of criminal record but they had references as to their good character.
I hope the judge gets, and makes public, the minutes of the Board meeting when this issue was discussed. As it must have been. Surely.
There ought to have been many meetings, since this dragged on for years. It will not be a quick enquiry, I think.
If Dick is looking for another police job how about Chief Constable of Cleveland Police? She would be less controversial and gaffe-prone than most of the recent incumbents. Whats more she is guaranteed that a vacancy is around the corner because Chief Constables are forced to resign / get fired on a regular basis.
She'd also enjoy the political environment, with the local Tory PCC under police investigation for a serious offence.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Kamila Valieva can compete again at the Winter Olympics after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) decided that no provisional suspension should be imposed on the 15-year-old after she failed a drugs test.
Cas said preventing the Russian figure skater from competing would have caused her "irreparable harm".
What a mess. The other competitors should consider boycotting the individual event.
The Russians should have been barred altogether and not have this stupid rebranding of ROC.
Only that would get them to stop this industrial scale state sponsored doping.
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
And what's really appalling is that the incompetence at Fujitsu-ICL was so severe that a number of postmasters went to prison for crimes they did not commit. And Fujitsu-UCL tried to cover it up.
Not only that people took their own lives.
It was not only Fujitsu, the high ups in the Post Office also knew but still allowed prosecutions to take place.
Absolutely disgusting. These people allowed lives to be lost and ruined for a failed IT system they knew about.
They did more and worse - the Post Office brought the prosecutions. It was active malfeasance on a grand scale.
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
What a total sh!t-show of a project from start to finish. Those in charge, from PO and the suppliers, need to be held accountable for the failure.
Senior people at the PO knew the project was a bug-riddled disaster, yet proceeded to hold this sub-postmasters, small business franchisees, legally liable for the accounting errors it was generating.
That the result was a number of these small businesssmen ending up in prison, and others committing suicide, really needs a public enquiry.
I disagree.
It needs a criminal inquiry, followed by prosecutions.
What baffles me about the behaviour of the PO management is the apparent lack of common sense.
They recruited staff from a very wide range of backgrounds, few if any of whom had any kind of criminal record. Yet the sheer number the PO was accusing implied that they had somehow managed to corner the market in crooked staff. Surely somebody at some point must have said 'This can't be right'. How could any organisation manage to recruit so many fraudelent staff? It would be very difficult even if that's what they were trying to do.
Never mind all the other obvious failures. The failure to apply common sense seems to be one of the most obvious, extreme and inexplicable.
Although it does rather presuppose these people had common sense.
Mr P-t-P makes a very good point. Not only did these people not have any kind of criminal record but they had references as to their good character.
I hope the judge gets, and makes public, the minutes of the Board meeting when this issue was discussed. As it must have been. Surely.
It is not uncommon for large organisations to be run incompetently, but the PO seems to have been a particularly extreme example.
One hopes that the Board will be held fully to account, and indeed those who recruited and appointed them. Far too often these positions are handed out as a result of networking rather than suitablility for the post.
Re. the idea that Johnson is out this week, I'd have thought the moment has passed hasn't it?
They will continue to fudge the police investigation and he will continue to deflect attention away from it. If and when Putin pulls back The Express will laud it as Boris beating Putin. If Putin invades (I still don't think he will) it will suit Boris admirably.
No, I'm afraid tory MPs bottled it and we're stuck with the chaotic Liar for another 2 years. Unfortunately for them and him, the damage is done. They will get a shellacking at the next General Election.
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
What a total sh!t-show of a project from start to finish. Those in charge, from PO and the suppliers, need to be held accountable for the failure.
Senior people at the PO knew the project was a bug-riddled disaster, yet proceeded to hold this sub-postmasters, small business franchisees, legally liable for the accounting errors it was generating.
That the result was a number of these small businesssmen ending up in prison, and others committing suicide, really needs a public enquiry.
I disagree.
It needs a criminal inquiry, followed by prosecutions.
What baffles me about the behaviour of the PO management is the apparent lack of common sense.
They recruited staff from a very wide range of backgrounds, few if any of whom had any kind of criminal record. Yet the sheer number the PO was accusing implied that they had somehow managed to corner the market in crooked staff. Surely somebody at some point must have said 'This can't be right'. How could any organisation manage to recruit so many fraudelent staff? It would be very difficult even if that's what they were trying to do.
Never mind all the other obvious failures. The failure to apply common sense seems to be one of the most obvious, extreme and inexplicable.
Although it does rather presuppose these people had common sense.
Mr P-t-P makes a very good point. Not only did these people not have any kind of criminal record but they had references as to their good character.
I hope the judge gets, and makes public, the minutes of the Board meeting when this issue was discussed. As it must have been. Surely.
There ought to have been many meetings, since this dragged on for years. It will not be a quick enquiry, I think.
The Beeb is saying it expects the Inquiry to run for the rest of this year.
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
What a total sh!t-show of a project from start to finish. Those in charge, from PO and the suppliers, need to be held accountable for the failure.
Senior people at the PO knew the project was a bug-riddled disaster, yet proceeded to hold this sub-postmasters, small business franchisees, legally liable for the accounting errors it was generating.
That the result was a number of these small businesssmen ending up in prison, and others committing suicide, really needs a public enquiry.
I disagree.
It needs a criminal inquiry, followed by prosecutions.
I agree but it will never happen. The U.K. is poor at holding those at that level to account. If it was the US they’d be looking at jail time.
Being a pedant, what annoys me is referring to Pewtin. U and yu are separate letters in Russian and it is pronounced pooteen, with the stress on the first syllable
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun - and other tabloids do similar - remember that most readers don't care that much for politics or national issues. They care about their own family, about their job, about where they live (in an abstract sense because they likely don't know most of their neighbours and dislike the ones they do know), about sport and telly, and about an abstract sense of what their country is.
The newspapers fuel that range of views. Make sport and Big Telly as important an issue as anything. Sing simplistic stories about Queen, country and "culture" (which is what the reader likes). Take issues that they don't know about or care about but think are probably important and distil them down into bitesize issues which then get positioned to reinforce the rest. Easy to keep people buying the newspaper when it tells them what they want to know and that what they think is what every right-minded person thinks.
So don't dismiss Trevor Kavannah for writing a juvenile article. It is anything but - expertly crafted by someone with a lifetime of experience to push every button. Cynical yes. Dangerous yes. But he isn't a child writing to idiots. Remember that its not a silly question if you reasonably don't know the answer - and we have millions of people who don't know, don't care and are kept in a knowledge state where they never will know or care.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
And what's really appalling is that the incompetence at Fujitsu-ICL was so severe that a number of postmasters went to prison for crimes they did not commit. And Fujitsu-UCL tried to cover it up.
Not only that people took their own lives.
It was not only Fujitsu, the high ups in the Post Office also knew but still allowed prosecutions to take place.
Absolutely disgusting. These people allowed lives to be lost and ruined for a failed IT system they knew about.
They did more and worse - the Post Office brought the prosecutions. It was active malfeasance on a grand scale.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Perhaps the reason Brexit voters aren't particularly well educated is the lack of vocational training by employers working with a low wage, low productivity, high immigration environment?
What is good for highly educated, well paid PBers is not necessarily the same for everyone else. The UK has a brilliant tertiary education and professional sector, everything else is a bit rubbish and that's where our focus should be.
Note: there is definitely a very strong correlation between Leave voting and education levels. But last time I looked at it, causality hadn't been proven (LSE have a good summary).
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Ha ha, whatever you think of Leon I doubt he’s daft enough to fail for this trollbait.
Is this why you dropped back in here last night to ask his whereabouts ? So you could engage in such merry banter.
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
And what's really appalling is that the incompetence at Fujitsu-ICL was so severe that a number of postmasters went to prison for crimes they did not commit. And Fujitsu-UCL tried to cover it up.
Not only that people took their own lives.
It was not only Fujitsu, the high ups in the Post Office also knew but still allowed prosecutions to take place.
Absolutely disgusting. These people allowed lives to be lost and ruined for a failed IT system they knew about.
They did more and worse - the Post Office brought the prosecutions. It was active malfeasance on a grand scale.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Er, it's the Sun. It's always written that way.
Kinda my point
I have to run my work through a thing that ensures that people with an average vocabulary can read it. You'd be surprised...
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
And what's really appalling is that the incompetence at Fujitsu-ICL was so severe that a number of postmasters went to prison for crimes they did not commit. And Fujitsu-UCL tried to cover it up.
Not only that people took their own lives.
It was not only Fujitsu, the high ups in the Post Office also knew but still allowed prosecutions to take place.
Absolutely disgusting. These people allowed lives to be lost and ruined for a failed IT system they knew about.
They did more and worse - the Post Office brought the prosecutions. It was active malfeasance on a grand scale.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Perhaps the reason Brexit voters aren't particularly well educated is the lack of vocational training by employers working with a low wage, low productivity, high immigration environment?
What is good for highly educated, well paid PBers is not necessarily the same for everyone else. The UK has a brilliant tertiary education and professional sector, everything else is a bit rubbish and that's where our focus should be.
Note: there is definitely a very strong correlation between Leave voting and education levels. But last time I looked at it, causality hadn't been proven (LSE have a good summary).
By definition Brexit voters were older and, as such, educational opportunities (especially further education and Uni) were not really options for many of them.
Belgium’s state security unit for the first time raises fear of China spying on Huawei and Xiaomi phone users.
“There is...a risk of unwanted data transfer to Chinese authorities and thereby of espionage,” justice minister @VincentVQ told Beijing-sanctioned MP @SamuelCogolati....
Despite the state security’s warning, the Belgian government say it is “not aware of any EU body” that would investigate the extent of Chinese espionage through smartphones, an astonishing revelation of the EU’s potential vulnerabilities while facing tech-savvy rivals.
When the terrorists from the Paris attack were hiding in Brussels the Belgian police got more help from British intelligence than they did from their own.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun....
The whole argument of the juvenile Sun article is that Boris must stay to deliver Brexit. It's bollox, but it's not a separate issue.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Cuadrilla have just closed the last site in the U.K. where they were looking at fracking.
Fracking is dead in the U.K.
If they want to start it then fine by me. Until they have viable, fully scalable, fully renewable energy we need fossil fuels. People need to be kept onside with the green stuff and will turn against it once it starts costing them money.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Too late for fracking. If it was going to help us during the energy transition we should have gone in big time about a decade ago. And no one is going to invest knowing that the next government will probably ban it again.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Perhaps the reason Brexit voters aren't particularly well educated is the lack of vocational training by employers working with a low wage, low productivity, high immigration environment?
What is good for highly educated, well paid PBers is not necessarily the same for everyone else. The UK has a brilliant tertiary education and professional sector, everything else is a bit rubbish and that's where our focus should be.
Note: there is definitely a very strong correlation between Leave voting and education levels. But last time I looked at it, causality hadn't been proven (LSE have a good summary).
By definition Brexit voters were older and, as such, educational opportunities (especially further education and Uni) were not really options for many of them.
I thought that too (no 50% Uni) but I think the analysis took that into account by adjusting for age.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Ha ha, whatever you think of Leon I doubt he’s daft enough to fail for this trollbait.
Is this why you dropped back in here last night to ask his whereabouts ? So you could engage in such merry banter.
For someone who repeatedly accuses others on here of 'trolling', even seasoned posters, you don't half make a fair fist of it. A case of pot, kettle, black.
I don't sit around on this forum. I have other things to do in my life. But, no, I popped back on here because I sense I understand Leon fairly well and I am genuinely interested to know if he listened to his heart and decided to stay in Sri Lanka.
Some of my wildest and best decisions in life have been spur of the moment, heart based. I got off a flight recently as they were about to close the doors so I suppose I feel his confliction. If I were him I'd have stayed rather than return to the UK.
Ha: I once decided to go and live in Asia. Packed my flat, get my injections and flew out four days after deciding. It was brilliant.
As for my original point, I think the majority of us now recognise that Brexit was a terrible error.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Too late for fracking. If it was going to help us during the energy transition we should have gone in big time about a decade ago. And no one is going to invest knowing that the next government will probably ban it again.
You may be right but media reports are suggesting otherwise:
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
I agree that it's the stupidest decision in the recent history of the UK and why 'Remoaners' will never let it go.
To be anchored to the most diverse and culturally interesting continent in the world was a daily delight. To have the same relationship to Paris Florence and Athens as we have to any provincial town in the UK was magical.
To have had the freedom to work and live in Venice as easily as Harlepool and to throw it away makes many of us feel physically sick.
And for what? So that we could facilitate Boris Johnson's rise to PM? So Jacob Rees Mogg could be a big fish in a smaller pond? So some East Coast town didn't have to hear people talking foreign languages.....
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
What a total sh!t-show of a project from start to finish. Those in charge, from PO and the suppliers, need to be held accountable for the failure.
Senior people at the PO knew the project was a bug-riddled disaster, yet proceeded to hold this sub-postmasters, small business franchisees, legally liable for the accounting errors it was generating.
That the result was a number of these small businesssmen ending up in prison, and others committing suicide, really needs a public enquiry.
I disagree.
It needs a criminal inquiry, followed by prosecutions.
What baffles me about the behaviour of the PO management is the apparent lack of common sense.
They recruited staff from a very wide range of backgrounds, few if any of whom had any kind of criminal record. Yet the sheer number the PO was accusing implied that they had somehow managed to corner the market in crooked staff. Surely somebody at some point must have said 'This can't be right'. How could any organisation manage to recruit so many fraudelent staff? It would be very difficult even if that's what they were trying to do.
Never mind all the other obvious failures. The failure to apply common sense seems to be one of the most obvious, extreme and inexplicable.
Although it does rather presuppose these people had common sense.
It's easy to make cutting remarks like that but in a way that trivialsie a genuine and serious question.
I would say it was statistically impossible to find that many crooks in a normal population of people. That in itself should have rung the alarm bells.
Maybe the assumption was that many people will resort to fraud when given the opportunity, and that the computer system provided a means of identifying them. After all, we don't know how many people commit fraud, just how many are caught.
One of the reasons they pushed ahead with the new Horizon system, was that they were concerned about fraud.
So when the system started reporting fraud, they thought they’d found what they were looking for and didn’t question it - despite serious misgivings about this software throughout the organisation.
It’s a very good example of seeing what you expect to see, and reacting accordingly, without a proper understanding.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak. (Fission AND Fusion by the way - when we can).
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
I agree that it's the stupidest decision in the recent history of the UK and why 'Remoaners' will never let it go.
To be anchored to the most diverse and culturally interesting continent in the world was a daily delight. To have the same relationship to Paris Florence and Athens as we have to any provincial town in the UK was magical.
To have had the freedom to work and live in Venice as easily as Harlepool and to throw it away makes many of us feel physically sick.
And for what? So that we could facilitate Boris Johnson's rise to PM? So Jacob Rees Mogg could be a big fish in a smaller pond? So some East Coast town didn't have to hear people talking foreign languages.....
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak.
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Nuclear is being built in this country, but even if we were to invest 10x as much in nuclear as we are now it would take years or decades to get built. Especially holding it to the highest standards so that it doesn't leak.
So again, in the meantime, until its built, where do you get your hydrocarbons from?
Oh and nuclear serves well for baseload capacity but it is next to useless for on-demand spikes of energy shortages which is what gas is useful for. When everyone puts their kettle on at the same time at the end of the England game, or when the wind stops blowing etc you can't suddenly generate more energy from nuclear so until batteries can replace gas you still need hydrocarbons from somewhere.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
To be anchored to the most diverse......
So diverse that when the UK left the EU the ethnic diversity of the EU Parliament fell substantially:
Britain's departure from the EU has dramatically cut black and ethnic minority representation in the European Parliament, a new analysis has found. The number of BAME members of the legislature has fallen by 20 per cent following Brexit, undoing most of the gains at the last election.
Just 24* out of 705 MEPs are people of colour, down from 30 – despite an estimate 50 million estimated to be living in Europe. The UK had the highest number of ethnic minority MEPs in the 2019 mandate - at seven - with only 13 of the 28 EU member states electing any at all.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak.
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Nuclear is being built in this country, but even if we were to invest 10x as much in nuclear as we are now it would take years or decades to get built. Especially holding it to the highest standards so that it doesn't leak.
So again, in the meantime, until its built, where do you get your hydrocarbons from?
Oh and nuclear serves well for baseload capacity but it is next to useless for on-demand spikes of energy shortages which is what gas is useful for. When everyone puts their kettle on at the same time at the end of the England game, or when the wind stops blowing etc you can't suddenly generate more energy from nuclear so until batteries can replace gas you still need hydrocarbons from somewhere.
We should have been been building more nuclear way back. We lagged far behind. Fusion reactors could be a really vital energy source of the future.
Meantime, more green use: solar, wind and waves.
What we should not be doing is raping the earth.
But I fancy you and I are poles apart in the meaning of life. It would take a long time to explain. Actually, 'explain' is too cerebral. It's more about spirit. Seriously, watch some of th Ben Fogle programmes.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Perhaps the reason Brexit voters aren't particularly well educated is the lack of vocational training by employers working with a low wage, low productivity, high immigration environment?
What is good for highly educated, well paid PBers is not necessarily the same for everyone else. The UK has a brilliant tertiary education and professional sector, everything else is a bit rubbish and that's where our focus should be.
Note: there is definitely a very strong correlation between Leave voting and education levels. But last time I looked at it, causality hadn't been proven (LSE have a good summary).
Plenty of reasonably well paid apprentices will also have voted Leave, given Leave won majorities amongst the lower middle class and skilled working class as well as the unskilled working class. Only the upper middle class voted Remain
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Too late for fracking. If it was going to help us during the energy transition we should have gone in big time about a decade ago. And no one is going to invest knowing that the next government will probably ban it again.
You may be right but media reports are suggesting otherwise:
New Lucidtalk Northern Ireland Stormont poll has SF still ahead but the DUP cutting the SF lead from 8% to 4%. Movement from TUV to DUP and some from SDLP to SF.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak.
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Nuclear is being built in this country, but even if we were to invest 10x as much in nuclear as we are now it would take years or decades to get built. Especially holding it to the highest standards so that it doesn't leak.
So again, in the meantime, until its built, where do you get your hydrocarbons from?
Oh and nuclear serves well for baseload capacity but it is next to useless for on-demand spikes of energy shortages which is what gas is useful for. When everyone puts their kettle on at the same time at the end of the England game, or when the wind stops blowing etc you can't suddenly generate more energy from nuclear so until batteries can replace gas you still need hydrocarbons from somewhere.
We should have been been building more nuclear way back. We lagged far behind. Fusion reactors could be a really vital energy source of the future.
Meantime, more green use: solar, wind and waves.
What we should not be doing is raping the earth.
But I fancy you and I are poles apart in the meaning of life. It would take a long time to explain. Actually, 'explain' is too cerebral. It's more about spirit. Seriously, watch some of th Ben Fogle programmes.
I'm trying to explain to you, but it seems you're the one who is too thick to understand. Lets try this slowly.
Without storage, which isn't viable yet, energy needs to be generated at the point its consumed.
Nuclear works for baseload. Solar, wind and waves all work based on when the world is being kind to them, not when people want to consume energy too.
So forget about Ben Fogle and think about people putting their kettle on, when they want to put their kettle on. In the dark, so solar isn't working. At once, so nuclear baseload isn't working.
The only way to bridge that gap is to have on-demand energy generated at that moment. Nuclear, wind, solar and tidal are not suitable for on-demand energy. Gas is.
So until we have an alternative, where do you want to get your hydrocarbons from?
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
To be anchored to the most diverse......
So diverse that when the UK left the EU the ethnic diversity of the EU Parliament fell substantially:
Britain's departure from the EU has dramatically cut black and ethnic minority representation in the European Parliament, a new analysis has found. The number of BAME members of the legislature has fallen by 20 per cent following Brexit, undoing most of the gains at the last election.
Just 24* out of 705 MEPs are people of colour, down from 30 – despite an estimate 50 million estimated to be living in Europe. The UK had the highest number of ethnic minority MEPs in the 2019 mandate - at seven - with only 13 of the 28 EU member states electing any at all.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
To be anchored to the most diverse......
So diverse that when the UK left the EU the ethnic diversity of the EU Parliament fell substantially:
Britain's departure from the EU has dramatically cut black and ethnic minority representation in the European Parliament, a new analysis has found. The number of BAME members of the legislature has fallen by 20 per cent following Brexit, undoing most of the gains at the last election.
Just 24* out of 705 MEPs are people of colour, down from 30 – despite an estimate 50 million estimated to be living in Europe. The UK had the highest number of ethnic minority MEPs in the 2019 mandate - at seven - with only 13 of the 28 EU member states electing any at all.
Fracking is just a waste of time. We know that the current plan is to eliminate all fossil fuels from the national grid by 2035. So this already implies large reductions in gas use over the next decade. Why would you spend a few years investing into fracking only to see the market for your gas disappear? Why put lots of effort into two transitions - from imported gas to domestic gas and then from gas to renewables - instead of just speeding ahead with the transition already underway as quickly as possible?
Build more wind energy. A *lot* more wind energy. Build battery plants. Put a few eggs in some other baskets too (tidal, nuclear, interconnectors to Icelandic geothermal and Moroccan solar).
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun....
The whole argument of the juvenile Sun article is that Boris must stay to deliver Brexit. It's bollox, but it's not a separate issue.
Yes I know, but it is two issues. One - tabloids feeding simplistic spun snippets to people who largely don't care which are engineered to ensure they care just enough in the preferred direction of travel. Two - the subject of the snippet in question.
This one was about Brexit. Others are about culture. Unions. Foreigners. The Elite.
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
What a total sh!t-show of a project from start to finish. Those in charge, from PO and the suppliers, need to be held accountable for the failure.
Senior people at the PO knew the project was a bug-riddled disaster, yet proceeded to hold this sub-postmasters, small business franchisees, legally liable for the accounting errors it was generating.
That the result was a number of these small businesssmen ending up in prison, and others committing suicide, really needs a public enquiry.
I disagree.
It needs a criminal inquiry, followed by prosecutions.
What baffles me about the behaviour of the PO management is the apparent lack of common sense.
They recruited staff from a very wide range of backgrounds, few if any of whom had any kind of criminal record. Yet the sheer number the PO was accusing implied that they had somehow managed to corner the market in crooked staff. Surely somebody at some point must have said 'This can't be right'. How could any organisation manage to recruit so many fraudelent staff? It would be very difficult even if that's what they were trying to do.
Never mind all the other obvious failures. The failure to apply common sense seems to be one of the most obvious, extreme and inexplicable.
Although it does rather presuppose these people had common sense.
As the saying goes, there is nothing common about common sense.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak.
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Nuclear is being built in this country, but even if we were to invest 10x as much in nuclear as we are now it would take years or decades to get built. Especially holding it to the highest standards so that it doesn't leak.
So again, in the meantime, until its built, where do you get your hydrocarbons from?
Oh and nuclear serves well for baseload capacity but it is next to useless for on-demand spikes of energy shortages which is what gas is useful for. When everyone puts their kettle on at the same time at the end of the England game, or when the wind stops blowing etc you can't suddenly generate more energy from nuclear so until batteries can replace gas you still need hydrocarbons from somewhere.
We should have been been building more nuclear way back. We lagged far behind. Fusion reactors could be a really vital energy source of the future.
Meantime, more green use: solar, wind and waves.
What we should not be doing is raping the earth.
But I fancy you and I are poles apart in the meaning of life. It would take a long time to explain. Actually, 'explain' is too cerebral. It's more about spirit. Seriously, watch some of th Ben Fogle programmes.
I'm trying to explain to you, but it seems you're the one who is too thick to understand. Lets try this slowly...
The only way to bridge that gap is to have on-demand energy generated at that moment. Nuclear, wind, solar and tidal are not suitable for on-demand energy. Gas is.
So until we have an alternative, where do you want to get your hydrocarbons from?
So how long before fracking could deliver significant amounts of gas compared to our domestic consumption, in your view ?
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun....
The whole argument of the juvenile Sun article is that Boris must stay to deliver Brexit. It's bollox, but it's not a separate issue.
Yes I know, but it is two issues. One - tabloids feeding simplistic spun snippets to people who largely don't care which are engineered to ensure they care just enough in the preferred direction of travel. Two - the subject of the snippet in question.
This one was about Brexit. Others are about culture. Unions. Foreigners. The Elite.
I must confess to being puzzled about the idea that Brexit isn't 'done'. European immigration has ceased, and we've re-established, more or less, Customs controls. As far as I recall most of the changes that were brought in between 1975 and 2016 were consensual. What is it that people want changed?
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun....
The whole argument of the juvenile Sun article is that Boris must stay to deliver Brexit. It's bollox, but it's not a separate issue.
Yes I know, but it is two issues. One - tabloids feeding simplistic spun snippets to people who largely don't care which are engineered to ensure they care just enough in the preferred direction of travel. Two - the subject of the snippet in question.
This one was about Brexit. Others are about culture. Unions. Foreigners. The Elite.
As far as I recall most of the changes that were brought in between 1975 and 2016 were consensual. What is it that people want changed?
Recollections may vary cough Lisbon Treaty Referendum.....
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak.
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Nuclear is being built in this country, but even if we were to invest 10x as much in nuclear as we are now it would take years or decades to get built. Especially holding it to the highest standards so that it doesn't leak.
So again, in the meantime, until its built, where do you get your hydrocarbons from?
Oh and nuclear serves well for baseload capacity but it is next to useless for on-demand spikes of energy shortages which is what gas is useful for. When everyone puts their kettle on at the same time at the end of the England game, or when the wind stops blowing etc you can't suddenly generate more energy from nuclear so until batteries can replace gas you still need hydrocarbons from somewhere.
We should have been been building more nuclear way back. We lagged far behind. Fusion reactors could be a really vital energy source of the future.
Meantime, more green use: solar, wind and waves.
What we should not be doing is raping the earth.
But I fancy you and I are poles apart in the meaning of life. It would take a long time to explain. Actually, 'explain' is too cerebral. It's more about spirit. Seriously, watch some of th Ben Fogle programmes.
The "I wouldn't start from here' argument may be true, but is also pointless. Perhaps we should have been building nuclear way back, but we were not - and environmentalists played a large part in not having them built.
But we are where we are. Fusion reactors are too far in the future to lay any faith in (if we get them, brilliant, but we cannot rely on that).
If you don't want to 'rape the earth', then live a fully sustainable lifestyle off the grid - because otherwise all you are doing is pushing the raping onto others. Some of the electricity to run your home will be coming from 'dirty' sources, as will some of it to run the servers, and the Internet, and everything else. Your food will be delivered in 'dirty; lorries. Foreign holidays? Forget it.
It's brilliant to have an aim of a green future. It's a great vision. But in the meantime we need to live in reality, and know that we need to support the ~70 million people in this country (yet alone the wider world). Unless you want a massive amount of pain and deaths, that involves moving to a green future whilst supporting those people.
And given what's happening in Ukraine atm, we need to source as from somewhere. So that means either importing from other places (e.g. LNG) or fracking locally.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
To be anchored to the most diverse......
So diverse that when the UK left the EU the ethnic diversity of the EU Parliament fell substantially:
Britain's departure from the EU has dramatically cut black and ethnic minority representation in the European Parliament, a new analysis has found. The number of BAME members of the legislature has fallen by 20 per cent following Brexit, undoing most of the gains at the last election.
Just 24* out of 705 MEPs are people of colour, down from 30 – despite an estimate 50 million estimated to be living in Europe. The UK had the highest number of ethnic minority MEPs in the 2019 mandate - at seven - with only 13 of the 28 EU member states electing any at all.
Do please point out another EU government with an as ethnically diverse a Cabinet as the UK.....
* If the EU Parliament represented the EU's ethnic diversity that number would be ±80
Do you think cultural diversity had anything to do with skin colour?
Not uniquely, but I thought being open to immigration from across the world was supposed to increase diversity, and some amount of that includes cultural diversity from ethnic diversity. Since you didn't specify of course someone would include a definition which is not artificially restricted.
There is opposition to expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the coast of Sussex....some of the local Tory MPs appear not to have got the "renewables" memo...
Fracking is just a waste of time. We know that the current plan is to eliminate all fossil fuels from the national grid by 2035. So this already implies large reductions in gas use over the next decade. Why would you spend a few years investing into fracking only to see the market for your gas disappear? Why put lots of effort into two transitions - from imported gas to domestic gas and then from gas to renewables - instead of just speeding ahead with the transition already underway as quickly as possible?
Build more wind energy. A *lot* more wind energy. Build battery plants. Put a few eggs in some other baskets too (tidal, nuclear, interconnectors to Icelandic geothermal and Moroccan solar).
The plan is to eliminate fossil fuels by 2035. I for one am uncertain that the tech will be there to do so.
(I hope I am wrong.)
As ever, the late David MacKay's book is brilliant on how much renewable energy we can generate in the UK. I wish someone would update it. https://www.withouthotair.com/
"The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.
The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.
“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”"
What a total sh!t-show of a project from start to finish. Those in charge, from PO and the suppliers, need to be held accountable for the failure.
Senior people at the PO knew the project was a bug-riddled disaster, yet proceeded to hold this sub-postmasters, small business franchisees, legally liable for the accounting errors it was generating.
That the result was a number of these small businesssmen ending up in prison, and others committing suicide, really needs a public enquiry.
I disagree.
It needs a criminal inquiry, followed by prosecutions.
What baffles me about the behaviour of the PO management is the apparent lack of common sense.
They recruited staff from a very wide range of backgrounds, few if any of whom had any kind of criminal record. Yet the sheer number the PO was accusing implied that they had somehow managed to corner the market in crooked staff. Surely somebody at some point must have said 'This can't be right'. How could any organisation manage to recruit so many fraudelent staff? It would be very difficult even if that's what they were trying to do.
Never mind all the other obvious failures. The failure to apply common sense seems to be one of the most obvious, extreme and inexplicable.
Although it does rather presuppose these people had common sense.
Mr P-t-P makes a very good point. Not only did these people not have any kind of criminal record but they had references as to their good character.
I hope the judge gets, and makes public, the minutes of the Board meeting when this issue was discussed. As it must have been. Surely.
It is not uncommon for large organisations to be run incompetently, but the PO seems to have been a particularly extreme example.
One hopes that the Board will be held fully to account, and indeed those who recruited and appointed them. Far too often these positions are handed out as a result of networking rather than suitablility for the post.
True, but this is likely to turn into a case study of management failure in large hierarchical organisations. There was a long chain of command from the software engineers in Fujitsu, up through that company, across to the contract managers in the PO and up through many layers of management to the PO Board. I would expect that all the way along, a gloss was being put on the information being passed upwards, and unrealistic instructions to sort it out being passed back downwards.
The buck should stop at the top, but it isn't clear whether we'll ever establish exactly how much the senior PO executives knew about what was really going on. So far, Fujitsu has got off lightly in the media, but I would guess that the inquiry will find that the supplier wasn't being open and honest with its customer. I'd expect the enquiry will zero in on who authorised the prosecutions, and those people will be in the hotseat whether or not they had the full picture at the time.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak.
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Nuclear is being built in this country, but even if we were to invest 10x as much in nuclear as we are now it would take years or decades to get built. Especially holding it to the highest standards so that it doesn't leak.
So again, in the meantime, until its built, where do you get your hydrocarbons from?
Oh and nuclear serves well for baseload capacity but it is next to useless for on-demand spikes of energy shortages which is what gas is useful for. When everyone puts their kettle on at the same time at the end of the England game, or when the wind stops blowing etc you can't suddenly generate more energy from nuclear so until batteries can replace gas you still need hydrocarbons from somewhere.
We should have been been building more nuclear way back. We lagged far behind. Fusion reactors could be a really vital energy source of the future.
Meantime, more green use: solar, wind and waves.
What we should not be doing is raping the earth.
But I fancy you and I are poles apart in the meaning of life. It would take a long time to explain. Actually, 'explain' is too cerebral. It's more about spirit. Seriously, watch some of th Ben Fogle programmes.
The "I wouldn't start from here' argument may be true, but is also pointless. Perhaps we should have been building nuclear way back, but we were not - and environmentalists played a large part in not having them built.
But we are where we are. Fusion reactors are too far in the future to lay any faith in (if we get them, brilliant, but we cannot rely on that).
If you don't want to 'rape the earth', then live a fully sustainable lifestyle off the grid - because otherwise all you are doing is pushing the raping onto others. Some of the electricity to run your home will be coming from 'dirty' sources, as will some of it to run the servers, and the Internet, and everything else. Your food will be delivered in 'dirty; lorries. Foreign holidays? Forget it.
It's brilliant to have an aim of a green future. It's a great vision. But in the meantime we need to live in reality, and know that we need to support the ~70 million people in this country (yet alone the wider world). Unless you want a massive amount of pain and deaths, that involves moving to a green future whilst supporting those people.
And given what's happening in Ukraine atm, we need to source as from somewhere. So that means either importing from other places (e.g. LNG) or fracking locally.
I'm more surprised that someone who likes to moralise like a fiery preacher about acceptable forms of comedy is a ok with causally applying rape metaphors to non-rape actions. No need for sensitivity there I guess.
He has a point that Johnson's policy decision seemed to be about nothing more than saving his skin and blindsided all established authorities. Will also seems keen to get back to normal. 'Like most I relish life opening up.' Or does he?
'while the new normal could never be the normal of pre-pandemic, it was still normal enough..... This dream is where the vast majority would love us to be. Personally, I delight in the escalating return to normality – dinners, lunches with colleagues, getting out and about much more freely – but I am watchful. On buses, trains and tubes, I take care to wear a mask and make sure, if I can, that I sit with others wearing them. I willingly wear a mask in shops, cinema, theatre or going around galleries. I keep my social distance. I enjoy the possibilities of Zoom, a working life organised around online slots, but saving time on travelling. If asked to take a lateral flow test before a large gathering, I happily comply. I live a life as normally as possible – but remain vigilant about the danger of contracting Covid. It’s how I expect to continue.'
Now he isn't clear if ontinue means indefinite future and it isn't clear whether he sees restrictions applying to men in their 70s like him or if we should all be doing this for ever and eternity. I wonder how Will would have felt in his youth if he had to comply with these impositions on a permanent basis? Over Christmas I was with with my brother and sister in law who have three young children. They aren't overly political people but like many are sick to death of covid. They worry about the impact on their children who've obviously been negatively affected by the pandemic. They were angry at the way those in authority seemed desperate to deny omicron was milder than delta in spite of the evidence to the contrary.
A few days ago I went to see a friend and his partner, both in their early 30s with no kids. I was quite taken aback that my friend had decided against travelling to London due to covid and had been urging his (70ish) mother to only go out once a week, citing no higher authority than Chris Whitty for his concern. His partner's 92 year old grandmother is also part of their close circle and the idea of passing covid on to her horrifies him.
I do get that. But what are we going to do? Live the rest of our lives as semi hermits at the behest of the very old and clinically vulnerable? It isn't entirely obvious that would be a very healthy strategy either. Getting infected with a mild variant of covid might help protect you against a nastier one that comes along later. People's general immunity could be weakening significantly.
When the mask mandate gets dropped I suspect we will see rather a lot of people continuing to wear then in certain circumstances - 2 years gets you used to things.
The mask debate has become so polarised but I think they should still be worn indoors because not to do so puts others at risk at harm. I have avoided covid so far and would really rather not catch it. I know it will damage me mentally and I am wary of the longterm effects of covid. I will continue to wear a mask for the foreseeable and I know many others who do.
Life will not return to how it was for a long time. In some parts of the world it will not do so in our lifetimes and 50 years from now the children of today will still be scarred by the experience.
Some good has come from this pandemic: a recalibration of life's priorities and the marvel of realising that commuting is a stupid way to live the only life you have. Work from home as much as you can and reconnect with nature and the green planet.
Sorry but it’s hard not to laugh at this. Unless you have a medical condition which gives you a particular vulnerability to covid even after vaccination, the likelihood is that this behaviour will in the long run be worse for your health. Our immune systems need constant training, that much should be obvious by the unusual fierceness of this winter‘s colds. Sars-cov2 being just another one of those colds at this point for almost everyone.
Fracking is just a waste of time. We know that the current plan is to eliminate all fossil fuels from the national grid by 2035. So this already implies large reductions in gas use over the next decade. Why would you spend a few years investing into fracking only to see the market for your gas disappear? Why put lots of effort into two transitions - from imported gas to domestic gas and then from gas to renewables - instead of just speeding ahead with the transition already underway as quickly as possible?
Build more wind energy. A *lot* more wind energy. Build battery plants. Put a few eggs in some other baskets too (tidal, nuclear, interconnectors to Icelandic geothermal and Moroccan solar).
We should do both.
Gas is being used when it is needed. Whether we use domestic or imported gas doesn't need a change in infrastructure for that. The extraction of hydrocarbons and the consumption of them are two separate factors. There isn't two separate transitions, there's only one, the transition away from hydrocarbons and that continues at the same pace whether we're using domestic or imported gas.
Investing in fracking will be profitable or costly depending upon whether there's a market for it and whether its viable and profitable. We know there'll be a market for it. We also know that fracking sites don't last forever, that's an issue in current gas prices is that in America especially people invest in fracking a site, consume its energy, then move on and during lockdown they didn't invest in new sites.
Domestic gas is a potentially cheaper and cleaner alternative to imported gas. Its something we should be seriously look into. If we could use up proposed sites before the switch to alternatives is complete then that's a cleaner, cheaper and geopolitically safer alternative.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun....
The whole argument of the juvenile Sun article is that Boris must stay to deliver Brexit. It's bollox, but it's not a separate issue.
Yes I know, but it is two issues. One - tabloids feeding simplistic spun snippets to people who largely don't care which are engineered to ensure they care just enough in the preferred direction of travel. Two - the subject of the snippet in question.
This one was about Brexit. Others are about culture. Unions. Foreigners. The Elite.
I must confess to being puzzled about the idea that Brexit isn't 'done'. European immigration has ceased, and we've re-established, more or less, Customs controls. As far as I recall most of the changes that were brought in between 1975 and 2016 were consensual. What is it that people want changed?
There are two definitions of Brexit. One is as written on the referendum paper - should the UK leave the EU? The other is "BREXIT" which is whatever the person wants it to be. We have discussed various different kinds of BREXIT and Brexiteers. I vcame up with three distinct groups - Singapore-on-Thames, Mercantilists, Workers Republic of Englanders - and there other smaller groups.
BREXIT as seen by a Singapore-on-Thamesist like Rees-Mogg is directly opposed by BREXIT as seen by WWC Workers Repubicists, and both screw over the Mercantilists.
So to answer your question you have to go back to the points you raise and consider who is asking and why?
Many people wanted to not just stop immigration but send home all kinds of forrin who weren't from EU countries. SoT people want to bring back the empire, WRE people want more people who look like them and talk like them providing less competition for jobs and higher wages. Neither of these groups is satisfied because they have not reached their desired destination.
Customs was always a fringe issue despite it being central to what happens after Brexit. For some it was totemic - a Blue Passport made in Poland by a French company. For others it was not being told what to do by bureaucrats. For SoT and Merchant groups they wanted easier cheaper trade and have ended up with harder more expensive trade. SoT wanted to make things less safe and more profitable and that hasn't happened either. WRE didn't care but won't like less choice for more cost.
So whilst Brexit was achieved, BREXIT cannot be achieved. So the fight will go on and on and on without end until someone says "hang on, this is the opposite of what we wanted" and it all starts rolling back.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak.
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Nuclear is being built in this country, but even if we were to invest 10x as much in nuclear as we are now it would take years or decades to get built. Especially holding it to the highest standards so that it doesn't leak.
So again, in the meantime, until its built, where do you get your hydrocarbons from?
Oh and nuclear serves well for baseload capacity but it is next to useless for on-demand spikes of energy shortages which is what gas is useful for. When everyone puts their kettle on at the same time at the end of the England game, or when the wind stops blowing etc you can't suddenly generate more energy from nuclear so until batteries can replace gas you still need hydrocarbons from somewhere.
We should have been been building more nuclear way back. We lagged far behind. Fusion reactors could be a really vital energy source of the future.
Meantime, more green use: solar, wind and waves.
What we should not be doing is raping the earth.
But I fancy you and I are poles apart in the meaning of life. It would take a long time to explain. Actually, 'explain' is too cerebral. It's more about spirit. Seriously, watch some of th Ben Fogle programmes.
I'm trying to explain to you, but it seems you're the one who is too thick to understand. Lets try this slowly...
The only way to bridge that gap is to have on-demand energy generated at that moment. Nuclear, wind, solar and tidal are not suitable for on-demand energy. Gas is.
So until we have an alternative, where do you want to get your hydrocarbons from?
So how long before fracking could deliver significant amounts of gas compared to our domestic consumption, in your view ?
Take your time.
"Could"
Months to two years. The technology is all there, its only politics preventing it.
Just like wind power it doesn't need to be a 100% replacement for imports overnight: any cheaper, cleaner and geopolitically safer alternatives going online are significant.
Fracking is just a waste of time. We know that the current plan is to eliminate all fossil fuels from the national grid by 2035. So this already implies large reductions in gas use over the next decade. Why would you spend a few years investing into fracking only to see the market for your gas disappear? Why put lots of effort into two transitions - from imported gas to domestic gas and then from gas to renewables - instead of just speeding ahead with the transition already underway as quickly as possible?
Build more wind energy. A *lot* more wind energy. Build battery plants. Put a few eggs in some other baskets too (tidal, nuclear, interconnectors to Icelandic geothermal and Moroccan solar).
...Domestic gas is a potentially cheaper and cleaner alternative to imported gas. Its something we should be seriously look into. If we could use up proposed sites before the switch to alternatives is complete then that's a cleaner, cheaper and geopolitically safer alternative.
Why would it be cheaper ? Clearly domestic production would be of great benefit to the exchequer, but in terms of end prices there's be little or no difference.
But you still haven't answered the question of how quickly a significant (as opposed to token) domestic supply might be possible.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun - and other tabloids do similar - remember that most readers don't care that much for politics or national issues. They care about their own family, about their job, about where they live (in an abstract sense because they likely don't know most of their neighbours and dislike the ones they do know), about sport and telly, and about an abstract sense of what their country is.
The newspapers fuel that range of views. Make sport and Big Telly as important an issue as anything. Sing simplistic stories about Queen, country and "culture" (which is what the reader likes). Take issues that they don't know about or care about but think are probably important and distil them down into bitesize issues which then get positioned to reinforce the rest. Easy to keep people buying the newspaper when it tells them what they want to know and that what they think is what every right-minded person thinks.
So don't dismiss Trevor Kavannah for writing a juvenile article. It is anything but - expertly crafted by someone with a lifetime of experience to push every button. Cynical yes. Dangerous yes. But he isn't a child writing to idiots. Remember that its not a silly question if you reasonably don't know the answer - and we have millions of people who don't know, don't care and are kept in a knowledge state where they never will know or care.
A very dystopian view which is possibly close to the mark but the juvenility that struck me most was the way he tried to destroy John Major. These days polemics are much more subtle. Even Sun readers will just skim over that sort of thing. Advertising has taken the art of persuasion way past those schoolboy insults
With regards to energy needs, I am doing my bit. In December I recommissioned the geriatric storage heaters here in the old bank so that the contractors doing a full replaster had the right conditions. Said storage heaters are Old but Functional.
And then the energy bill arrives. Geriatric heating system now turned off permanently...
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak.
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Nuclear is being built in this country, but even if we were to invest 10x as much in nuclear as we are now it would take years or decades to get built. Especially holding it to the highest standards so that it doesn't leak.
So again, in the meantime, until its built, where do you get your hydrocarbons from?
Oh and nuclear serves well for baseload capacity but it is next to useless for on-demand spikes of energy shortages which is what gas is useful for. When everyone puts their kettle on at the same time at the end of the England game, or when the wind stops blowing etc you can't suddenly generate more energy from nuclear so until batteries can replace gas you still need hydrocarbons from somewhere.
We should have been been building more nuclear way back. We lagged far behind. Fusion reactors could be a really vital energy source of the future.
Meantime, more green use: solar, wind and waves.
What we should not be doing is raping the earth.
But I fancy you and I are poles apart in the meaning of life. It would take a long time to explain. Actually, 'explain' is too cerebral. It's more about spirit. Seriously, watch some of th Ben Fogle programmes.
The "I wouldn't start from here' argument may be true, but is also pointless. Perhaps we should have been building nuclear way back, but we were not - and environmentalists played a large part in not having them built.
But we are where we are. Fusion reactors are too far in the future to lay any faith in (if we get them, brilliant, but we cannot rely on that).
If you don't want to 'rape the earth', then live a fully sustainable lifestyle off the grid - because otherwise all you are doing is pushing the raping onto others. Some of the electricity to run your home will be coming from 'dirty' sources, as will some of it to run the servers, and the Internet, and everything else. Your food will be delivered in 'dirty; lorries. Foreign holidays? Forget it.
It's brilliant to have an aim of a green future. It's a great vision. But in the meantime we need to live in reality, and know that we need to support the ~70 million people in this country (yet alone the wider world). Unless you want a massive amount of pain and deaths, that involves moving to a green future whilst supporting those people.
And given what's happening in Ukraine atm, we need to source as from somewhere. So that means either importing from other places (e.g. LNG) or fracking locally.
I'm more surprised that someone who likes to moralise like a fiery preacher about acceptable forms of comedy is a ok with causally applying rape metaphors to non-rape actions. No need for sensitivity there I guess.
When I was a kid, oilseed rape was just coming in as a crop. I used to get rather embarrassed when visiting farms and hearing farmers talk about 'cutting the rape', 'sowing rape', 'a good year for the rape', etc, etc.
On the other hand, all the talk of 'tupping' never really bothered me.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun - and other tabloids do similar - remember that most readers don't care that much for politics or national issues. They care about their own family, about their job, about where they live (in an abstract sense because they likely don't know most of their neighbours and dislike the ones they do know), about sport and telly, and about an abstract sense of what their country is.
The newspapers fuel that range of views. Make sport and Big Telly as important an issue as anything. Sing simplistic stories about Queen, country and "culture" (which is what the reader likes). Take issues that they don't know about or care about but think are probably important and distil them down into bitesize issues which then get positioned to reinforce the rest. Easy to keep people buying the newspaper when it tells them what they want to know and that what they think is what every right-minded person thinks.
So don't dismiss Trevor Kavannah for writing a juvenile article. It is anything but - expertly crafted by someone with a lifetime of experience to push every button. Cynical yes. Dangerous yes. But he isn't a child writing to idiots. Remember that its not a silly question if you reasonably don't know the answer - and we have millions of people who don't know, don't care and are kept in a knowledge state where they never will know or care.
A very dystopian view which is possibly close to the mark but the juvenility that struck me most was the way he tried to destroy John Major. These days polemics are much more subtle. Even Sun readers will just skim over that sort of thing. Advertising has taken the art of persuasion way past those schoolboy insults
My Journalism Degree dates back to 1998 and my experiences as a journalist were brief and brutal. I wasn't being dystopian enough.
Fracking is just a waste of time. We know that the current plan is to eliminate all fossil fuels from the national grid by 2035. So this already implies large reductions in gas use over the next decade. Why would you spend a few years investing into fracking only to see the market for your gas disappear? Why put lots of effort into two transitions - from imported gas to domestic gas and then from gas to renewables - instead of just speeding ahead with the transition already underway as quickly as possible?
Build more wind energy. A *lot* more wind energy. Build battery plants. Put a few eggs in some other baskets too (tidal, nuclear, interconnectors to Icelandic geothermal and Moroccan solar).
...Domestic gas is a potentially cheaper and cleaner alternative to imported gas. Its something we should be seriously look into. If we could use up proposed sites before the switch to alternatives is complete then that's a cleaner, cheaper and geopolitically safer alternative.
Why would it be cheaper ? Clearly domestic production would be of great benefit to the exchequer, but in terms of end prices there's be little or no difference.
But you still haven't answered the question of how quickly a significant (as opposed to token) domestic supply might be possible.
This is the same inane nonsense that people say to oppose windfarms. They're just tokenistic etc
Serious change is achieved by a series of 'small' steps. And domestic prices are high because globally supply is low (largely due to an absence of investment in fracking compared to pre-pandemic) while consumption is high (due to a resurgence in demand post-pandemic). Increasing supply would help to address that imbalance.
The biggest questions over gas, are security of supply and price.
A country such as the UK needs to either get fracking, secure supply from other sources such as the USA and Qatar, and look at removing dependence on Russian gas.
Right now, the whole of Europe is being held hostage by Mr Putin, we have huge energy inflation and threatened shortages for political reasons.
By how much do bills need to rise, before the country accepts that we get fracking in the short term, and get away from reliance on an unstable dictator? Do it properly, and the UK could be a net exporter of the stuff into Europe next winter.
With regards to energy needs, I am doing my bit. In December I recommissioned the geriatric storage heaters here in the old bank so that the contractors doing a full replaster had the right conditions. Said storage heaters are Old but Functional.
And then the energy bill arrives. Geriatric heating system now turned off permanently...
Surely you're going to need some heat from somewhere to dry the plaster out?
Mr. Sandpit, there won't be any fracking. It isn't the magical, perfect soruce of energy, so it's vehemently opposed.
One imagines that if fusion ever comes off there'll be plenty of opposition to that too.
There is a great deal of 'green' support from people who want the country to remain in aspic and never change - especially their own areas. Or worse, from those who think we can live as we did back in the 1800s before all this nasty industry stuff came about.
I particularly like religious greens in the chip industry - given how environmentally destructive chip fabrication is...
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Ha ha, whatever you think of Leon I doubt he’s daft enough to fail for this trollbait.
Is this why you dropped back in here last night to ask his whereabouts ? So you could engage in such merry banter.
For someone who repeatedly accuses others on here of 'trolling', even seasoned posters, you don't half make a fair fist of it. A case of pot, kettle, black.
I don't sit around on this forum. I have other things to do in my life. But, no, I popped back on here because I sense I understand Leon fairly well and I am genuinely interested to know if he listened to his heart and decided to stay in Sri Lanka.
Some of my wildest and best decisions in life have been spur of the moment, heart based. I got off a flight recently as they were about to close the doors so I suppose I feel his confliction. If I were him I'd have stayed rather than return to the UK.
Ha: I once decided to go and live in Asia. Packed my flat, get my injections and flew out four days after deciding. It was brilliant.
As for my original point, I think the majority of us now recognise that Brexit was a terrible error.
Thanks for your life story.
I look forward to it coming out in paperback.
I voted remain but I don’t obsess about it daily. It has happened. We have to live with it. Baiting people or being rude about brexit voters is pointless. I’d rejoin in a heartbeat but it won’t happen.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak. (Fission AND Fusion by the way - when we can).
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Lol: Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild ?? A bunch of New Age hippies? Middle class people living eccentric lives and invite upper middle class Ben to come and chat with them and probably pay them a fee for the TV rights? Can anyone seriously believe this provides any indicator of how normal people who struggle with a very real world can modify their way of life? Chortle.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun....
The whole argument of the juvenile Sun article is that Boris must stay to deliver Brexit. It's bollox, but it's not a separate issue.
Yes I know, but it is two issues. One - tabloids feeding simplistic spun snippets to people who largely don't care which are engineered to ensure they care just enough in the preferred direction of travel. Two - the subject of the snippet in question.
This one was about Brexit. Others are about culture. Unions. Foreigners. The Elite.
As far as I recall most of the changes that were brought in between 1975 and 2016 were consensual. What is it that people want changed?
Recollections may vary cough Lisbon Treaty Referendum.....
Overtaken by 'events' though, surely.
And, you might be surprised to know that I agree that once the Government had intimated that a referendum would be held, it should have been.
Meantime, we're going to see more and more of the Nasty Party as Boris panders to his right-wing (sometimes loony) boneheads.
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
Rape the earth and screw the people?
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
I'm a huge believer in nuclear power. The greenest and most natural form of energy in the universe and we should be going for it big time. Just don't let it leak. (Fission AND Fusion by the way - when we can).
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Lol: Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild ?? A bunch of New Age hippies? Middle class people living eccentric lives and invite upper middle class Ben to come and chat with them and probably pay them a fee for the TV rights? Can anyone seriously believe this provides any indicator of how normal people who struggle with a very real world can modify their way of life? Chortle.
That sounds like the sort of show Alan Partridge would have pitched to Tony Hayers. Alongside Inner City Sumo and Arm Wrestling with Chas N Dave.
The biggest questions over gas, are security of supply and price.
A country such as the UK needs to either get fracking, secure supply from other sources such as the USA and Qatar, and look at removing dependence on Russian gas.
Right now, the whole of Europe is being held hostage by Mr Putin, we have huge energy inflation and threatened shortages for political reasons.
By how much do bills need to rise, before the country accepts that we get fracking in the short term, and get away from reliance on an unstable dictator? Do it properly, and the UK could be a net exporter of the stuff into Europe next winter.
Really?
The most likely place for Fracking to work has just closed down because it wasn't working (regardless of all the PR issues, not enough gas was being captured for the energy (and water) used.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Where do you prefer to get your hydrocarbons from?
Nuclear
Now that is a dumb post. How do you make your hydrocarbons from the nuclear processes?
When I was a kid, I learned about carbon carbon bond formation reactions in chemistry, and I asked 'why don't we just make more oil (e.g. for petrol etc) then?'. Its actually not a stupid question. The teacher's answer was about how difficult it was and that you'd need to expend more energy doing it than you'd recoup.
Now we are growing fuels, so using the power of the sun to make plants produce oils for us. Whether its the best use of land is open to question. I have a colleague who uses algae - the idea that maybe we can do the production in water.
Ultimately you can argue that such hydrocarbons ARE produced by nuclear - from the sun.
Mr Pioneers, I'm grateful for that analysis, but I'd take issue with one sentence, viz 'Many people wanted to not just stop immigration but send home all kinds of forrin who weren't from EU countries.'
It should, I think, read 'Many people wanted to not just stop immigration but send home all kinds of forrin.'
And some wanted 'to not stop immigration but send home all kinds of forrin from EU countries.'
Javier Blas @JavierBlas Aluminum is everywhere, underpinning modern life, from an iPhone to a jetliner to a can of beer to a Tesla car. The problem? The aluminum market is now at its hottest in 30 years | via @bopinion
Where do you prefer to get your hydrocarbons from?
Nuclear
Now that is a dumb post. How do you make your hydrocarbons from the nuclear processes?
When I was a kid, I learned about carbon carbon bond formation reactions in chemistry, and I asked 'why don't we just make more oil (e.g. for petrol etc) then?'. Its actually not a stupid question. The teacher's answer was about how difficult it was and that you'd need to expend more energy doing it than you'd recoup.
Now we are growing fuels, so using the power of the sun to make plants produce oils for us. Whether its the best use of land is open to question. I have a colleague who uses algae - the idea that maybe we can do the production in water.
Ultimately you can argue that such hydrocarbons ARE produced by nuclear - from the sun.
So maybe it wasn't a dumb post after all?
Right first time.
The second nuclear is fusion, and despite recent good news is still a way off....
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun....
The whole argument of the juvenile Sun article is that Boris must stay to deliver Brexit. It's bollox, but it's not a separate issue.
Yes I know, but it is two issues. One - tabloids feeding simplistic spun snippets to people who largely don't care which are engineered to ensure they care just enough in the preferred direction of travel. Two - the subject of the snippet in question.
This one was about Brexit. Others are about culture. Unions. Foreigners. The Elite.
As far as I recall most of the changes that were brought in between 1975 and 2016 were consensual. What is it that people want changed?
Recollections may vary cough Lisbon Treaty Referendum.....
Overtaken by 'events' though, surely.
And, you might be surprised to know that I agree that once the Government had intimated that a referendum would be held, it should have been.
Aw, come on, what was promised was a referendum on the EU constitution. Lisbon treaty was obviously entirely different
Interesting that the LD position then was for a wider EU ref. Wonder how that would have turned out had it happened at the time....
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Brexit is a separate issue.
With regards to The Sun....
The whole argument of the juvenile Sun article is that Boris must stay to deliver Brexit. It's bollox, but it's not a separate issue.
Yes I know, but it is two issues. One - tabloids feeding simplistic spun snippets to people who largely don't care which are engineered to ensure they care just enough in the preferred direction of travel. Two - the subject of the snippet in question.
This one was about Brexit. Others are about culture. Unions. Foreigners. The Elite.
As far as I recall most of the changes that were brought in between 1975 and 2016 were consensual. What is it that people want changed?
Recollections may vary cough Lisbon Treaty Referendum.....
Overtaken by 'events' though, surely.
And, you might be surprised to know that I agree that once the Government had intimated that a referendum would be held, it should have been.
Aw, come on, what was promised was a referendum on the EU constitution. Lisbon treaty was obviously entirely different
Interesting that the LD position then was for a wider EU ref. Wonder how that would have turned out had it happened at the time....
Its easy to blame right wing Eurosceptics and the media for Brexit, but its undeniable that some Europhiles made mistakes, and frankly lacked confidence in their ability to get the nation to vote in the 'correct' way. Why else would the promised referendum over Lisbon never come to pass? The idea that it was a completely different treaty is utter nonsense. I strongly suspect that they thought they would lose.
No, what a fine fellow Matt Goodwin is! Seriously - interesting findings, which confirm the impressions that HYUFD and others have given - aside from a general modest decline in Tory support, there's a very sharp recline in Red Wall type seats for the reasons cited.
The biggest questions over gas, are security of supply and price.
A country such as the UK needs to either get fracking, secure supply from other sources such as the USA and Qatar, and look at removing dependence on Russian gas.
Right now, the whole of Europe is being held hostage by Mr Putin, we have huge energy inflation and threatened shortages for political reasons.
By how much do bills need to rise, before the country accepts that we get fracking in the short term, and get away from reliance on an unstable dictator? Do it properly, and the UK could be a net exporter of the stuff into Europe next winter.
Really?
The most likely place for Fracking to work has just closed down because it wasn't working (regardless of all the PR issues, not enough gas was being captured for the energy (and water) used.
It’s fair enough if the field doesn’t produce the required yield, but most of the fracking issues appear to be political rather than geological.
No, what a fine fellow Matt Goodwin is! Seriously - interesting findings, which confirm the impressions that HYUFD and others have given - aside from a general modest decline in Tory support, there's a very sharp recline in Red Wall type seats for the reasons cited.
Seem to be a lot who have drifted away to apathy and not voting. That might not be the case in a tight GE.
Interesting article by Trevor Kavanagh in that it's written in such a juvenile style. It could have been written by a none too bright fourteen year old. Maybe it's just the standard on PB is so high?
At the risk of annoying people like Leon, it's written for 14-year olds because that's the approximate intelligence of a lot of people who were suckered into voting for Brexit (Sun readers).
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
To be anchored to the most diverse......
So diverse that when the UK left the EU the ethnic diversity of the EU Parliament fell substantially:
Britain's departure from the EU has dramatically cut black and ethnic minority representation in the European Parliament, a new analysis has found. The number of BAME members of the legislature has fallen by 20 per cent following Brexit, undoing most of the gains at the last election.
Just 24* out of 705 MEPs are people of colour, down from 30 – despite an estimate 50 million estimated to be living in Europe. The UK had the highest number of ethnic minority MEPs in the 2019 mandate - at seven - with only 13 of the 28 EU member states electing any at all.
Do please point out another EU government with an as ethnically diverse a Cabinet as the UK.....
* If the EU Parliament represented the EU's ethnic diversity that number would be ±80
Yes, Ms Vance. The UK Cabinet is wonderfully diverse.... though there is rather a shortage of Englishmen. However it is also "wonderfully" unrepresentative in terms of competence and honesty.....
Comments
It was not only Fujitsu, the high ups in the Post Office also knew but still allowed prosecutions to take place.
Absolutely disgusting. These people allowed lives to be lost and ruined for a failed IT system they knew about.
She'd also enjoy the political environment, with the local Tory PCC under police investigation for a serious offence.
It was the stupidest decision in the history of the UK, which a significant majority of the country, including those who voted for it, now recognise. And Boris Johnson, who never believed in Brexit and is European through-and-through, jumped on the bandwagon at the very last minute purely for political expediency.
Only that would get them to stop this industrial scale state sponsored doping.
The law on private prosecutions is to be changed as a result.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252497419/Government-to-change-unfair-private-prosecutions-used-to-prosecute-innocent-subpostmasters?amp=1
One hopes that the Board will be held fully to account, and indeed those who recruited and appointed them. Far too often these positions are handed out as a result of networking rather than suitablility for the post.
They will continue to fudge the police investigation and he will continue to deflect attention away from it. If and when Putin pulls back The Express will laud it as Boris beating Putin. If Putin invades (I still don't think he will) it will suit Boris admirably.
No, I'm afraid tory MPs bottled it and we're stuck with the chaotic Liar for another 2 years. Unfortunately for them and him, the damage is done. They will get a shellacking at the next General Election.
With regards to The Sun - and other tabloids do similar - remember that most readers don't care that much for politics or national issues. They care about their own family, about their job, about where they live (in an abstract sense because they likely don't know most of their neighbours and dislike the ones they do know), about sport and telly, and about an abstract sense of what their country is.
The newspapers fuel that range of views. Make sport and Big Telly as important an issue as anything. Sing simplistic stories about Queen, country and "culture" (which is what the reader likes). Take issues that they don't know about or care about but think are probably important and distil them down into bitesize issues which then get positioned to reinforce the rest. Easy to keep people buying the newspaper when it tells them what they want to know and that what they think is what every right-minded person thinks.
So don't dismiss Trevor Kavannah for writing a juvenile article. It is anything but - expertly crafted by someone with a lifetime of experience to push every button. Cynical yes. Dangerous yes. But he isn't a child writing to idiots. Remember that its not a silly question if you reasonably don't know the answer - and we have millions of people who don't know, don't care and are kept in a knowledge state where they never will know or care.
At least something good will come out of it.
Perhaps the reason Brexit voters aren't particularly well educated is the lack of vocational training by employers working with a low wage, low productivity, high immigration environment?
What is good for highly educated, well paid PBers is not necessarily the same for everyone else. The UK has a brilliant tertiary education and professional sector, everything else is a bit rubbish and that's where our focus should be.
Note: there is definitely a very strong correlation between Leave voting and education levels. But last time I looked at it, causality hadn't been proven (LSE have a good summary).
Is this why you dropped back in here last night to ask his whereabouts ? So you could engage in such merry banter.
The Post Office looked into the problems, discovered its mistakes, and then covered them up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
I see that Fracking may be returning to the UK and we'll see a host of other policies over the next two years which rape the earth and screw the people. It's back to the worst unchained excesses of capitalism. Quite how Carrie is going to take this I don't know and I imagine the No.10 flat will be a stormy place. Meanwhile house prices continue to soar, forcing out younger people and continuing to generate an ever starker divide between haves and have nots.
I have less and less in common with this country. Some of you will think 'good riddance' but ask yourselves deep inside, not on here, is this 'really' the country you want it to be?
The Post Office looked into the problems, discovered its mistakes, covered then up and continued to prosecute people as part of the cover-up.
“There is...a risk of unwanted data transfer to Chinese authorities and thereby of espionage,” justice minister @VincentVQ told Beijing-sanctioned MP @SamuelCogolati....
Despite the state security’s warning, the Belgian government say it is “not aware of any EU body” that would investigate the extent of Chinese espionage through smartphones, an astonishing revelation of the EU’s potential vulnerabilities while facing tech-savvy rivals.
https://twitter.com/StuartKLau/status/1493126214629969920?s=20&t=dbEV-hU9NssnDBYddsgTkw
When the terrorists from the Paris attack were hiding in Brussels the Belgian police got more help from British intelligence than they did from their own.
It's bollox, but it's not a separate issue.
Because importing gas from Putin or Middle Eastern sheikhs is so much better than using domestic energy? When the domestic energy has a lower carbon footprint than imports too?
Then again, this isn't the first thing you've written with an agenda excusing or furthering Putin, it seems standing up to Putin whether by defending liberal democracies or using our own natural energy sources is something that you're vehemently opposed to, I wonder why?
Fracking is dead in the U.K.
If they want to start it then fine by me. Until they have viable, fully scalable, fully renewable energy we need fossil fuels. People need to be kept onside with the green stuff and will turn against it once it starts costing them money.
And no one is going to invest knowing that the next government will probably ban it again.
I don't sit around on this forum. I have other things to do in my life. But, no, I popped back on here because I sense I understand Leon fairly well and I am genuinely interested to know if he listened to his heart and decided to stay in Sri Lanka.
Some of my wildest and best decisions in life have been spur of the moment, heart based. I got off a flight recently as they were about to close the doors so I suppose I feel his confliction. If I were him I'd have stayed rather than return to the UK.
Ha: I once decided to go and live in Asia. Packed my flat, get my injections and flew out four days after deciding. It was brilliant.
As for my original point, I think the majority of us now recognise that Brexit was a terrible error.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/13/david-frost-joins-tory-mps-in-calls-for-return-of-fracking-in-uk?share=tumblr
David Frost making a big play of it.
To be anchored to the most diverse and culturally interesting continent in the world was a daily delight. To have the same relationship to Paris Florence and Athens as we have to any provincial town in the UK was magical.
To have had the freedom to work and live in Venice as easily as Harlepool and to throw it away makes many of us feel physically sick.
And for what? So that we could facilitate Boris Johnson's rise to PM? So Jacob Rees Mogg could be a big fish in a smaller pond? So some East Coast town didn't have to hear people talking foreign languages.....
So when the system started reporting fraud, they thought they’d found what they were looking for and didn’t question it - despite serious misgivings about this software throughout the organisation.
It’s a very good example of seeing what you expect to see, and reacting accordingly, without a proper understanding.
Putin is a godawful person. So is Boris Johnson.
From your post youu don't really understand me at all. Some other time. Got to go. But maybe watch some Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild. It will be very alternative to your worldview but they will expand your horizons.
Nailed it.
So again, in the meantime, until its built, where do you get your hydrocarbons from?
Oh and nuclear serves well for baseload capacity but it is next to useless for on-demand spikes of energy shortages which is what gas is useful for. When everyone puts their kettle on at the same time at the end of the England game, or when the wind stops blowing etc you can't suddenly generate more energy from nuclear so until batteries can replace gas you still need hydrocarbons from somewhere.
Britain's departure from the EU has dramatically cut black and ethnic minority representation in the European Parliament, a new analysis has found. The number of BAME members of the legislature has fallen by 20 per cent following Brexit, undoing most of the gains at the last election.
Just 24* out of 705 MEPs are people of colour, down from 30 – despite an estimate 50 million estimated to be living in Europe. The UK had the highest number of ethnic minority MEPs in the 2019 mandate - at seven - with only 13 of the 28 EU member states electing any at all.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-bame-eu-parliament-members-ethnic-minority-a9315036.html
Do please point out another EU government with an as ethnically diverse a Cabinet as the UK.....
* If the EU Parliament represented the EU's ethnic diversity that number would be ±80
Meantime, more green use: solar, wind and waves.
What we should not be doing is raping the earth.
But I fancy you and I are poles apart in the meaning of life. It would take a long time to explain. Actually, 'explain' is too cerebral. It's more about spirit. Seriously, watch some of th Ben Fogle programmes.
Tsk.
SF 23%
DUP 19%
Alliance 16%
UUP 14%
SDLP 10%
TUV 6%
Greens 6%
https://twitter.com/SuzyJourno/status/1493115900370771968?s=20&t=0QJCWVgc5_i-TjEVI3ADcg
Without storage, which isn't viable yet, energy needs to be generated at the point its consumed.
Nuclear works for baseload. Solar, wind and waves all work based on when the world is being kind to them, not when people want to consume energy too.
So forget about Ben Fogle and think about people putting their kettle on, when they want to put their kettle on. In the dark, so solar isn't working. At once, so nuclear baseload isn't working.
The only way to bridge that gap is to have on-demand energy generated at that moment. Nuclear, wind, solar and tidal are not suitable for on-demand energy. Gas is.
So until we have an alternative, where do you want to get your hydrocarbons from?
Build more wind energy. A *lot* more wind energy. Build battery plants. Put a few eggs in some other baskets too (tidal, nuclear, interconnectors to Icelandic geothermal and Moroccan solar).
This one was about Brexit. Others are about culture. Unions. Foreigners. The Elite.
Take your time.
As far as I recall most of the changes that were brought in between 1975 and 2016 were consensual. What is it that people want changed?
But we are where we are. Fusion reactors are too far in the future to lay any faith in (if we get them, brilliant, but we cannot rely on that).
If you don't want to 'rape the earth', then live a fully sustainable lifestyle off the grid - because otherwise all you are doing is pushing the raping onto others. Some of the electricity to run your home will be coming from 'dirty' sources, as will some of it to run the servers, and the Internet, and everything else. Your food will be delivered in 'dirty; lorries. Foreign holidays? Forget it.
It's brilliant to have an aim of a green future. It's a great vision. But in the meantime we need to live in reality, and know that we need to support the ~70 million people in this country (yet alone the wider world). Unless you want a massive amount of pain and deaths, that involves moving to a green future whilst supporting those people.
And given what's happening in Ukraine atm, we need to source as from somewhere. So that means either importing from other places (e.g. LNG) or fracking locally.
(I hope I am wrong.)
As ever, the late David MacKay's book is brilliant on how much renewable energy we can generate in the UK. I wish someone would update it.
https://www.withouthotair.com/
The buck should stop at the top, but it isn't clear whether we'll ever establish exactly how much the senior PO executives knew about what was really going on. So far, Fujitsu has got off lightly in the media, but I would guess that the inquiry will find that the supplier wasn't being open and honest with its customer. I'd expect the enquiry will zero in on who authorised the prosecutions, and those people will be in the hotseat whether or not they had the full picture at the time.
Gas is being used when it is needed. Whether we use domestic or imported gas doesn't need a change in infrastructure for that. The extraction of hydrocarbons and the consumption of them are two separate factors. There isn't two separate transitions, there's only one, the transition away from hydrocarbons and that continues at the same pace whether we're using domestic or imported gas.
Investing in fracking will be profitable or costly depending upon whether there's a market for it and whether its viable and profitable. We know there'll be a market for it. We also know that fracking sites don't last forever, that's an issue in current gas prices is that in America especially people invest in fracking a site, consume its energy, then move on and during lockdown they didn't invest in new sites.
Domestic gas is a potentially cheaper and cleaner alternative to imported gas. Its something we should be seriously look into. If we could use up proposed sites before the switch to alternatives is complete then that's a cleaner, cheaper and geopolitically safer alternative.
NEW: Keir Starmer confirms he has received death threats following Boris Johnson's Jimmy Savile smear.
https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1493141340296818690
BREXIT as seen by a Singapore-on-Thamesist like Rees-Mogg is directly opposed by BREXIT as seen by WWC Workers Repubicists, and both screw over the Mercantilists.
So to answer your question you have to go back to the points you raise and consider who is asking and why?
Many people wanted to not just stop immigration but send home all kinds of forrin who weren't from EU countries. SoT people want to bring back the empire, WRE people want more people who look like them and talk like them providing less competition for jobs and higher wages. Neither of these groups is satisfied because they have not reached their desired destination.
Customs was always a fringe issue despite it being central to what happens after Brexit. For some it was totemic - a Blue Passport made in Poland by a French company. For others it was not being told what to do by bureaucrats. For SoT and Merchant groups they wanted easier cheaper trade and have ended up with harder more expensive trade. SoT wanted to make things less safe and more profitable and that hasn't happened either. WRE didn't care but won't like less choice for more cost.
So whilst Brexit was achieved, BREXIT cannot be achieved. So the fight will go on and on and on without end until someone says "hang on, this is the opposite of what we wanted" and it all starts rolling back.
Months to two years. The technology is all there, its only politics preventing it.
Just like wind power it doesn't need to be a 100% replacement for imports overnight: any cheaper, cleaner and geopolitically safer alternatives going online are significant.
Clearly domestic production would be of great benefit to the exchequer, but in terms of end prices there's be little or no difference.
But you still haven't answered the question of how quickly a significant (as opposed to token) domestic supply might be possible.
What's happening to Boris Johnson's support? A thread based on a talk I gave last week
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1493135620465729537
And then the energy bill arrives. Geriatric heating system now turned off permanently...
“The UK ambassador’s words were taken out of context & the prospect of joining NATO remains enshrined in the constitution.
“The key for our country is a security guarantee and the best guarantee would be the immediate joining of NATO.”
https://twitter.com/JamWaterhouse/status/1493137793232650242
On the other hand, all the talk of 'tupping' never really bothered me.
Serious change is achieved by a series of 'small' steps. And domestic prices are high because globally supply is low (largely due to an absence of investment in fracking compared to pre-pandemic) while consumption is high (due to a resurgence in demand post-pandemic). Increasing supply would help to address that imbalance.
A country such as the UK needs to either get fracking, secure supply from other sources such as the USA and Qatar, and look at removing dependence on Russian gas.
Right now, the whole of Europe is being held hostage by Mr Putin, we have huge energy inflation and threatened shortages for political reasons.
By how much do bills need to rise, before the country accepts that we get fracking in the short term, and get away from reliance on an unstable dictator? Do it properly, and the UK could be a net exporter of the stuff into Europe next winter.
Sadly.
One imagines that if fusion ever comes off there'll be plenty of opposition to that too.
I particularly like religious greens in the chip industry - given how environmentally destructive chip fabrication is...
I look forward to it coming out in paperback.
I voted remain but I don’t obsess about it daily. It has happened. We have to live with it. Baiting people or being rude about brexit voters is pointless. I’d rejoin in a heartbeat but it won’t happen.
And, you might be surprised to know that I agree that once the Government had intimated that a referendum would be held, it should have been.
https://www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,kishwer-falkner-is-life-now-so-brittle-that-to-ask-questions-is-to-be-deemed-to-be-controversial
The most likely place for Fracking to work has just closed down because it wasn't working (regardless of all the PR issues, not enough gas was being captured for the energy (and water) used.
* and everyone else of course
When I was a kid, I learned about carbon carbon bond formation reactions in chemistry, and I asked 'why don't we just make more oil (e.g. for petrol etc) then?'. Its actually not a stupid question. The teacher's answer was about how difficult it was and that you'd need to expend more energy doing it than you'd recoup.
Now we are growing fuels, so using the power of the sun to make plants produce oils for us. Whether its the best use of land is open to question. I have a colleague who uses algae - the idea that maybe we can do the production in water.
Ultimately you can argue that such hydrocarbons ARE produced by nuclear - from the sun.
So maybe it wasn't a dumb post after all?
'Many people wanted to not just stop immigration but send home all kinds of forrin who weren't from EU countries.'
It should, I think, read 'Many people wanted to not just stop immigration but send home all kinds of forrin.'
And some wanted 'to not stop immigration but send home all kinds of forrin from EU countries.'
@JavierBlas
Aluminum is everywhere, underpinning modern life, from an iPhone to a jetliner to a can of beer to a Tesla car. The problem? The aluminum market is now at its hottest in 30 years | via @bopinion
https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1493140046433636352
What's the breakdown in + and -? Do they like Johnson more or dislike Starmer more?
The second nuclear is fusion, and despite recent good news is still a way off....
Interesting that the LD position then was for a wider EU ref. Wonder how that would have turned out had it happened at the time....
This is hard to copy and will either work cunningly or embugger the car, apparently.
Current odds are 26 for Norris, Ricciardo 41, McLaren 26 (Ladbrokes, oddly, Betfair has all the odds substantially shorter).
Lengthens to 29 and 46 with boost, and I've put dinky sums on. If you've got a free bet, worth considering.