I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
I'm guessing there was a popular version of D&D with an "arse" scale on character alignment that I missed.
People were calling Johnson "evil" here recently.
Arse is not evil.
So the scale goes directly from arse (Johnson) to evil genocidal autocratic terrorist (Putin). Is there nothing in between? Where on the dial do we place lazy, philandering, malevolent, duplicitous, rule- breaking, self-serving liars?
Not in the box marked evil, for sure.
And say just the one person has been killed in Afghanistan who would have escaped and survived but for jolly old Boris, does that tilt the balance?
Was there intent to kill that one person?
Compare with bombing a clearly marked school or theatre used as a shelter for women and children, destroyed with a precision weapon. Likening Boris to Putin in the evil stakes just destroys the credibility of the person making that comparison. Assuming they had any in the first place.
Yes. I never did that, though. I said a. Putin is evil b. johnson is evil c. Putin is more evil than johnson. So that rather misses the point.
How evil is modern Germany for its arms embargo on Ukraine?
Less evil than you suspect given that it's a general ban on sending lethal weapons to conflict zones, and they have made an exception in this case.
It was a callous decision that has doubtless cost many Ukrainian lives.
Why so different from Johnson in Afghanistan?
I strongly doubt that claim. You think German arms exports will have turned this around? Do you think present access to munitions has been the limiting factor in the ability of the Ukrainian army to mount a defence? I don't.
Also, I need to underscore this because I don't think you've quite understood it: Germany has a blanket ban on arms exports to conflict zones for which they have made an exception in supplying Ukraine. The implication in your post is that Germany has singled out Ukraine to not be supplied whereas as the opposite is now much closer to the truth.
Previous: blanket ban Now: blanket ban with pro-Ukraine exception.
The Germans were laughing at the Ukrainians because it would all be over in 48 hours FFS.
They've been shamed into helping out. There's nothing noble in it.
I didn't say there was anything noble, I'm trying to correct your implication that Germany maliciously singled out Ukraine when in reality they first adhered to a blanket ban, then changed to making an exception in Ukraine's favour. I don't want to interfere with your moral judgements but it's better if they aren't based on a misunderstanding of the basic facts.
I know about Germany's blanket ban. It obviously wasn't that important to them or they wouldn't have since abandoned it.
I think the delay in their realisation of this was as "evil" as anything Boris did in Afghanistan.
Who else this year has been affected by Germany's "Blanket Ban"?
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
Yes and No. There is a short term demand for additional sources of fossil fuels. If new UK sources can be brought on stream within two years and pay back within the next ten years, by all means develop these. But the need is an immediate and relatively short term one. Import the fuel if that's how you can meet that need.
Why import when we can be self sufficient
It may upset the green lobby but then transitioning to net zero is 20 plus years anyway
Because that's not actually the problem. The problem is finding alternative supplies to Russian oil and gas by next winter.
Coal. Keep West Burton and Radcliffe on Soar going. Switch Drax's remaining coal units back on. Its dirty and thats bad. But the choice we have is limited.
I find the concept of evil itself to be inaccurate, unhelpful and rooted in superstition.
A moral relativist then
Who gets to define "evil". You? Me?
Such terms are relativist by definition.
I fear we are going to get "God" invoked if we're not careful, and the whole business of that somehow not being a human concept and therefore giving us a moral absolute. And there the argument will end if we're lucky
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
Yes and No. There is a short term demand for additional sources of fossil fuels. If new UK sources can be brought on stream within two years and pay back within the next ten years, by all means develop these. But the need is an immediate and relatively short term one. Import the fuel if that's how you can meet that need.
Why import when we can be self sufficient
It may upset the green lobby but then transitioning to net zero is 20 plus years anyway
Because that's not actually the problem. The problem is finding alternative supplies to Russian oil and gas by next winter.
That’s the immediate problem, but in the short to medium term we should exploit our own resources.
I agree, but as i pointed out the useful opportunities for doing so are limited. This isn't an easy problem to solve, which is why we will probably see high prices, fragile deliveries and continued use of Russian fuels for the time being.
The opportunities may or may not be limited, I’d be interested on Richard Tyndall take on that, but they are there and labour just ruling them out is ridiculous.
Neil Hauer @NeilPHauer · 14h Something I've noticed over the past week or so here: almost every Ukrainian I spoke to has made it clear that they blame not only Putin, but the average Russian as much (or more) for this war. The view is: we overthrew our corrupt government, and they accept their murderous one.
The amount of animosity from the average Ukrainian towards the average Russian is already huge and growing more with every single new airstrike, every new civilian death. The effects of this war will last for generations.
I find the concept of evil itself to be inaccurate, unhelpful and rooted in superstition.
Me too.
People are not good or evil, just open to good or evil thoughts and actions.
Glad someone half agrees. I would say good or bad actions. Evil implies some malevolent force. Which diminishes the agency and choice.
Yes, I would agree with that, though "good and bad" carries baggage too, albeit less than evil.
It is fundamental to Christianity to recognise that we all have the temptation to sin, as well as the possibility of grace. Even those who have committed terrible acts can be saved by repentance.
Yes. Good and bad carry connotations too. There are actions which have positive effects and those which have negative effects. Sometimes we get them wrong and get an unintended result. Intention is therefore key.
On refugees, it occasionally crosses my mind that any delays may not be just due to the status of Ukrainians and the (theoretical) risk they represent, but also to the (theoretical) risk presented by host 'families'.
Most of the refugees are currently women, children and the elderly, I presume. Obviously the vast majority in the UK who wish to host refugees do so from noble intentions, but is it possible that there is a risk that some hosts - a very small minority, granted - take it upon themselves to host refugees with the intention of sexually and/or economically exploiting them? What safeguards are in place to protect refugees; because, sadly, some are needed? The government is unlikely to say out loud that "we have to check that host families are safe". I'm curious as to how other European nations are assessing this risk and ensuring that hosts are 'safe'.
I'm in touch with one of the refugee charities acting as matchmakers, https://www.paih.org/?msclkid=9ea76a06a83911ecb7238f4abf3359ea . I asked them how my local party could help iron out the hurdles caused by the "you must know the name of the refugee" rule. The CEO told me:
------------ For us to match Ukrainians in need with hosts we would need you to register your hosting offer at www.roomforrefugees.com , and we would then assess your offer and match appropriately.
We have a Ukrainian refugees register and will be beginning the process of marching soon. Once our assessment process is complete, we will use The Government's Homes for Ukraine Scheme
We are unable to share personal data. And we must risk check both guests and hosts.
------------- ...which seems fair enough. Their admirable website goes into more detail and stresses both the need to think carefully what you're taking on and the opportunity to discuss it thoroughly before you make an arrangement.
I'm sure that the vast majority of volunteer host sponsors only want to help. I do hear reports of people hoping to exploit the situation in various ways (from simply fancying getting the money with no intention of doing much for the refugee, to actively looking to use them for unpaid help) and it's crucial that the refugee gets a contact to report any exploitation (financial, sexual, whatever), since otherwise they'll feel completely trapped.
Not everyone is welcoming. Friends went on holiday in a caravan to the Kent coast last month (brefore the war) and found themselves parked next to a group of caravans from a Britain First group who had come to do refugee harassment - shouting at the arrivals in boats, telling them to go back, etc. One boasted of pouring beer on the women. They claimed to be "helping the authorities to keep Britain safe". I'm tolerant of different opinions but I'd like to feel this was illegal behaviour (a public order offence, perhaps?) and would be pleased to see them all locked up.
I find the concept of evil itself to be inaccurate, unhelpful and rooted in superstition.
A moral relativist then
Who gets to define "evil". You? Me?
Such terms are relativist by definition.
I fear we are going to get "God" invoked if we're not careful, and the whole business of that somehow not being a human concept and therefore giving us a moral absolute. And there the argument will end if we're lucky
HY can't talk to us about God as he misquotes the Bible. I'm not about to get involved in a debate with him on the subject as he has nothing to say worth listening to.
My point was that evil in the human world is a defined concept not an absolute. I know several people who firmly believe Boris is evil and can point to the deliberately callous way they treat the poor / sick as evidence. When you aren't being reduced to penury and left humiliated and desperate by sneering politicians you won't accept that "evil" is a valid definition for the man. But it could be depending on perspective.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
Good morning Malc.
I am sure the Ayrshire air is fresh and bracing and good that the UK government can do the right thing for the country while Nicola ties herself in knots
I understand Alex S is fully on board especially with all the Scottish jobs involved
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
Yes and No. There is a short term demand for additional sources of fossil fuels. If new UK sources can be brought on stream within two years and pay back within the next ten years, by all means develop these. But the need is an immediate and relatively short term one. Import the fuel if that's how you can meet that need.
Why import when we can be self sufficient
It may upset the green lobby but then transitioning to net zero is 20 plus years anyway
I don't think the UK can be self-sufficient. I think we can produce about half of our own gas requirements. The options are: reduce usage significantly, or import. Most European countries are in the same boat.
No we could produce all our own gas requirements. What stops us doing so is market price vs cost - too low and it is not worth companies doing it - and Government policy.
So have I misunderstood the self-sufficiency index then? Can you explain it to me, because I thought it was the ratio of potential production and usage.
Potential production is always based on existing and planned fields. Oil and gas companies are only allowed to bank proven, viable reserves which they plan on exploiting in the future. But there are huge amounts of additional potential reserves that are known about but which are not planned on being exploited under the current and foreseen price and policy framework. Or at least under that framework until a few weeks ago.
Current estimates for UK Oil and gas reserves run at around 20-40 billion barrels of oil equivalent. At the very peak of UK production we were producing 2.7 million barrels a day. We don't need to produce anything like that much now but that in itself would give us up to 40 years worth of production. And all those figures are based on what is exploitable at an oil price of £40 to £50 dollars a barrel. As the oil price increases then more becomes viable.
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
I'm guessing there was a popular version of D&D with an "arse" scale on character alignment that I missed.
People were calling Johnson "evil" here recently.
Arse is not evil.
So the scale goes directly from arse (Johnson) to evil genocidal autocratic terrorist (Putin). Is there nothing in between? Where on the dial do we place lazy, philandering, malevolent, duplicitous, rule- breaking, self-serving liars?
Not in the box marked evil, for sure.
And say just the one person has been killed in Afghanistan who would have escaped and survived but for jolly old Boris, does that tilt the balance?
Was there intent to kill that one person?
Compare with bombing a clearly marked school or theatre used as a shelter for women and children, destroyed with a precision weapon. Likening Boris to Putin in the evil stakes just destroys the credibility of the person making that comparison. Assuming they had any in the first place.
I agree but it is a very interesting question. Clearly a person who deliberately kills a person is more evil than a person who causes death due to their in action. However I do get more angry with the latter.
There is no point in getting angry with the Putins and the Hitlers of this world. We just need to stop them. Same for serial killers. However people who stand by and allow stuff to happen or cover it up eg NHS executive who preside over and cover up hospital deaths due to their incompetence make me much angrier.
That could be just me. I'm angrier at those who fail to act. The evil are evil. They just have to be stopped.
You need to recalibrate then.
I don't think so. I am with 100% with you on those trying to make an equivalence between Boris and Putin. It is clearly nonsense. I have said so here on this an other similar issues. In fact I am sure you will have seen some angry posts by me here when people do such things. I was the first I think to comment on Boris's crass comment comparing Brexit to Ukraine. It was crass.
The point is getting angry with truly evil people is pointless. They will always be evil and do evil things. They need stopping. I'm 100% behind Ukraine and I really want Putin held to account, but I am not angry with him. There is no point.
Whereas when Boris made that Brexit/Ukraine comment or when a hospital bureaucrat covers up a hospital scandal I get very angry because these aren't inherently evil people and yet they are doing something very wrong. And that makes me very angry.
In a nut shell:
Putin is evil so there is no point in getting angry with him over his deliberate evil Boris is not evil, so when he does stuff that is crass or causes harm I am angry with him.
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
I'm guessing there was a popular version of D&D with an "arse" scale on character alignment that I missed.
People were calling Johnson "evil" here recently.
Arse is not evil.
So the scale goes directly from arse (Johnson) to evil genocidal autocratic terrorist (Putin). Is there nothing in between? Where on the dial do we place lazy, philandering, malevolent, duplicitous, rule- breaking, self-serving liars?
Not in the box marked evil, for sure.
And say just the one person has been killed in Afghanistan who would have escaped and survived but for jolly old Boris, does that tilt the balance?
Was there intent to kill that one person?
Compare with bombing a clearly marked school or theatre used as a shelter for women and children, destroyed with a precision weapon. Likening Boris to Putin in the evil stakes just destroys the credibility of the person making that comparison. Assuming they had any in the first place.
Yes. I never did that, though. I said a. Putin is evil b. johnson is evil c. Putin is more evil than johnson. So that rather misses the point.
The Inuit have 27 different words for snow.
They recognise there is a difference between the icky grey slushy slightly melted snow underfoot and the harsh icefilled snow storm from the northern waste that will kill you in minutes if you are not careful.
Should we not recognise the difference between Boris and Putin similarly?
Yes. As I have been saying all along
sweetness and light in short supply this morning. I am off point to pointing in the sunshine.
The point is they use different words for different things. You are insisting on using the same word and relying on shades of gray
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
Yes and No. There is a short term demand for additional sources of fossil fuels. If new UK sources can be brought on stream within two years and pay back within the next ten years, by all means develop these. But the need is an immediate and relatively short term one. Import the fuel if that's how you can meet that need.
Why import when we can be self sufficient
It may upset the green lobby but then transitioning to net zero is 20 plus years anyway
Because that's not actually the problem. The problem is finding alternative supplies to Russian oil and gas by next winter.
Coal. Keep West Burton and Radcliffe on Soar going. Switch Drax's remaining coal units back on. Its dirty and thats bad. But the choice we have is limited.
Agree. Coal is dirty, but Russian oil and gas is dirtier.
Neil Hauer @NeilPHauer · 14h Something I've noticed over the past week or so here: almost every Ukrainian I spoke to has made it clear that they blame not only Putin, but the average Russian as much (or more) for this war. The view is: we overthrew our corrupt government, and they accept their murderous one.
The amount of animosity from the average Ukrainian towards the average Russian is already huge and growing more with every single new airstrike, every new civilian death. The effects of this war will last for generations.
I think there is an element of truth in that, not that Russians approve of, or like Putin, but there is/was a degree of complicity in accepting Putin's rule, when instead Russia might have changed direction, because the Russian people broadly approved of Putin stabilising the economy and saw their living standards rise as a result. The Russian people are not ignorant, they know what Putin is and how he rules, even if they do not know the details, they would certainly recognise Putin and his ilk. God knows they have enough similar leaders from history to compare with Putin.
It is wrong to put too much blame on 'Russians'. I say this because I wouldn't want to be blamed myself, for bad previous decisions made by British governments.
There is much to learn from the post war reconstruction of Japan and Germany.
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
I'm guessing there was a popular version of D&D with an "arse" scale on character alignment that I missed.
People were calling Johnson "evil" here recently.
Arse is not evil.
So the scale goes directly from arse (Johnson) to evil genocidal autocratic terrorist (Putin). Is there nothing in between? Where on the dial do we place lazy, philandering, malevolent, duplicitous, rule- breaking, self-serving liars?
Not in the box marked evil, for sure.
And say just the one person has been killed in Afghanistan who would have escaped and survived but for jolly old Boris, does that tilt the balance?
Was there intent to kill that one person?
Compare with bombing a clearly marked school or theatre used as a shelter for women and children, destroyed with a precision weapon. Likening Boris to Putin in the evil stakes just destroys the credibility of the person making that comparison. Assuming they had any in the first place.
Yes. I never did that, though. I said a. Putin is evil b. johnson is evil c. Putin is more evil than johnson. So that rather misses the point.
How evil is modern Germany for its arms embargo on Ukraine?
Less evil than you suspect given that it's a general ban on sending lethal weapons to conflict zones, and they have made an exception in this case.
It was a callous decision that has doubtless cost many Ukrainian lives.
Why so different from Johnson in Afghanistan?
I strongly doubt that claim. You think German arms exports will have turned this around? Do you think present access to munitions has been the limiting factor in the ability of the Ukrainian army to mount a defence? I don't.
Also, I need to underscore this because I don't think you've quite understood it: Germany has a blanket ban on arms exports to conflict zones for which they have made an exception in supplying Ukraine. The implication in your post is that Germany has singled out Ukraine to not be supplied whereas as the opposite is now much closer to the truth.
Previous: blanket ban Now: blanket ban with pro-Ukraine exception.
The Germans were laughing at the Ukrainians because it would all be over in 48 hours FFS.
They've been shamed into helping out. There's nothing noble in it.
I didn't say there was anything noble, I'm trying to correct your implication that Germany maliciously singled out Ukraine when in reality they first adhered to a blanket ban, then changed to making an exception in Ukraine's favour. I don't want to interfere with your moral judgements but it's better if they aren't based on a misunderstanding of the basic facts.
Germany seems to have been doing a quiet but probably useful job of backfilling ex Warsaw Pact countries who donate their Soviet era defences to Ukraine. So those countries now have more modern German supplied defences.
I find the concept of evil itself to be inaccurate, unhelpful and rooted in superstition.
A moral relativist then
Who gets to define "evil". You? Me?
Such terms are relativist by definition.
I fear we are going to get "God" invoked if we're not careful, and the whole business of that somehow not being a human concept and therefore giving us a moral absolute. And there the argument will end if we're lucky
HY can't talk to us about God as he misquotes the Bible. I'm not about to get involved in a debate with him on the subject as he has nothing to say worth listening to.
My point was that evil in the human world is a defined concept not an absolute. I know several people who firmly believe Boris is evil and can point to the deliberately callous way they treat the poor / sick as evidence. When you aren't being reduced to penury and left humiliated and desperate by sneering politicians you won't accept that "evil" is a valid definition for the man. But it could be depending on perspective.
It’s been a long time since I studied theology, but relative vs absolute morality was a key philosophical discussion. I don’t think you can just state it as a fact like that
I think the “recent” vote on Trident was 18 July 2016: Lammy, Haigh, Nandy, Rayner & Stevens voted against votes.parliament.uk
A further 8 members of Labour’s front bench outside shadow cabinet voted against: Cadbury, Foxcroft, Griffith, Hamilton, Hussein, Shah, West & Zeichner
And a further 4 members of the shadow cabinet did not vote: Ashworth, Debbonaire, McMahon & Thornberry
I didn't realise that all those Labour mps voted against Trident - not a good look
Pity it is a lie, you are easily taken in by Tory propaganda G.
Why is John Rentoul lying in his fact check?
WTF are you wittering about and who the F*** is John Rentoul
You clearly don't bother reading what you're replying to.
Click on "show previous quotes" and give reading it a go.
read even more rubbish, no thanks, time is short. John Rentoul is a fanny though. PS: There i snothing that could ever happen to make G not believe in the sanctity and worship of the Tories. If the Tories nuked Wales he would agree it was necessary and good for the country.
I find the concept of evil itself to be inaccurate, unhelpful and rooted in superstition.
A moral relativist then
Who gets to define "evil". You? Me?
Such terms are relativist by definition.
I fear we are going to get "God" invoked if we're not careful, and the whole business of that somehow not being a human concept and therefore giving us a moral absolute. And there the argument will end if we're lucky
HY can't talk to us about God as he misquotes the Bible. I'm not about to get involved in a debate with him on the subject as he has nothing to say worth listening to.
My point was that evil in the human world is a defined concept not an absolute. I know several people who firmly believe Boris is evil and can point to the deliberately callous way they treat the poor / sick as evidence. When you aren't being reduced to penury and left humiliated and desperate by sneering politicians you won't accept that "evil" is a valid definition for the man. But it could be depending on perspective.
It’s been a long time since I studied theology, but relative vs absolute morality was a key philosophical discussion. I don’t think you can just state it as a fact like that
I can. In the modern world morality is relative. Something defined by societies and something that different societies have different views about. Now lets go back further in time towards absolute morality defined by religion. That is ALSO relative. Which religion are we considering? Is Christian absolutism compatible with other faith's own definitions? How about Catholic vs Eastern Orthodox vs Anglican etc etc?
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
I'm guessing there was a popular version of D&D with an "arse" scale on character alignment that I missed.
People were calling Johnson "evil" here recently.
Arse is not evil.
So the scale goes directly from arse (Johnson) to evil genocidal autocratic terrorist (Putin). Is there nothing in between? Where on the dial do we place lazy, philandering, malevolent, duplicitous, rule- breaking, self-serving liars?
Not in the box marked evil, for sure.
And say just the one person has been killed in Afghanistan who would have escaped and survived but for jolly old Boris, does that tilt the balance?
Was there intent to kill that one person?
Compare with bombing a clearly marked school or theatre used as a shelter for women and children, destroyed with a precision weapon. Likening Boris to Putin in the evil stakes just destroys the credibility of the person making that comparison. Assuming they had any in the first place.
Yes. I never did that, though. I said a. Putin is evil b. johnson is evil c. Putin is more evil than johnson. So that rather misses the point.
How evil is modern Germany for its arms embargo on Ukraine?
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
I think the “recent” vote on Trident was 18 July 2016: Lammy, Haigh, Nandy, Rayner & Stevens voted against votes.parliament.uk
A further 8 members of Labour’s front bench outside shadow cabinet voted against: Cadbury, Foxcroft, Griffith, Hamilton, Hussein, Shah, West & Zeichner
And a further 4 members of the shadow cabinet did not vote: Ashworth, Debbonaire, McMahon & Thornberry
I didn't realise that all those Labour mps voted against Trident - not a good look
Pity it is a lie, you are easily taken in by Tory propaganda G.
Why is John Rentoul lying in his fact check?
WTF are you wittering about and who the F*** is John Rentoul
You clearly don't bother reading what you're replying to.
Click on "show previous quotes" and give reading it a go.
read even more rubbish, no thanks, time is short. John Rentoul is a fanny though. PS: There i snothing that could ever happen to make G not believe in the sanctity and worship of the Tories. If the Tories nuked Wales he would agree it was necessary and good for the country.
I wouldn't be here to say anything !!!!
G, I am sure they would avoid your house, it woudl have a protective ring round it.
I see Rishi is pushing back against Boris' drive for much more nuclear. Bloody good job too. He gets my vote on that basis alone.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
Nah, mini nukes rock. Also they are made by Rolls Royce who put the Merlin engine in the Spitfire during our Finest Hour. What are you, some kind of Blighty hating remoaner?
We are going to put one in every Tory MPs garden. They couldn't possibly complain, could they?
Well, they wouldn't complain, but why would you be so unkind as to put them near Tory MPs?
Dr Y, it's off-topic, but I saw the following about Rugeley and Amazon and thought you might be interested:
THat is interesting - not least the Amazon policy of chucking people out, or at least giving them an offer they can't refuse, after a relatively short time of service, and never employing them again. Where are the new workers to come from and the old ones to go, one wonders.
Interesting piece, and broadly +ve about Amazon.
The anger toward Amazon, meanwhile, has dissipated. The company has become a better employer, at least in some ways. But it feels as if Amazon and Rugeley have learnt to live alongside each other, rather than to live together. Their stories are running along different tracks at different speeds, their fates not intertwined in the way of company towns of old. Whatever Rugeley’s future (and it doesn’t look bleak by any means), few in the town see Amazon at the heart of it.
Interesting on the politics too. The Tories won the Council by behaving like Lib Dems. Will they hold it?
The "Mining town" to "Amazon town" trope does not stand up, as Amazon only employ 300 from a local pop of 25k.
I'm not sure what Amazon's idea of a cutoff date is, but if it is 2 years which is the minimum AFAIK to get permanent employment status benefits, then that implies quite a turnover. If the average working life is 40 years that means Amazon would need to draw on a pool of 20 x 300 = 6k workers in a steady state.
25K pop - maybe 2/3 working, say 17K working. Some will be professionals or in other fairly permanent long term jobs or just not up to Amazon or Amazon is not up to their wishes as an employer, so maybe leaving a pool of a half, say 8K.
Not a huge amount of scope for expansion unless they draw on wider areas or something changes - business model, whatever. But plenty of time yet.
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
I'm guessing there was a popular version of D&D with an "arse" scale on character alignment that I missed.
People were calling Johnson "evil" here recently.
Arse is not evil.
So the scale goes directly from arse (Johnson) to evil genocidal autocratic terrorist (Putin). Is there nothing in between? Where on the dial do we place lazy, philandering, malevolent, duplicitous, rule- breaking, self-serving liars?
Not in the box marked evil, for sure.
And say just the one person has been killed in Afghanistan who would have escaped and survived but for jolly old Boris, does that tilt the balance?
Was there intent to kill that one person?
Compare with bombing a clearly marked school or theatre used as a shelter for women and children, destroyed with a precision weapon. Likening Boris to Putin in the evil stakes just destroys the credibility of the person making that comparison. Assuming they had any in the first place.
Yes. I never did that, though. I said a. Putin is evil b. johnson is evil c. Putin is more evil than johnson. So that rather misses the point.
How evil is modern Germany for its arms embargo on Ukraine?
Less evil than you suspect given that it's a general ban on sending lethal weapons to conflict zones, and they have made an exception in this case.
It was a callous decision that has doubtless cost many Ukrainian lives.
Why so different from Johnson in Afghanistan?
I strongly doubt that claim. You think German arms exports will have turned this around? Do you think present access to munitions has been the limiting factor in the ability of the Ukrainian army to mount a defence? I don't.
Also, I need to underscore this because I don't think you've quite understood it: Germany has a blanket ban on arms exports to conflict zones for which they have made an exception in supplying Ukraine. The implication in your post is that Germany has singled out Ukraine to not be supplied whereas as the opposite is now much closer to the truth.
Previous: blanket ban Now: blanket ban with pro-Ukraine exception.
The Germans were laughing at the Ukrainians because it would all be over in 48 hours FFS.
They've been shamed into helping out. There's nothing noble in it.
I didn't say there was anything noble, I'm trying to correct your implication that Germany maliciously singled out Ukraine when in reality they first adhered to a blanket ban, then changed to making an exception in Ukraine's favour. I don't want to interfere with your moral judgements but it's better if they aren't based on a misunderstanding of the basic facts.
I know about Germany's blanket ban. It obviously wasn't that important to them or they wouldn't have since abandoned it.
I think the delay in their realisation of this was as "evil" as anything Boris did in Afghanistan.
Who else this year has been affected by Germany's "Blanket Ban"?
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
Good morning Malc.
I am sure the Ayrshire air is fresh and bracing and good that the UK government can do the right thing for the country while Nicola ties herself in knots
I understand Alex S is fully on board especially with all the Scottish jobs involved
Morning G, it is a lovely morning indeed and I hope you are enjoying similar in wales. Nice thought and possibly a few jobs but as before Scotland will see little of any benefits. Therefore it would be better left in the ground.
I think the “recent” vote on Trident was 18 July 2016: Lammy, Haigh, Nandy, Rayner & Stevens voted against votes.parliament.uk
A further 8 members of Labour’s front bench outside shadow cabinet voted against: Cadbury, Foxcroft, Griffith, Hamilton, Hussein, Shah, West & Zeichner
And a further 4 members of the shadow cabinet did not vote: Ashworth, Debbonaire, McMahon & Thornberry
I didn't realise that all those Labour mps voted against Trident - not a good look
Pity it is a lie, you are easily taken in by Tory propaganda G.
Why is John Rentoul lying in his fact check?
WTF are you wittering about and who the F*** is John Rentoul
You clearly don't bother reading what you're replying to.
Click on "show previous quotes" and give reading it a go.
read even more rubbish, no thanks, time is short. John Rentoul is a fanny though. PS: There i snothing that could ever happen to make G not believe in the sanctity and worship of the Tories. If the Tories nuked Wales he would agree it was necessary and good for the country.
I wouldn't be here to say anything !!!!
G, I am sure they would avoid your house, it woudl have a protective ring round it.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Seek help for that anger, Malc. I hope you find peace in the sunshine
I think the “recent” vote on Trident was 18 July 2016: Lammy, Haigh, Nandy, Rayner & Stevens voted against votes.parliament.uk
A further 8 members of Labour’s front bench outside shadow cabinet voted against: Cadbury, Foxcroft, Griffith, Hamilton, Hussein, Shah, West & Zeichner
And a further 4 members of the shadow cabinet did not vote: Ashworth, Debbonaire, McMahon & Thornberry
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
"Rape and pillage"? For fuck's sake. It's not 1544 you mental case.
Were you not told to FUCK OFF arsehole. Post your shite on someone else's timeline.
I find the concept of evil itself to be inaccurate, unhelpful and rooted in superstition.
A moral relativist then
Who gets to define "evil". You? Me?
Such terms are relativist by definition.
I fear we are going to get "God" invoked if we're not careful, and the whole business of that somehow not being a human concept and therefore giving us a moral absolute. And there the argument will end if we're lucky
HY can't talk to us about God as he misquotes the Bible. I'm not about to get involved in a debate with him on the subject as he has nothing to say worth listening to.
My point was that evil in the human world is a defined concept not an absolute. I know several people who firmly believe Boris is evil and can point to the deliberately callous way they treat the poor / sick as evidence. When you aren't being reduced to penury and left humiliated and desperate by sneering politicians you won't accept that "evil" is a valid definition for the man. But it could be depending on perspective.
It’s been a long time since I studied theology, but relative vs absolute morality was a key philosophical discussion. I don’t think you can just state it as a fact like that
I can. In the modern world morality is relative. Something defined by societies and something that different societies have different views about. Now lets go back further in time towards absolute morality defined by religion. That is ALSO relative. Which religion are we considering? Is Christian absolutism compatible with other faith's own definitions? How about Catholic vs Eastern Orthodox vs Anglican etc etc?
I don’t really have the energy for this debate today (still getting over covid).
But most religions have similar core principles - “thou shalt not murder” for example - which are simply the building blocks of a functioning society rather than anything intrinsically religious.
But if you have a society which says murder is ok - let’s say the Thugee Cult* - then relative morality would say “it’s ok, it’s their belief system” while absolute morality says “murder is wrong”
For me morality is absolute - but equally I would be strict on the definitions vs try to overlay it with too many nice to haves.
* ignoring the debate on whether the Thugees were real or invented
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
Here's the problem though: Net Zero even if a success, decades down the line, doesn't make anything "better" it just stops things getting worse. It's sacrifice for a very long term payoff of neutrality at best.
It's not hard to see how energy security and the cost of living will trump it. For it to get real traction it has to be make life cleaner, nicer, better, cheaper, more fun.. all the positive things the green movement hate.
If one accepts that there are real risks of climate change, then this feels like an opportunity to do something about it. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending it’s 1975 isn’t going to help.
Not arguing for that. But the framing is all wrong.
No-one's going to vote for perpetual self-sacrifice and doom outside of a few fanatics.
Yes, hope is better at motivating people than fear.
I think this is a general problem for the Left, wider than on Green issues. The Thatcherite rout casts a long shadow.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Guys I know we are tolerant of @malcolmg dyspeptic ramblings.
But this sort of comment doesn’t add anything to the site.
Bit like your comments , get a life. Jessie boy running to teacher, just imagine you at school snitching on everyone. Have you ever added anything of value to the site
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
I'm guessing there was a popular version of D&D with an "arse" scale on character alignment that I missed.
People were calling Johnson "evil" here recently.
Arse is not evil.
So the scale goes directly from arse (Johnson) to evil genocidal autocratic terrorist (Putin). Is there nothing in between? Where on the dial do we place lazy, philandering, malevolent, duplicitous, rule- breaking, self-serving liars?
Not in the box marked evil, for sure.
And say just the one person has been killed in Afghanistan who would have escaped and survived but for jolly old Boris, does that tilt the balance?
Was there intent to kill that one person?
Compare with bombing a clearly marked school or theatre used as a shelter for women and children, destroyed with a precision weapon. Likening Boris to Putin in the evil stakes just destroys the credibility of the person making that comparison. Assuming they had any in the first place.
Yes. I never did that, though. I said a. Putin is evil b. johnson is evil c. Putin is more evil than johnson. So that rather misses the point.
How evil is modern Germany for its arms embargo on Ukraine?
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Guys I know we are tolerant of @malcolmg dyspeptic ramblings.
But this sort of comment doesn’t add anything to the site.
Bit like your comments , get a life. Jessie boy running to teacher, just imagine you at school snitching on everyone. Have you ever added anything of value to the site
Jessie boy is not the preferred nomenclature in the 21st century Malcolm. Try keeping slurs out of your insults.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Guys I know we are tolerant of @malcolmg dyspeptic ramblings.
But this sort of comment doesn’t add anything to the site.
Bit like your comments , get a life. Jessie boy running to teacher, just imagine you at school snitching on everyone. Have you ever added anything of value to the site
Calm down!
I am perfectly calm thank you very much, you seem to want to be the big bwana ordering people about on here.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Guys I know we are tolerant of @malcolmg dyspeptic ramblings.
But this sort of comment doesn’t add anything to the site.
Bit like your comments , get a life. Jessie boy running to teacher, just imagine you at school snitching on everyone. Have you ever added anything of value to the site
Jessie boy is not the preferred nomenclature in the 21st century Malcolm. Try keeping slurs out of your insults.
I cannot help being a 20th century person, and in my day it was not a slur, merely that you were wimpy. All in the mind of the beholder it seems as having looked at 21st century usage I see it is all woke now and has been twisted to be something else. I come from a much more innocent age.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Guys I know we are tolerant of @malcolmg dyspeptic ramblings.
But this sort of comment doesn’t add anything to the site.
Bit like your comments , get a life. Jessie boy running to teacher, just imagine you at school snitching on everyone. Have you ever added anything of value to the site
Jessie boy is not the preferred nomenclature in the 21st century Malcolm. Try keeping slurs out of your insults.
I cannot help being a 20th century person, and in my day it was not a slur, merely that you were wimpy. All in the mind of the beholder it seems as having looked at 21st century usage I see it is all woke now and has been twisted to be something else. I come from a much more oinnocent age.
Ah yes, surprised you didn't go with 'should have a thicker skin'.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Guys I know we are tolerant of @malcolmg dyspeptic ramblings.
But this sort of comment doesn’t add anything to the site.
Bit like your comments , get a life. Jessie boy running to teacher, just imagine you at school snitching on everyone. Have you ever added anything of value to the site
Jessie boy is not the preferred nomenclature in the 21st century Malcolm. Try keeping slurs out of your insults.
I cannot help being a 20th century person, and in my day it was not a slur, merely that you were wimpy. All in the mind of the beholder it seems as having looked at 21st century usage I see it is all woke now and has been twisted to be something else. I come from a much more oinnocent age.
Ah yes, surprised you didn't go with 'should have a thicker skin'.
I have been educated now though and will advance to the 21st century.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
True, but it’s not unfair to blame Johnson for carelessly increasing the risk to her.
I’d say the question to ask the Johnson defending rump is do they think that BJ experienced a single moment of unease, remorse or lost sleep over Nazanin (a question that of course could be asked about everything relating to him aside from what aided his ambition and personal comfort)?
The Putin comparison is of course absurd; has someone declared open season on ridiculous, hyperbolic analogies or something? BJ is of course crass, narcisstic, amoral, lying Trump without the grifting talent.
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
I'm guessing there was a popular version of D&D with an "arse" scale on character alignment that I missed.
People were calling Johnson "evil" here recently.
Arse is not evil.
So the scale goes directly from arse (Johnson) to evil genocidal autocratic terrorist (Putin). Is there nothing in between? Where on the dial do we place lazy, philandering, malevolent, duplicitous, rule- breaking, self-serving liars?
Not in the box marked evil, for sure.
And say just the one person has been killed in Afghanistan who would have escaped and survived but for jolly old Boris, does that tilt the balance?
Was there intent to kill that one person?
Compare with bombing a clearly marked school or theatre used as a shelter for women and children, destroyed with a precision weapon. Likening Boris to Putin in the evil stakes just destroys the credibility of the person making that comparison. Assuming they had any in the first place.
I agree but it is a very interesting question. Clearly a person who deliberately kills a person is more evil than a person who causes death due to their in action. However I do get more angry with the latter.
There is no point in getting angry with the Putins and the Hitlers of this world. We just need to stop them. Same for serial killers. However people who stand by and allow stuff to happen or cover it up eg NHS executive who preside over and cover up hospital deaths due to their incompetence make me much angrier.
That could be just me. I'm angrier at those who fail to act. The evil are evil. They just have to be stopped.
You need to recalibrate then.
I don't think so. I am with 100% with you on those trying to make an equivalence between Boris and Putin. It is clearly nonsense. I have said so here on this an other similar issues. In fact I am sure you will have seen some angry posts by me here when people do such things. I was the first I think to comment on Boris's crass comment comparing Brexit to Ukraine. It was crass.
The point is getting angry with truly evil people is pointless. They will always be evil and do evil things. They need stopping. I'm 100% behind Ukraine and I really want Putin held to account, but I am not angry with him. There is no point.
Whereas when Boris made that Brexit/Ukraine comment or when a hospital bureaucrat covers up a hospital scandal I get very angry because these aren't inherently evil people and yet they are doing something very wrong. And that makes me very angry.
In a nut shell:
Putin is evil so there is no point in getting angry with him over his deliberate evil Boris is not evil, so when he does stuff that is crass or causes harm I am angry with him.
Putin is evil. Shrug shoulders. "Oh well, evil's gonna evil...."
No. Because that way leads to giving him a pass and turning inwards on our own failings, because, you know, maybe Russia has a point....
A mother and her children run for cover to a shelter. Putin's troops fire a missile. Moments later, there are little body parts over a 50 yard radius. Because she and her nation would not bow down to the egomaniacal evil turd who has a God complex.
Get angry. Very angry. We all can do things when we are angry enough. We can make sacrifices we otherwise wouldn't do. We can shout with a voice that doesn't get heard when we aren't angry.
I find the concept of evil itself to be inaccurate, unhelpful and rooted in superstition.
A moral relativist then
Who gets to define "evil". You? Me?
Such terms are relativist by definition.
I fear we are going to get "God" invoked if we're not careful, and the whole business of that somehow not being a human concept and therefore giving us a moral absolute. And there the argument will end if we're lucky
HY can't talk to us about God as he misquotes the Bible. I'm not about to get involved in a debate with him on the subject as he has nothing to say worth listening to.
My point was that evil in the human world is a defined concept not an absolute. I know several people who firmly believe Boris is evil and can point to the deliberately callous way they treat the poor / sick as evidence. When you aren't being reduced to penury and left humiliated and desperate by sneering politicians you won't accept that "evil" is a valid definition for the man. But it could be depending on perspective.
It’s been a long time since I studied theology, but relative vs absolute morality was a key philosophical discussion. I don’t think you can just state it as a fact like that
I can. In the modern world morality is relative. Something defined by societies and something that different societies have different views about. Now lets go back further in time towards absolute morality defined by religion. That is ALSO relative. Which religion are we considering? Is Christian absolutism compatible with other faith's own definitions? How about Catholic vs Eastern Orthodox vs Anglican etc etc?
I don’t really have the energy for this debate today (still getting over covid).
But most religions have similar core principles - “thou shalt not murder” for example - which are simply the building blocks of a functioning society rather than anything intrinsically religious.
But if you have a society which says murder is ok - let’s say the Thugee Cult* - then relative morality would say “it’s ok, it’s their belief system” while absolute morality says “murder is wrong”
For me morality is absolute - but equally I would be strict on the definitions vs try to overlay it with too many nice to haves.
* ignoring the debate on whether the Thugees were real or invented
Sure. Thou shall not commit murder. Unless its a crusade. Or the inquisition. Etc etc. Thou shall not commit adultery. Unless you are permitted.
The problem with all of this is that the definitions of things like "murder" are themselves flexible. And when the Pope - the literal voice of God - is sanctioning murder, where does the definition of evil sit?
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
If we are buying from Russia and shipping around the world , how could it be worse producing it on our own doorstep. Nuclear needs huge government subsidies and takes forever to get in place. Renewables should be invested though this lot will just use it to fleece the public.
I see Rishi is pushing back against Boris' drive for much more nuclear. Bloody good job too. He gets my vote on that basis alone.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
Nah, mini nukes rock. Also they are made by Rolls Royce who put the Merlin engine in the Spitfire during our Finest Hour. What are you, some kind of Blighty hating remoaner?
We are going to put one in every Tory MPs garden. They couldn't possibly complain, could they?
Well, they wouldn't complain, but why would you be so unkind as to put them near Tory MPs?
Dr Y, it's off-topic, but I saw the following about Rugeley and Amazon and thought you might be interested:
THat is interesting - not least the Amazon policy of chucking people out, or at least giving them an offer they can't refuse, after a relatively short time of service, and never employing them again. Where are the new workers to come from and the old ones to go, one wonders.
Interesting piece, and broadly +ve about Amazon.
The anger toward Amazon, meanwhile, has dissipated. The company has become a better employer, at least in some ways. But it feels as if Amazon and Rugeley have learnt to live alongside each other, rather than to live together. Their stories are running along different tracks at different speeds, their fates not intertwined in the way of company towns of old. Whatever Rugeley’s future (and it doesn’t look bleak by any means), few in the town see Amazon at the heart of it.
Interesting on the politics too. The Tories won the Council by behaving like Lib Dems. Will they hold it?
The "Mining town" to "Amazon town" trope does not stand up, as Amazon only employ 300 from a local pop of 25k.
I'm not sure what Amazon's idea of a cutoff date is, but if it is 2 years which is the minimum AFAIK to get permanent employment status benefits, then that implies quite a turnover. If the average working life is 40 years that means Amazon would need to draw on a pool of 20 x 300 = 6k workers in a steady state.
25K pop - maybe 2/3 working, say 17K working. Some will be professionals or in other fairly permanent long term jobs or just not up to Amazon or Amazon is not up to their wishes as an employer, so maybe leaving a pool of a half, say 8K.
Not a huge amount of scope for expansion unless they draw on wider areas or something changes - business model, whatever. But plenty of time yet.
At the moment there is a big project to build a designer village at Scotch Corner.
Recently added to the plan is a large (Amazon size) warehouse. Problem is Richmond is at full employment and there is already another warehouse in Darlington so no real local workforce.
Now the sane option would be to build it 5 miles down at Catterick but that land is all MoD or national park so not a solution. But the reality is at the moment the agencies who supply Amazon with staff can’t find staff.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Guys I know we are tolerant of @malcolmg dyspeptic ramblings.
But this sort of comment doesn’t add anything to the site.
Bit like your comments , get a life. Jessie boy running to teacher, just imagine you at school snitching on everyone. Have you ever added anything of value to the site
Jessie boy is not the preferred nomenclature in the 21st century Malcolm. Try keeping slurs out of your insults.
I cannot help being a 20th century person, and in my day it was not a slur, merely that you were wimpy. All in the mind of the beholder it seems as having looked at 21st century usage I see it is all woke now and has been twisted to be something else. I come from a much more innocent age.
A more innocent age when men were men and if they got touchy-feely with the staff that was just a perk of power.. right Malky?
You really are a jerk of the first order. Back to your usual touchy feely with yourself saddo.
This forum is in danger of becoming an echo chamber of anti-Borisovian bile
The Tories are only 4-5 points behind, in mid-term, after 12 years in office. Their leader is a marmitey fellow, but is famously good at campaigning. He faces a boring plank of an opposition leader, with no campaigning record, a boring Woke Islington lawyer who cannot say “only women have cervixes”
I get that Boris gives apoplexy to many. Including 90% of PB-ers. And I can see why (especially if you’re in any way Woke, Remoanery, etc). But this red mist of anger and contempt risks clouding collective PB judgement.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Guys I know we are tolerant of @malcolmg dyspeptic ramblings.
But this sort of comment doesn’t add anything to the site.
Bit like your comments , get a life. Jessie boy running to teacher, just imagine you at school snitching on everyone. Have you ever added anything of value to the site
Jessie boy is not the preferred nomenclature in the 21st century Malcolm. Try keeping slurs out of your insults.
I cannot help being a 20th century person, and in my day it was not a slur, merely that you were wimpy. All in the mind of the beholder it seems as having looked at 21st century usage I see it is all woke now and has been twisted to be something else. I come from a much more innocent age.
A more innocent age when men were men and if they got touchy-feely with the staff that was just a perk of power.. right Malky?
A humble man goes jogging Keeping fit And why does he do this? Because this is no ordinary man. This is Boris Johnson: plain, no frills, unassuming. But he knows he is leader of the free world & must keep in top condition for all of us. We are blessed.👍🇬🇧
This forum is in danger of becoming an echo chamber of anti-Borisovian bile
The Tories are only 4-5 points behind, in mid-term, after 12 years in office. Their leader is a marmitey fellow, but is famously good at campaigning. He faces a boring plank of an opposition leader, with no campaigning record, a boring Woke Islington lawyer who cannot say “only women have cervixes”
I get that Boris gives apoplexy to many. Including 90% of PB-ers. And I can see why (especially if you’re in any way Woke, Remoanery, etc). But this red mist of anger and contempt risks clouding collective PB judgement.
He could still easily win the next GE
I’m not sure that you’re quite the chap to carry a message warning of the red mist of anger and contempt clouding collective PB judgement.
This forum is in danger of becoming an echo chamber of anti-Borisovian bile
The Tories are only 4-5 points behind, in mid-term, after 12 years in office. Their leader is a marmitey fellow, but is famously good at campaigning. He faces a boring plank of an opposition leader, with no campaigning record, a boring Woke Islington lawyer who cannot say “only women have cervixes”
I get that Boris gives apoplexy to many. Including 90% of PB-ers. And I can see why (especially if you’re in any way Woke, Remoanery, etc). But this red mist of anger and contempt risks clouding collective PB judgement.
He could still easily win the next GE
I’m not sure that you’re quite the chap to carry a message warning of the red mist of anger and contempt clouding collective PB judgement.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
That's nice but the planet doesn't care about a war.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
They aren't. The planet is on fire, we need to stop producing CO2 as soon as possible, we are running out of time and I am deeply sceptical of the Tories hitting net zero if this is the approach they are taking to it.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
That's nice but the planet doesn't care about a war.
It is not nice, it is the real world and real politics
This forum is in danger of becoming an echo chamber of anti-Borisovian bile
The Tories are only 4-5 points behind, in mid-term, after 12 years in office. Their leader is a marmitey fellow, but is famously good at campaigning. He faces a boring plank of an opposition leader, with no campaigning record, a boring Woke Islington lawyer who cannot say “only women have cervixes”
I get that Boris gives apoplexy to many. Including 90% of PB-ers. And I can see why (especially if you’re in any way Woke, Remoanery, etc). But this red mist of anger and contempt risks clouding collective PB judgement.
He could still easily win the next GE
I’m not sure that you’re quite the chap to carry a message warning of the red mist of anger and contempt clouding collective PB judgement.
Surely I’m the poacher turned gamekeeper, in this instance
Talking of apoplexy, I have an internal malc-o-meter which estimates that the likelihood of a YES vote in an imminent indyref is inversely related to the invective spilling out of @malcolmg
In short: the angrier he gets the less likely is Sindy, and vice versa
Given that he’s always quite angry, this has reassured me the separatists will not win any time soon
Judging by today’s performance, the chances of a YES vote right now seem minuscule, and indyref2 has receded into the late 2040s
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
That's nice but the planet doesn't care about a war.
It is not nice, it is the real world and real politics
You'll be dead by the time it matters, how very convenient for you
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
That's nice but the planet doesn't care about a war.
It is not nice, it is the real world and real politics
You'll be dead by the time it matters, how very convenient for you
Get in the bin
Only giving back what he gave to me when he insulted my grandmother.
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
I'm guessing there was a popular version of D&D with an "arse" scale on character alignment that I missed.
People were calling Johnson "evil" here recently.
Arse is not evil.
So the scale goes directly from arse (Johnson) to evil genocidal autocratic terrorist (Putin). Is there nothing in between? Where on the dial do we place lazy, philandering, malevolent, duplicitous, rule- breaking, self-serving liars?
Not in the box marked evil, for sure.
And say just the one person has been killed in Afghanistan who would have escaped and survived but for jolly old Boris, does that tilt the balance?
Was there intent to kill that one person?
Compare with bombing a clearly marked school or theatre used as a shelter for women and children, destroyed with a precision weapon. Likening Boris to Putin in the evil stakes just destroys the credibility of the person making that comparison. Assuming they had any in the first place.
I agree but it is a very interesting question. Clearly a person who deliberately kills a person is more evil than a person who causes death due to their in action. However I do get more angry with the latter.
There is no point in getting angry with the Putins and the Hitlers of this world. We just need to stop them. Same for serial killers. However people who stand by and allow stuff to happen or cover it up eg NHS executive who preside over and cover up hospital deaths due to their incompetence make me much angrier.
That could be just me. I'm angrier at those who fail to act. The evil are evil. They just have to be stopped.
You need to recalibrate then.
I don't think so. I am with 100% with you on those trying to make an equivalence between Boris and Putin. It is clearly nonsense. I have said so here on this an other similar issues. In fact I am sure you will have seen some angry posts by me here when people do such things. I was the first I think to comment on Boris's crass comment comparing Brexit to Ukraine. It was crass.
The point is getting angry with truly evil people is pointless. They will always be evil and do evil things. They need stopping. I'm 100% behind Ukraine and I really want Putin held to account, but I am not angry with him. There is no point.
Whereas when Boris made that Brexit/Ukraine comment or when a hospital bureaucrat covers up a hospital scandal I get very angry because these aren't inherently evil people and yet they are doing something very wrong. And that makes me very angry.
In a nut shell:
Putin is evil so there is no point in getting angry with him over his deliberate evil Boris is not evil, so when he does stuff that is crass or causes harm I am angry with him.
Putin is evil. Shrug shoulders. "Oh well, evil's gonna evil...."
No. Because that way leads to giving him a pass and turning inwards on our own failings, because, you know, maybe Russia has a point....
A mother and her children run for cover to a shelter. Putin's troops fire a missile. Moments later, there are little body parts over a 50 yard radius. Because she and her nation would not bow down to the egomaniacal evil turd who has a God complex.
Get angry. Very angry. We all can do things when we are angry enough. We can make sacrifices we otherwise wouldn't do. We can shout with a voice that doesn't get heard when we aren't angry.
I think you are getting, getting angry mixed up with doing something. I can and do stuff without getting angry I never shrug my shoulders.
I do stuff or support people who do stuff rather than get angry. We are going to open our home to refugees if accepted. We donate. We both get involved with lots of campaigns as you will have seen from posts here and always have.
And what makes me angry is people who stand by and watch or do harm by their inaction.
You really have misunderstood my post.
There is no point in getting angry with evil people. Get angry with those who aren't evil but do sod all to sort it out or say or do crass things that make it worse.
I am/was really angry with our crass asylum effort at the start as you will of seen from my numerous posts.
What is the point of me getting angry with Putin? Doing is what matters, so I get angry with those who do not act.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
They aren't. The planet is on fire, we need to stop producing CO2 as soon as possible, we are running out of time and I am deeply sceptical of the Tories hitting net zero if this is the approach they are taking to it.
Surely you can see that we will be importing oil and gas for the next 20 years or so as we transition to net zero and all HMG is proposing is to become self sufficient, while at the same time investing in green energy with more windfarms and insulating home
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
That's nice but the planet doesn't care about a war.
It is not nice, it is the real world and real politics
You'll be dead by the time it matters, how very convenient for you
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
On 4 nuclear may not be a dead end in the UK - but it depends on whether Rolls Royce’s mini nuke design works.
And the thing is we do need baseline power and there are no easy solutions there. If the wind doesn’t blow for a few days no amount of storage is going to help
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
True, but it’s not unfair to blame Johnson for carelessly increasing the risk to her.
I’d say the question to ask the Johnson defending rump is do they think that BJ experienced a single moment of unease, remorse or lost sleep over Nazanin (a question that of course could be asked about everything relating to him aside from what aided his ambition and personal comfort)?
The Putin comparison is of course absurd; has someone declared open season on ridiculous, hyperbolic analogies or something? BJ is of course crass, narcisstic, amoral, lying Trump without the grifting talent.
The Trump analogy is ALSO hyperbolic nonsense. Boris has many many flaws but he hasn’t tried to overthrow the democratic process
The only British people that tried that were, you know, his most bitter opponents: the Remoaners
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
That's nice but the planet doesn't care about a war.
It is not nice, it is the real world and real politics
You'll be dead by the time it matters, how very convenient for you
Get in the bin
Only giving back what he gave to me when he insulted my grandmother.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
I find the lack of UK focus on tidal power a deeply tragic reflection on our political classes and interest groups.
All the benefits of wind/solar but super super predictable, basically free power.
Recently went to a talk by these people https://www.ourtide.org/ who are trying to just raise awareness of the pro/cons of each option.
If we committed to doing tidal then ramping up north sea gas/oil in the short term would make sense (at least then we would have a plan) instead we go for the harder nuclear options.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
I would question the value of an energy policy whose aim is to annoy the greens. But that's a perennial problem with this government. Has it come up with any policy yet that is worth the paper it's written on?
This forum is in danger of becoming an echo chamber of anti-Borisovian bile
The Tories are only 4-5 points behind, in mid-term, after 12 years in office. Their leader is a marmitey fellow, but is famously good at campaigning. He faces a boring plank of an opposition leader, with no campaigning record, a boring Woke Islington lawyer who cannot say “only women have cervixes”
I get that Boris gives apoplexy to many. Including 90% of PB-ers. And I can see why (especially if you’re in any way Woke, Remoanery, etc). But this red mist of anger and contempt risks clouding collective PB judgement.
He could still easily win the next GE
I’m not sure that you’re quite the chap to carry a message warning of the red mist of anger and contempt clouding collective PB judgement.
Surely I’m the poacher turned gamekeeper, in this instance
Talking of apoplexy, I have an internal malc-o-meter which estimates that the likelihood of a YES vote in an imminent indyref is inversely related to the invective spilling out of @malcolmg
In short: the angrier he gets the less likely is Sindy, and vice versa
Given that he’s always quite angry, this has reassured me the separatists will not win any time soon
Judging by today’s performance, the chances of a YES vote right now seem minuscule, and indyref2 has receded into the late 2040s
I’m old school, I use the ‘SNP honeymoon about to end’ guys being unerringly consistent as my metric of Indy being within our grasp.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
I would question the value of an energy policy whose aim is to annoy the greens. But that's a perennial problem with this government. Has it come up with any policy yet that is worth the paper it's written on?
This week HMG announces the energy policy going forward and this will be very popular as we become self sufficient in oil and gas
The graphic shows the evolution in how confident people are that Russia will be defeated.
Encouraging for Ukraine, discouraging for Putin. A nation confidently united, like that, can literally never be defeated. Unless he deports them ALL to Siberia
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
True, but it’s not unfair to blame Johnson for carelessly increasing the risk to her.
I’d say the question to ask the Johnson defending rump is do they think that BJ experienced a single moment of unease, remorse or lost sleep over Nazanin (a question that of course could be asked about everything relating to him aside from what aided his ambition and personal comfort)?
The Putin comparison is of course absurd; has someone declared open season on ridiculous, hyperbolic analogies or something? BJ is of course crass, narcisstic, amoral, lying Trump without the grifting talent.
The Trump analogy is ALSO hyperbolic nonsense. Boris has many many flaws but he hasn’t tried to overthrow the democratic process
The only British people that tried that were, you know, his most bitter opponents: the Remoaners
I like how you can pivot from saying your political opponents should be locked up to calling OTHER PEOPLE Trumpist in the space of a few hours.
Still, you've given the world a good euphemism for an ended torrent of brass-necked hypocrisy: "I'm poacher turned gamekeeper!" So, er, well done.
Another angle to Johnson's Brexit comments is that the EU is quite likely to disappoint Ukraine regarding how willing it will be to conduct a fast accession process. It's also not absurd to argue that being caught in a tug of war between two competing customs unions was one of the root causes of the conflict, and Brexit gives the UK the opportunity to stand for a different model.
I'm sorry, but it definitely is absurd to suggest that competing customs unions was the cause of the conflict. The cause of the conflict was entirely in the fascist fever dream of a small number of people at the heart of the Russian state, and the despotic and violent power structures that preserve them in power. There is no sense in which Ukraine, the EU, the UK, the USA, or anyone outside the Kremlin is in any meaningful way a cause, even a minor one.
It's rarely as simple as this in international politics, but this time it is.
Russian nationalists were enraged by the prospect of the EU customs border regime applying between what they saw as the Russian cities of Kharkiv and Belgorod. There is a remarkable parallel with the issues raised by the Northern Ireland backstop. This is not a justification of Russian agression, but it's necessary to understand the background.
Yes, I'm aware of the excuses that some Russians have given, but it's a little like a man murdering his ex because she went on a date with someone else. You would never suggest that the date was a root cause because all that does is raise the awkward question of why 99.99% of similar dates don't result in the same response. Also, if it hadn't been this "provocation" it would have been another. The Russian narrative of the causes of the war relies on an already absurd and broken conception of who is allowed to do what, to the extent that it carried zero explanatory weight.
It's not an excuse but does have explanatory weight.
Putin hasn't invaded Belarus. Why? Because he didn't need to. Ideally he would have wanted to keep Ukraine in the same position. Ukrainians had every right to choose a different path, but many in the West were naive about what the stakes were.
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
I'm guessing there was a popular version of D&D with an "arse" scale on character alignment that I missed.
People were calling Johnson "evil" here recently.
Arse is not evil.
So the scale goes directly from arse (Johnson) to evil genocidal autocratic terrorist (Putin). Is there nothing in between? Where on the dial do we place lazy, philandering, malevolent, duplicitous, rule- breaking, self-serving liars?
Not in the box marked evil, for sure.
And say just the one person has been killed in Afghanistan who would have escaped and survived but for jolly old Boris, does that tilt the balance?
Was there intent to kill that one person?
Compare with bombing a clearly marked school or theatre used as a shelter for women and children, destroyed with a precision weapon. Likening Boris to Putin in the evil stakes just destroys the credibility of the person making that comparison. Assuming they had any in the first place.
I agree but it is a very interesting question. Clearly a person who deliberately kills a person is more evil than a person who causes death due to their in action. However I do get more angry with the latter.
There is no point in getting angry with the Putins and the Hitlers of this world. We just need to stop them. Same for serial killers. However people who stand by and allow stuff to happen or cover it up eg NHS executive who preside over and cover up hospital deaths due to their incompetence make me much angrier.
That could be just me. I'm angrier at those who fail to act. The evil are evil. They just have to be stopped.
You need to recalibrate then.
I don't think so. I am with 100% with you on those trying to make an equivalence between Boris and Putin. It is clearly nonsense. I have said so here on this an other similar issues. In fact I am sure you will have seen some angry posts by me here when people do such things. I was the first I think to comment on Boris's crass comment comparing Brexit to Ukraine. It was crass.
The point is getting angry with truly evil people is pointless. They will always be evil and do evil things. They need stopping. I'm 100% behind Ukraine and I really want Putin held to account, but I am not angry with him. There is no point.
Whereas when Boris made that Brexit/Ukraine comment or when a hospital bureaucrat covers up a hospital scandal I get very angry because these aren't inherently evil people and yet they are doing something very wrong. And that makes me very angry.
In a nut shell:
Putin is evil so there is no point in getting angry with him over his deliberate evil Boris is not evil, so when he does stuff that is crass or causes harm I am angry with him.
Putin is evil. Shrug shoulders. "Oh well, evil's gonna evil...."
No. Because that way leads to giving him a pass and turning inwards on our own failings, because, you know, maybe Russia has a point....
A mother and her children run for cover to a shelter. Putin's troops fire a missile. Moments later, there are little body parts over a 50 yard radius. Because she and her nation would not bow down to the egomaniacal evil turd who has a God complex.
Get angry. Very angry. We all can do things when we are angry enough. We can make sacrifices we otherwise wouldn't do. We can shout with a voice that doesn't get heard when we aren't angry.
I think you are getting, getting angry mixed up with doing something. I can and do stuff without getting angry I never shrug my shoulders.
I do stuff or support people who do stuff rather than get angry. We are going to open our home to refugees if accepted. We donate. We both get involved with lots of campaigns as you will have seen from posts here and always have.
And what makes me angry is people who stand by and watch or do harm by their inaction.
You really have misunderstood my post.
There is no point in getting angry with evil people. Get angry with those who aren't evil but do sod all to sort it out or say or do crass things that make it worse.
I am/was really angry with our crass asylum effort at the start as you will of seen from my numerous posts.
What is the point of me getting angry with Putin? Doing is what matters, so I get angry with those who do not act.
Just FYI I have spent my whole life campaigning on issues. By the time I was 40 I was lucky enough to be financially independent so I left work and set up my own company and worked part time. The rest of the time I spent campaigning on issues. Sometimes I get to emotionally involved but only with those who should know better who obstruct or do nothing to help. For instance I can't do anything about a terrorist who kills and maims or a starving child. I can do something to help after the event and get angry with those who obstruct me.
The circumstances of the attack are being investigated, but police said a terror attack had been ruled out.
"It is an accident, a tragic one. The car hit the group and tried to carry on but it was quickly stopped by the police," police spokeswoman Cristina Ianoco said.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
magically the Scottish oil and gas that had ran out and was worthless has suddenly reappeared and london now need to pillage Scotland yet again whilst sneering as ever no doubt.
We could do the whole Matrix thing and power the whole nation off actual scotsmen.
Or, we already do. Have you ever had a dream, malcolm, that you seemed so sure it was real? But if you were unable to wake up from that dream, how would you tell the difference between the dream world & the real world?
Fuck that plot point annoys me with the stupidity of the physics. Ruins the film when they could so easily have pinched an idea from Hyperion, and had the machines cocooning the humans so as to use their brains as extra computing power.
Well most of it is run off Scottish windpower, Scottish oil and gas so be little different to what it is now. These fcukwits have ranted for years about how there was no oil left and as if by magic it all appears again, definitely a fantasy world for sure.
You kindly provide much of the Scottish wind power, for which we are thankful.
I have never said there was none left, but it's profitability did dive because Putin and the Saudis got in a price battle (forgive me if I am wrong) and drove the price down (blissful days). It is now likely to be more profitable again - good times for Aberdeen.
Lucky you were not included , I was meaning Tories, little Englanders and their ilk. They are strangely silent on the matter now except the fact they want to rape and pillage us yet again to fund their overspending. Aberdeen will see little, it will once more all head to London to be splaffed up a wall.
Seriously - “rape and pillage”? Lay off the vodka so early and take a walk
Fuck off you septic nasty little arsehole of a creep. @Razedabode
Guys I know we are tolerant of @malcolmg dyspeptic ramblings.
But this sort of comment doesn’t add anything to the site.
Bit like your comments , get a life. Jessie boy running to teacher, just imagine you at school snitching on everyone. Have you ever added anything of value to the site
Jessie boy is not the preferred nomenclature in the 21st century Malcolm. Try keeping slurs out of your insults.
I cannot help being a 20th century person, and in my day it was not a slur, merely that you were wimpy. All in the mind of the beholder it seems as having looked at 21st century usage I see it is all woke now and has been twisted to be something else. I come from a much more oinnocent age.
Ah yes, surprised you didn't go with 'should have a thicker skin'.
You should consider "getting with" the current millennium.
This forum is in danger of becoming an echo chamber of anti-Borisovian bile
The Tories are only 4-5 points behind, in mid-term, after 12 years in office. Their leader is a marmitey fellow, but is famously good at campaigning. He faces a boring plank of an opposition leader, with no campaigning record, a boring Woke Islington lawyer who cannot say “only women have cervixes”
I get that Boris gives apoplexy to many. Including 90% of PB-ers. And I can see why (especially if you’re in any way Woke, Remoanery, etc). But this red mist of anger and contempt risks clouding collective PB judgement.
He could still easily win the next GE
I’m not sure that you’re quite the chap to carry a message warning of the red mist of anger and contempt clouding collective PB judgement.
Surely I’m the poacher turned gamekeeper, in this instance
Talking of apoplexy, I have an internal malc-o-meter which estimates that the likelihood of a YES vote in an imminent indyref is inversely related to the invective spilling out of @malcolmg
In short: the angrier he gets the less likely is Sindy, and vice versa
Given that he’s always quite angry, this has reassured me the separatists will not win any time soon
Judging by today’s performance, the chances of a YES vote right now seem minuscule, and indyref2 has receded into the late 2040s
Leon, your meter is wired up wrong way round or you are reading it upside down. Some home truths to a handful of useless oafs on here will not even register as angry. It is PITY rather than anger , that such misguided creatures roam the earth that inspires me. I wonder at the stupidity of some of the absolute turnips on here, especially the "johnny come lately" types who do not understand they are stupid dullards and are unable to read and understand posts.
The circumstances of the attack are being investigated, but police said a terror attack had been ruled out.
"It is an accident, a tragic one. The car hit the group and tried to carry on but it was quickly stopped by the police," police spokeswoman Cristina Ianoco said.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
True, but it’s not unfair to blame Johnson for carelessly increasing the risk to her.
I’d say the question to ask the Johnson defending rump is do they think that BJ experienced a single moment of unease, remorse or lost sleep over Nazanin (a question that of course could be asked about everything relating to him aside from what aided his ambition and personal comfort)?
The Putin comparison is of course absurd; has someone declared open season on ridiculous, hyperbolic analogies or something? BJ is of course crass, narcisstic, amoral, lying Trump without the grifting talent.
The Trump analogy is ALSO hyperbolic nonsense. Boris has many many flaws but he hasn’t tried to overthrow the democratic process
The only British people that tried that were, you know, his most bitter opponents: the Remoaners
I like how you can pivot from saying your political opponents should be locked up to calling OTHER PEOPLE Trumpist in the space of a few hours.
Still, you've given the world a good euphemism for an ended torrent of brass-necked hypocrisy: "I'm poacher turned gamekeeper!" So, er, well done.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
I would question the value of an energy policy whose aim is to annoy the greens. But that's a perennial problem with this government. Has it come up with any policy yet that is worth the paper it's written on?
Hmm. A naughty bit of misquoting there. Big G didn't say the aim of the policy was to annoy the Greens, just that that would be a consequence. There are lots of things that annoy Greens, just as there are lots of things that annoy all factions in politics. The bigger problem with the Tories at the moment is they are trying to run policies so as not to annoy certain specific sections of society rather than the reverse.
Rachel Reeves indicates they will not support North Sea oil and gas production
And there in one comment is labour's real problem
Why? Investing in long term, sustainable solutions that don’t screw up the planet seems fairly non controversial.
I would respectively suggest you have not realised just how quickly this debate has changed, and the need to transition over the next 20 years will require us to develop our own oil and gas rather than getting it from Russia or importing it from other sources
Yes and No. There is a short term demand for additional sources of fossil fuels. If new UK sources can be brought on stream within two years and pay back within the next ten years, by all means develop these. But the need is an immediate and relatively short term one. Import the fuel if that's how you can meet that need.
Why import when we can be self sufficient
It may upset the green lobby but then transitioning to net zero is 20 plus years anyway
Because that's not actually the problem. The problem is finding alternative supplies to Russian oil and gas by next winter.
That’s the immediate problem, but in the short to medium term we should exploit our own resources.
I agree, but as i pointed out the useful opportunities for doing so are limited. This isn't an easy problem to solve, which is why we will probably see high prices, fragile deliveries and continued use of Russian fuels for the time being.
The opportunities may or may not be limited, I’d be interested on Richard Tyndall take on that, but they are there and labour just ruling them out is ridiculous.
There are many opportunities and I covered some of them in my posting at 10.50.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
They aren't. The planet is on fire, we need to stop producing CO2 as soon as possible, we are running out of time and I am deeply sceptical of the Tories hitting net zero if this is the approach they are taking to it.
1) Shut down the gas fired powers stations now. The lights go out. 2) Import gas. 3) Produce gas domestically.
This forum is in danger of becoming an echo chamber of anti-Borisovian bile
The Tories are only 4-5 points behind, in mid-term, after 12 years in office. Their leader is a marmitey fellow, but is famously good at campaigning. He faces a boring plank of an opposition leader, with no campaigning record, a boring Woke Islington lawyer who cannot say “only women have cervixes”
I get that Boris gives apoplexy to many. Including 90% of PB-ers. And I can see why (especially if you’re in any way Woke, Remoanery, etc). But this red mist of anger and contempt risks clouding collective PB judgement.
He could still easily win the next GE
I’m not sure that you’re quite the chap to carry a message warning of the red mist of anger and contempt clouding collective PB judgement.
Surely I’m the poacher turned gamekeeper, in this instance
Talking of apoplexy, I have an internal malc-o-meter which estimates that the likelihood of a YES vote in an imminent indyref is inversely related to the invective spilling out of @malcolmg
In short: the angrier he gets the less likely is Sindy, and vice versa
Given that he’s always quite angry, this has reassured me the separatists will not win any time soon
Judging by today’s performance, the chances of a YES vote right now seem minuscule, and indyref2 has receded into the late 2040s
I’m old school, I use the ‘SNP honeymoon about to end’ guys being unerringly consistent as my metric of Indy being within our grasp.
Ross for next FM was a real cracker, how doolally has he gone since he denounced Boris and then went to damascus and found himself again. Kerr had his teeth falling out whilst saying why are we always talking about Indyref2, real comedy club stuff. Talent , you ain't seen nothing yet, I hope I never have to be treated by that Doctor they say is a brilliant politician , he gives idiots a bad name.
Dropped by to read the BTL comments which are usually enlightening. Today it is filled with offensive bile.
Will drop back later but regular and frequent commenters might reflect on the impact the tone of their comments has on the choices of how the many lurkers here spend their time. The gardening suddenly seems more enticing.
The annoying thing about greens for me is that they don't accept how far we've come. True, we've got a long way to go, but the energy sector is so massively different to how it was a decade ago, let alone two decades.
For too many environmentalists, everything is always awful, and we're doing terribly. It warns me that even when we get to net-zero, there'll be another 'crisis' to be dealt with.
It's all stick with them. Occasionally it might be nice to hear: "We've done okay so far, but we cannot rest on our laurels - we need to accelerate." Instead too many act as if we've done nothing.
The graphic shows the evolution in how confident people are that Russia will be defeated.
Encouraging for Ukraine, discouraging for Putin. A nation confidently united, like that, can literally never be defeated. Unless he deports them ALL to Siberia
I still don't see path to them regaining Donbas (never mind Crimea), but if they remain united like that it means the Leadership can presumably hold firmer against offering concessions to the Russians as the price for peace, on the basis that the Ukrainian people would rather not pay some prices.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
You cannot get to net zero without a long transition and this war has turned the previous assumptions upside down
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
I would question the value of an energy policy whose aim is to annoy the greens. But that's a perennial problem with this government. Has it come up with any policy yet that is worth the paper it's written on?
Hmm. A naughty bit of misquoting there. Big G didn't say the aim of the policy was to annoy the Greens, just that that would be a consequence. There are lots of things that annoy Greens, just as there are lots of things that annoy all factions in politics. The bigger problem with the Tories at the moment is they are trying to run policies so as not to annoy certain specific sections of society rather than the reverse.
Hmm. This government majors on performative activity that Big G does buy into in a big way, hence his remark. I mean I would like this government, for once to devise policies that deliver outcomes that are worthwhile on their own merits.
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
I find the lack of UK focus on tidal power a deeply tragic reflection on our political classes and interest groups.
All the benefits of wind/solar but super super predictable, basically free power.
Recently went to a talk by these people https://www.ourtide.org/ who are trying to just raise awareness of the pro/cons of each option.
If we committed to doing tidal then ramping up north sea gas/oil in the short term would make sense (at least then we would have a plan) instead we go for the harder nuclear options.
MrB
It's not free - to say so harms the case for it.
It has a price in £ per Mw of capacity.
Less than nuclear. probably bit more than gas. It would be interesting to see the price vs wind taking into account the requirement for excess capacity for wind.
Dropped by to read the BTL comments which are usually enlightening. Today it is filled with offensive bile.
Will drop back later but regular and frequent commenters might reflect on the impact the tone of their comments has on the choices of how the many lurkers here spend their time. The gardening suddenly seems more enticing.
Dropped by to read the BTL comments which are usually enlightening. Today it is filled with offensive bile.
Will drop back later but regular and frequent commenters might reflect on the impact the tone of their comments has on the choices of how the many lurkers here spend their time. The gardening suddenly seems more enticing.
Yes I agree. It comes to something when it is left to me to raise the tone of the site
But that’s what I’m trying to do. Too much pointless nastiness and Scottish Nationalism is not an attractive spectacle.
It’s a bright, sunny if chilly spring morning. Play nicer, everyone
How has COVID affected the temper of pb.com threads?
Many recent threads -- this one included -- seem to become exceptionally ill-tempered rather quickly. COVID seems to have overwhelmed some people's ability to process or even acknowledge conflicting points of view.
There is good argument that Russia would not have launched the invasion without Putin's paranoia, exacerbated by COVID.
My guess is Boris would be in more trouble without COVID. In benign & placid times, his shortcomings would be even more apparent.
(OTH, there is a good argument that President Donald Trump would be romping through his second term, without his disastrous response to COVID).
This forum is in danger of becoming an echo chamber of anti-Borisovian bile
The Tories are only 4-5 points behind, in mid-term, after 12 years in office. Their leader is a marmitey fellow, but is famously good at campaigning. He faces a boring plank of an opposition leader, with no campaigning record, a boring Woke Islington lawyer who cannot say “only women have cervixes”
I get that Boris gives apoplexy to many. Including 90% of PB-ers. And I can see why (especially if you’re in any way Woke, Remoanery, etc). But this red mist of anger and contempt risks clouding collective PB judgement.
He could still easily win the next GE
I’m not sure that you’re quite the chap to carry a message warning of the red mist of anger and contempt clouding collective PB judgement.
Surely I’m the poacher turned gamekeeper, in this instance
Talking of apoplexy, I have an internal malc-o-meter which estimates that the likelihood of a YES vote in an imminent indyref is inversely related to the invective spilling out of @malcolmg
In short: the angrier he gets the less likely is Sindy, and vice versa
Given that he’s always quite angry, this has reassured me the separatists will not win any time soon
Judging by today’s performance, the chances of a YES vote right now seem minuscule, and indyref2 has receded into the late 2040s
I’m old school, I use the ‘SNP honeymoon about to end’ guys being unerringly consistent as my metric of Indy being within our grasp.
Ross for next FM was a real cracker, how doolally has he gone since he denounced Boris and then went to damascus and found himself again. Kerr had his teeth falling out whilst saying why are we always talking about Indyref2, real comedy club stuff. Talent , you ain't seen nothing yet, I hope I never have to be treated by that Doctor they say is a brilliant politician , he gives idiots a bad name.
THere is a certain irony about a Scon complaining that we are always talking about indyref2. His party did nothing else for years under the avatar of the Ruth Davidson says no to indyref party. Though their tone has changed a bit in recent months. Suddenly they're the Blue LDs - all about potholes and cycle lanes, at least in leaflets through the door.
The graphic shows the evolution in how confident people are that Russia will be defeated.
Encouraging for Ukraine, discouraging for Putin. A nation confidently united, like that, can literally never be defeated. Unless he deports them ALL to Siberia
I still don't see path to them regaining Donbas (never mind Crimea), but if they remain united like that it means the Leadership can presumably hold firmer against offering concessions to the Russians as the price for peace, on the basis that the Ukrainian people would rather not pay some prices.
Allegedly some (not all) of the Donbass separatist groups that were fighting Ukraine a few months ago are now fighting Russia with Ukraine. Russia has turned the separatist regions into mafia statelets, and many of the separatists are not happy.
The question is whether the separatists want to be part of Russia, or their own semi-independent region. From what I've read, they're split on that.
Another angle to Johnson's Brexit comments is that the EU is quite likely to disappoint Ukraine regarding how willing it will be to conduct a fast accession process. It's also not absurd to argue that being caught in a tug of war between two competing customs unions was one of the root causes of the conflict, and Brexit gives the UK the opportunity to stand for a different model.
I'm sorry, but it definitely is absurd to suggest that competing customs unions was the cause of the conflict. The cause of the conflict was entirely in the fascist fever dream of a small number of people at the heart of the Russian state, and the despotic and violent power structures that preserve them in power. There is no sense in which Ukraine, the EU, the UK, the USA, or anyone outside the Kremlin is in any meaningful way a cause, even a minor one.
It's rarely as simple as this in international politics, but this time it is.
Russian nationalists were enraged by the prospect of the EU customs border regime applying between what they saw as the Russian cities of Kharkiv and Belgorod. There is a remarkable parallel with the issues raised by the Northern Ireland backstop. This is not a justification of Russian agression, but it's necessary to understand the background.
Yes, I'm aware of the excuses that some Russians have given, but it's a little like a man murdering his ex because she went on a date with someone else. You would never suggest that the date was a root cause because all that does is raise the awkward question of why 99.99% of similar dates don't result in the same response. Also, if it hadn't been this "provocation" it would have been another. The Russian narrative of the causes of the war relies on an already absurd and broken conception of who is allowed to do what, to the extent that it carried zero explanatory weight.
It's not an excuse but does have explanatory weight.
Putin hasn't invaded Belarus. Why? Because he didn't need to. Ideally he would have wanted to keep Ukraine in the same position. Ukrainians had every right to choose a different path, but many in the West were naive about what the stakes were.
Whilst I understand the point you are trying to make, if Ukraine wanted to be a Westernised democracy rather than a Neo-Communist dictatorship then I would suggest it was incumbent on the West, the EU and NATO to support them in this. I know what you are doing is not victim blaming as such but it is blaming those who wanted to support the victim rather than blaming the wholly unreasonable behaviour of the attacker.
Should the western democracies be content - or at least complicit - in sitting back whilst countries are threatened and bullied into becoming satellites for dictatorships? I don't believe so. Yes there is a place for Realpolitik and I am not saying in any way I support Western military intervention in every tin pot dictatorship to try and force them to be democracies. That Blair doctrine is, I think, wrong headed. But the idea that we should not actively be encouraging and helping countries to achieve what we are fortunate enough to have, through targeted politics and trade seems to be a negation of our morals and beliefs.
The annoying thing about greens for me is that they don't accept how far we've come. True, we've got a long way to go, but the energy sector is so massively different to how it was a decade ago, let alone two decades.
For too many environmentalists, everything is always awful, and we're doing terribly. It warns me that even when we get to net-zero, there'll be another 'crisis' to be dealt with.
It's all stick with them. Occasionally it might be nice to hear: "We've done okay so far, but we cannot rest on our laurels - we need to accelerate." Instead too many act as if we've done nothing.
Something in this, but I think most people who support green policies, which is mainstream these days, don't underestimate either the progress made or the remaining task.
“Vladimir Putin has 'finally agreed 'to face-to-face peace talks with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky after more than three weeks of war, it has been reported. The two leaders have let their diplomatic teams conduct peace talks on the neutral ground since shortly after the start of the conflict on February 24, but a BBC correspondent has confirmed the two will meet in person”
If we are to achieve net zero, how is there any common sense in trying to produce more CO2?
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
They are entirely compatible. 1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities. 2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one. 3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1) 4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
On 4 nuclear may not be a dead end in the UK - but it depends on whether Rolls Royce’s mini nuke design works.
And the thing is we do need baseline power and there are no easy solutions there. If the wind doesn’t blow for a few days no amount of storage is going to help
It doesn't depend on whether they work (although having a nuclear sub reactor parked in your town is going to bring out a tsunami of NIMBY's). It depends on the cost. Of siting, planning permission, building, maintaining, defending, decommissioning. Boris hasn't told us any of the answers to those.
The annoying thing about greens for me is that they don't accept how far we've come. True, we've got a long way to go, but the energy sector is so massively different to how it was a decade ago, let alone two decades.
For too many environmentalists, everything is always awful, and we're doing terribly. It warns me that even when we get to net-zero, there'll be another 'crisis' to be dealt with.
It's all stick with them. Occasionally it might be nice to hear: "We've done okay so far, but we cannot rest on our laurels - we need to accelerate." Instead too many act as if we've done nothing.
It's partly political, I think. The wrong people are implementing the policies. So when you mention the net zero commitment, horse out of ICE cars etc..... that is met with actual anger. One chap at a local meeting stated that the government is increasing emissions and denies climate change.
The other issue is that the for a chunk of the Green movement, moving society to net zero is the wrong answer. They want to implement Green Communism - the vision that was outline by a lady (forget the name) a while back - everyone lives in tower blocks, does government allocated work. Travel is government controlled and allocated. Strict birth control policies to reduce the population.
Comments
It was a blanket covering Ukraine.
I think if you live in a democracy like ours, it can be easy to give the people living in a dictatorship a free pass.
There are actions which have positive effects and those which have negative effects. Sometimes we get them wrong and get an unintended result.
Intention is therefore key.
------------
For us to match Ukrainians in need with hosts we would need you to register your hosting offer at www.roomforrefugees.com , and we would then assess your offer and match appropriately.
We have a Ukrainian refugees register and will be beginning the process of marching soon. Once our assessment process is complete, we will use The Government's Homes for Ukraine Scheme
We are unable to share personal data. And we must risk check both guests and hosts.
-------------
...which seems fair enough. Their admirable website goes into more detail and stresses both the need to think carefully what you're taking on and the opportunity to discuss it thoroughly before you make an arrangement.
I'm sure that the vast majority of volunteer host sponsors only want to help. I do hear reports of people hoping to exploit the situation in various ways (from simply fancying getting the money with no intention of doing much for the refugee, to actively looking to use them for unpaid help) and it's crucial that the refugee gets a contact to report any exploitation (financial, sexual, whatever), since otherwise they'll feel completely trapped.
Not everyone is welcoming. Friends went on holiday in a caravan to the Kent coast last month (brefore the war) and found themselves parked next to a group of caravans from a Britain First group who had come to do refugee harassment - shouting at the arrivals in boats, telling them to go back, etc. One boasted of pouring beer on the women. They claimed to be "helping the authorities to keep Britain safe". I'm tolerant of different opinions but I'd like to feel this was illegal behaviour (a public order offence, perhaps?) and would be pleased to see them all locked up.
My point was that evil in the human world is a defined concept not an absolute. I know several people who firmly believe Boris is evil and can point to the deliberately callous way they treat the poor / sick as evidence. When you aren't being reduced to penury and left humiliated and desperate by sneering politicians you won't accept that "evil" is a valid definition for the man. But it could be depending on perspective.
I am sure the Ayrshire air is fresh and bracing and good that the UK government can do the right thing for the country while Nicola ties herself in knots
I understand Alex S is fully on board especially with all the Scottish jobs involved
Current estimates for UK Oil and gas reserves run at around 20-40 billion barrels of oil equivalent. At the very peak of UK production we were producing 2.7 million barrels a day. We don't need to produce anything like that much now but that in itself would give us up to 40 years worth of production. And all those figures are based on what is exploitable at an oil price of £40 to £50 dollars a barrel. As the oil price increases then more becomes viable.
The point is getting angry with truly evil people is pointless. They will always be evil and do evil things. They need stopping. I'm 100% behind Ukraine and I really want Putin held to account, but I am not angry with him. There is no point.
Whereas when Boris made that Brexit/Ukraine comment or when a hospital bureaucrat covers up a hospital scandal I get very angry because these aren't inherently evil people and yet they are doing something very wrong. And that makes me very angry.
In a nut shell:
Putin is evil so there is no point in getting angry with him over his deliberate evil
Boris is not evil, so when he does stuff that is crass or causes harm I am angry with him.
There is much to learn from the post war reconstruction of Japan and Germany.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/spy-fictions-new-golden-age-the-novels-to-read-now-dq6pmg2jw
I've read (and enjoyed) the Slough House series, has anyone read any of Henry Porter's "Firefly" series, or any of the other authors praised?
Correction-What an ill informed comment
25K pop - maybe 2/3 working, say 17K working. Some will be professionals or in other fairly permanent long term jobs or just not up to Amazon or Amazon is not up to their wishes as an employer, so maybe leaving a pool of a half, say 8K.
Not a huge amount of scope for expansion unless they draw on wider areas or something changes - business model, whatever. But plenty of time yet.
But most religions have similar core principles - “thou shalt not murder” for example - which are simply the building blocks of a functioning society rather than anything intrinsically religious.
But if you have a society which says murder is ok - let’s say the Thugee Cult* - then relative morality would say “it’s ok, it’s their belief system” while absolute morality says “murder is wrong”
For me morality is absolute - but equally I would be strict on the definitions vs try to overlay it with too many nice to haves.
* ignoring the debate on whether the Thugees were real or invented
Guys I know we are tolerant of @malcolmg dyspeptic ramblings.
But this sort of comment doesn’t add anything to the site.
I think this is a general problem for the Left, wider than on Green issues. The Thatcherite rout casts a long shadow.
Jessie boy running to teacher, just imagine you at school snitching on everyone.
Have you ever added anything of value to the site
The Putin comparison is of course absurd; has someone declared open season on ridiculous, hyperbolic analogies or something? BJ is of course crass, narcisstic, amoral, lying Trump without the grifting talent.
This is the time to massively invest in renewables and nuclear.
No. Because that way leads to giving him a pass and turning inwards on our own failings, because, you know, maybe Russia has a point....
A mother and her children run for cover to a shelter. Putin's troops fire a missile. Moments later, there are little body parts over a 50 yard radius. Because she and her nation would not bow down to the egomaniacal evil turd who has a God complex.
Get angry. Very angry. We all can do things when we are angry enough. We can make sacrifices we otherwise wouldn't do. We can shout with a voice that doesn't get heard when we aren't angry.
The problem with all of this is that the definitions of things like "murder" are themselves flexible. And when the Pope - the literal voice of God - is sanctioning murder, where does the definition of evil sit?
Renewables should be invested though this lot will just use it to fleece the public.
Recently added to the plan is a large (Amazon size) warehouse. Problem is Richmond is at full employment and there is already another warehouse in Darlington so no real local workforce.
Now the sane option would be to build it 5 miles down at Catterick but that land is all MoD or national park so not a solution. But the reality is at the moment the agencies who supply Amazon with staff can’t find staff.
The Tories are only 4-5 points behind, in mid-term, after 12 years in office. Their leader is a marmitey fellow, but is famously good at campaigning. He faces a boring plank of an opposition leader, with no campaigning record, a boring Woke Islington lawyer who cannot say “only women have cervixes”
I get that Boris gives apoplexy to many. Including 90% of PB-ers. And I can see why (especially if you’re in any way Woke, Remoanery, etc). But this red mist of anger and contempt risks clouding collective PB judgement.
He could still easily win the next GE
1. We need power next winter. If we can't get replacement gas then our gas-fired power stations are in trouble. Without them we have a big hole in our capabilities as we bet the farm on cheap gas imports to maximise profits. We may need to keep burning coal a bit longer whilst we change our capabilities.
2. We must invest into renewables. Not just erecting wind farms but actually making the turbines. Invest into tidal so that we can harness the huge tidal surges. Mass produced solar panels so that every house can have one.
3. But having done all that we still need oil. We aren't about to replace next week every truck engine with hydrogen so we need oil. We still need plastic so we still need oil. Better to use our own oil than be on the hook to someone else (see gas, point 1)
4. Nuclear is a massive dead end. We can't produce our own nuclear power stations any more from an engineering point of view, and even from a construction point of view they are very very very slow to put up and at vast cost. Better to sink the money into cheaper cleaner faster alternatives.
I have a Tesla on order to sit alongside our Ioniq EV. And I am advocating more domestic oil and gas production. The two are not incompatible.
Keeping fit
And why does he do this?
Because this is no ordinary man.
This is Boris Johnson: plain, no frills, unassuming.
But he knows he is leader of the free world & must keep in top condition for all of us.
We are blessed.👍🇬🇧
https://twitter.com/MichaelTakeMP/status/1505311316969467904
We have oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and the demand to free ourselves from importing Russian oil and gas, and from elsewhere, will become the over riding argument in the next few months and at present labour are on the wrong side of the argument
These discussions are going on across Europe right now as their use, especially Germany, of Russian oil and gas is providing Putin with all he needs to carry on his murderous military campaigns
Indeed I believe Germany are to reinstate coal fired power stations
I understand a new energy policy is to be announced by HMG this week that no doubt will annoy the greens but receive popular support
Talking of apoplexy, I have an internal malc-o-meter which estimates that the likelihood of a YES vote in an imminent indyref is inversely related to the invective spilling out of @malcolmg
In short: the angrier he gets the less likely is Sindy, and vice versa
Given that he’s always quite angry, this has reassured me the separatists will not win any time soon
Judging by today’s performance, the chances of a YES vote right now seem minuscule, and indyref2 has receded into the late 2040s
I do stuff or support people who do stuff rather than get angry. We are going to open our home to refugees if accepted. We donate. We both get involved with lots of campaigns as you will have seen from posts here and always have.
And what makes me angry is people who stand by and watch or do harm by their inaction.
You really have misunderstood my post.
There is no point in getting angry with evil people. Get angry with those who aren't evil but do sod all to sort it out or say or do crass things that make it worse.
I am/was really angry with our crass asylum effort at the start as you will of seen from my numerous posts.
What is the point of me getting angry with Putin? Doing is what matters, so I get angry with those who do not act.
This is not either or, it is both
And the thing is we do need baseline power and there are no easy solutions there. If the wind doesn’t blow for a few days no amount of storage is going to help
The only British people that tried that were, you know, his most bitter opponents: the Remoaners
An overwhelming percentage of Ukrainians believe Russia will be defeated, and do not support a ceasefire unless Russia fully retreats from Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1505473701315284993
The graphic shows the evolution in how confident people are that Russia will be defeated.
All the benefits of wind/solar but super super predictable, basically free power.
Recently went to a talk by these people https://www.ourtide.org/ who are trying to just raise awareness of the pro/cons of each option.
If we committed to doing tidal then ramping up north sea gas/oil in the short term would make sense (at least then we would have a plan) instead we go for the harder nuclear options.
MrB
https://www.lesoir.be/431126/article/2022-03-20/wallonie-une-voiture-fonce-dans-une-foule-reunie-pour-le-carnaval-et-fait
Mind you, I suppose they did report it.
Putin hasn't invaded Belarus. Why? Because he didn't need to. Ideally he would have wanted to keep Ukraine in the same position. Ukrainians had every right to choose a different path, but many in the West were naive about what the stakes were.
"It is an accident, a tragic one. The car hit the group and tried to carry on but it was quickly stopped by the police," police spokeswoman Cristina Ianoco said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60811591
Some home truths to a handful of useless oafs on here will not even register as angry. It is PITY rather than anger , that such misguided creatures roam the earth that inspires me. I wonder at the stupidity of some of the absolute turnips on here, especially the "johnny come lately" types who do not understand they are stupid dullards and are unable to read and understand posts.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60811591
2) Import gas.
3) Produce gas domestically.
What do you pick?
Will drop back later but regular and frequent commenters might reflect on the impact the tone of their comments has on the choices of how the many lurkers here spend their time. The gardening suddenly seems more enticing.
For too many environmentalists, everything is always awful, and we're doing terribly. It warns me that even when we get to net-zero, there'll be another 'crisis' to be dealt with.
It's all stick with them. Occasionally it might be nice to hear: "We've done okay so far, but we cannot rest on our laurels - we need to accelerate." Instead too many act as if we've done nothing.
It has a price in £ per Mw of capacity.
Less than nuclear. probably bit more than gas. It would be interesting to see the price vs wind taking into account the requirement for excess capacity for wind.
But that’s what I’m trying to do. Too much pointless nastiness and Scottish Nationalism is not an attractive spectacle.
It’s a bright, sunny if chilly spring morning. Play nicer, everyone
How has COVID affected the temper of pb.com threads?
Many recent threads -- this one included -- seem to become exceptionally ill-tempered rather quickly. COVID seems to have overwhelmed some people's ability to process or even acknowledge conflicting points of view.
There is good argument that Russia would not have launched the invasion without Putin's paranoia, exacerbated by COVID.
My guess is Boris would be in more trouble without COVID. In benign & placid times, his shortcomings would be even more apparent.
(OTH, there is a good argument that President Donald Trump would be romping through his second term, without his disastrous response to COVID).
The question is whether the separatists want to be part of Russia, or their own semi-independent region. From what I've read, they're split on that.
Should the western democracies be content - or at least complicit - in sitting back whilst countries are threatened and bullied into becoming satellites for dictatorships? I don't believe so. Yes there is a place for Realpolitik and I am not saying in any way I support Western military intervention in every tin pot dictatorship to try and force them to be democracies. That Blair doctrine is, I think, wrong headed. But the idea that we should not actively be encouraging and helping countries to achieve what we are fortunate enough to have, through targeted politics and trade seems to be a negation of our morals and beliefs.
“Vladimir Putin has 'finally agreed 'to face-to-face peace talks with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky after more than three weeks of war, it has been reported. The two leaders have let their diplomatic teams conduct peace talks on the neutral ground since shortly after the start of the conflict on February 24, but a BBC correspondent has confirmed the two will meet in person”
The other issue is that the for a chunk of the Green movement, moving society to net zero is the wrong answer. They want to implement Green Communism - the vision that was outline by a lady (forget the name) a while back - everyone lives in tower blocks, does government allocated work. Travel is government controlled and allocated. Strict birth control policies to reduce the population.