I think it unlikely the government will u-turn on free tests, if only because limiting testing will itself dramatically reduce the official numbers of cases and that will reduce the political effect of rising infections.
Well ... will it though?
That might have worked a century ago but nowadays with media awareness? It's not just anecdotal, but problems in industries like travel where infections are causing chaos (Dover, Heathrow) as well as schools and NHS trusts. My son's school had to shut the whole of last week because there was so much covid - they ran out of teachers. The scientists may get ridiculed but studies like ZOE, which the Gov't have pulled the plug on, are still reporting and they have a current daily infection estimate at 337,000. https://covid.joinzoe.com/
I think it's an incredibly dangerous political route to go down to think you can pull the wool over people's eyes and, effectively, gag the news. It smacks to me of the last vestiges of a party losing power, not to mention being rather Putinesque.
The right-wingers (I know it annoys people if I call them Far Right) are so hell-bent on pretending this thing has gone away that they've lost all sense of proportion and perspective.
The issue will always be capacity in the health care system. If things get bad in this respect, then the restrictions will come back. This is what a majority of people will accept.
I don't know about the "chaos" you describe - is it the disease that is causing chaos, or the requirement to test and isolate?
Also: the situation in Ukraine puts Covid in to context. The world doesn't stop turning and cannot be put on hold because of Covid.
Good morning
Why anyone takes @Heathener seriously I do not know
Because she often has interesting opinions, as do you, and PB is least interesting when we spend time slagging off other contributors, and focus instead on what they're saying. The mass assault on HYUFD on the last thread was excessive too - fine to deride his opinions, but I don't think we should spend time trying to label him.
It's possible that some contributors deliberately try to wind us up (not a novel phenomenon, cf. SeanT, malcolmg). A good response to that is not to be wound up.
The bullying of HYUFD has been going on for months. It’s utterly shameful to see it continue.
It is not bullying. It is making it clear that certain views which he advocates - including supporting the use of force against people whose only 'crime' is to want to vote - are unacceptable. He is by far and away the most extremist poster on this forum and if he is going to promulgate such views then he should expect to be attacked for them.
If we had a poster on here openly advocating repatriating all non whites or sterilising the disabled then I would fully expect them to be mercilessly challenged and castigated. I don't see some of HYUFD's views as being much different.
That is not bullying, it is common sense.
Given we have had holocaust deniers amongst others on here in the past rather absurd comparison.
It is of course this elected UK government's policy to refuse an indyref2, in Boris' own words for 40 years minimum. If Sturgeon held a wildcat referendum then we would be in a Spain Catalonia situation whether you liked it or not.
I consider you equally to often post extreme libertarian views, so what
If Sturgeon held a wildcat referendum I would expect the UK government to try and stop it through the courts. I would also expect them to ignore the result. I would not expect any force to be used in particular tanks.
If there were riots by Nationalists then of course riot police would have to be used and arrests made as happened in Spain with Catalan Nationalists. Otherwise they would have in effect lost control of Scotland and Sturgeon would try and force through the result, maybe even declaring UDI, even if the UK government ignored it
Nationalista in Spain/Catalonia = right winger like you. The word you want is, presumably, Independista.
How very dare you! HYUFD is a proud Britpat, his allegiance to the flag, Queen, church and nation is the good kind made up of sugar and spice and all things nice, with hardly any truncheoning of grannies.
Given the way this government u turns on its u turns I wouldn’t rule out Boris Johnson announcing the return of free Covid-19 tests.
Covid tests are not free.
They are either paid for by the user of paid for through taxation.
This kind of pedantry does you no favours. Everybody know when you say something is "free" that it means you don't have to pay to get/consume it. LFTs are free. Twitter is a free. This site is free. These are not the abuses of the language that you think they are.
Your denial of reality does you no favours.
Covid tests cost money.
So they will be paid for either by the user or by higher taxes.
Acknowledged; almost everything costs money to produce. Not all of those things are paid for by the user. Those things are free. Free does not mean "costs nothing to make available". What you're doing is requiring others to follow you into an unusual use of a commonly used word because it offends your ideology. Should Covid tests be free? I don't know. Are they, right now? Yes, definitely.
Everything costs, its just a question of who pays.
The issue of 'free' tests as with anything 'free' is merely the consumer pointing at someone else and saying "make them pay instead of me".
Yes, someone pays for things like Covid tests when they are free.
That doesn't mean they aren't free. Why are you struggling with this? If you don't pay for something, it's free. It's really that simple. You don't need to put quotes around the word, that's just what the word means.
When your ideology forces you to stop using words normally, you have a problem. When you start to tell people that they should stop using words normally, we all have a problem.
Because they are not free.
You might argue that they are 'free at the point of use' although paid for at a different time and by a different person.
But its the denial of the reality that goods and services have to be paid for which underlies many of our current problems.
And leads to cognitive dissonance of people condemning the government for spending so much on its testing and then condemning the government for not providing 'free' covid tests.
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show the BBC used to make.
Hearing very good things about it, but not yet seen.
BTW, watched Ken Branagh's "Death on the Nile" last night. Just, why, Ken, why? Everything about it was far inferior to the David Suchet TV version of 2004.
The only interesting thing was a very nuanced performance by Russell Brand as the Doctor.
Give it a miss.
Wasn't there some huge issue behind that? One of the main actors got "cancelled"* and they had to edit around it? * was Armie Hammer
The Slow Horses are part of a series of 7 books, so if Apple+ can keep it together they are going to have a lot of material.
I see the Goldman Sachs Elf has chosen Easter in SoCal over, er, Northallerton.
I remember Malcolm Tucker once saying something to the effect of the voters don't even want their politicians to have a comfortable chair so Sunaks 1% lifestyle and his lack of any desire to reign it in is a very serious negative for him that will be exploited.
I see the Goldman Sachs Elf has chosen Easter in SoCal over, er, Northallerton.
I remember Malcolm Tucker once saying something to the effect of the voters don't even want their politicians to have a comfortable chair so Sunaks 1% lifestyle and his lack of any desire to reign it in is a very serious negative for him that will be exploited.
Unlike you - rein, not reign, surely? Unless you think Sunak will replace Liz for some reason?
I see the Goldman Sachs Elf has chosen Easter in SoCal over, er, Northallerton.
I remember Malcolm Tucker once saying something to the effect of the voters don't even want their politicians to have a comfortable chair so Sunaks 1% lifestyle and his lack of any desire to reign it in is a very serious negative for him that will be exploited.
Hmm ... this calls for a Deltic movie for Sandy Rentool, and Sunak too of course
I see the Goldman Sachs Elf has chosen Easter in SoCal over, er, Northallerton.
I remember Malcolm Tucker once saying something to the effect of the voters don't even want their politicians to have a comfortable chair so Sunaks 1% lifestyle and his lack of any desire to reign it in is a very serious negative for him that will be exploited.
Rein it in, and I think people expect the rich and famous to be both rich, and famous. It's prolly quite clever of him to fuck off stateside and not rub it in our faces over here. He's a busted flush, but not for that reason.
I see the Goldman Sachs Elf has chosen Easter in SoCal over, er, Northallerton.
I remember Malcolm Tucker once saying something to the effect of the voters don't even want their politicians to have a comfortable chair so Sunaks 1% lifestyle and his lack of any desire to reign it in is a very serious negative for him that will be exploited.
Unlike you - rein, not reign, surely? Unless you think Sunak will replace Liz for some reason?
I think it unlikely the government will u-turn on free tests, if only because limiting testing will itself dramatically reduce the official numbers of cases and that will reduce the political effect of rising infections.
Well ... will it though?
That might have worked a century ago but nowadays with media awareness? It's not just anecdotal, but problems in industries like travel where infections are causing chaos (Dover, Heathrow) as well as schools and NHS trusts. My son's school had to shut the whole of last week because there was so much covid - they ran out of teachers. The scientists may get ridiculed but studies like ZOE, which the Gov't have pulled the plug on, are still reporting and they have a current daily infection estimate at 337,000. https://covid.joinzoe.com/
I think it's an incredibly dangerous political route to go down to think you can pull the wool over people's eyes and, effectively, gag the news. It smacks to me of the last vestiges of a party losing power, not to mention being rather Putinesque.
The right-wingers (I know it annoys people if I call them Far Right) are so hell-bent on pretending this thing has gone away that they've lost all sense of proportion and perspective.
The issue will always be capacity in the health care system. If things get bad in this respect, then the restrictions will come back. This is what a majority of people will accept.
I don't know about the "chaos" you describe - is it the disease that is causing chaos, or the requirement to test and isolate?
Also: the situation in Ukraine puts Covid in to context. The world doesn't stop turning and cannot be put on hold because of Covid.
Good morning
Why anyone takes @Heathener seriously I do not know
Because she often has interesting opinions, as do you, and PB is least interesting when we spend time slagging off other contributors, and focus instead on what they're saying. The mass assault on HYUFD on the last thread was excessive too - fine to deride his opinions, but I don't think we should spend time trying to label him.
It's possible that some contributors deliberately try to wind us up (not a novel phenomenon, cf. SeanT, malcolmg). A good response to that is not to be wound up.
The bullying of HYUFD has been going on for months. It’s utterly shameful to see it continue.
It is not bullying. It is making it clear that certain views which he advocates - including supporting the use of force against people whose only 'crime' is to want to vote - are unacceptable. He is by far and away the most extremist poster on this forum and if he is going to promulgate such views then he should expect to be attacked for them.
If we had a poster on here openly advocating repatriating all non whites or sterilising the disabled then I would fully expect them to be mercilessly challenged and castigated. I don't see some of HYUFD's views as being much different.
That is not bullying, it is common sense.
Given we have had holocaust deniers amongst others on here in the past rather absurd comparison.
It is of course this elected UK government's policy to refuse an indyref2, in Boris' own words for 40 years minimum. If Sturgeon held a wildcat referendum then we would be in a Spain Catalonia situation whether you liked it or not.
I consider you equally to often post extreme libertarian views, so what
If Sturgeon held a wildcat referendum I would expect the UK government to try and stop it through the courts. I would also expect them to ignore the result. I would not expect any force to be used in particular tanks.
If there were riots by Nationalists then of course riot police would have to be used and arrests made as happened in Spain with Catalan Nationalists. Otherwise they would have in effect lost control of Scotland and Sturgeon would try and force through the result, maybe even declaring UDI, even if the UK government ignored it
“lost control of Scotland”
Thanks for that wee gem. Certainly have me a chuckle.
P&O Ferries are still not operating any ferries across the English Channel, or the North Channel, and one of their scheduled ferries is cancelled on the North Sea route.
This is two-and-a-half weeks on from the sackings on March 17th.
Will they be able to restore services before the end of what would have been the statutory consultation period?
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show that would be at home on the BBC.
Yeah, I might resuscitate my Apple+ subscription just for that going on reviews. Tbf I don't the BBC could afford Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, that would probably be the budget for several years of pishy cookery programmes blown.
I wonder if the revelations of the atrocities we have seen today will persuade European countries to switch off the gas?
All those people who accused central and east Europeans of paranoia towards Russia ought to hang their heads in shame. There is a profound arrogance in assuming you know someone's neighbours better than they do themselves. Truth is those people had seen it all before. There was never any sign that Russia had changed. A kleptocratic elite that uses delinquents as cannon fodder. No doubt there will be the usual suspects saying we poked the bear (like we did in Chechnya and Syria?) how poor Russia has been humiliated by the west for 30/300/3000 years etc etc.
Something else. I can't help feel there has been a certain snobbery on display. A view in western Europe that Russians were BETTER than their fellow slavs. After all Russia gave us ballet, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. What have the Poles and Ukrainians given us? How dare they deign to criticise the great nation of Russia. What a bunch of upstarts. Now it wasn't just a matter of class or culture. Money mattered too and of course cheap gas. Russia has been infantilised by its energy resources removing any need to develop a modern economy. I hope Europeans now feel like Dr Frankenstein after he created the monster.
The Poles gave us Copernicus.
And Chopin.
And one of my primary school teachers.
John III Sobieski, the man who finally turned back the expanding Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vienna.
Ukraine gave us Khrushchev - for good or for ill - and a case could be made for Trotsky and Gorbachev as well.
I should have mentioned Joseph Conrad and Sergei Prokofiev.
Amazing chap Conrad. He was pals with both Neil Munro, the author of the comedy classic Para Handy, and Cunninghame Graham, the Liberal MP who went on to become the first socialist MP in the Commons and helped found both the Labour Party and then the Scottish National Party.
Is Conrad the greatest novelist to write in a language not native to him ?
Probably, yes. But other contenders (includes other genres than just novel writing):
Samuel Beckett Joseph Brodsky Emil Cioran Eva Hoffman Romain Gary Jack Kerouac Agota Kristof Milan Kundera Alistair MacLean Yann Martel Vladimir Nabokov Björn and Benny
I did wonder about Gaels, Welsh and Irish native speakers, but don't know enough about them to judge.
Admirable, but never usually a hindrance on PB. Just witness the number of military geniuses we suddenly have.
Show me one poster who claims to be a 'military genius'.
Mostly we just have people trying to make sense of a complex situation. The great thing about this site is often when someone gets something wrong, someone with more knowledge pops up to politely correct them. And we all learn.
Given the evidence of all the war crimes coming out of towns outside of Kyiv, I fear how bad Mariupol will be. Not only have the Russians been there from the start, the Chechens are there too and their reputation is not of ones who worry about human rights of civilians.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
During my time on here someone said you must be mentally ill to want to change your sex. That's transphobic. I'm not saying transphobia is rife, but it happens.
That is the official line: gender dysphoria is a medically diagnoseable, treatable ailment. It is even in DSM-5.
Even if sanctions are not biting, presumably all this fighting is costing the Russians money. There were rumours - scotched - early on in the invasion that the cost of the war was something like $20bn per day. If that was much too high, the point remains: a state that was something of an economic basket case before is spending its money at a much higher rate than before. At some point, surely, the war becomes unaffordable?
That number was debunked - like a number of other numbers relating to the Russian conflict, it makes sense if it was 20bn "roubles". There was a similar thing with some "lost GDP" numbers out of Russia.
Yes, it was. But it's still going to be costing them a not-inconsiderable amount. At some point they will run out of money, surely? The early giddy rumours that that point would be days away were debunked. But is that point weeks away, or months, or years? I don't know. But I personally doubt the ability of Russia to be able to afford the war much beyond the middle of summer.
Why ?
Apart from the economic front, there is the issue of international dependencies.
Putin has long tried to make large chunks of the Russian economy autarkic. There was good article (trying to find it) about the extent to which this has failed, due to corruption.
Essentially, it is very hard to eliminate foreign comments in a supply chain. It is much easier and cheaper to setup a factory screw-drivering together foreign components and declare victory.
It has been reported, already, that the main Russian tank factory has shut down. Which means that the Russian army will be replacing the tanks it is losing from the various stockpiles. Which are old and not in the best of shape.
The war will do massive damage to their economy, sure. But it’s entirely conceivable that they could sustain a lower pace of operations (having abandoned several fronts), for quite a long time. While oil revenues hold up they likely don’t have an existential economic problem, and finding other sources (China etc) for imports isn’t impossible.
That is why supplying Ukraine with sufficient arms and resources is essential. A eventual ceasefire a year or two down the road, with Russia having taken the south including Mariupol and held it, would be a disastrous result for Ukraine and a very dangerous one for the west.
Why get excited ?
A country with an economy just slightly bigger than Spain's has invaded its neighbour. It's using its circa 4% of world GDP to threaten economic consequences on countries with over 50% of world GDP.
Meanwhile it has trashed the prospects of its main money earners - energy, arms and metals - and is on its way to an unhappy economic stagnation. Add in its military reputation has imploded and politically it is heading to be a vassal of China and it is a country that needs a serious rethink.
I think Robert made just this point last year, well before they invaded Ukraine, when he said Russia didn’t represent much of a threat anymore because it was economically insignificant.
You’re right that the invasion will be massively costly, perhaps disastrous for Russia. But they still retain the military capacity to do great damage, not to mention the planet’s largest nuclear arsenal.
Oil revenues probably give them another decade at least where they are effectively immune to outside persuasion by economic means, even if sanctions can wreak economic damage.
It could become a dependency of China, in a similar manner to North Korea. That’s not the same thing as a vassal.
Also, if gas supplies do get cut off to European industry, the economic damage would be quite significant not just to Europe, but to the world. Germany alone was 7.8% of worldwide exports (by value, 2020). There's bound to be certain kinds of industrial goods, chemicals (don't know what exactly) where German/European production stopping would cause knock-on effects - plus the generally bad effect a further European recession would have.
I see the Goldman Sachs Elf has chosen Easter in SoCal over, er, Northallerton.
I remember Malcolm Tucker once saying something to the effect of the voters don't even want their politicians to have a comfortable chair so Sunaks 1% lifestyle and his lack of any desire to reign it in is a very serious negative for him that will be exploited.
Rein it in, and I think people expect the rich and famous to be both rich, and famous. It's prolly quite clever of him to fuck off stateside and not rub it in our faces over here. He's a busted flush, but not for that reason.
Shades of Sunny Jim flaunting his hairy moobs in Guadeloupe.
There is Labour support for increased arms supplies.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1510545951160741891 I’m not going to post photos of the Russian atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine but they are surely reason enough for 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇪🇺 and NATO to provide tanks and other offensive weaponry to 🇺🇦 ? We cannot stand by and pretend we haven’t seen the genocidal war crimes.
P&O Ferries are still not operating any ferries across the English Channel, or the North Channel, and one of their scheduled ferries is cancelled on the North Sea route.
This is two-and-a-half weeks on from the sackings on March 17th.
Will they be able to restore services before the end of what would have been the statutory consultation period?
Will the length of the queue at Dover surpass that of the infamous military column outside Kyiv?
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show that would be at home on the BBC.
Yeah, I might resuscitate my Apple+ subscription just for that going on reviews. Tbf I don't the BBC could afford Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, that would probably be the budget for several years of pishy cookery programmes blown.
The two main actors are far less famous (and thus I imagine affordable). Gary Oldman is good, but would hope you could find somebody else play an alcoholic washed up desk jockey competently.
No idea how much Apple+ spent on this show, but it definitely isn't on par with the likes of Foundation, where every second was $10,000s worth of VFX shots. It definitely could be made without spending the earth on it. Its about a load of spies who work out a rundown office in the back streets of London, no need for James Bond style locations and special effects.
The paratroop raid on the airport might conceivably have succeeded had not Ukraine been prepared. 9 Jan'22: 🇺🇲 General Mingus attempts to dissuade Russia from invading, saying it would be a quagmire, to no reaction 🔹European leaders don't believe 🇺🇲 Intel re: invasion 🔹mid-Jan'22: CIA director Burns warns Zelenskyy in Kyiv that 🇷🇺 would attempt to seize Hostomel airfield https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1510575951826067461
The plan wasn’t quite as ridiculous as it now seems.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
Honestly you really don't read or worse understand anyone's posts do you. I mean what are you talking about. I can't think how to respond to your post because it makes no sense whatsoever. I don't object to Nick's posts at all, or want to stop him and in fact tend to agree with most of his posts. One of my favourite posters.
It is noticeable that you often don't understand posts.
FFS, can't you just let go? We get that you don't like HYUFD's views. I'm not so keen on most (or all?) of them, but it doesn't bother me, and the site would be poorer without him.
As it happens, there are a small number of other posters whose views I do find really obnoxious. Guess what? Nobody would know. Why? Because I just ignore them.
Ok. And I agree it would be poorer without them. And I don't dislike him, just his views and to be honest the ignorance. But point taken.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
I read it partly as an attempt at dark humour TBH and people need to lighten up a bit about that. On the other hand he does take the British Monarchy, Northern Irish loyalism and arguably religion far too seriously IMO.
Overall he is still a much better and more pleasant poster than others on here and still gives a relatively dispassionate view of Lab, Con and LD electoral fortunes.
Dispassionate you say? I’ve seen him try to ramp one point increases in SCon VI in the teens. And flippantly dismiss 50%+ scores for opponents. He is incapable of being dispassionate about England’s satellite states.
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show that would be at home on the BBC.
Yeah, I might resuscitate my Apple+ subscription just for that going on reviews. Tbf I don't the BBC could afford Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, that would probably be the budget for several years of pishy cookery programmes blown.
The two main actors are far less famous (and thus I imagine affordable). Gary Oldman is good, but would hope you could find somebody else play an alcoholic washed up desk jockey competently.
No idea how much Apple+ spent on this show, but it definitely isn't on par with the likes of Foundation, where every second was $100,000s worth of VFX shots. It definitely could be made without spending the earth on it. Its about a load of spies who work out a rundown office in the back streets of London.
Fair point, I would imagine the budget, stars excepted, would be below Killing Eve which I've stopped watching due to its flogged dead equine status.
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show that would be at home on the BBC.
Another one from an ex-BBC production house bought up by a foreign company licencing to a different foreign company.
See-Saw Films is the credited production house. I can't see any direct info that it was BBC from the bio. It was written by Will Smith, who was in (wrote some of) the Thick of It / Veep.
Politically I feel there's a sense of the 70's rather than the 90's - a sense of everything being a bit rubbish, costs going up etc. From that we got Thatcher, so we will see what we get from this.
It's an interesting question, and a useful analogy. The 1970s marked the point at which the post-war economic model started to fail. Arguably the current period marks the point at which the Thatcherite economic model's failures are becoming manifest. I suspect that the answer to these failings won't me 'more Thatcherism', but it won't be a return to post-war state socialism either. There is one quick way of solving some of our economic woes of course, but it won't happen because the government can't admit that its central policy is a failure, even though that is obvious to any neutral observer.
Well don't keep us in suspenders; what do you think it is?
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I believe Nick actually is a communist? Or certainly former communist?
I was a (Euro)communist in my teens, which, sadly, are more than 50 years astern. I've chosen to be honest about it, but equally I think people should accept what I am now - left-wing Labour by preference but a bias to compromise and split differences. HYUFD is right that I've had to put up with a certain amount of weird stuff, including recently being an agent of Russia or China, though after a couple of days the poster apologised. That has sensitised me to the risks of personal attacks.
Essentially I think people's *views* are fair game (it would be perfectly OK to say someone's views look like fascism or stalinism or indeed (omigod) conservatism, but we waste our time labelling each other as fascists, trots, spies, etc. Attack the idea, not the bloke who has fallen for it.
The paratroop raid on the airport might conceivably have succeeded had not Ukraine been prepared. 9 Jan'22: 🇺🇲 General Mingus attempts to dissuade Russia from invading, saying it would be a quagmire, to no reaction 🔹European leaders don't believe 🇺🇲 Intel re: invasion 🔹mid-Jan'22: CIA director Burns warns Zelenskyy in Kyiv that 🇷🇺 would attempt to seize Hostomel airfield https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1510575951826067461
The plan wasn’t quite as ridiculous as it now seems.
Yes, IMO a lot of praise should go to the UK and US intelligence services who seemed very on-the-ball with their warnings about the oncoming onslaught.
There is Labour support for increased arms supplies.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1510545951160741891 I’m not going to post photos of the Russian atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine but they are surely reason enough for 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇪🇺 and NATO to provide tanks and other offensive weaponry to 🇺🇦 ? We cannot stand by and pretend we haven’t seen the genocidal war crimes.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
We should give them the tools to push the Russians out of their country and its also time to to turn the gas imports off and fuck the consequences. The war crimes being committed by the Russian regime are horrific and yet countries allied to Ukraine are spending billions of dollars per week propping up the Russians.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
During my time on here someone said you must be mentally ill to want to change your sex. That's transphobic. I'm not saying transphobia is rife, but it happens.
That is the official line: gender dysphoria is a medically diagnoseable, treatable ailment. It is even in DSM-5.
The paratroop raid on the airport might conceivably have succeeded had not Ukraine been prepared. 9 Jan'22: 🇺🇲 General Mingus attempts to dissuade Russia from invading, saying it would be a quagmire, to no reaction 🔹European leaders don't believe 🇺🇲 Intel re: invasion 🔹mid-Jan'22: CIA director Burns warns Zelenskyy in Kyiv that 🇷🇺 would attempt to seize Hostomel airfield https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1510575951826067461
The plan wasn’t quite as ridiculous as it now seems.
Yes, IMO a lot of praise should go to the UK and US intelligence services who seemed very on-the-ball with their warnings about the oncoming onslaught.
I don't just think the prior warnings, the level of knowledge that the troops on the ground, especially the SoF have, points to them getting continued assistance.
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show that would be at home on the BBC.
Another one from an ex-BBC production house bought up by a foreign company licencing to a different foreign company.
See-Saw Films is the credited production house. I can't see any direct info that it was BBC from the bio. It was written by Will Smith, who was in (wrote some of) the Thick of It / Veep.
I think it unlikely the government will u-turn on free tests, if only because limiting testing will itself dramatically reduce the official numbers of cases and that will reduce the political effect of rising infections.
Well ... will it though?
That might have worked a century ago but nowadays with media awareness? It's not just anecdotal, but problems in industries like travel where infections are causing chaos (Dover, Heathrow) as well as schools and NHS trusts. My son's school had to shut the whole of last week because there was so much covid - they ran out of teachers. The scientists may get ridiculed but studies like ZOE, which the Gov't have pulled the plug on, are still reporting and they have a current daily infection estimate at 337,000. https://covid.joinzoe.com/
I think it's an incredibly dangerous political route to go down to think you can pull the wool over people's eyes and, effectively, gag the news. It smacks to me of the last vestiges of a party losing power, not to mention being rather Putinesque.
The right-wingers (I know it annoys people if I call them Far Right) are so hell-bent on pretending this thing has gone away that they've lost all sense of proportion and perspective.
The issue will always be capacity in the health care system. If things get bad in this respect, then the restrictions will come back. This is what a majority of people will accept.
I don't know about the "chaos" you describe - is it the disease that is causing chaos, or the requirement to test and isolate?
Also: the situation in Ukraine puts Covid in to context. The world doesn't stop turning and cannot be put on hold because of Covid.
Good morning
Why anyone takes @Heathener seriously I do not know
Because she often has interesting opinions, as do you, and PB is least interesting when we spend time slagging off other contributors, and focus instead on what they're saying. The mass assault on HYUFD on the last thread was excessive too - fine to deride his opinions, but I don't think we should spend time trying to label him.
It's possible that some contributors deliberately try to wind us up (not a novel phenomenon, cf. SeanT, malcolmg). A good response to that is not to be wound up.
Posters that burst peoples carefully constructed comfort bubbles are essential to PB. If you find yourself thinking poster X sounds weird, it might be a good opportunity to question yourself.
I am not sure many of us need to question ourselves about whether it is a bad idea to beat up grannies, use tanks against people for daring to want a vote, and advocate first use of nukes against Argentina.
HYUFD wants to be an elected representative. I would suggest it is incumbent upon all those who think he is dangerously unsuited for any form of elected office to ensure views are widely known so voters are not fooled into supporting him.
He already is an elected representative, bless him.
I did some googling the other day, I think I’ve identified him from the Epping Council website, pretty easy to do based on the personal snippets he’s dropped here. I should get out more.
I did ponder letting the local Labour Party know so they could read his postings. But I thought that would be a bit shitty.
You'd probably be better off, if you want to cause him problems, letting the local LibDems know.
If people start posting and leaking what people posted on here in a private forum then that also opens the way for others to start transferring details to employers, political opponents etc as many have identified themselves on here and made posts they might regret.
However I have not posted anything on here I am particularly ashamed of and not anything on the whole most Epping Forest Conservative voters would not agree with
I agree. Doxxing is deplorable. It recently drove @Charles off the site. While I didn't like his views, he was an interesting insight into an older noblese oblige style of Toryism, albeit one that used a cultivated veneer to mask its beastliness.
NOT BLOODY TRUE
Charles bloody linked to an obituary for someone he said was his Dad, how do you dox someone who has already done that to themselves? I just got fed up and pointed out that the genuinely posh and rich don't go on and on and on about it on internet forums, and to close off the likely retort that I just thought that because I don't know any of them, I pointed out, truthfully, that I know some of his cousins, and you could know them for years without them going out of their way to tell you Who They Are.
Not doxxing.
Yes, everyone knows who @Charles is. The issue aiui was naming an uncle, which was a bit off, even if anyone could have worked it out for themselves. It is a shame @Charles has gone, with his expert knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry and, although not to everyone's taste, anecdotes about his ancestors but there it is.
I always got the impression that Charles was a combination of mildly embarrassed and tongue in cheek about his ancestry. He could have remained silent, but then, it was a part of who he was he could nothing about.
I miss him and if he lurks, very much hope he makes a reappearance. The site is poorer for his departure.
Hundreds of millions poorer, probably.... 😉
I have no idea who Charles is! I always assumed he was a comic creation, nobody could be that posh in real life. The site is certainly poorer in his absence.
Classic 'nice but dim' posho. I'd welcome him back.
Never struck me as dim. And in some areas very well informed. I suspect your prejudice is showing.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I believe Nick actually is a communist? Or certainly former communist?
I was a (Euro)communist in my teens, which, sadly, are more than 50 years astern. I've chosen to be honest about it, but equally I think people should accept what I am now - left-wing Labour by preference but a bias to compromise and split differences. HYUFD is right that I've had to put up with a certain amount of weird stuff, including recently being an agent of Russia or China, though after a couple of days the poster apologised. That has sensitised me to the risks of personal attacks.
Essentially I think people's *views* are fair game (it would be perfectly OK to say someone's views look like fascism or stalinism or indeed (omigod) conservatism, but we waste our time labelling each other as fascists, trots, spies, etc. Attack the idea, not the bloke who has fallen for it.
I always consider your views to be centred in commonsense on most topics. Our political views are not the same. I have never voted Labour, but you always seem to take a sensible view on most matters that span political views.
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show that would be at home on the BBC.
Yeah, I might resuscitate my Apple+ subscription just for that going on reviews. Tbf I don't the BBC could afford Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, that would probably be the budget for several years of pishy cookery programmes blown.
The two main actors are far less famous (and thus I imagine affordable). Gary Oldman is good, but would hope you could find somebody else play an alcoholic washed up desk jockey competently.
No idea how much Apple+ spent on this show, but it definitely isn't on par with the likes of Foundation, where every second was $10,000s worth of VFX shots. It definitely could be made without spending the earth on it. Its about a load of spies who work out a rundown office in the back streets of London, no need for James Bond style locations and special effects.
Loads of these shows are now done using the UE4 virtual stage which cuts production cost and time significantly. I'm almost certain this will have been given that it's SPE.
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show that would be at home on the BBC.
Another one from an ex-BBC production house bought up by a foreign company licencing to a different foreign company.
See-Saw Films is the credited production house. I can't see any direct info that it was BBC from the bio. It was written by Will Smith, who was in (wrote some of) the Thick of It / Veep.
There's quite a few ex-BBC people aiui.
That's not quite the same thing. Isn't tv / movies / media all a bit 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, everybody knows everybody who has worked with / for x....nature of the business.
I notice with UK AI start-up scene is becoming a bit like that where it isn't becoming very hard to link most to some sort of connection to DeepMinds by the same game.
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
Absolutely bizarre threader that abjectly fails to consider the clear evidence that its own charts reveal – the drop in masking is revealed preference over the nonsense people tell pollsters.
As for the odious Heathener's early-morning rallying to the flag. I know you are a troll who preaches violence towards those who choose not to wear a mask, despite masking being entirely voluntary.
Get this into your head: lockdowns and restrictions aren't coming back. The public won't wear it for a virus that is now statistically less dangerous than influenza.
I think it unlikely the government will u-turn on free tests, if only because limiting testing will itself dramatically reduce the official numbers of cases and that will reduce the political effect of rising infections.
Well ... will it though?
That might have worked a century ago but nowadays with media awareness? It's not just anecdotal, but problems in industries like travel where infections are causing chaos (Dover, Heathrow) as well as schools and NHS trusts. My son's school had to shut the whole of last week because there was so much covid - they ran out of teachers. The scientists may get ridiculed but studies like ZOE, which the Gov't have pulled the plug on, are still reporting and they have a current daily infection estimate at 337,000. https://covid.joinzoe.com/
I think it's an incredibly dangerous political route to go down to think you can pull the wool over people's eyes and, effectively, gag the news. It smacks to me of the last vestiges of a party losing power, not to mention being rather Putinesque.
The right-wingers (I know it annoys people if I call them Far Right) are so hell-bent on pretending this thing has gone away that they've lost all sense of proportion and perspective.
The issue will always be capacity in the health care system. If things get bad in this respect, then the restrictions will come back. This is what a majority of people will accept.
I don't know about the "chaos" you describe - is it the disease that is causing chaos, or the requirement to test and isolate?
Also: the situation in Ukraine puts Covid in to context. The world doesn't stop turning and cannot be put on hold because of Covid.
Good morning
Why anyone takes @Heathener seriously I do not know
Because she often has interesting opinions, as do you, and PB is least interesting when we spend time slagging off other contributors, and focus instead on what they're saying. The mass assault on HYUFD on the last thread was excessive too - fine to deride his opinions, but I don't think we should spend time trying to label him.
It's possible that some contributors deliberately try to wind us up (not a novel phenomenon, cf. SeanT, malcolmg). A good response to that is not to be wound up.
Posters that burst peoples carefully constructed comfort bubbles are essential to PB. If you find yourself thinking poster X sounds weird, it might be a good opportunity to question yourself.
I am not sure many of us need to question ourselves about whether it is a bad idea to beat up grannies, use tanks against people for daring to want a vote, and advocate first use of nukes against Argentina.
HYUFD wants to be an elected representative. I would suggest it is incumbent upon all those who think he is dangerously unsuited for any form of elected office to ensure views are widely known so voters are not fooled into supporting him.
He already is an elected representative, bless him.
I did some googling the other day, I think I’ve identified him from the Epping Council website, pretty easy to do based on the personal snippets he’s dropped here. I should get out more.
I did ponder letting the local Labour Party know so they could read his postings. But I thought that would be a bit shitty.
You'd probably be better off, if you want to cause him problems, letting the local LibDems know.
If people start posting and leaking what people posted on here in a private forum then that also opens the way for others to start transferring details to employers, political opponents etc as many have identified themselves on here and made posts they might regret.
However I have not posted anything on here I am particularly ashamed of and not anything on the whole most Epping Forest Conservative voters would not agree with
I agree. Doxxing is deplorable. It recently drove @Charles off the site. While I didn't like his views, he was an interesting insight into an older noblese oblige style of Toryism, albeit one that used a cultivated veneer to mask its beastliness.
NOT BLOODY TRUE
Charles bloody linked to an obituary for someone he said was his Dad, how do you dox someone who has already done that to themselves? I just got fed up and pointed out that the genuinely posh and rich don't go on and on and on about it on internet forums, and to close off the likely retort that I just thought that because I don't know any of them, I pointed out, truthfully, that I know some of his cousins, and you could know them for years without them going out of their way to tell you Who They Are.
Not doxxing.
Yes, everyone knows who @Charles is. The issue aiui was naming an uncle, which was a bit off, even if anyone could have worked it out for themselves. It is a shame @Charles has gone, with his expert knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry and, although not to everyone's taste, anecdotes about his ancestors but there it is.
I always got the impression that Charles was a combination of mildly embarrassed and tongue in cheek about his ancestry. He could have remained silent, but then, it was a part of who he was he could nothing about.
I miss him and if he lurks, very much hope he makes a reappearance. The site is poorer for his departure.
Hundreds of millions poorer, probably.... 😉
I have no idea who Charles is! I always assumed he was a comic creation, nobody could be that posh in real life. The site is certainly poorer in his absence.
Classic 'nice but dim' posho. I'd welcome him back.
Never struck me as dim. And in some areas very well informed. I suspect your prejudice is showing.
His insight into Glasgow people trafficking was as deep as it was wide.
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show that would be at home on the BBC.
If it’s half as good as the books it will be great - clever concept (basically rather than go through the hassle of firing MI5 duds they ship them to dead end jobs in a crummy office in the hope & expectation that they’ll quit) and give them the boss from hell (the Oldman character). Needless to say things don’t work out as planned.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
During my time on here someone said you must be mentally ill to want to change your sex. That's transphobic. I'm not saying transphobia is rife, but it happens.
That is the official line: gender dysphoria is a medically diagnoseable, treatable ailment. It is even in DSM-5.
Until the 1970s so was homosexuality.
Which gives pause for thought but both need to be analysed on their own terms. My views have been strongly influenced by Helen Joyces' book "Trans" and I'm not aware of any convincing attempt to refute her main points.
I think it unlikely the government will u-turn on free tests, if only because limiting testing will itself dramatically reduce the official numbers of cases and that will reduce the political effect of rising infections.
Well ... will it though?
That might have worked a century ago but nowadays with media awareness? It's not just anecdotal, but problems in industries like travel where infections are causing chaos (Dover, Heathrow) as well as schools and NHS trusts. My son's school had to shut the whole of last week because there was so much covid - they ran out of teachers. The scientists may get ridiculed but studies like ZOE, which the Gov't have pulled the plug on, are still reporting and they have a current daily infection estimate at 337,000. https://covid.joinzoe.com/
I think it's an incredibly dangerous political route to go down to think you can pull the wool over people's eyes and, effectively, gag the news. It smacks to me of the last vestiges of a party losing power, not to mention being rather Putinesque.
The right-wingers (I know it annoys people if I call them Far Right) are so hell-bent on pretending this thing has gone away that they've lost all sense of proportion and perspective.
The issue will always be capacity in the health care system. If things get bad in this respect, then the restrictions will come back. This is what a majority of people will accept.
I don't know about the "chaos" you describe - is it the disease that is causing chaos, or the requirement to test and isolate?
Also: the situation in Ukraine puts Covid in to context. The world doesn't stop turning and cannot be put on hold because of Covid.
Good morning
Why anyone takes @Heathener seriously I do not know
Because she often has interesting opinions, as do you, and PB is least interesting when we spend time slagging off other contributors, and focus instead on what they're saying. The mass assault on HYUFD on the last thread was excessive too - fine to deride his opinions, but I don't think we should spend time trying to label him.
It's possible that some contributors deliberately try to wind us up (not a novel phenomenon, cf. SeanT, malcolmg). A good response to that is not to be wound up.
The bullying of HYUFD has been going on for months. It’s utterly shameful to see it continue.
It is not bullying. It is making it clear that certain views which he advocates - including supporting the use of force against people whose only 'crime' is to want to vote - are unacceptable. He is by far and away the most extremist poster on this forum and if he is going to promulgate such views then he should expect to be attacked for them.
If we had a poster on here openly advocating repatriating all non whites or sterilising the disabled then I would fully expect them to be mercilessly challenged and castigated. I don't see some of HYUFD's views as being much different.
That is not bullying, it is common sense.
Given we have had holocaust deniers amongst others on here in the past rather absurd comparison.
It is of course this elected UK government's policy to refuse an indyref2, in Boris' own words for 40 years minimum. If Sturgeon held a wildcat referendum then we would be in a Spain Catalonia situation whether you liked it or not.
I consider you equally to often post extreme libertarian views, so what
We do not, to my knowledge, have any holocaust deniers on here and have not for a considerable period of time so my statement stands.
And the difference between us is that I do not advocate or support the use of violence to promote my political views. You do. Regularly.
Very disturbing thread on how Russia is further conflating the "ukr is run by Nazis" into a whole new terror and justification for war and genocide. Bleak.
Greg Yudin @YudinGreg · 16m It follows that Nazism is an external enemy that should be destroyed at any cost. The initial view was that Nazis have seized power in Ukraine, while ordinary Ukrainians are just some sort of Russians with silly ideas about their identity and a ridiculous language 3/11
Greg Yudin @YudinGreg · 16m This meant “de-nazification” could be completed through regime change & Ukrainians should be liberated. Obviously, this conception failed when Ukrainians started resisting bravely. A natural conclusion from that: Ukrainians turned out to be deeply infected by Nazism 4/11
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show that would be at home on the BBC.
Yeah, I might resuscitate my Apple+ subscription just for that going on reviews. Tbf I don't the BBC could afford Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, that would probably be the budget for several years of pishy cookery programmes blown.
The two main actors are far less famous (and thus I imagine affordable). Gary Oldman is good, but would hope you could find somebody else play an alcoholic washed up desk jockey competently.
No idea how much Apple+ spent on this show, but it definitely isn't on par with the likes of Foundation, where every second was $10,000s worth of VFX shots. It definitely could be made without spending the earth on it. Its about a load of spies who work out a rundown office in the back streets of London, no need for James Bond style locations and special effects.
Loads of these shows are now done using the UE4 virtual stage which cuts production cost and time significantly. I'm almost certain this will have been given that it's SPE.
Even with virtual stage, my understanding is Foundation was still very expensive to make, $50+ million.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
There's some rather dire contributions but it doesn't mean they are driven by transphobia (as fairly defined). And I'm not up for making such an accusation against individual posters. I could (and I could prove it to an objective and informed audience beyond reasonable doubt) but it does no good. It'd just make people even less likely to give a hearing to my stuff on the issue.
yes, will probably pass 400 by end of day, and worth noting that theses are the confirmed losses of Russian tanks, verified by photo, there are probably a lot more destroyed that we don't have photos of and a lot damaged that have been pulled back maybe over the boarder to be repaired. I cant find today numbers but Ukraine is clamming to have destroyed over 650 tanks a few days ago, and I think their number is credible.
Breakdown of Russian tanks losses on Oryx, (and the number of active and reserve tanks according to Wikipedia)
T64 - 12 (meant to be in reserve only) T72 - 235 (2,300 Active and 7,000 R) T80 - 86 (480 A and 4000 R) T90 - 17 (435 A and 200 R) Unidentified: - 47
Russia's' most modern tank the T14 does not seem to be present in Ukraine, possibly because there are still sorting out teething troubles with it, or maybe because there don't what to loess one and have it captured and given to the USA.
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
An interesting post. I've always been very bearish about CCS, and I know we've discussed it previously. It has a minor role in very specific circumstances (as you say above), but I really do not see it as a significant contributor to a 'solution' to the crisis.
Energy storage is key. Many moons ago on here, I suggested an X-Prize style competition by the government, offering massive incentives to develop energy storage. It might be a little too late for that now, but it is the missing link - and not an easy one to fill.
Talking of tv, Slow Horses on Apple+ starring Gary Oldman, seems very promising. Its the sort of show that would be at home on the BBC.
If it’s half as good as the books it will be great - clever concept (basically rather than go through the hassle of firing MI5 duds they ship them to dead end jobs in a crummy office in the hope & expectation that they’ll quit) and give them the boss from hell (the Oldman character). Needless to say things don’t work out as planned.
I watched the first two episodes back to back and I enjoyed it. It could have easily gone too far with the schtick of the losers, but so far its walked the line between using the fact they are weirdo losers for amusing quips, while still sticking to the premise there is a genuine danger that needs to be tackled.
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
Extracting more of our own gas also fits the bill.
yes, will probably pass 400 by end of day, and worth noting that theses are the confirmed losses of Russian tanks, verified by photo, there are probably a lot more destroyed that we don't have photos of and a lot damaged that have been pulled back maybe over the boarder to be repaired. I cant find today numbers but Ukraine is clamming to have destroyed over 650 tanks a few days ago, and I think their number is credible.
Breakdown of Russian tanks losses on Oryx, (and the number of active and reserve tanks according to Wikipedia)
T64 - 12 (meant to be in reserve only) T72 - 235 (2,300 Active and 7,000 R) T80 - 86 (480 A and 4000 R) T90 - 17 (435 A and 200 R) Unidentified: - 47
Russia's' most modern tank the T14 does not seem to be present in Ukraine, possibly because there are still sorting out teething troubles with it, or maybe because there don't what to loess one and have it captured and given to the USA.
I think they lost a T14 in Syria, which gave them significant concerns.
I'd also treat the 'reserve' numbers with a little scepticism. I bet only 1 in 10 of the reserve can be made to work within a day; 2 in 10 in a week. Reserves are the first thing where funding is cut. And tanks need trained crews.
Excessive globalisation / consolidation strikes again. 80% of the global supply of sunflower oil comes out of Russia and Ukraine. For UK market, 75% of supply is packed by a single company.
Excessive globalisation / consolidation strikes again. 80% of the global supply of sunflower oil comes out of Russia and Ukraine. For UK market, 75% of supply is packed by a single company.
Just In Time is brilliant during 'normal' times. AS the 2011 Japanese earthquake, or Covid, or the chip shortage, or this event show: JIT is a git when small things fail.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
During my time on here someone said you must be mentally ill to want to change your sex. That's transphobic. I'm not saying transphobia is rife, but it happens.
That is the official line: gender dysphoria is a medically diagnoseable, treatable ailment. It is even in DSM-5.
Until the 1970s so was homosexuality.
Which gives pause for thought but both need to be analysed on their own terms. My views have been strongly influenced by Helen Joyces' book "Trans" and I'm not aware of any convincing attempt to refute her main points.
It is fundamental to the Trans debate whether it is a pathological state (gender dysphoria) or whether a normal variation to be accommodated by self actualisation.
In my mind (I am not a psychiatrist) a pathological mental state is one causing psychological, emotional or social harm to an individual or others.
As such some mental illnesses are caused by society and can be depathologised by changes in society. Homosexuality is an example of this, but there are others, such as promiscuity or atheism, at least in the UK. In other countries things may be different.
So a key issue in the Trans debate is whether society can accommodate Trans people as they want to be, or whether other societal impacts from this are too important.
Excessive globalisation / consolidation strikes again. 80% of the global supply of sunflower oil comes out of Russia and Ukraine. For UK market, 75% of supply is packed by a single company.
Just In Time is brilliant during 'normal' times. AS the 2011 Japanese earthquake, or Covid, or the chip shortage, or this event show: JIT is a git when small things fail.
Its not just JIT, it is the shear scale of the centralisation / near monopolies that have formed across practically every industry. Not only is there no resilience if there is a near single point of failure, but the idea of a free market fails e.g.
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
An interesting post. I've always been very bearish about CCS, and I know we've discussed it previously. It has a minor role in very specific circumstances (as you say above), but I really do not see it as a significant contributor to a 'solution' to the crisis.
Energy storage is key. Many moons ago on here, I suggested an X-Prize style competition by the government, offering massive incentives to develop energy storage. It might be a little too late for that now, but it is the missing link - and not an easy one to fill.
We can still use green hydrogen as a storage vector. Round trip efficiency isn't great, but it would work at large scale - just like it does with natural gas.
I think it unlikely the government will u-turn on free tests, if only because limiting testing will itself dramatically reduce the official numbers of cases and that will reduce the political effect of rising infections.
Well ... will it though?
That might have worked a century ago but nowadays with media awareness? It's not just anecdotal, but problems in industries like travel where infections are causing chaos (Dover, Heathrow) as well as schools and NHS trusts. My son's school had to shut the whole of last week because there was so much covid - they ran out of teachers. The scientists may get ridiculed but studies like ZOE, which the Gov't have pulled the plug on, are still reporting and they have a current daily infection estimate at 337,000. https://covid.joinzoe.com/
I think it's an incredibly dangerous political route to go down to think you can pull the wool over people's eyes and, effectively, gag the news. It smacks to me of the last vestiges of a party losing power, not to mention being rather Putinesque.
The right-wingers (I know it annoys people if I call them Far Right) are so hell-bent on pretending this thing has gone away that they've lost all sense of proportion and perspective.
The issue will always be capacity in the health care system. If things get bad in this respect, then the restrictions will come back. This is what a majority of people will accept.
I don't know about the "chaos" you describe - is it the disease that is causing chaos, or the requirement to test and isolate?
Also: the situation in Ukraine puts Covid in to context. The world doesn't stop turning and cannot be put on hold because of Covid.
Good morning
Why anyone takes @Heathener seriously I do not know
Because she often has interesting opinions, as do you, and PB is least interesting when we spend time slagging off other contributors, and focus instead on what they're saying. The mass assault on HYUFD on the last thread was excessive too - fine to deride his opinions, but I don't think we should spend time trying to label him.
It's possible that some contributors deliberately try to wind us up (not a novel phenomenon, cf. SeanT, malcolmg). A good response to that is not to be wound up.
The bullying of HYUFD has been going on for months. It’s utterly shameful to see it continue.
It is not bullying. It is making it clear that certain views which he advocates - including supporting the use of force against people whose only 'crime' is to want to vote - are unacceptable. He is by far and away the most extremist poster on this forum and if he is going to promulgate such views then he should expect to be attacked for them.
If we had a poster on here openly advocating repatriating all non whites or sterilising the disabled then I would fully expect them to be mercilessly challenged and castigated. I don't see some of HYUFD's views as being much different.
That is not bullying, it is common sense.
Given we have had holocaust deniers amongst others on here in the past rather absurd comparison.
It is of course this elected UK government's policy to refuse an indyref2, in Boris' own words for 40 years minimum. If Sturgeon held a wildcat referendum then we would be in a Spain Catalonia situation whether you liked it or not.
I consider you equally to often post extreme libertarian views, so what
We do not, to my knowledge, have any holocaust deniers on here and have not for a considerable period of time so my statement stands.
And the difference between us is that I do not advocate or support the use of violence to promote my political views. You do. Regularly.
The sinister antisemite Crosby was banned for life from the site several years ago.
A very strange individual. I have numerous conversations about polling models, all very logical, taking work based upon academic literature, and it was all very interesting. Then you would see all of a sudden he would go off the reservation banging on about the Jews and the Holocaust, denying provable facts.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
During my time on here someone said you must be mentally ill to want to change your sex. That's transphobic. I'm not saying transphobia is rife, but it happens.
That is the official line: gender dysphoria is a medically diagnoseable, treatable ailment. It is even in DSM-5.
Until the 1970s so was homosexuality.
Which gives pause for thought but both need to be analysed on their own terms. My views have been strongly influenced by Helen Joyces' book "Trans" and I'm not aware of any convincing attempt to refute her main points.
It is fundamental to the Trans debate whether it is a pathological state (gender dysphoria) or whether a normal variation to be accommodated by self actualisation.
In my mind (I am not a psychiatrist) a pathological mental state is one causing psychological, emotional or social harm to an individual or others.
As such some mental illnesses are caused by society and can be depathologised by changes in society. Homosexuality is an example of this, but there are others, such as promiscuity or atheism, at least in the UK. In other countries things may be different.
So a key issue in the Trans debate is whether society can accommodate Trans people as they want to be, or whether other societal impacts from this are too important.
Apologies in advance if I am reading this incorrectly, totally missing the boat and/or failing to understand your points here.
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
An interesting post. I've always been very bearish about CCS, and I know we've discussed it previously. It has a minor role in very specific circumstances (as you say above), but I really do not see it as a significant contributor to a 'solution' to the crisis.
Energy storage is key. Many moons ago on here, I suggested an X-Prize style competition by the government, offering massive incentives to develop energy storage. It might be a little too late for that now, but it is the missing link - and not an easy one to fill.
The compressed air battery seems to be the winning idea at the moment. It also allows us to tap storage tanks for CO2 and put it into long term underground storage to actually move into a net negative scenario.
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
An interesting post. I've always been very bearish about CCS, and I know we've discussed it previously. It has a minor role in very specific circumstances (as you say above), but I really do not see it as a significant contributor to a 'solution' to the crisis.
Energy storage is key. Many moons ago on here, I suggested an X-Prize style competition by the government, offering massive incentives to develop energy storage. It might be a little too late for that now, but it is the missing link - and not an easy one to fill.
We can still use green hydrogen as a storage vector. Round trip efficiency isn't great, but it would work at large scale - just like it does with natural gas.
Yep. As with energy generation, I think storage will end up as a series of 'solutions', at different scales, probably locally distributed rather than a few big plants.
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
Extracting more of our own gas also fits the bill.
I agree that for the hydrocarbons we do consume, we should endeavour to maximise the domestic supply so long as the environmental consequences are not more damaging than the alternatives. And that should include coal.
Saying 'no new developments' is bonkers, as long as we have ongoing demand. It is worse than virtue signalling, it is economically damaging and threatens energy security until we are weaned off fossil fuels.
I think it unlikely the government will u-turn on free tests, if only because limiting testing will itself dramatically reduce the official numbers of cases and that will reduce the political effect of rising infections.
Well ... will it though?
That might have worked a century ago but nowadays with media awareness? It's not just anecdotal, but problems in industries like travel where infections are causing chaos (Dover, Heathrow) as well as schools and NHS trusts. My son's school had to shut the whole of last week because there was so much covid - they ran out of teachers. The scientists may get ridiculed but studies like ZOE, which the Gov't have pulled the plug on, are still reporting and they have a current daily infection estimate at 337,000. https://covid.joinzoe.com/
I think it's an incredibly dangerous political route to go down to think you can pull the wool over people's eyes and, effectively, gag the news. It smacks to me of the last vestiges of a party losing power, not to mention being rather Putinesque.
The right-wingers (I know it annoys people if I call them Far Right) are so hell-bent on pretending this thing has gone away that they've lost all sense of proportion and perspective.
The issue will always be capacity in the health care system. If things get bad in this respect, then the restrictions will come back. This is what a majority of people will accept.
I don't know about the "chaos" you describe - is it the disease that is causing chaos, or the requirement to test and isolate?
Also: the situation in Ukraine puts Covid in to context. The world doesn't stop turning and cannot be put on hold because of Covid.
Good morning
Why anyone takes @Heathener seriously I do not know
Because she often has interesting opinions, as do you, and PB is least interesting when we spend time slagging off other contributors, and focus instead on what they're saying. The mass assault on HYUFD on the last thread was excessive too - fine to deride his opinions, but I don't think we should spend time trying to label him.
It's possible that some contributors deliberately try to wind us up (not a novel phenomenon, cf. SeanT, malcolmg). A good response to that is not to be wound up.
Posters that burst peoples carefully constructed comfort bubbles are essential to PB. If you find yourself thinking poster X sounds weird, it might be a good opportunity to question yourself.
I am not sure many of us need to question ourselves about whether it is a bad idea to beat up grannies, use tanks against people for daring to want a vote, and advocate first use of nukes against Argentina.
HYUFD wants to be an elected representative. I would suggest it is incumbent upon all those who think he is dangerously unsuited for any form of elected office to ensure views are widely known so voters are not fooled into supporting him.
He already is an elected representative, bless him.
I did some googling the other day, I think I’ve identified him from the Epping Council website, pretty easy to do based on the personal snippets he’s dropped here. I should get out more.
I did ponder letting the local Labour Party know so they could read his postings. But I thought that would be a bit shitty.
You'd probably be better off, if you want to cause him problems, letting the local LibDems know.
If people start posting and leaking what people posted on here in a private forum then that also opens the way for others to start transferring details to employers, political opponents etc as many have identified themselves on here and made posts they might regret.
However I have not posted anything on here I am particularly ashamed of and not anything on the whole most Epping Forest Conservative voters would not agree with
I agree. Doxxing is deplorable. It recently drove @Charles off the site. While I didn't like his views, he was an interesting insight into an older noblese oblige style of Toryism, albeit one that used a cultivated veneer to mask its beastliness.
NOT BLOODY TRUE
Charles bloody linked to an obituary for someone he said was his Dad, how do you dox someone who has already done that to themselves? I just got fed up and pointed out that the genuinely posh and rich don't go on and on and on about it on internet forums, and to close off the likely retort that I just thought that because I don't know any of them, I pointed out, truthfully, that I know some of his cousins, and you could know them for years without them going out of their way to tell you Who They Are.
Not doxxing.
Yes, everyone knows who @Charles is. The issue aiui was naming an uncle, which was a bit off, even if anyone could have worked it out for themselves. It is a shame @Charles has gone, with his expert knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry and, although not to everyone's taste, anecdotes about his ancestors but there it is.
I always got the impression that Charles was a combination of mildly embarrassed and tongue in cheek about his ancestry. He could have remained silent, but then, it was a part of who he was he could nothing about.
I miss him and if he lurks, very much hope he makes a reappearance. The site is poorer for his departure.
Hundreds of millions poorer, probably.... 😉
I have no idea who Charles is! I always assumed he was a comic creation, nobody could be that posh in real life. The site is certainly poorer in his absence.
Classic 'nice but dim' posho. I'd welcome him back.
Never struck me as dim. And in some areas very well informed. I suspect your prejudice is showing.
Lots of cliches dropped in a faux authoritative manner - is why I made that rather tart and sneaky (since he isn't here) comment.
But yep, very well informed in some things, and often quite thoughtful, and a decent guy, is my 'better self' assessment.
I am coming to conclusion these people have some weird BDSM kink for being glued to things. The sort of people who would actually love Leon's flint dildo business.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
During my time on here someone said you must be mentally ill to want to change your sex. That's transphobic. I'm not saying transphobia is rife, but it happens.
That is the official line: gender dysphoria is a medically diagnoseable, treatable ailment. It is even in DSM-5.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Excessive globalisation / consolidation strikes again. 80% of the global supply of sunflower oil comes out of Russia and Ukraine. For UK market, 75% of supply is packed by a single company.
Just In Time is brilliant during 'normal' times. AS the 2011 Japanese earthquake, or Covid, or the chip shortage, or this event show: JIT is a git when small things fail.
Yes good point. If I was running a huge multi national car manufacturing concern I would be using JIT, but if I had my own little factory l wouldn't risk it as the extra cost of a small amount of stock is better than the potential disaster. That might just be me being risk adverse.
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
Extracting more of our own gas also fits the bill.
I agree that for the hydrocarbons we do consume, we should endeavour to maximise the domestic supply so long as the environmental consequences are not more damaging than the alternatives. And that should include coal.
Saying 'no new developments' is bonkers, as long as we have ongoing demand. It is worse than virtue signalling, it is economically damaging and threatens energy security until we are weaned off fossil fuels.
Removing coal from our energy mix was a huge environmental gain, just from air quality improvements. We should, of course, be removing all of the barriers to domestic oil and gas extraction. The idea that by eliminating domestic industries we would magically reduce demand was always ridiculous. We should never have been in this position of having huge oil and gas reserves in the UK but also being reliant on imports. Labour and the Tories have both put us in this position and it's time for grown up government to tell the green lobby to get fucked.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
During my time on here someone said you must be mentally ill to want to change your sex. That's transphobic. I'm not saying transphobia is rife, but it happens.
That is the official line: gender dysphoria is a medically diagnoseable, treatable ailment. It is even in DSM-5.
Until the 1970s so was homosexuality.
Which gives pause for thought but both need to be analysed on their own terms. My views have been strongly influenced by Helen Joyces' book "Trans" and I'm not aware of any convincing attempt to refute her main points.
It is fundamental to the Trans debate whether it is a pathological state (gender dysphoria) or whether a normal variation to be accommodated by self actualisation.
In my mind (I am not a psychiatrist) a pathological mental state is one causing psychological, emotional or social harm to an individual or others.
As such some mental illnesses are caused by society and can be depathologised by changes in society. Homosexuality is an example of this, but there are others, such as promiscuity or atheism, at least in the UK. In other countries things may be different.
So a key issue in the Trans debate is whether society can accommodate Trans people as they want to be, or whether other societal impacts from this are too important.
For a whole range of practical purposes it makes little difference. Transitioning requires heavyweight medical intervention and a philosophical debate over the existence of a soul like gender identity doesn't affect that. The substantive issues are access to things currently segregated on the basis of biological sex including safe spaces, prisons and women's sport plus treatment of minors with irreversible and risky medical interventions . Another less important issue is how far elaborate changes in terminology are needed and whether short hand cultural assumptions that apply to the vast majority of the population need to be abandoned. My view is that we recognise degrees of transition by an individual in terms of access to segregated resources and activities and that biological sex is retained as a discriminator for certain things like some sports. The vast majority of individuals who transition will be able to live their lives as their chosen gender without negating the rights of others.
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
An interesting post. I've always been very bearish about CCS, and I know we've discussed it previously. It has a minor role in very specific circumstances (as you say above), but I really do not see it as a significant contributor to a 'solution' to the crisis.
Energy storage is key. Many moons ago on here, I suggested an X-Prize style competition by the government, offering massive incentives to develop energy storage. It might be a little too late for that now, but it is the missing link - and not an easy one to fill.
We can still use green hydrogen as a storage vector. Round trip efficiency isn't great, but it would work at large scale - just like it does with natural gas.
Yep. As with energy generation, I think storage will end up as a series of 'solutions', at different scales, probably locally distributed rather than a few big plants.
Very soon everyone's car will be an energy storage device. Use the remaining juice in the battery to meet the evening peak, then recharge overnight when supply would otherwise exceed demand.
Car batteries for daily load shifting, hydrogen for seasonal load shifting.
Excessive globalisation / consolidation strikes again. 80% of the global supply of sunflower oil comes out of Russia and Ukraine. For UK market, 75% of supply is packed by a single company.
Just In Time is brilliant during 'normal' times. AS the 2011 Japanese earthquake, or Covid, or the chip shortage, or this event show: JIT is a git when small things fail.
Yes good point. If I was running a huge multi national car manufacturing concern I would be using JIT, but if I had my own little factory l wouldn't risk it as the extra cost of a small amount of stock is better than the potential disaster. That might just be me being risk adverse.
Interestingly Toyota who pioneered JIT over the past few years re-evaluated this system and now actually hold stock of crucial components. For example, I believe they were stockpiling chips before COVID and it allowed them to continue production when other had to cease, because they had assessed their business to see which items could only be produced by a single vendor and those that matched this category they realised the potential breakdown if that vendor was taken offline.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Thanks for the info.
"no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch"
As someone who worked at the hardware/software level, what are the constraining factors to moving back onto the software branch? Is the hardware actually very different, and if so, it is it modularised?
There is Labour support for increased arms supplies.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1510545951160741891 I’m not going to post photos of the Russian atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine but they are surely reason enough for 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇪🇺 and NATO to provide tanks and other offensive weaponry to 🇺🇦 ? We cannot stand by and pretend we haven’t seen the genocidal war crimes.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
We should give them the tools to push the Russians out of their country and its also time to to turn the gas imports off and fuck the consequences. The war crimes being committed by the Russian regime are horrific and yet countries allied to Ukraine are spending billions of dollars per week propping up the Russians.
Pace @Dura_Ace , the Typhoons are pretty capable missile platforms with good radar. Would be a significant upgrade for Poland - but it would also complicate thing for them if they want US F16s. Running two incompatible aircraft types in a similar role is a very expensive hobby.
(edit) I see he got there first, and with better arguments.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Correction: they could use the Polish AIM-120C but they are bringing less to the fight than a Block 52 F-16C carrying the same weapon.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Wouldn't they just run them for this conflict and then do what we're going to do (sell them for parts/scrap)? Essentially just a short term fix for giving away their MiGs.
Either way, thanks for the info, I feel as though we'd do well to hire you as a consultant DA, but then you'd be joining the capitalist system.
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
An interesting post. I've always been very bearish about CCS, and I know we've discussed it previously. It has a minor role in very specific circumstances (as you say above), but I really do not see it as a significant contributor to a 'solution' to the crisis.
Energy storage is key. Many moons ago on here, I suggested an X-Prize style competition by the government, offering massive incentives to develop energy storage. It might be a little too late for that now, but it is the missing link - and not an easy one to fill.
The compressed air battery seems to be the winning idea at the moment. It also allows us to tap storage tanks for CO2 and put it into long term underground storage to actually move into a net negative scenario.
Would also solve our industrial CO2 supply problem - and potentially the neon production one, too.
There are various storage technologies which have different advantages/disadvantages. They are not mutually exclusive.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
During my time on here someone said you must be mentally ill to want to change your sex. That's transphobic. I'm not saying transphobia is rife, but it happens.
That is the official line: gender dysphoria is a medically diagnoseable, treatable ailment. It is even in DSM-5.
Until the 1970s so was homosexuality.
Which gives pause for thought but both need to be analysed on their own terms. My views have been strongly influenced by Helen Joyces' book "Trans" and I'm not aware of any convincing attempt to refute her main points.
It is fundamental to the Trans debate whether it is a pathological state (gender dysphoria) or whether a normal variation to be accommodated by self actualisation.
In my mind (I am not a psychiatrist) a pathological mental state is one causing psychological, emotional or social harm to an individual or others.
As such some mental illnesses are caused by society and can be depathologised by changes in society. Homosexuality is an example of this, but there are others, such as promiscuity or atheism, at least in the UK. In other countries things may be different.
So a key issue in the Trans debate is whether society can accommodate Trans people as they want to be, or whether other societal impacts from this are too important.
Apologies in advance if I am reading this incorrectly, totally missing the boat and/or failing to understand your points here.
You consider atheism a mental illness?
No, but other societies and times have done so. It is clearly not so in contemporary Britain. I use it as an example of a society changing, and being more accepting of social deviance.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Thanks for the info.
"no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch"
As someone who worked at the hardware/software level, what are the constraining factors to moving back onto the software branch? Is the hardware actually very different, and if so, it is it modularised?
Potentially an ASIC? Would have a specified instruction set rather than anything programmable.
No, but other societies and times have done so. It is clearly not so in contemporary Britain. I use it as an example of a society changing, and being more accepting of social deviance.
OK, thanks for clarifying. So mental illness by this definition is essentially anything that would not be considered "the norm" by wider society?
Excessive globalisation / consolidation strikes again. 80% of the global supply of sunflower oil comes out of Russia and Ukraine. For UK market, 75% of supply is packed by a single company.
I'm not particularly concerned about this because sunflower oil is horrible for your health. Hopefully return to using beef tallow.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
During my time on here someone said you must be mentally ill to want to change your sex. That's transphobic. I'm not saying transphobia is rife, but it happens.
That is the official line: gender dysphoria is a medically diagnoseable, treatable ailment. It is even in DSM-5.
Until the 1970s so was homosexuality.
Which gives pause for thought but both need to be analysed on their own terms. My views have been strongly influenced by Helen Joyces' book "Trans" and I'm not aware of any convincing attempt to refute her main points.
It is fundamental to the Trans debate whether it is a pathological state (gender dysphoria) or whether a normal variation to be accommodated by self actualisation.
In my mind (I am not a psychiatrist) a pathological mental state is one causing psychological, emotional or social harm to an individual or others.
As such some mental illnesses are caused by society and can be depathologised by changes in society. Homosexuality is an example of this, but there are others, such as promiscuity or atheism, at least in the UK. In other countries things may be different.
So a key issue in the Trans debate is whether society can accommodate Trans people as they want to be, or whether other societal impacts from this are too important.
For a whole range of practical purposes it makes little difference. Transitioning requires heavyweight medical intervention and a philosophical debate over the existence of a soul like gender identity doesn't affect that. The substantive issues are access to things currently segregated on the basis of biological sex including safe spaces, prisons and women's sport plus treatment of minors with irreversible and risky medical interventions . Another less important issue is how far elaborate changes in terminology are needed and whether short hand cultural assumptions that apply to the vast majority of the population need to be abandoned. My view is that we recognise degrees of transition by an individual in terms of access to segregated resources and activities and that biological sex is retained as a discriminator for certain things like some sports. The vast majority of individuals who transition will be able to live their lives as their chosen gender without negating the rights of others.
Though a key part of the Trans debate is how far physical transitioning is required for social acceptance. A significant percentage of Trans people do not surgically or chemically transition.
HYUFD doesn’t pretend like most of the people that bully him day after day. Just let it go and leave the guy alone.
HYUFD is anti-democratic. He would be happy to see me, and thousands of others like me, imprisoned for our political views if that was necessary for his side to stay in power.
I might disagree politically with a lot of other posters here, and sometimes the things they say might upset me, because of the degree to which I think their views will lead to suffering for others - but only HYUFD has left me feeling scared for my liberty.
I will stand up for democratic norms against someone like HYUFD, and that is not bullying. Nor is it bullying to insist on proper use of facts, where HYUFD has a way of denying basic aspects of reality.
Where have I said I would imprison people for their views? I am generally more tolerant of Corbynistas for example than most of the liberal and libertarian thought police on here when they are not trashing me
Exactly. HYUFD has a right to his opinions. I see no reason for anyone to feel threatened - if he was Prime Minister, there might be policies that would give cause for concern, but as things stand he's simply representing one of many viewpoints, and it's not illegal for him to hold them. Democracy includes not hassling people personally because they say things we don't agree with.
It's also verrrrry boring.
I'm surprised by you Nick. Yes HYUFD has a right to his views and a right to express them which he does fulsomely. We also have a right to oppose them which is what we are doing. I would have thought from your background you would be at the forefront of objecting to these types of views. As history tells us it is the failure to object to these types of views that enables them to take hold.
Nick has been called a Communist amongst other things on here. Occasionally worse.
I often disagree with him but he has a right to his views exactly as I do and everyone else does on here as long as they are legal.
Without the pile on from thought police like you
I think it's your Scotland views where you lose the plot. Otherwise, true blue Tory with a trad bent and polling every day for breakfast.
And one (imo) very positive thing about you I'd like to put on record having noticed - an absence of brutish, simple simon interventions on 'trans'.
Naah, gonna have to show you thee red card there. Who actualy are you talking about? Because nobody who makes that accusation ever makes it good. Nobody here is "anti trans," that's just a hypothetical hate category, like saboteurs in Stalin's Russia. There's a certain amount of brutish simplicity in my proposed NO DICK spaces, but that doesn't make the proposal wrong.
The fact that I think the UK anti-apartheid movement was a load of posturing virtue-signalling wankers does not, while I am at it, mean that I am secretly in favour of racial segregation.
During my time on here someone said you must be mentally ill to want to change your sex. That's transphobic. I'm not saying transphobia is rife, but it happens.
That is the official line: gender dysphoria is a medically diagnoseable, treatable ailment. It is even in DSM-5.
Until the 1970s so was homosexuality.
Which gives pause for thought but both need to be analysed on their own terms. My views have been strongly influenced by Helen Joyces' book "Trans" and I'm not aware of any convincing attempt to refute her main points.
It is fundamental to the Trans debate whether it is a pathological state (gender dysphoria) or whether a normal variation to be accommodated by self actualisation.
In my mind (I am not a psychiatrist) a pathological mental state is one causing psychological, emotional or social harm to an individual or others.
As such some mental illnesses are caused by society and can be depathologised by changes in society. Homosexuality is an example of this, but there are others, such as promiscuity or atheism, at least in the UK. In other countries things may be different.
So a key issue in the Trans debate is whether society can accommodate Trans people as they want to be, or whether other societal impacts from this are too important.
Apologies in advance if I am reading this incorrectly, totally missing the boat and/or failing to understand your points here.
You consider atheism a mental illness?
No, @Foxy ’s point is there are societies which have.
As far as the trans argument is concerned, I have a child who is trans, and find the suggestion that he is suffering a mental illness both absurd - he is better adjusted than most posters, here including me - and offensive.
Germany's 'Never Again' is bullshit. Pure hypocrisy.
'Never Again' has always been BS. I hate the phrase. I feel contempt for those who trot it out.
Cambodia, Sudan, DRC, Rawanda, the Balkans, Yemen, Somalia, El Salvador, Kashmir, Biafra, and many more show that the world is quite content to watch 'Never Again' happen again.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Wouldn't they just run them for this conflict and then do what we're going to do (sell them for parts/scrap)? Essentially just a short term fix for giving away their MiGs.
Either way, thanks for the info, I feel as though we'd do well to hire you as a consultant DA, but then you'd be joining the capitalist system.
You can't just "run" them. They need massive technical and logistcal support from contractors (BAE, Eurojet Turbo, Eurofighter and probably Serco as they seem to do everything.) None of this expertise is in-house in the RAF any more. It would be so expensive and disruptive to the Polish Air Force that it would degrade their capability as a fighting force.
If we wanted to level up the Polish Air Force then the fastest and most effective thing to do would be to give them more F-16s out of AMARC or maybe a National Guard unit.
For those interested in the Hungarian election latest turnout at 1pm local time was 40.01% this is slightly lower than 2018 but well ahead of 2014. And there was a record of 14.1% voting between 11 and 1pm .
Higher turnout is expected to help the opposition especially as they are not splintered like 2018. This is especially important when you look at the 2018 figures.
In that election even though Fidesz only got 34% of those able to vote they ended up with 67% of seats .
The full figures were
34% Fidesz 36% for the anti Fidesz parties 30% did not vote
The highest turnout so far is in Budapest with 42.7% .
Fidesz is still favoured to win the election as the opposition would need around 4% lead to have a chance of a majority .
I have been an advocate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as part of our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, including for power generation and 'blue' hydrogen to decarbonise the gas grid.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
Extracting more of our own gas also fits the bill.
I agree that for the hydrocarbons we do consume, we should endeavour to maximise the domestic supply so long as the environmental consequences are not more damaging than the alternatives. And that should include coal.
Saying 'no new developments' is bonkers, as long as we have ongoing demand. It is worse than virtue signalling, it is economically damaging and threatens energy security until we are weaned off fossil fuels.
Removing coal from our energy mix was a huge environmental gain, just from air quality improvements. We should, of course, be removing all of the barriers to domestic oil and gas extraction. The idea that by eliminating domestic industries we would magically reduce demand was always ridiculous. We should never have been in this position of having huge oil and gas reserves in the UK but also being reliant on imports. Labour and the Tories have both put us in this position and it's time for grown up government to tell the green lobby to get fucked.
Picking up on your last point, from my perspective the problem is with some elements of the green movement training their guns on the wrong target.
Their focus should be on the demand side of the balance sheet. Eliminate consumption of hydrocarbons and there would then be no incentive to invest in new production. Instead, they advocate a policy that just makes us more reliant on energy imports from an array of undemocratic countries, and achieves no reduction in CO2 emissions.
Look at the Cambo oilfield and the proposed coking coal mine in Cumbria. Their development will not increase consumption, it will just make us more self sufficient. More jobs, more tax revenues, improved balance of payments, reduced supply chain risk.
There is Labour support for increased arms supplies.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1510545951160741891 I’m not going to post photos of the Russian atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine but they are surely reason enough for 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇪🇺 and NATO to provide tanks and other offensive weaponry to 🇺🇦 ? We cannot stand by and pretend we haven’t seen the genocidal war crimes.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
We should give them the tools to push the Russians out of their country and its also time to to turn the gas imports off and fuck the consequences. The war crimes being committed by the Russian regime are horrific and yet countries allied to Ukraine are spending billions of dollars per week propping up the Russians.
Agree with that,
There are quite a lot of operators of T72 Tanks, many in NATO and many of those are looking to Phaze the tank out in so there could be a few places
T72 Operators in NATO, according to Wikipedia:
Bulgaria - 80 Active and 350 in reserve Czech Republic - 30 Active 86 in reserve Hungary - 16 active 113 Reserve Poland - 586 Slovakia - 22 Romanian - 28 in reserve Looking to sell.
Those 6 nations are out of 42 in total that operate the T72, mostly poorer nations, some most of which will not what to annoy Russia to much, but I bet a few are strapped for cash and also what to keep on the good side of Washington, and would be willing to sell a few if kept quiet.
For those interested in the Hungarian election latest turnout at 1pm local time was 40.01% this is slightly lower than 2018 but well ahead of 2014. And there was a record of 14.1% voting between 11 and 1pm .
Higher turnout is expected to help the opposition especially as they are not splintered like 2018. This is especially important when you look at the 2018 figures.
In that election even though Fidesz only got 34% of those able to vote they ended up with 67% of seats .
The full figures were
34% Fidesz 36% for the anti Fidesz parties 30% did not vote
The highest turnout so far is in Budapest with 42.7% .
Fidesz is still favoured to win the election as the opposition would need around 4% lead to have a chance of a majority .
Surely the fraction of seats should be compared to the fraction of votes they received? Those who didn't vote obviously don't have any specific set of MPs representing them.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Thanks for the info.
"no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch"
As someone who worked at the hardware/software level, what are the constraining factors to moving back onto the software branch? Is the hardware actually very different, and if so, it is it modularised?
I don't know exactly but it definitely needs new hardware and (I think) a structural change in a forward fuselage cross member to accommodate it. Then you've got to recertify the whole thing for flight, weapons release, etc. The Prime Minister will be one of Johnson's as yet unborn future bastards by the time all that happened.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Thanks for the info.
"no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch"
As someone who worked at the hardware/software level, what are the constraining factors to moving back onto the software branch? Is the hardware actually very different, and if so, it is it modularised?
Potentially an ASIC? Would have a specified instruction set rather than anything programmable.
Given the fantastic cost of the project, I'd be amazed if such things were not easy to change and swap. If they are not, the it reflects very badly on the project.
What might kybosh it is if they needed extra cabling / hydraulics etc to hardpoints, and they just add it. That sort of change would be an absolute barsteward to revert or add.
Hundreds? Aren't these things supposed to be the size of a football stadium or something?
It's academic anyway. If Nimbies regularly succeed in blocking fifty Barratt boxes here or a windmill there then the chances of modular reactors ever being built are precisely zero. A nuclear power plant isn't generally considered to be beneficial to local house prices.
Small reactors. The sort of thing that fits in a smallish attack submarine. I'm very much in favour, from the little we know atm, and especially if they don't use highly-enriched uranium.
I don't really see how that helps with the politics. All the people who were opposed to having a large reactor near their houses will be equally opposed to having a small reactor, and there won't be any compensating local jobs either.
There is Labour support for increased arms supplies.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1510545951160741891 I’m not going to post photos of the Russian atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine but they are surely reason enough for 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇪🇺 and NATO to provide tanks and other offensive weaponry to 🇺🇦 ? We cannot stand by and pretend we haven’t seen the genocidal war crimes.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
We should give them the tools to push the Russians out of their country and its also time to to turn the gas imports off and fuck the consequences. The war crimes being committed by the Russian regime are horrific and yet countries allied to Ukraine are spending billions of dollars per week propping up the Russians.
Agree with that,
There are quite a lot of operators of T72 Tanks, many in NATO and many of those are looking to Phaze the tank out in so there could be a few places
T72 Operators in NATO, according to Wikipedia:
Bulgaria - 80 Active and 350 in reserve Czech Republic - 30 Active 86 in reserve Hungary - 16 active 113 Reserve Poland - 586 Slovakia - 22 Romanian - 28 in reserve Looking to sell.
Those 6 nations are out of 42 in total that operate the T72, mostly poorer nations, some most of which will not what to annoy Russia to much, but I bet a few are strapped for cash and also what to keep on the good side of Washington, and would be willing to sell a few if kept quiet.
Speaking as a non-military expert: is there any reason why we couldn't 'accept' Ukrainian tanks from their vast stores, or ones that have been damaged, and do a lot of the heavy maintenance work for them? Or could (say) Poland allow Ukrainians to train on their soil? Russia would see it as an escalation, but Russia seems to see any Ukrainian still breathing as an escalation.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Thanks for the info.
"no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch"
As someone who worked at the hardware/software level, what are the constraining factors to moving back onto the software branch? Is the hardware actually very different, and if so, it is it modularised?
I don't know exactly but it definitely needs new hardware and (I think) a structural change in a forward fuselage cross member to accommodate it. Then you've got to recertify the whole thing for flight, weapons release, etc. The Prime Minister will be one of Johnson's as yet unborn future bastards by the time all that happened.
That sounds like they used an ASIC in that case, which is probably why maintenance is so expensive, you need to simply swap in new silicon to keep them flying, and running manufacturing for them will mean each chip has huge spin up and spin down costs associated.
I might not know defence (as seemingly relying on substandard research), but I do know silicon chips and wafer processes...
For those interested in the Hungarian election latest turnout at 1pm local time was 40.01% this is slightly lower than 2018 but well ahead of 2014. And there was a record of 14.1% voting between 11 and 1pm .
Higher turnout is expected to help the opposition especially as they are not splintered like 2018. This is especially important when you look at the 2018 figures.
In that election even though Fidesz only got 34% of those able to vote they ended up with 67% of seats .
The full figures were
34% Fidesz 36% for the anti Fidesz parties 30% did not vote
The highest turnout so far is in Budapest with 42.7% .
Fidesz is still favoured to win the election as the opposition would need around 4% lead to have a chance of a majority .
Surely the fraction of seats should be compared to the fraction of votes they received? Those who didn't vote obviously don't have any specific set of MPs representing them.
That’s true but the key thing is that the splintered opposition allowed Fidesz to get a huge majority . This time the main opposition parties have joined forces .
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Thanks for the info.
"no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch"
As someone who worked at the hardware/software level, what are the constraining factors to moving back onto the software branch? Is the hardware actually very different, and if so, it is it modularised?
I don't know exactly but it definitely needs new hardware and (I think) a structural change in a forward fuselage cross member to accommodate it. Then you've got to recertify the whole thing for flight, weapons release, etc. The Prime Minister will be one of Johnson's as yet unborn future bastards by the time all that happened.
That doesn't sound massive. I'll bet you any money: if it decides it has to be done (tm), it will be done in a matter of weeks. If that.
Hundreds? Aren't these things supposed to be the size of a football stadium or something?
It's academic anyway. If Nimbies regularly succeed in blocking fifty Barratt boxes here or a windmill there then the chances of modular reactors ever being built are precisely zero. A nuclear power plant isn't generally considered to be beneficial to local house prices.
Small reactors. The sort of thing that fits in a smallish attack submarine. I'm very much in favour, from the little we know atm, and especially if they don't use highly-enriched uranium.
I don't really see how that helps with the politics. All the people who were opposed to having a large reactor near their houses will be equally opposed to having a small reactor, and there won't be any compensating local jobs either.
You call it an SMR and people think that this is referring to a Steam Methane Reformer, making blue hydrogen, and welcome the investment.
The US and unnamed countries (Poland) are said to be prepping a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine. I think it's also time for us to lend Poland the money to buy our tranche 1 Typhoons (which are being taken out of service in 2025, but could have their operational life extended for an extra 10 years) so they can give Ukraine their old MiGs.
I've read some bonkers shit over the course of World War Z but this is a new perigee.
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Thanks for the info.
"no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch"
As someone who worked at the hardware/software level, what are the constraining factors to moving back onto the software branch? Is the hardware actually very different, and if so, it is it modularised?
I don't know exactly but it definitely needs new hardware and (I think) a structural change in a forward fuselage cross member to accommodate it. Then you've got to recertify the whole thing for flight, weapons release, etc. The Prime Minister will be one of Johnson's as yet unborn future bastards by the time all that happened.
That doesn't sound massive. I'll bet you any money: if it decides it has to be done (tm), it will be done in a matter of weeks. If that.
(And yes, IANAE, IMBBAA, etc, etc)
Nah, if they're moving from an ASIC to a generalised CPU in a combat setting the recertification process will be huge. The ASIC timings will have been built into the software specifications. The room for error in emulating the ASIC instructions and timings will be nil, which will require extensive testing.
No, but other societies and times have done so. It is clearly not so in contemporary Britain. I use it as an example of a society changing, and being more accepting of social deviance.
OK, thanks for clarifying. So mental illness by this definition is essentially anything that would not be considered "the norm" by wider society?
I read it as you did, and thought Foxy sounded – well – erm, a bit crackers. Mental illness is surely what it says it is: a malfunctioning of normal brain function. The views of any particular society would – it seems to me – be irrelevant to this.
Just because some societies (bafflingly, wrongly) consider homosexuality and atheism wrong, doesn't make homosexuality and atheism an illness of any kind.
You could better argue that the societies themselves were sick for preaching against such freedom of thought and sexuality.
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HYUFD is a proud Britpat, his allegiance to the flag, Queen, church and nation is the good kind made up of sugar and spice and all things nice, with hardly any truncheoning of grannies.
You might argue that they are 'free at the point of use' although paid for at a different time and by a different person.
But its the denial of the reality that goods and services have to be paid for which underlies many of our current problems.
And leads to cognitive dissonance of people condemning the government for spending so much on its testing and then condemning the government for not providing 'free' covid tests.
The Slow Horses are part of a series of 7 books, so if Apple+ can keep it together they are going to have a lot of material.
I see the Goldman Sachs Elf has chosen Easter in SoCal over, er, Northallerton.
I remember Malcolm Tucker once saying something to the effect of the voters don't even want their politicians to have a comfortable chair so Sunaks 1% lifestyle and his lack of any desire to reign it in is a very serious negative for him that will be exploited.
A huge explosion occurred in #Baku, the capital of #Azerbaijan.
There are dozens of dead and wounded.
https://twitter.com/TRintheworld/status/1510399154694107136
But...Kangaroo Guy has now gone back with his people carrier to get the tapirs out the zoo.
Legend.
https://twitter.com/shaunwalker7/status/1510318514174939142
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYCyOQAyAp8
Thanks for that wee gem. Certainly have me a chuckle.
This is two-and-a-half weeks on from the sackings on March 17th.
Will they be able to restore services before the end of what would have been the statutory consultation period?
https://mobile.twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1510545951160741891
I’m not going to post photos of the Russian atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine but they are surely reason enough for 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇪🇺 and NATO to provide tanks and other offensive weaponry to 🇺🇦 ? We cannot stand by and pretend we haven’t seen the genocidal war crimes.
No idea how much Apple+ spent on this show, but it definitely isn't on par with the likes of Foundation, where every second was $10,000s worth of VFX shots. It definitely could be made without spending the earth on it. Its about a load of spies who work out a rundown office in the back streets of London, no need for James Bond style locations and special effects.
9 Jan'22: 🇺🇲 General Mingus attempts to dissuade Russia from invading, saying it would be a quagmire, to no reaction
🔹European leaders don't believe 🇺🇲 Intel re: invasion
🔹mid-Jan'22: CIA director Burns warns Zelenskyy in Kyiv that 🇷🇺 would attempt to seize Hostomel airfield
https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1510575951826067461
The plan wasn’t quite as ridiculous as it now seems.
Essentially I think people's *views* are fair game (it would be perfectly OK to say someone's views look like fascism or stalinism or indeed (omigod) conservatism, but we waste our time labelling each other as fascists, trots, spies, etc. Attack the idea, not the bloke who has fallen for it.
We should give them the tools to push the Russians out of their country and its also time to to turn the gas imports off and fuck the consequences. The war crimes being committed by the Russian regime are horrific and yet countries allied to Ukraine are spending billions of dollars per week propping up the Russians.
https://twitter.com/MelnykAndrij/status/1510540816187539459
Germany's 'Never Again' is bullshit. Pure hypocrisy.
I notice with UK AI start-up scene is becoming a bit like that where it isn't becoming very hard to link most to some sort of connection to DeepMinds by the same game.
The war has made me rethink. The above approach would actually increase our natural gas consumption, due to the energy inefficiencies associated with CCS. A decarbonisation strategy that is more aligned with domestic self sufficiency in energy supply is now, in my opinion, the way we should be heading. It may well cost more, and be more disruptive (e.g., replacing everyone's gas boiler with a shitty air source heat pump), but priorities have shifted.
So, lots of renewables, electrolytic 'green' hydrogen, energy storage, electrification.
There is still a role for CCS, decarbonising highly emitting industries and on Energy from Waste plants, making the latter net-negative, but a much diminished role from what I have previously called for.
If the government is to U-turn in this area, then they've got around a year to do so before final investment decisions are made. Let's see what happens...
As for the odious Heathener's early-morning rallying to the flag. I know you are a troll who preaches violence towards those who choose not to wear a mask, despite masking being entirely voluntary.
Get this into your head: lockdowns and restrictions aren't coming back. The public won't wear it for a virus that is now statistically less dangerous than influenza.
Greg Yudin
@YudinGreg
·
16m
It follows that Nazism is an external enemy that should be destroyed at any cost. The initial view was that Nazis have seized power in Ukraine, while ordinary Ukrainians are just some sort of Russians with silly ideas about their identity and a ridiculous language 3/11
Greg Yudin
@YudinGreg
·
16m
This meant “de-nazification” could be completed through regime change & Ukrainians should be liberated. Obviously, this conception failed when Ukrainians started resisting bravely. A natural conclusion from that: Ukrainians turned out to be deeply infected by Nazism 4/11
https://twitter.com/YudinGreg/status/1510577043829895175
He concludes "I am afraid the worst thing are yet to follow."
====
I fear this war only ends if Putin is removed from power one way or the other.
Breakdown of Russian tanks losses on Oryx, (and the number of active and reserve tanks according to Wikipedia)
T64 - 12 (meant to be in reserve only)
T72 - 235 (2,300 Active and 7,000 R)
T80 - 86 (480 A and 4000 R)
T90 - 17 (435 A and 200 R)
Unidentified: - 47
Russia's' most modern tank the T14 does not seem to be present in Ukraine, possibly because there are still sorting out teething troubles with it, or maybe because there don't what to loess one and have it captured and given to the USA.
Energy storage is key. Many moons ago on here, I suggested an X-Prize style competition by the government, offering massive incentives to develop energy storage. It might be a little too late for that now, but it is the missing link - and not an easy one to fill.
I'd also treat the 'reserve' numbers with a little scepticism. I bet only 1 in 10 of the reserve can be made to work within a day; 2 in 10 in a week. Reserves are the first thing where funding is cut. And tanks need trained crews.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60941091
Excessive globalisation / consolidation strikes again. 80% of the global supply of sunflower oil comes out of Russia and Ukraine. For UK market, 75% of supply is packed by a single company.
In my mind (I am not a psychiatrist) a pathological mental state is one causing psychological, emotional or social harm to an individual or others.
As such some mental illnesses are caused by society and can be depathologised by changes in society. Homosexuality is an example of this, but there are others, such as promiscuity or atheism, at least in the UK. In other countries things may be different.
So a key issue in the Trans debate is whether society can accommodate Trans people as they want to be, or whether other societal impacts from this are too important.
How 4 companies control the beef industry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_hCLjUrK1E
You consider atheism a mental illness?
Saying 'no new developments' is bonkers, as long as we have ongoing demand. It is worse than virtue signalling, it is economically damaging and threatens energy security until we are weaned off fossil fuels.
But yep, very well informed in some things, and often quite thoughtful, and a decent guy, is my 'better self' assessment.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10681221/Eco-activist-GLUES-hand-microphone-live-LBC-interview-morning.html
The British "Tranche 1" Typhoons are at Software Block 5. A tranche is a commercial structure; it's the block which defines capability. The RAF forked the software at B5 (Change Request 193) to get austere A2G capability ahead of the other partner nations which didn't care about it. This was to enable the beautiful dream of a Typhoon to Afghanistan deployment that never happened. Instead we got the Herrick Tornado detachment which cost a million quid a week for seven years.
So we had 53 aircraft that have no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch. The RAF lack the expertise, will and money to support the B5 software so the aircraft are obsolete which is why they are in the "reduce to produce" process. ie scrapped for parts.
These aircraft would be of significant net negative value to the Polish Air Force as they are colossally expensive to operate and can employ none of their existing weapons. They are also functionally inferior to the F-16s they already have and the F-35As they have on order.
Car batteries for daily load shifting, hydrogen for seasonal load shifting.
"no feasible upgrade route back into the main software branch"
As someone who worked at the hardware/software level, what are the constraining factors to moving back onto the software branch? Is the hardware actually very different, and if so, it is it modularised?
Running two incompatible aircraft types in a similar role is a very expensive hobby.
(edit) I see he got there first, and with better arguments.
Either way, thanks for the info, I feel as though we'd do well to hire you as a consultant DA, but then you'd be joining the capitalist system.
There are various storage technologies which have different advantages/disadvantages. They are not mutually exclusive.
As far as the trans argument is concerned, I have a child who is trans, and find the suggestion that he is suffering a mental illness both absurd - he is better adjusted than most posters, here including me - and offensive.
Cambodia, Sudan, DRC, Rawanda, the Balkans, Yemen, Somalia, El Salvador, Kashmir, Biafra, and many more show that the world is quite content to watch 'Never Again' happen again.
If we wanted to level up the Polish Air Force then the fastest and most effective thing to do would be to give them more F-16s out of AMARC or maybe a National Guard unit.
Higher turnout is expected to help the opposition especially as they are not splintered like 2018. This is especially important when you look at the 2018 figures.
In that election even though Fidesz only got 34% of those able to vote they ended up with 67% of seats .
The full figures were
34% Fidesz
36% for the anti Fidesz parties
30% did not vote
The highest turnout so far is in Budapest with 42.7% .
Fidesz is still favoured to win the election as the opposition would need around 4% lead to have a chance of a majority .
Their focus should be on the demand side of the balance sheet. Eliminate consumption of hydrocarbons and there would then be no incentive to invest in new production. Instead, they advocate a policy that just makes us more reliant on energy imports from an array of undemocratic countries, and achieves no reduction in CO2 emissions.
Look at the Cambo oilfield and the proposed coking coal mine in Cumbria. Their development will not increase consumption, it will just make us more self sufficient. More jobs, more tax revenues, improved balance of payments, reduced supply chain risk.
There are quite a lot of operators of T72 Tanks, many in NATO and many of those are looking to Phaze the tank out in so there could be a few places
T72 Operators in NATO, according to Wikipedia:
Bulgaria - 80 Active and 350 in reserve
Czech Republic - 30 Active 86 in reserve
Hungary - 16 active 113 Reserve
Poland - 586
Slovakia - 22
Romanian - 28 in reserve Looking to sell.
Those 6 nations are out of 42 in total that operate the T72, mostly poorer nations, some most of which will not what to annoy Russia to much, but I bet a few are strapped for cash and also what to keep on the good side of Washington, and would be willing to sell a few if kept quiet.
What might kybosh it is if they needed extra cabling / hydraulics etc to hardpoints, and they just add it. That sort of change would be an absolute barsteward to revert or add.
Incidentally, here's a good thread on why "Just provide system x to Ukraine" mostly doesn't work:
https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1510341553520361472
I might not know defence (as seemingly relying on substandard research), but I do know silicon chips and wafer processes...
(And yes, IANAE, IMBBAA, etc, etc)
Just because some societies (bafflingly, wrongly) consider homosexuality and atheism wrong, doesn't make homosexuality and atheism an illness of any kind.
You could better argue that the societies themselves were sick for preaching against such freedom of thought and sexuality.