More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
So how much does French electricity cost compared to the UK's ?
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
Good evening from Stockton-on-Tees. I am once again staying in the town's Hampton by Hilton which is owned by the council and was something of a political controversy. The Tories and independents were vociferous that it would be a waste of money, built to help regenerate a town which also now has The Globe theatre (also owned by the council) which would similarly be a white elephant.
And yet here I am, in this very busy hotel, with a car park that is completely full. And a significant number of the guests are going to whatever the show is at The Globe tonight. Couple in front had come up from Norfolk. Have been here during the week as well - also busy.
What is it about Tories especially where investment is subsidy / communism and must be frowned upon?
EDIT - hotel has free car charging which is good! But I can't shift my now fully charged off the charge point as the car park is full. So tough titty anyone getting here late, I'm off for a pint(s) and a parmo.
The issue is this.
Very mostly, politicians cannot be trusted to run private businesses.
But the private sector, left to itself, will underserve - because it is not interested in societal externalities - and tend to a monopoly that privileges the already wealthy.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
On that subject, I note we have been exporting a lot of power to France recently when we have wind surpluses (and even when we don't). Not encouraging re nuclear's flexibility.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
So how much does French electricity cost compared to the UK's ?
After subsidies etc.
Power in France is cheaper because the French government spent the equivalent of a quarter of a year's GDP building power stations, and then handed them gratis to EDF. That cost has fallen directly on French taxpayer in terms of debt that needs servicing. (In fact it's worse than that, because the money was never repaid, and now French nuclear plants are nearing the end of their service life, and the debt still exists.)
The UK government could borrow huge sums and do that. But that is just playing shell games, moving the cost from the plug to the paycheck. People pay more in taxes *plus* electricity under this scenario.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
So how much does French electricity cost compared to the UK's ?
After subsidies etc.
Power in France is cheaper because the French government spent the equivalent of a quarter of a year's GDP building power stations, and then handed them gratis to EDF. That cost has fallen directly on French taxpayer in terms of debt that needs servicing. (In fact it's worse than that, because the money was never repaid, and now French nuclear plants are nearing the end of their service life, and the debt still exists.)
The UK government could borrow huge sums and do that. But that is just playing shell games, moving the cost from the plug to the paycheck. People pay more in taxes *plus* electricity under this scenario.
They don’t pay more in electricity, though. And France can successfully export energy, too, and indeed nuclear expertise.
It’s not a “shell game” for a government to borrow - at interest rates only available to a tax-collecting sovereign - for investment.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
For the same reason that you will find "crème anglaise" on many an upmarket menu. If they can find a fancy foreign name for it then it will sell more easily for a higher margin.
Part of our heritage of being conquered by the Normans is an abiding sense of cultural inferiority towards the French, and this is just another example.
The English (or British) and the French have a mutual inferiority complex, possibly unique in the world
We consider them sexier, luckier, more elegant
Yet they consider us as culturally triumphant - the English language - a little bit manlier, annoyingly smarter in the end
There’s a whole subspecies of declinist French thought dedicated to working out how the English managed to conquer the world, and make the world speak their tongue, when it *should* have been the French
Neither side is generally aware of the neurosis across the Channel
See that "true" Tories have already begun smearing new Oz PM Anthony Albanese in wake of Labor Party victory and ex-PM Scott Morrison's defenestration by the voters.
The notion that AA's youthful associations mean his current views were set in stone long ago, is risible.
Getting back to Morrison & Etc.'s shellacking, still unclear IF Labor will get a majority in House of Representatives - 76 - however they aren't too far behind that mark, with 72 seats as of this moment (according to abc.au) with 66.3% of vote counted and 14 seats still in doubt.
Re: these 14 seats
Australian Labor Party leading =7 > Bennelong (NSW), Deaken (Vic), Gilmore (NSW), Lingiari (NT), Lyons (Tasmania), Macnamara (Vic), Sturt (SA)
Liberal Party leading = 5 > Bass (Tasmania), Casey (Vic), Dickson (QLD), Menzies (Vic), Moore (WA)
National Party = 1 > Cowper (NSW)
Green Party = 1 > Brisbane (QLD)
The fall in votes & seats for the Coalition government was matched & in number of key seats caused by rise of "Teal" Independents who ran opposed to leading lights in the Morrison govt.
I am not saying that anywhere else has it better, but the UK economy seems quite uniquely fucked.
Not least because the government has no interest in actual economic policy.
Actually, I think we're uniquely positioned to thrive in the current world circumstances. We have (with some caveats), plenty of food, plenty of varied fuel, we have the geographical advantages of being a set of islands, etc. The opportunities just need to be grasped. I'm open to being persuaded otherwise, but this Government is over. Boris can claw back a little respect from me if he deals with the hard situation in NI for his successor. But perhaps even that might take someone new.
The UK is reliant on the EU for 70% of its fresh food.
I don't think it's as high as that, while I wouldn't say the UK us self sufficient, I think we make around 50-60% of food consumed here, iirc the 70% figure relates to imports not the total food consumed and that number has gone down a fair bit too. Overall the most recent figure I've seen is something like 20% of all food consumed in the UK comes from the EU, down from about 30% over the last few years.
It's still a very substantial number, but I also don't see the relevance of it in any discussion. Agricultural business sells in an international market so unless the EU decides to put up export bans (and while this less unlikely than many consider it's still not a huge risk factor) there's not a huge issue.
Something that's changed over the last couple of weeks is the wholesale price of gas dropping like a stone as domestic demand drops and the UK accepts a huge, huge amount of LNG in its terminals for export to the EU via our two pipelines to Belgium and the Netherlands. This will take another month or so to feed into factory prices but it's going to be a confounding factor on the economy this summer compared to what we were expecting.
I'm with Max on this one.
Clearly the UK can grow our own regular food requirements - though not perhaps in foodstuffs such as kangaroo, bananas and crocodiles.
It only needs a comparison with the Netherlands, who have double the population density even of England - yet grow more than enough for themselves and are also a major exporter.
It would perhaps require more greenhouse growing, and there are certain barriers - an obsession with extensive low productivity farming is one, a massive % of land with restrictions is perhaps another.
I am not saying that anywhere else has it better, but the UK economy seems quite uniquely fucked.
Not least because the government has no interest in actual economic policy.
Actually, I think we're uniquely positioned to thrive in the current world circumstances. We have (with some caveats), plenty of food, plenty of varied fuel, we have the geographical advantages of being a set of islands, etc. The opportunities just need to be grasped. I'm open to being persuaded otherwise, but this Government is over. Boris can claw back a little respect from me if he deals with the hard situation in NI for his successor. But perhaps even that might take someone new.
The UK is reliant on the EU for 70% of its fresh food.
I don't think it's as high as that, while I wouldn't say the UK us self sufficient, I think we make around 50-60% of food consumed here, iirc the 70% figure relates to imports not the total food consumed and that number has gone down a fair bit too. Overall the most recent figure I've seen is something like 20% of all food consumed in the UK comes from the EU, down from about 30% over the last few years.
It's still a very substantial number, but I also don't see the relevance of it in any discussion. Agricultural business sells in an international market so unless the EU decides to put up export bans (and while this less unlikely than many consider it's still not a huge risk factor) there's not a huge issue.
Something that's changed over the last couple of weeks is the wholesale price of gas dropping like a stone as domestic demand drops and the UK accepts a huge, huge amount of LNG in its terminals for export to the EU via our two pipelines to Belgium and the Netherlands. This will take another month or so to feed into factory prices but it's going to be a confounding factor on the economy this summer compared to what we were expecting.
I'm with Max on this one.
Clearly the UK can grow our own regular food requirements - though not perhaps in foodstuffs such as kangaroo, bananas and crocodiles.
It only needs a comparison with the Netherlands, who have double the population density even of England - yet grow more than enough for themselves and are also a major exporter.
It would perhaps require more greenhouse growing, and there are certain barriers - an obsession with extensive low productivity farming is one, a massive % of land with restrictions is perhaps another.
To what end? Endless watery tomatoes. What’s the point?
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
On point 3, I used to bean advocate of CCGT plants with CCS to provide low carbon despatchable power. With the war, I've changed my mind - such a plant will lock us in to natural gas imports for decades to come. So we need to look at the alternative storage vectors to provide this function - hydrogen turbines (with green hydrogen, not blue), batteries, liquid air, pumped hydro, etc.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
So how much does French electricity cost compared to the UK's ?
After subsidies etc.
Power in France is cheaper because the French government spent the equivalent of a quarter of a year's GDP building power stations, and then handed them gratis to EDF. That cost has fallen directly on French taxpayer in terms of debt that needs servicing. (In fact it's worse than that, because the money was never repaid, and now French nuclear plants are nearing the end of their service life, and the debt still exists.)
The UK government could borrow huge sums and do that. But that is just playing shell games, moving the cost from the plug to the paycheck. People pay more in taxes *plus* electricity under this scenario.
They don’t pay more in electricity, though. And France can successfully export energy, too, and indeed nuclear expertise.
It’s not a “shell game” for a government to borrow - at interest rates only available to a tax-collecting sovereign - for investment.
Although at this moment it's importing it, to the tune of around 4% of all electricity we and the RoI are producing.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Unfortunate then that the best wine producing region in the country is near Dymock.
Thread on food prices - tomatoes as an example. Very worrying...
Ed Conway @EdConwaySky · 6h The upshot is that half of the greenhouses in the Lea Valley have been left empty this year. It's hard to describe what a big deal this is. Up until this year they hadn't seen a SINGLE one left without plants. This one should have cucumbers growing in it. Instead: nothing.
I've shared this before on here but a good read from 2 months ago about what fertilizer and other shortages mean for food supplies. TL;DR, eye-watering costs for the west and likely famine in many poorer countries.
Dependence on nitrogen fertiliser has been a disaster for nutrition. Nitrogen provides bulk. Its not the only mineral a crop needs to be healthy, and to make nourishing food. Rock dust is plentiful, and a far better fertiliser than nitrogen. So I see this as unintentional good news.
Rock dust is nonsensical woo, debunked all over the Internet, eg
Even if it did what it claims, all it claims is to restore micronutrients. There is no way it is going to increase yields the way artificial npk does.
Have you read the feeble article you posted? That's the debunking equivalent of being thrashed by the proverbial wet lettuce.
Rock dust is being used in Perthshire to make record breaking vegetables, and is apparently now being exported for profit. Evidently the farmers using it must be suggestible dupes, and the football sized cabbages must be holographical projections. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/dec/14/scotland-rock-dust-transform-soil
Jesus christ.
Have you ever grown anything? "The Thomsons' once-exhausted land now produces football-sized cabbages, massive onions and normally delicate fruits the size of a fist." You do realise that the determinants of the size of a vegetable are 1. Variety 2. General growing conditions and alongway third 3. Fertiliser? How the hell are micronutrients on their own meant to produce whatever these fist sized fruits are?
Rock dust “mimics the glacial cycles” and “accelerates the natural weathering process”
Sounds like fou fou dust to me
It can sound like anything it likes to you, the market garden is producing the physical vegetables, and they're not introducing nitrogen fertiliser into the soil secretly at the dead of night, so I suggest you go and sit on a prize-winning marrow.
Thread on food prices - tomatoes as an example. Very worrying...
Ed Conway @EdConwaySky · 6h The upshot is that half of the greenhouses in the Lea Valley have been left empty this year. It's hard to describe what a big deal this is. Up until this year they hadn't seen a SINGLE one left without plants. This one should have cucumbers growing in it. Instead: nothing.
I've shared this before on here but a good read from 2 months ago about what fertilizer and other shortages mean for food supplies. TL;DR, eye-watering costs for the west and likely famine in many poorer countries.
Dependence on nitrogen fertiliser has been a disaster for nutrition. Nitrogen provides bulk. Its not the only mineral a crop needs to be healthy, and to make nourishing food. Rock dust is plentiful, and a far better fertiliser than nitrogen. So I see this as unintentional good news.
Rock dust is nonsensical woo, debunked all over the Internet, eg
Even if it did what it claims, all it claims is to restore micronutrients. There is no way it is going to increase yields the way artificial npk does.
Have you read the feeble article you posted? That's the debunking equivalent of being thrashed by the proverbial wet lettuce.
Rock dust is being used in Perthshire to make record breaking vegetables, and is apparently now being exported for profit. Evidently the farmers using it must be suggestible dupes, and the football sized cabbages must be holographical projections. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/dec/14/scotland-rock-dust-transform-soil
Jesus christ.
Have you ever grown anything? "The Thomsons' once-exhausted land now produces football-sized cabbages, massive onions and normally delicate fruits the size of a fist." You do realise that the determinants of the size of a vegetable are 1. Variety 2. General growing conditions and alongway third 3. Fertiliser? How the hell are micronutrients on their own meant to produce whatever these fist sized fruits are?
Rock dust “mimics the glacial cycles” and “accelerates the natural weathering process”
Sounds like fou fou dust to me
It can sound like anything it likes to you, the market garden is producing the physical vegetables, and they're not introducing nitrogen fertiliser into the soil secretly at the dead of night, so I suggest you go and sit on a prize-winning marrow.
I believe in data. Show me that and I might believe you
There are pages and pages of studies on their website:
The two-year incorporation of the rock dust compost into a poor-quality soil led to a significant increase in the yield with the increase of 120% and 187% compared to untreated control in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Application of rock dust compost obviously promoted superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity and concentration of vitamin C in mature apple trees. The beneficial effects coincided with higher microbial activity and shifts in the composition of the soil microbiome. Our results demonstrate that the practice of combining the rock dust-fortified compost with NPK fertilizers provides a cost- effective way of supplying crops with macro-and micronutrients ensuring better vegetative growth and higher yields.
Here we report that amending a UK clay-loam agricultural soil with a high loading (10 kg/m2) of relatively coarse-grained crushed basalt significantly increased the yield (21 ± 9.4%, SE) of the important C4 cereal Sorghum bicolor under controlled environmental conditions, without accumulation of potentially toxic trace elements in the seeds. Yield increases resulted from the basalt treatment after 120 days without P- and K-fertilizer addition. Shoot silicon concentrations also increased significantly (26 ± 5.4%, SE), with potential benefits for crop resistance to biotic and abiotic stress.
Take your pick.
your first link = 404. Your second is classic bullshit: it compares rockdusty compost with "untreated control" - i.e. with no compost at all. We know that compost works, we strongly suspect that rock dust is neither here nor there, so this is a test of compost faking it as a test of rockdust. Just embarrassing. Next one looks the same, final one reports no significant interesting results.
This is just classic crankdom. i am sure there's a tribe in the hindu kush who live to 130 and never get cancer because of their diet of rockdusty apricots.
Actually, if you'd troubled yourself to read it, that wasn't the methodology.
'Two different types of compost were prepared and used throughout the study.
The first type, referred to as composted manure (CM), was produced by mixing seven parts of dung with three parts of wheat straw (w/w), which resulted in a C/N ratio of ca. 26. The second type, referred to as composted manure with rock dust (CMRD), was prepared identically except for the 90 addition of 0.4 part of the byproduct of quarry industry, which serves as a source of different trace mineral nutrients. The chemical composition of the rock dust used in this study was described earlier by Li and Dong (2013).'
Why on earth would they have done it in the way you suggest?
The only thing that's embarrassing here is you been the stupid twunt who's claimed there isn't a single study, been told there are in fact multiple studies, and who is now scrabbling around trying to discredit the ones posted by making wild, easily disprovable claims about their methods.
Yawn
I am down here organically managing 15 acres of pasture and 50-odd fruit trees, someone else on the thread is growing a ha of vines, but you are the one who knows all about it. odd.
Oh OK, I thought it was 'controlled studies' that you wanted. Now I've given you the studies, it's back to 'I know best because'.
Yeah. Your comedy nutters misdescribed their own study, and I accurately summarised the misdescription. Looking at the actual study, this leaps out:
"All trees were approximately 15 years old, and due to age and poor management practices displayed signs of physiological stress and/or disease. The disease symptoms manifested in the form of leaf scorch (browning of leaves from the edge inwards) and some dying of upper branches."
Not sure what to make of "experts" who think that apples, on any rootstock I have ever heard of, are suffering from old age at 15, but the main point is: these trees were fucked. any given vitamin or micronutrient is the elixir of life to an organism suffering a deficiency of that v or n, and completely useless to one which isn't. Again, this is crank thinking, it's Linus Pauling thinking a ton of vitamin C confers immortality because a tiny bit of it cures scurvy.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Not true. It was Americans who coined the term “British fizz”, to classify it on their wine lists
There’s not much of an export market anyway, save for the odd US importer who finds the idea of English wine exotically amusing, and the Norwegians who pay such high taxes that it outweighs the underlying expense.
Not yet - not enough volume, and word hasn't spread.
Given the spiralling insanity of champagne prices, sparkling wine has a lot of market opportunities at the moment.
It would be odd if England (or Britain, since there are Welsh and even Scottish vineyards) could compete with the hectarage of Italy or Spain.
If England wants fizz to compete it needs to be high end as a direct competitor to champagne, Which perhaps explains why there seems to be latent dissatisfaction with “Fizz” as a brand name.
Perhaps we need something which denotes especial quality or provenance, sort of in the way methode champenoise does.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
So how much does French electricity cost compared to the UK's ?
After subsidies etc.
Power in France is cheaper because the French government spent the equivalent of a quarter of a year's GDP building power stations, and then handed them gratis to EDF. That cost has fallen directly on French taxpayer in terms of debt that needs servicing. (In fact it's worse than that, because the money was never repaid, and now French nuclear plants are nearing the end of their service life, and the debt still exists.)
The UK government could borrow huge sums and do that. But that is just playing shell games, moving the cost from the plug to the paycheck. People pay more in taxes *plus* electricity under this scenario.
They don’t pay more in electricity, though. And France can successfully export energy, too, and indeed nuclear expertise.
It’s not a “shell game” for a government to borrow - at interest rates only available to a tax-collecting sovereign - for investment.
If the cost to a consumer - in terms of higher tax payments - exceeds their savings on electricity, then yes, it is a shell game. It's moving a cost from one pocket to another, not eliminating it.
If nuclear was cost efficient, people would be building it all over the world.
And yet the number of nuclear plants - even in profoundly ungreen places - is declining. The French company (Areva) that is the world's largest builder of the plants went bust and had to be bailed out by - oh yes - the French state.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
According to my wine selling mates they are all pushing Cremant as the “new” Prosecco this summer. Cheap and sweet generally so will go down a treat in the bars of the UK these coming months no doubt.
Cremant is pretty horrible
Cheap, tho. And sweet: yes. So it might work, for a bit. Not a great name, however
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
So how much does French electricity cost compared to the UK's ?
After subsidies etc.
Power in France is cheaper because the French government spent the equivalent of a quarter of a year's GDP building power stations, and then handed them gratis to EDF. That cost has fallen directly on French taxpayer in terms of debt that needs servicing. (In fact it's worse than that, because the money was never repaid, and now French nuclear plants are nearing the end of their service life, and the debt still exists.)
The UK government could borrow huge sums and do that. But that is just playing shell games, moving the cost from the plug to the paycheck. People pay more in taxes *plus* electricity under this scenario.
They don’t pay more in electricity, though. And France can successfully export energy, too, and indeed nuclear expertise.
It’s not a “shell game” for a government to borrow - at interest rates only available to a tax-collecting sovereign - for investment.
If the cost to a consumer - in terms of higher tax payments - exceeds their savings on electricity, then yes, it is a shell game. It's moving a cost from one pocket to another, not eliminating it.
If nuclear was cost efficient, people would be building it all over the world.
And yet the number of nuclear plants - even in profoundly ungreen places - is declining. The French company (Areva) that is the world's largest builder of the plants went bust and had to be bailed out by - oh yes - the French state.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
Sounds like the sort of bollocks that the proponents of Direct Air Capture would also be bigging up.
Unfortunately on DAC they now seem to have duped the US Government.
I am not saying that anywhere else has it better, but the UK economy seems quite uniquely fucked.
Not least because the government has no interest in actual economic policy.
Actually, I think we're uniquely positioned to thrive in the current world circumstances. We have (with some caveats), plenty of food, plenty of varied fuel, we have the geographical advantages of being a set of islands, etc. The opportunities just need to be grasped. I'm open to being persuaded otherwise, but this Government is over. Boris can claw back a little respect from me if he deals with the hard situation in NI for his successor. But perhaps even that might take someone new.
The UK is reliant on the EU for 70% of its fresh food.
Are you sure it’s not 70% of imports, rather than 70% of all food consumed?
It should be pointed out as well that the EU was at best a decidedly mixed blessing for British agriculture. Without their policy muddles and corruption, we could have been in a position to feed ourselves. The illegal ban on our beef at the behest of the French (who had twice as much BSE as we did, although they called it something else) was bad, but the subsidy mechanism was far more damaging over the long term.
We went from having in the early 1990s one of the most efficient and advanced agricultural sectors in the world, capable of feeding 60 million people, to, well...
Putting aside the deficiencies of CAP, the idea that the UK can feed itself is risible.
Or, if it could, it would only do so with incredibly high food costs.
This has surely been the case since, I don’t know, the repeal of the Corn Laws.
I think it could but not overnight, it would required 3-5 years of planning and we'd obviously lose stuff like olive oil and speciality imported items as well as fruits out of season. Compared to just 30 years ago, though, the range of food that can now be successfully grown in the UK is huge so the loss would be much less noticeable than most think. I think in a few select areas we could probably cultivate olive trees to make olive oil but it would be very expensive compared to today. The biggest loss would be wine, UK wine is expensive and we absolutely don't produce anywhere near enough compared to consumption. There just isn't enough viable land to support the various grape varieties.
UK sparkling wine delivers better "champagne" than Champagne now.
Chapel Down is simply incredible now. I definitely prefer to Moët and it's almost up there with Bollinger. Maybe better.
The best English fizz is definitely better than the equivalent champagne in the same price bracket
It’s also different: more lively and buttery-fruity
Not cheap, mind
The advance of English fizz is one thing which has really proven global warming, to my mind. A change you can actually see, in the glass, and taste, on the tongue
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
No, it’s fucking terrible, as it is French
This is ENGLISH FIZZ
Be loud, be proud
There is a Sussex village called Cocking. Another one called Funtington
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
On point 3, I used to bean advocate of CCGT plants with CCS to provide low carbon despatchable power. With the war, I've changed my mind - such a plant will lock us in to natural gas imports for decades to come. So we need to look at the alternative storage vectors to provide this function - hydrogen turbines (with green hydrogen, not blue), batteries, liquid air, pumped hydro, etc.
Winston Churchill said of oil - "Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone." The same is true of natural gas. If we have gas contracts with the US, Norway, Qatar and Australia (as well as some indigenous production), then we will have security.
The issue that the UK has had is that gas purchasers (typically power generators) found it more cost efficient to rely on a very thin spot market for LNG cargoes to meet demand. That looked really clever before the Ukraine war, and now looks really stupid. Korea and Japan, by contrast, have essentially all of their gas imports on long term contracts.
Just to add: back in 2015 I wrote a paper warning of the UK's dangerous dependence on the spot LNG market, and argued that capacity payments without a guarantee than a plant had a secured supply of hydrocarbons was a dangerous delusion.
Thread on food prices - tomatoes as an example. Very worrying...
Ed Conway @EdConwaySky · 6h The upshot is that half of the greenhouses in the Lea Valley have been left empty this year. It's hard to describe what a big deal this is. Up until this year they hadn't seen a SINGLE one left without plants. This one should have cucumbers growing in it. Instead: nothing.
I've shared this before on here but a good read from 2 months ago about what fertilizer and other shortages mean for food supplies. TL;DR, eye-watering costs for the west and likely famine in many poorer countries.
Just mentioned this to my beloved and as practical as ever she said
'I will just have to plant some more' !!!
Big G, cultivating votre jardin comme d’habitude.
You mentioned earlier you thought Ardern will fall next year
As a Kiwi you obviously must have a feel for this and are Kiwi's falling out of love with her?
Short answer, yes.
She’s a very poor administrator and essentially a performative idiot.
Which is interesting because she was more popular than God when she won re-election in 2020, and widely feted across the West. In fact, I think you were a fan at the time too.
A lot can change in 18 months.
True heir to Blair. Even worked as one of his policy wonks.
No she didn’t. She had an admin job. She “allowed” her CV to be over-construed.
Wiki claims 'senior policy advisor' in a 'policy unit'. What does this really mean?
It means she had a cushy number spouting ignorant bullshit that causes enormous trouble when tried in the real world.
At least, judging by the policy advisers I have had the misfortune to encounter.
We could perhaps see some of that with her Covid policies. Magnificent, on paper, effective, for a while, unsustainable in the medium term.
However, it should be noted that the medium term was long enough in that case.
Some policy advisors are really top class, you know.
(Northern_Al, retired Policy Advisor).
I hate to say it mate, because I've always liked what you have to say and you're clearly a lovely person, but...
If you were a policy adviser in education, you were either not top class, or you were ignored.
Thanks for the compliment. On the second bit, I didn't work in your bit of education, though - a bit more niche. And actually, if you think things are bad you'd be amazed at how much worse some things would be if some advisors got their way.
Fucking hell. If this true - and I'm assuming it is - it makes me all the gladder I'm getting out.
Because I don't *think* things are bad, I *know* they are, and I can see them getting much worse given the appalling incompetence of those in charge.
And you're saying they're not the worst? That's really alarming.
On the subject of education - apparently 3 more local parents have taken the following option.
1) Take their children out of their high end private school. 2) Enrol them at the local Free school for 6th form. 3) Plan to have them extensively tutored.
a) Costs less than 2 years of expensive private education. b) They can put "state school" on their CVs c) The state school will probably get 3 children into top universities.
Who said that egalitarianism isn't an option?
It's a logical approach, particularly since the target universities are working to is to lower admissions from private schools.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
When traveling beyond the UK and Anglo-infested tourist traps & expat hubs BEFORE asking the sweet young(ish) thing next to you at the bar IF she'd enjoy some English Fizz, probably BEST to make sure she knows that you are referring to an alcoholic beverage?
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
Cremanglaise is a middle market anal sex lubricant
But why? Big nukes take years before commissioning.
He seems to have a bee in his bonnet over nukes and is very skeptical of renewables by comparison.
Apparently it is a small modular reactor via Rolls-Royce
That haven't even been prototyped yet.
This has Garden Bridge and PPE procurement fiasos written all over it
And we wonder why projects don’t get pushed forwards.
Some projects may not work but some might be fantastically successful. One of the advantages of being Government / Tax-funded is you can experiment with things .
Too right. I could tell you stories of the scars on my back of trying to get the Government to approve big major projects.
They are almost entirely concerned with what the national audit office (and press) might say one day if they get the cost & schedule wrong, and therefore push for absurd levels of certainty at the outline business case stage that kills off the project.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
So how much does French electricity cost compared to the UK's ?
After subsidies etc.
Power in France is cheaper because the French government spent the equivalent of a quarter of a year's GDP building power stations, and then handed them gratis to EDF. That cost has fallen directly on French taxpayer in terms of debt that needs servicing. (In fact it's worse than that, because the money was never repaid, and now French nuclear plants are nearing the end of their service life, and the debt still exists.)
The UK government could borrow huge sums and do that. But that is just playing shell games, moving the cost from the plug to the paycheck. People pay more in taxes *plus* electricity under this scenario.
They don’t pay more in electricity, though. And France can successfully export energy, too, and indeed nuclear expertise.
It’s not a “shell game” for a government to borrow - at interest rates only available to a tax-collecting sovereign - for investment.
If the cost to a consumer - in terms of higher tax payments - exceeds their savings on electricity, then yes, it is a shell game. It's moving a cost from one pocket to another, not eliminating it.
If nuclear was cost efficient, people would be building it all over the world.
And yet the number of nuclear plants - even in profoundly ungreen places - is declining. The French company (Areva) that is the world's largest builder of the plants went bust and had to be bailed out by - oh yes - the French state.
You’d need to prove that the taxation outweighs the energy bills, and perhaps again there is a case for the progressiveness of taxation versus the distribution of monopolistic rents charged by privately owned utilities.
I am not necessarily pro-nuclear, or even trying to defend French energy policy of the 1970s, I just think the case is more complex than you suggest and you are discounting the various subsidies poured into alternative energy sources, too.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
Cremanglaise is a middle market anal sex lubricant
I had Cremanglaise down as the new Lymeswold.
Merrett sounds like a specialised breed of a small animal, or a variety of eating apple.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
Sounds like the sort of bollocks that the proponents of Direct Air Capture would also be bigging up.
Unfortunately on DAC they now seem to have duped the US Government.
Most of the companies in the wireless power delivery space are frauds of one kind or another.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
Think of the fried birds, never mind microlight pilots (not sure about airliners, Faraday cages?).
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
Cremanglaise is, to use a technical term from the domain of marketing, fucking shit.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
So how much does French electricity cost compared to the UK's ?
After subsidies etc.
Power in France is cheaper because the French government spent the equivalent of a quarter of a year's GDP building power stations, and then handed them gratis to EDF. That cost has fallen directly on French taxpayer in terms of debt that needs servicing. (In fact it's worse than that, because the money was never repaid, and now French nuclear plants are nearing the end of their service life, and the debt still exists.)
The UK government could borrow huge sums and do that. But that is just playing shell games, moving the cost from the plug to the paycheck. People pay more in taxes *plus* electricity under this scenario.
They don’t pay more in electricity, though. And France can successfully export energy, too, and indeed nuclear expertise.
It’s not a “shell game” for a government to borrow - at interest rates only available to a tax-collecting sovereign - for investment.
If I build nuclear power stations, sell them to you for £1 and undertake to pay for all the decommissioning costs.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
On point 3, I used to bean advocate of CCGT plants with CCS to provide low carbon despatchable power. With the war, I've changed my mind - such a plant will lock us in to natural gas imports for decades to come. So we need to look at the alternative storage vectors to provide this function - hydrogen turbines (with green hydrogen, not blue), batteries, liquid air, pumped hydro, etc.
Winston Churchill said of oil - "Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone." The same is true of natural gas. If we have gas contracts with the US, Norway, Qatar and Australia (as well as some indigenous production), then we will have security.
The issue that the UK has had is that gas purchasers (typically power generators) found it more cost efficient to rely on a very thin spot market for LNG cargoes to meet demand. That looked really clever before the Ukraine war, and now looks really stupid. Korea and Japan, by contrast, have essentially all of their gas imports on long term contracts.
Just to add: back in 2015 I wrote a paper warning of the UK's dangerous dependence on the spot LNG market, and argued that capacity payments without a guarantee than a plant had a secured supply of hydrocarbons was a dangerous delusion.
The government will be making decisions this year, and spending taxpayers' money. To me, locking us in to more natural gas consumption for 30 years when alternative strategies exist isn't the right thing to do.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
So how much does French electricity cost compared to the UK's ?
After subsidies etc.
Power in France is cheaper because the French government spent the equivalent of a quarter of a year's GDP building power stations, and then handed them gratis to EDF. That cost has fallen directly on French taxpayer in terms of debt that needs servicing. (In fact it's worse than that, because the money was never repaid, and now French nuclear plants are nearing the end of their service life, and the debt still exists.)
The UK government could borrow huge sums and do that. But that is just playing shell games, moving the cost from the plug to the paycheck. People pay more in taxes *plus* electricity under this scenario.
They don’t pay more in electricity, though. And France can successfully export energy, too, and indeed nuclear expertise.
It’s not a “shell game” for a government to borrow - at interest rates only available to a tax-collecting sovereign - for investment.
If I build nuclear power stations, sell them to you for £1 and undertake to pay for all the decommissioning costs.
How much do the power stations cost?
If you are borrowing at reasonable rates, not as much as you think.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
Think of the fried birds, never mind microlight pilots (not sure about airliners, Faraday cages?).
Given the impact of the air being heated up by the energy pumping through it, one wouldn't want to fly anywhere near the beams. Even if they were safe. Which they wouldn't be.
Bear in mind this is an issue with lasers today (blooming). And power delivery to the ground from space would be - what - 10 or 100,000x more power.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
I'd favour the more ridiculously named ones more commonly found in Dorset and Somerset.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
You take too much of a purist free market view towards nuclear.
It provides steady reliable baseload (for decades) using small quantities of uranium sourced from stable countries and is almost entirely carbon free, except during construction. You pay a bit more, yes, and you get clean power, stability and geopolitical insurance.
A mix of 25-30% nuclear makes sense. Otherwise if you, say, had 100% offshore wind you'd have to build enough to cover peak demand hours/days when you might need lots of power but there might not be much wind - and that would be hugely inefficient in construction and operation.
Also, it hasn't escaped many people's attention that France isn't affected by anything like the electricity price rises we have here at the moment due to their predominantly nuclear fleet.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
I'd favour the more ridiculously named ones more commonly found in Dorset and Somerset.
Presumably Cornwall, with all its zzzz’s, can furnish a solution.
Australian politics has experienced a seismic and profound shift.
Scott Morrison's prime ministership is over on the back of a female independent climate revolt. It's the women, stupid.
The Liberal Party has been smashed by a sea of teal women. . . .
The Coalition's own tracking polls said Morrison was unpopular with women. In fact, it was lethal.
In the chase for Labor's blue collar heartland, Morrison failed to connect with women.
In the end, Morrison couldn't deliver the government a second miracle and lost his party some of its historical heartland on the back of a climate, integrity and independent insurgency. . . .
A generation of Liberal politicians have been lost and the recriminations will be wide and deep.
A new reality for both parties After six weeks of campaigning, and three years of trouble-plagued governing, voters have sent one giant message to the major parties: do not take them for granted. This election is the shock the major parties must learn from or their power will continue to diminish.
Labor was able to successfully turn this election into a referendum on Morrison's character and three-year legacy but not yet enough to win a clear majority — that is the reality the party must grapple with.
Anthony Albanese is the architect of this Labor strategy and has weathered criticism for being too timid over his term as Opposition Leader. Yet, his strategy of making the government the issue and paint it as tired and out of ideas has had some impact — he will become Australia's next prime minister.
It was just three years ago that Morrison became the Coalition's biggest asset, winning the so-called unwinnable election and cutting through to pull off an unlikely win.
Three years later, after holidaying in Hawaii during the nation's biggest existential bushfire crisis, failing to read the room to race to obtain vaccines or enough RATs, as well as being depicted as a man consistently "missing" in action and unprepared to take responsibility, voters have decided to switch camps.
They have done that despite expressing a broad lack of enthusiasm for Labor — the primary vote tells the story there — but the baseball bats have been out for the Liberals where it matters most.
Labor inherits a tough job . . . Albanese's focus on cost of living and wages has been a success, as has the negative zeroing-in on the public's anger at Morrison. . . .
The "teal wave" has swamped the Liberals, and Morrison's chase for working-class suburban seats in Labor heartland wasn't enough to counter it.
Now Labor inherits the cost-of-living crisis they focused on to push this government out of office. They face an inflation conundrum, and interest rates set to rise as workers continue to languish. . . .
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
You take too much of a purist free market view towards nuclear.
It provides steady reliable baseload (for decades) using small quantities of uranium sourced from stable countries and is almost entirely carbon free, except during construction. You pay a bit more, yes, and you get clean power, stability and geopolitical insurance.
A mix of 25-30% nuclear makes sense. Otherwise if you, say, had 100% offshore wind you'd have to build enough to cover peak demand hours/days when you might need lots of power but there might not be much wind - and that would be hugely inefficient in construction and operation.
Also, it hasn't escaped many people's attention that France isn't affected by anything like the electricity price rises we have here at the moment due to their predominantly nuclear fleet.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
Think of the fried birds, never mind microlight pilots (not sure about airliners, Faraday cages?).
Given the impact of the air being heated up by the energy pumping through it, one wouldn't want to fly anywhere near the beams. Even if they were safe. Which they wouldn't be.
Bear in mind this is an issue with lasers today (blooming). And power delivery to the ground from space would be - what - 10 or 100,000x more power.
Would make imposing no fly zones nice and easy though...
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
To Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
Cremanglaise is a middle market anal sex lubricant
I had Cremanglaise down as the new Lymeswold.
Merrett sounds like a specialised breed of a small animal, or a variety of eating apple.
Confession: I quite liked Lymeswold. A soft pleasant blue cheese. Nothing remarkable, but certainly palatable
Better than the dreaded “Danish Blue”, and….. and I was about to say it resembled a “blue Brie” then I discovered they are exactly the same cheese
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
The maths is fairly simple.
- You gain a certain amount from your solar cell being out in a vacuum, perfectly pointed at the sun. When it is in view (see orbits) - You lose from the power transmission, reception and the issues about orbits. - On the ground you lose from atmospheric absorption and generally imperfect pointing.
The thing is that solar cells are very cheap. And getting cheaper. Also land is extremely cheap. Hell, we are talking about paying farmers not to farm.
SPS starts to make sense for things like military bases in hostile areas, In Afghanistan the cost of a litre of diesel to run generators at forward bases got to weight-in-gold values.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
Cremanglaise is a middle market anal sex lubricant
I had Cremanglaise down as the new Lymeswold.
Merrett sounds like a specialised breed of a small animal, or a variety of eating apple.
I am drinking, as we speak, a delicious dry white Pecorino. Bad name though, as in should we open a bottle of Cheddar?
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
You take too much of a purist free market view towards nuclear.
It provides steady reliable baseload (for decades) using small quantities of uranium sourced from stable countries and is almost entirely carbon free, except during construction. You pay a bit more, yes, and you get clean power, stability and geopolitical insurance.
A mix of 25-30% nuclear makes sense. Otherwise if you, say, had 100% offshore wind you'd have to build enough to cover peak demand hours/days when you might need lots of power but there might not be much wind - and that would be hugely inefficient in construction and operation.
Also, it hasn't escaped many people's attention that France isn't affected by anything like the electricity price rises we have here at the moment due to their predominantly nuclear fleet.
On the last point, EDF will lose tens of billions this year, because Macron didn't want electricity bills rising during the election campaign. Pecresse made exactly this point. And because EDF is controlled by the French state, he can do that.
We could - of course - bring all power generation under the aegis of the State. And we could hold down power prices. And that would - societally - probably be better, because it would mean that most of the increase in costs of energy would fall on the wealthy.
But prices exist for a reason. They are information about what is scarce and what is not. Prices are information about what to build and where.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
I'd favour the more ridiculously named ones more commonly found in Dorset and Somerset.
Presumably Cornwall, with all its zzzz’s, can furnish a solution.
Polperro! Demelza! Lamorna! Ventongimps
Maybe not Ventongimps
Actually, Demelza is an excellent name. Just plant a few vines there (OK, it’s near Bodmin Moor but does anyone believe Prosecco came from Prosecco? No), then call it Demelza
Reading the Australian election analysis I just posted, Morrison & Albanese come across as antipodean version of that renowned UK politico-comic duo, Johnson & Starmer.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
Think of the fried birds, never mind microlight pilots (not sure about airliners, Faraday cages?).
Given the impact of the air being heated up by the energy pumping through it, one wouldn't want to fly anywhere near the beams. Even if they were safe. Which they wouldn't be.
Bear in mind this is an issue with lasers today (blooming). And power delivery to the ground from space would be - what - 10 or 100,000x more power.
Would make imposing no fly zones nice and easy though...
I was thinking nuclear weaponry is the thing you could stop with it.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
4) What to do with "nucular" waste.
Which is a bit of a canard.
You put the most radioactive stuff (which isn't much) into a secure underground geological facility - even gamma rays can't get through 3m of concrete, and it's no threat to anyone.
You shell the old reactor for 100 years and then can bulldoze the site and turn into, say, a nature reserve.
You're at more risk of radiation from taking a holiday in Cornwall than living near a nuclear power station.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
The problems aren't really b) and c) - you chose a microwave frequency that doesn't heat the air and you use a phased array approach, with the receiving system being basically chicken wire. Think miles of chicken wire. One idea is to mount it on posts and grow stuff below, if the land is agricultural. The beam destiny is usually suggested to be quite low - below the levels where you could stand there all day without any effect. The chicken wire would stop 99.99%+ of that, incidentally.
If the beam loses lock on the target receiver, it will automatically spread and become even less of a threat.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
So how much does French electricity cost compared to the UK's ?
After subsidies etc.
Power in France is cheaper because the French government spent the equivalent of a quarter of a year's GDP building power stations, and then handed them gratis to EDF. That cost has fallen directly on French taxpayer in terms of debt that needs servicing. (In fact it's worse than that, because the money was never repaid, and now French nuclear plants are nearing the end of their service life, and the debt still exists.)
The UK government could borrow huge sums and do that. But that is just playing shell games, moving the cost from the plug to the paycheck. People pay more in taxes *plus* electricity under this scenario.
They don’t pay more in electricity, though. And France can successfully export energy, too, and indeed nuclear expertise.
It’s not a “shell game” for a government to borrow - at interest rates only available to a tax-collecting sovereign - for investment.
If the cost to a consumer - in terms of higher tax payments - exceeds their savings on electricity, then yes, it is a shell game. It's moving a cost from one pocket to another, not eliminating it.
If nuclear was cost efficient, people would be building it all over the world.
And yet the number of nuclear plants - even in profoundly ungreen places - is declining. The French company (Areva) that is the world's largest builder of the plants went bust and had to be bailed out by - oh yes - the French state.
This is simply untrue. 10% of the world's power is nuclear and it's steadily rising - new fleets are being planned in Asia:
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
No, it’s fucking terrible, as it is French
This is ENGLISH FIZZ
Be loud, be proud
There is a Sussex village called Cocking. Another one called Funtington
“I’d love some more cocking, thanks”
Not bad
Haha Cocking aside, I think being in 'French' is actually a statement of ambition rather than inferiority in this instance. And Cremant being the name for French sparkling made outside Champagne, it sort of makes sense. It ain't perfect, I'll give you that.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
No, it’s fucking terrible, as it is French
This is ENGLISH FIZZ
Be loud, be proud
There is a Sussex village called Cocking. Another one called Funtington
“I’d love some more cocking, thanks”
Not bad
Haha Cocking aside, I think being in 'French' is actually a statement of ambition rather than inferiority in this instance. And Cremant being the name for French sparkling made outside Champagne, it sort of makes sense. It ain't perfect, I'll give you that.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
No, it’s fucking terrible, as it is French
This is ENGLISH FIZZ
Be loud, be proud
There is a Sussex village called Cocking. Another one called Funtington
“I’d love some more cocking, thanks”
Not bad
Haha Cocking aside, I think being in 'French' is actually a statement of ambition rather than inferiority in this instance. And Cremant being the name for French sparkling made outside Champagne, it sort of makes sense. It ain't perfect, I'll give you that.
it is absolutely terrible, in multiple ways. It is actually quite disturbing that you think it is “good”
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
A modest nuclear programme replacing what we have is not a bad idea.
A properly renewable programme using our own considerable natural resources that are cheaper, cleaner and indigenous to these islands would be a much better idea.
If it's tidal, yes. If we'd invested 60 years ago into space based industry we could have extensive space based solar being microwaved back to Earth and so cheap it would be unmetred. We are a stupid, ignorant species though.
Every sensible investigation of the cost of SPS comes up with it being cheaper to put the solar panels on the ground. Even if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship works and reaches it's $10 million per launch projected cost.
Yes because we are 60 years behind where we would have been if serious investment had started into space industry rather than the idiotic and pointless stuff NASA was doing and continues to do. For example, had serious work begun on sky hooks the cost would be right down. But it didn't so we are where we are. We are way behind in getting off this damn rock and guaranteeing a human future.
Nope - because some quite simple algebra tells up that putting the solar panels on the ground and losing a bit from the atmosphere etc is much cheaper than putting a slightly smaller number of the same panels in space and then beaming the power back. Even if launch costs are $100 a kilo.
There are some advantages to space-based power compared to ground solar cells as well - including the potential to generate power 24/7. If it can be made to work, it may be very advantageous to countries well away from the equator.
The fact Musk is so avidly against it, especially given his trade in ground-based systems - gives me an inkling that there's something in it.
Beaming power to the ground is *incredibly* difficult. Even if you solved all the engineering challenges, it's still:
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on (b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses (c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
Think of the fried birds, never mind microlight pilots (not sure about airliners, Faraday cages?).
Given the impact of the air being heated up by the energy pumping through it, one wouldn't want to fly anywhere near the beams. Even if they were safe. Which they wouldn't be.
Bear in mind this is an issue with lasers today (blooming). And power delivery to the ground from space would be - what - 10 or 100,000x more power.
Would make imposing no fly zones nice and easy though...
I was thinking nuclear weaponry is the thing you could stop with it.
at 20mW/cm2 of centimetric microwaves?
{Harry Wimperis has entered the chat, to ask if someone can build a death ray}
I see much about sources of energy, but little about sinks. I would suggest that capturing extra solar energy from space, would, like the use of fossil fuels and nuclear devices, warm the place up.
I see much about sources of energy, but little about sinks. I would suggest that capturing extra solar energy from space, would, like the use of fossil fuels and nuclear devices, warm the place up.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
4) What to do with "nucular" waste.
Which is a bit of a canard.
You put the most radioactive stuff (which isn't much) into a secure underground geological facility - even gamma rays can't get through 3m of concrete, and it's no threat to anyone.
You shell the old reactor for 100 years and then can bulldoze the site and turn into, say, a nature reserve.
You're at more risk of radiation from taking a holiday in Cornwall than living near a nuclear power station.
My stepmother blamed her fatal cancer on Cornish radon
I’ve no idea if she was right. I didn’t like her anyway
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
4) What to do with "nucular" waste.
Which is a bit of a canard.
You put the most radioactive stuff (which isn't much) into a secure underground geological facility - even gamma rays can't get through 3m of concrete, and it's no threat to anyone.
You shell the old reactor for 100 years and then can bulldoze the site and turn into, say, a nature reserve.
You're at more risk of radiation from taking a holiday in Cornwall than living near a nuclear power station.
Why do Ukrainians make sure their flies are zipped?
Cause they're warned that 'otherwise, Chernobyl fall out.'
I see much about sources of energy, but little about sinks. I would suggest that capturing extra solar energy from space, would, like the use of fossil fuels and nuclear devices, warm the place up.
Ah, that old canard.
Global Warming is happening because of a modification of the environment, trapping heat.
Simply adding more heat to the surface of the Earth will not noticeably warm the Earth. It will just radiate into spaces as usual.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
On point 3, I used to bean advocate of CCGT plants with CCS to provide low carbon despatchable power. With the war, I've changed my mind - such a plant will lock us in to natural gas imports for decades to come. So we need to look at the alternative storage vectors to provide this function - hydrogen turbines (with green hydrogen, not blue), batteries, liquid air, pumped hydro, etc.
Winston Churchill said of oil - "Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone." The same is true of natural gas. If we have gas contracts with the US, Norway, Qatar and Australia (as well as some indigenous production), then we will have security.
The issue that the UK has had is that gas purchasers (typically power generators) found it more cost efficient to rely on a very thin spot market for LNG cargoes to meet demand. That looked really clever before the Ukraine war, and now looks really stupid. Korea and Japan, by contrast, have essentially all of their gas imports on long term contracts.
Just to add: back in 2015 I wrote a paper warning of the UK's dangerous dependence on the spot LNG market, and argued that capacity payments without a guarantee than a plant had a secured supply of hydrocarbons was a dangerous delusion.
I wonder how far domestic demand for gas will decline this year - we have renewables coming on stream equivalent to approx. 10% of electricity demand at present, and 8GW of new interconnectors by 2025.
But lots of factors both ways. OTOH we are exporting a lot at present, and Boris Borisov the useless ^&*( has been sitting on his butt when he could have mitigated the current supply prices, and inflation, in one hit.
More nuclear power is a very very good idea. Much more is even better. Windfall taxes are just ridiculous. Tory become Labour and eventually will run out of other peoples money. Try redirecting some of the universal benefits the averagely off and well off don't need. Or zero tax on lncome up to living wage and increase the flat rate above. And take tax off heating and power and all food and clothing and whack up purchase tax on luxuries. Or Or Or DO SOMETHING
There are three problems with nuclear power:
(1) The number of nuclear power plants that have been built without government subsidies anywhere in the world is... counts... zero. Look at HPC: the electricity from there is almost twice as expensive as the government will guarantee for new wind. Oh yeah, and it turns out that HPC can't actually be built profitably even at that price, and they've just come to the government asking for more as it's (currently) both late and 1.5bn over budget.
(2) Nuclear does not have great reliability. An EDF nuclear plant's uptime is somewhere in the 60s. That means that - yes - you need to build lots of backup power for when your nuclear plant is down for unscheduled maintenance.
(3) Nuclear is not particularly flexible. A plant is - basically - either on or off.
Now, can nuclear be used as a part of our power generation mix to enhance the resilience of the grid? Yes. But if you relied completely on it, you would end up paying an awful lot (in the medium term) for your electricity. And if British firms are paying well above market rates for electricity, then either they will build their own powergen facilities (which will depress demand for nuclear power, causing it's own problems), or it will mean that power intensive businesses move elsewhere.
4) What to do with "nucular" waste.
Which is a bit of a canard.
You're at more risk of radiation from taking a holiday in Cornwall than living near a nuclear power station.
But why? Big nukes take years before commissioning.
He seems to have a bee in his bonnet over nukes and is very skeptical of renewables by comparison.
Apparently it is a small modular reactor via Rolls-Royce
That haven't even been prototyped yet.
This has Garden Bridge and PPE procurement fiasos written all over it
Your last line is interesting, as I think the comparisons are poor. The Garden Bridge was a massive waste of taxpayers' money, advantaging no-one except for the people who had been part of the dodgy procurement. It was unnecessary and (at least) borderline corrupt.
PPE procurement was a very different thing. We needed PPE desperately, at a time everyone else in the world needed it. We got the PPE we required, even if there was some waste. The question is whether we could have got the same amount of PPE in a timely manner without some waste.
Some waste? The parody posts are coming thick and fast this evening.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
Cremanglaise is a middle market anal sex lubricant
I had Cremanglaise down as the new Lymeswold.
Merrett sounds like a specialised breed of a small animal, or a variety of eating apple.
I am drinking, as we speak, a delicious dry white Pecorino. Bad name though, as in should we open a bottle of Cheddar?
That is very unkind when I am having a fortnight without wine.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
Cremanglaise is a middle market anal sex lubricant
I had Cremanglaise down as the new Lymeswold.
Merrett sounds like a specialised breed of a small animal, or a variety of eating apple.
I am drinking, as we speak, a delicious dry white Pecorino. Bad name though, as in should we open a bottle of Cheddar?
That is very unkind when I am having a fortnight without wine.
A lot of angry, very typical comments in reply, but occasionally even political youth wings can have do something sensible.
Hilarious thread
This means that all of the SNP is totally committed to nuclear defence, and to the nuclear deterrent; so their opposition to Trident is reduced to “we don’t want them in Scotland but we do want them, we just want someone else to take the risk on our behalf, thanks, because we are proud free Scots and we are also afraid and selfish”
I suggest this is not sustainable; you can imagine the scorn of the USA, for a start.
Sturgeon is about 6 months away from saying Trident can stay in Scotland
Thread on food prices - tomatoes as an example. Very worrying...
Ed Conway @EdConwaySky · 6h The upshot is that half of the greenhouses in the Lea Valley have been left empty this year. It's hard to describe what a big deal this is. Up until this year they hadn't seen a SINGLE one left without plants. This one should have cucumbers growing in it. Instead: nothing.
I've shared this before on here but a good read from 2 months ago about what fertilizer and other shortages mean for food supplies. TL;DR, eye-watering costs for the west and likely famine in many poorer countries.
Dependence on nitrogen fertiliser has been a disaster for nutrition. Nitrogen provides bulk. Its not the only mineral a crop needs to be healthy, and to make nourishing food. Rock dust is plentiful, and a far better fertiliser than nitrogen. So I see this as unintentional good news.
Rock dust is nonsensical woo, debunked all over the Internet, eg
Even if it did what it claims, all it claims is to restore micronutrients. There is no way it is going to increase yields the way artificial npk does.
Have you read the feeble article you posted? That's the debunking equivalent of being thrashed by the proverbial wet lettuce.
Rock dust is being used in Perthshire to make record breaking vegetables, and is apparently now being exported for profit. Evidently the farmers using it must be suggestible dupes, and the football sized cabbages must be holographical projections. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/dec/14/scotland-rock-dust-transform-soil
Jesus christ.
Have you ever grown anything? "The Thomsons' once-exhausted land now produces football-sized cabbages, massive onions and normally delicate fruits the size of a fist." You do realise that the determinants of the size of a vegetable are 1. Variety 2. General growing conditions and alongway third 3. Fertiliser? How the hell are micronutrients on their own meant to produce whatever these fist sized fruits are?
Rock dust “mimics the glacial cycles” and “accelerates the natural weathering process”
Sounds like fou fou dust to me
It can sound like anything it likes to you, the market garden is producing the physical vegetables, and they're not introducing nitrogen fertiliser into the soil secretly at the dead of night, so I suggest you go and sit on a prize-winning marrow.
Thread on food prices - tomatoes as an example. Very worrying...
Ed Conway @EdConwaySky · 6h The upshot is that half of the greenhouses in the Lea Valley have been left empty this year. It's hard to describe what a big deal this is. Up until this year they hadn't seen a SINGLE one left without plants. This one should have cucumbers growing in it. Instead: nothing.
I've shared this before on here but a good read from 2 months ago about what fertilizer and other shortages mean for food supplies. TL;DR, eye-watering costs for the west and likely famine in many poorer countries.
Dependence on nitrogen fertiliser has been a disaster for nutrition. Nitrogen provides bulk. Its not the only mineral a crop needs to be healthy, and to make nourishing food. Rock dust is plentiful, and a far better fertiliser than nitrogen. So I see this as unintentional good news.
Rock dust is nonsensical woo, debunked all over the Internet, eg
Even if it did what it claims, all it claims is to restore micronutrients. There is no way it is going to increase yields the way artificial npk does.
Have you read the feeble article you posted? That's the debunking equivalent of being thrashed by the proverbial wet lettuce.
Rock dust is being used in Perthshire to make record breaking vegetables, and is apparently now being exported for profit. Evidently the farmers using it must be suggestible dupes, and the football sized cabbages must be holographical projections. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/dec/14/scotland-rock-dust-transform-soil
Jesus christ.
Have you ever grown anything? "The Thomsons' once-exhausted land now produces football-sized cabbages, massive onions and normally delicate fruits the size of a fist." You do realise that the determinants of the size of a vegetable are 1. Variety 2. General growing conditions and alongway third 3. Fertiliser? How the hell are micronutrients on their own meant to produce whatever these fist sized fruits are?
Rock dust “mimics the glacial cycles” and “accelerates the natural weathering process”
Sounds like fou fou dust to me
It can sound like anything it likes to you, the market garden is producing the physical vegetables, and they're not introducing nitrogen fertiliser into the soil secretly at the dead of night, so I suggest you go and sit on a prize-winning marrow.
I believe in data. Show me that and I might believe you
There are pages and pages of studies on their website:
The two-year incorporation of the rock dust compost into a poor-quality soil led to a significant increase in the yield with the increase of 120% and 187% compared to untreated control in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Application of rock dust compost obviously promoted superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity and concentration of vitamin C in mature apple trees. The beneficial effects coincided with higher microbial activity and shifts in the composition of the soil microbiome. Our results demonstrate that the practice of combining the rock dust-fortified compost with NPK fertilizers provides a cost- effective way of supplying crops with macro-and micronutrients ensuring better vegetative growth and higher yields.
Here we report that amending a UK clay-loam agricultural soil with a high loading (10 kg/m2) of relatively coarse-grained crushed basalt significantly increased the yield (21 ± 9.4%, SE) of the important C4 cereal Sorghum bicolor under controlled environmental conditions, without accumulation of potentially toxic trace elements in the seeds. Yield increases resulted from the basalt treatment after 120 days without P- and K-fertilizer addition. Shoot silicon concentrations also increased significantly (26 ± 5.4%, SE), with potential benefits for crop resistance to biotic and abiotic stress.
Take your pick.
your first link = 404. Your second is classic bullshit: it compares rockdusty compost with "untreated control" - i.e. with no compost at all. We know that compost works, we strongly suspect that rock dust is neither here nor there, so this is a test of compost faking it as a test of rockdust. Just embarrassing. Next one looks the same, final one reports no significant interesting results.
This is just classic crankdom. i am sure there's a tribe in the hindu kush who live to 130 and never get cancer because of their diet of rockdusty apricots.
Actually, if you'd troubled yourself to read it, that wasn't the methodology.
'Two different types of compost were prepared and used throughout the study.
The first type, referred to as composted manure (CM), was produced by mixing seven parts of dung with three parts of wheat straw (w/w), which resulted in a C/N ratio of ca. 26. The second type, referred to as composted manure with rock dust (CMRD), was prepared identically except for the 90 addition of 0.4 part of the byproduct of quarry industry, which serves as a source of different trace mineral nutrients. The chemical composition of the rock dust used in this study was described earlier by Li and Dong (2013).'
Why on earth would they have done it in the way you suggest?
The only thing that's embarrassing here is you been the stupid twunt who's claimed there isn't a single study, been told there are in fact multiple studies, and who is now scrabbling around trying to discredit the ones posted by making wild, easily disprovable claims about their methods.
Yawn
I am down here organically managing 15 acres of pasture and 50-odd fruit trees, someone else on the thread is growing a ha of vines, but you are the one who knows all about it. odd.
Oh OK, I thought it was 'controlled studies' that you wanted. Now I've given you the studies, it's back to 'I know best because'.
Yeah. Your comedy nutters misdescribed their own study, and I accurately summarised the misdescription. Looking at the actual study, this leaps out:
"All trees were approximately 15 years old, and due to age and poor management practices displayed signs of physiological stress and/or disease. The disease symptoms manifested in the form of leaf scorch (browning of leaves from the edge inwards) and some dying of upper branches."
Not sure what to make of "experts" who think that apples, on any rootstock I have ever heard of, are suffering from old age at 15, but the main point is: these trees were fucked. any given vitamin or micronutrient is the elixir of life to an organism suffering a deficiency of that v or n, and completely useless to one which isn't. Again, this is crank thinking, it's Linus Pauling thinking a ton of vitamin C confers immortality because a tiny bit of it cures scurvy.
Have you ever grown anything?
I'm glad you actually read the study. Given that all the trees involved were suffering in the ways that you suggest, the differences in outcome between the groups are quite clear, just as clear, if not clearer, as if the study were conducted on healthy trees.
I'm not sure what you are driving at with this 'crank' stuff - the research in question is totally unrelated to the Perthshire rock dust people, they have just curated the studies on their website. Are the Chinese scientists and the journal they published their work in all comedy nutter cranks? Lest we forget, your first 'debunking' was courtesy of a gardening blog.
I'm not really annoyed with you, I regret calling you a name - you are showing yourself up somewhat though. Hopefully in the long run, this broadens your mind somewhat and helps your cultivation efforts.
A lot of angry, very typical comments in reply, but occasionally even political youth wings can have do something sensible.
Hilarious thread
This means that all of the SNP is totally committed to nuclear defence, and to the nuclear deterrent; so their opposition to Trident is reduced to “we don’t want them in Scotland but we do want them, we just want someone else to take the risk on our behalf, thanks, because we are proud free Scots and we are also afraid and selfish”
I suggest this is not sustainable; you can imagine the scorn of the USA, for a start.
Sturgeon is about 6 months away from saying Trident can stay in Scotland
Cowardly selfishness is perfectly sustainable as a small independent nation. Ireland has a selfish neutrality foreign policy and a selfish tax abuse economic policy, and has done for years.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
No, it’s fucking terrible, as it is French
This is ENGLISH FIZZ
Be loud, be proud
There is a Sussex village called Cocking. Another one called Funtington
“I’d love some more cocking, thanks”
Not bad
Haha Cocking aside, I think being in 'French' is actually a statement of ambition rather than inferiority in this instance. And Cremant being the name for French sparkling made outside Champagne, it sort of makes sense. It ain't perfect, I'll give you that.
Why is there a ridiculous competition to find a “suitable name” for English fizz, like ‘champagne” or “Prosecco”
The name is right there. ENGLISH FIZZ, It sounds posh, hedonistic and fun. Like a quickie in the Ha-ha. Just use that.
ENGLISH FIZZ
Because nobody except English people would ever use the term.
Prosecco was hardly in everyone’s vocabulary 30 years ago.
Exactly, and the name really matters: it creates the brand
Prosecco is a little village near Trieste. It’s a genius name/brand for selling sparkling wine. It actually sounds effervescent. A party in three syllables
I once spent a few days with the sparkling wine makers of Trentino who loudly lamented that their rather pleasant sparkling wine (older and nobler than Prosecco, they claimed) was called “Trentodoc”
TRENTODOC
It sounds like an Adobe spreadsheet app, or maybe a regional water utility. It doesn’t make you want to offer random drunken blow jobs
English Fizz is excellent. Ooh, yah, another gless of English fizz!!
You might feel so, but it's really just a description rather than a special designation that could gain a reputation, like Cava, Prosecco, Cremant, or of course Champagne. It also doesn't mean the liquid itself has to meet any standard of quality - a low quality carbonated English wine would still be 'English fizz', and there would be no way to prevent a winemaker labelling it as such.
Prosecco is generally shit cheap bubbles (but an excellent brand), cava is not really a brand, champagne is an excellent brand m name (but disguises a fair amount of mediocre wine), cremant is thin and disappointing and is not a good brand name
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
Yes, I agree the other proposed names are pretty poor, hence their non-adoption. I think Cremanglaise is actually better than those.
No, it’s fucking terrible, as it is French
This is ENGLISH FIZZ
Be loud, be proud
There is a Sussex village called Cocking. Another one called Funtington
“I’d love some more cocking, thanks”
Not bad
Haha Cocking aside, I think being in 'French' is actually a statement of ambition rather than inferiority in this instance. And Cremant being the name for French sparkling made outside Champagne, it sort of makes sense. It ain't perfect, I'll give you that.
it is absolutely terrible, in multiple ways. It is actually quite disturbing that you think it is “good”
A lot of angry, very typical comments in reply, but occasionally even political youth wings can have do something sensible.
Hilarious thread
This means that all of the SNP is totally committed to nuclear defence, and to the nuclear deterrent; so their opposition to Trident is reduced to “we don’t want them in Scotland but we do want them, we just want someone else to take the risk on our behalf, thanks, because we are proud free Scots and we are also afraid and selfish”
I suggest this is not sustainable; you can imagine the scorn of the USA, for a start.
Sturgeon is about 6 months away from saying Trident can stay in Scotland
Cowardly selfishness is perfectly sustainable as a small independent nation.
Only if said nation has peaceful, democratic neighbours that will bail them out in the last resort if they are attacked. It is fine for Scotland and Ireland, but somewhat less sustainable for others - ask Tibet, Sikkim, the inter-war Baltic States or Western Sahara.
Re gas: it is worth noting that neither Japan nor Korea - despite being massive energy importers - are seeing anything like the electricity or gas price increases we are.
Why?
Because their generators were happy to enter into long-term supply contracts with Qatar, PNG and Australia.
We've been hammered because all our LNG is spot cargoes.
A lot of angry, very typical comments in reply, but occasionally even political youth wings can have do something sensible.
Hilarious thread
This means that all of the SNP is totally committed to nuclear defence, and to the nuclear deterrent; so their opposition to Trident is reduced to “we don’t want them in Scotland but we do want them, we just want someone else to take the risk on our behalf, thanks, because we are proud free Scots and we are also afraid and selfish”
I suggest this is not sustainable; you can imagine the scorn of the USA, for a start.
Sturgeon is about 6 months away from saying Trident can stay in Scotland
Cowardly selfishness is perfectly sustainable as a small independent nation. Ireland has a selfish neutrality foreign policy and a selfish tax abuse economic policy, and has done for years.
A good point. However, both of these long term Irish policy positions are, I think, reaching their sell-by date
The SNP’s position is actually quite an interesting dilemma. It is surely an unspoken, unwritten criterion of NATO membership that you are prepared to have nukes on your land, or in your airspace. You cannot simultaneously be anti nukes on principle yet join a military alliance whereof the basis is the American (and, to a lesser extent, UK and French) nuclear umbrella?
Why should Americans take the risk of housing nukes to protect Scotland, which refuses to have nukes?
One of the reasons NZ was excluded from AUKUS was the NZ nuke-free policy
An Indy Scotland would find it very hard to join NATO without clarifying that it would allow nukes in and around Scotland, in which case what is the point in removing Trident? RUK could just veto Scottish membership of NATO, end of
In fact, this is the end of indy Scotland, as an idea
London just has to say: we will veto Scottish membership of NATO, unless it allows England to keep Trident on the Clyde
WTF does the SNP do then?
I would suggest, do a Finland, and threaten to join the Russian Federation instead, till the Americans lean on us to give them whatever they want, and we capitulate.
A lot of angry, very typical comments in reply, but occasionally even political youth wings can have do something sensible.
Hilarious thread
This means that all of the SNP is totally committed to nuclear defence, and to the nuclear deterrent; so their opposition to Trident is reduced to “we don’t want them in Scotland but we do want them, we just want someone else to take the risk on our behalf, thanks, because we are proud free Scots and we are also afraid and selfish”
I suggest this is not sustainable; you can imagine the scorn of the USA, for a start.
Sturgeon is about 6 months away from saying Trident can stay in Scotland
Cowardly selfishness is perfectly sustainable as a small independent nation.
Only if said nation has peaceful, democratic neighbours that will bail them out in the last resort if they are attacked. It is fine for Scotland and Ireland, but somewhat less sustainable for others - ask Tibet, Sikkim, the inter-war Baltic States or Western Sahara.
I recall, with some hilarity, the response of a Canadian anti-war activist on being told that the US wouldn't interfere with Canadian sovereignty with planned missile defence systems. They would program the "Keep Out" zone not to defend Canada, if Canada didn't want such a system.
Odd that the local press were claiming the LD candidate was a woman from Somerset. Richard Foord I used to know - as Mike Smithson says he is a long way from the standard LibDem. He'll stand out a mile in the parliamentary party.
I've just seem some interviews with him and he appears very smart and fluent. Eds successor?
A lot of angry, very typical comments in reply, but occasionally even political youth wings can have do something sensible.
Hilarious thread
This means that all of the SNP is totally committed to nuclear defence, and to the nuclear deterrent; so their opposition to Trident is reduced to “we don’t want them in Scotland but we do want them, we just want someone else to take the risk on our behalf, thanks, because we are proud free Scots and we are also afraid and selfish”
I suggest this is not sustainable; you can imagine the scorn of the USA, for a start.
Sturgeon is about 6 months away from saying Trident can stay in Scotland
A lot of small western countries have the luxury of indulging in gestures of political neutrality that they otherwise wouldn't be able to do in the absence of the NATO nuclear umbrella.
It's the core reason the alliance has endured - it literally underpins the security of the whole Western system.
Re gas: it is worth noting that neither Japan nor Korea - despite being massive energy importers - are seeing anything like the electricity or gas price increases we are.
Why?
Because their generators were happy to enter into long-term supply contracts with Qatar, PNG and Australia.
We've been hammered because all our LNG is spot cargoes.
How do you get to net zero without, ultimately, moving away from gas though?
https://mobile.twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1528082681673678848 At a Q and A session in Yekaterinburg today, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was asked how Russians should respond to friends and family abroad who tell them that Russia has become like Orwell's 1984. Her answer is just something else...
Comments
(a) Only going to generate power in the part of the world which the sun is shining on
(b) When you do capture the energy, you still have to get it to the ground - and that is going to heat the air up, with massive transmission losses
(c) And what happens if your beam of energy (in some form) happens to stray off the reciever?
Judith Chalmers is currently PM.
After subsidies etc.
Very mostly, politicians cannot be trusted to run private businesses.
But the private sector, left to itself, will underserve - because it is not interested in societal externalities - and tend to a monopoly that privileges the already wealthy.
The UK government could borrow huge sums and do that. But that is just playing shell games, moving the cost from the plug to the paycheck. People pay more in taxes *plus* electricity under this scenario.
And France can successfully export energy, too, and indeed nuclear expertise.
It’s not a “shell game” for a government to borrow - at interest rates only available to a tax-collecting sovereign - for investment.
We consider them sexier, luckier, more elegant
Yet they consider us as culturally triumphant - the English language - a little bit manlier, annoyingly smarter in the end
There’s a whole subspecies of declinist French thought dedicated to working out how the English managed to conquer the world, and make the world speak their tongue, when it *should* have been the French
Neither side is generally aware of the neurosis across the Channel
The notion that AA's youthful associations mean his current views were set in stone long ago, is risible.
Getting back to Morrison & Etc.'s shellacking, still unclear IF Labor will get a majority in House of Representatives - 76 - however they aren't too far behind that mark, with 72 seats as of this moment (according to abc.au) with 66.3% of vote counted and 14 seats still in doubt.
Re: these 14 seats
Australian Labor Party leading =7
> Bennelong (NSW), Deaken (Vic), Gilmore (NSW), Lingiari (NT), Lyons (Tasmania), Macnamara (Vic), Sturt (SA)
Liberal Party leading = 5
> Bass (Tasmania), Casey (Vic), Dickson (QLD), Menzies (Vic), Moore (WA)
National Party = 1
> Cowper (NSW)
Green Party = 1
> Brisbane (QLD)
The fall in votes & seats for the Coalition government was matched & in number of key seats caused by rise of "Teal" Independents who ran opposed to leading lights in the Morrison govt.
Clearly the UK can grow our own regular food requirements - though not perhaps in foodstuffs such as kangaroo, bananas and crocodiles.
It only needs a comparison with the Netherlands, who have double the population density even of England - yet grow more than enough for themselves and are also a major exporter.
It would perhaps require more greenhouse growing, and there are certain barriers - an obsession with extensive low productivity farming is one, a massive % of land with restrictions is perhaps another.
…is that my coat? Why, thank you.
Endless watery tomatoes.
What’s the point?
English Fizz is an excellent name, to my mind, certainly when compared with the proposed alternatives: Bretagne, Albion and Merrett. FFS. Lol
Maybe we just need to find a joyously named village in Kent or Sussex
"All trees were approximately 15 years old, and due to age and poor
management practices displayed signs of physiological stress and/or disease. The disease symptoms
manifested in the form of leaf scorch (browning of leaves from the edge inwards) and some dying of
upper branches."
Not sure what to make of "experts" who think that apples, on any rootstock I have ever heard of, are suffering from old age at 15, but the main point is: these trees were fucked. any given vitamin or micronutrient is the elixir of life to an organism suffering a deficiency of that v or n, and completely useless to one which isn't. Again, this is crank thinking, it's Linus Pauling thinking a ton of vitamin C confers immortality because a tiny bit of it cures scurvy.
Have you ever grown anything?
If nuclear was cost efficient, people would be building it all over the world.
And yet the number of nuclear plants - even in profoundly ungreen places - is declining. The French company (Areva) that is the world's largest builder of the plants went bust and had to be bailed out by - oh yes - the French state.
Cheap, tho. And sweet: yes. So it might work, for a bit. Not a great name, however
https://twitter.com/ysinational/status/1528007124864974851
Unfortunately on DAC they now seem to have duped the US Government.
This is ENGLISH FIZZ
Be loud, be proud
There is a Sussex village called Cocking. Another one called Funtington
“I’d love some more cocking, thanks”
Not bad
Poor Roger....and there he was telling us Britain hospitality sector had gone to shit unlike in France.
The issue that the UK has had is that gas purchasers (typically power generators) found it more cost efficient to rely on a very thin spot market for LNG cargoes to meet demand. That looked really clever before the Ukraine war, and now looks really stupid. Korea and Japan, by contrast, have essentially all of their gas imports on long term contracts.
Just to add: back in 2015 I wrote a paper warning of the UK's dangerous dependence on the spot LNG market, and argued that capacity payments without a guarantee than a plant had a secured supply of hydrocarbons was a dangerous delusion.
Just sayin'
They are almost entirely concerned with what the national audit office (and press) might say one day if they get the cost & schedule wrong, and therefore push for absurd levels of certainty at the outline business case stage that kills off the project.
I am not necessarily pro-nuclear, or even trying to defend French energy policy of the 1970s, I just think the case is more complex than you suggest and you are discounting the various subsidies poured into alternative energy sources, too.
Merrett sounds like a specialised breed of a small animal, or a variety of eating apple.
Don’t give up the day job.
How much do the power stations cost?
Bear in mind this is an issue with lasers today (blooming). And power delivery to the ground from space would be - what - 10 or 100,000x more power.
It provides steady reliable baseload (for decades) using small quantities of uranium sourced from stable countries and is almost entirely carbon free, except during construction. You pay a bit more, yes, and you get clean power, stability and geopolitical insurance.
A mix of 25-30% nuclear makes sense. Otherwise if you, say, had 100% offshore wind you'd have to build enough to cover peak demand hours/days when you might need lots of power but there might not be much wind - and that would be hugely inefficient in construction and operation.
Also, it hasn't escaped many people's attention that France isn't affected by anything like the electricity price rises we have here at the moment due to their predominantly nuclear fleet.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-21/election-2022-scott-morrison-loses-albanese/101087832
Australian politics has experienced a seismic and profound shift.
Scott Morrison's prime ministership is over on the back of a female independent climate revolt. It's the women, stupid.
The Liberal Party has been smashed by a sea of teal women. . . .
The Coalition's own tracking polls said Morrison was unpopular with women. In fact, it was lethal.
In the chase for Labor's blue collar heartland, Morrison failed to connect with women.
In the end, Morrison couldn't deliver the government a second miracle and lost his party some of its historical heartland on the back of a climate, integrity and independent insurgency. . . .
A generation of Liberal politicians have been lost and the recriminations will be wide and deep.
A new reality for both parties
After six weeks of campaigning, and three years of trouble-plagued governing, voters have sent one giant message to the major parties: do not take them for granted. This election is the shock the major parties must learn from or their power will continue to diminish.
Labor was able to successfully turn this election into a referendum on Morrison's character and three-year legacy but not yet enough to win a clear majority — that is the reality the party must grapple with.
Anthony Albanese is the architect of this Labor strategy and has weathered criticism for being too timid over his term as Opposition Leader. Yet, his strategy of making the government the issue and paint it as tired and out of ideas has had some impact — he will become Australia's next prime minister.
It was just three years ago that Morrison became the Coalition's biggest asset, winning the so-called unwinnable election and cutting through to pull off an unlikely win.
Three years later, after holidaying in Hawaii during the nation's biggest existential bushfire crisis, failing to read the room to race to obtain vaccines or enough RATs, as well as being depicted as a man consistently "missing" in action and unprepared to take responsibility, voters have decided to switch camps.
They have done that despite expressing a broad lack of enthusiasm for Labor — the primary vote tells the story there — but the baseball bats have been out for the Liberals where it matters most.
Labor inherits a tough job
. . . Albanese's focus on cost of living and wages has been a success, as has the negative zeroing-in on the public's anger at Morrison. . . .
The "teal wave" has swamped the Liberals, and Morrison's chase for working-class suburban seats in Labor heartland wasn't enough to counter it.
Now Labor inherits the cost-of-living crisis they focused on to push this government out of office. They face an inflation conundrum, and interest rates set to rise as workers continue to languish. . . .
You’ve explained it well.
Better than the dreaded “Danish Blue”, and….. and I was about to say it resembled a “blue Brie” then I discovered they are exactly the same cheese
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blue-Brie
- You gain a certain amount from your solar cell being out in a vacuum, perfectly pointed at the sun. When it is in view (see orbits)
- You lose from the power transmission, reception and the issues about orbits.
- On the ground you lose from atmospheric absorption and generally imperfect pointing.
The thing is that solar cells are very cheap. And getting cheaper. Also land is extremely cheap. Hell, we are talking about paying farmers not to farm.
SPS starts to make sense for things like military bases in hostile areas, In Afghanistan the cost of a litre of diesel to run generators at forward bases got to weight-in-gold values.
We could - of course - bring all power generation under the aegis of the State. And we could hold down power prices. And that would - societally - probably be better, because it would mean that most of the increase in costs of energy would fall on the wealthy.
But prices exist for a reason. They are information about what is scarce and what is not. Prices are information about what to build and where.
Maybe not Ventongimps
Actually, Demelza is an excellent name. Just plant a few vines there (OK, it’s near Bodmin Moor but does anyone believe Prosecco came from Prosecco? No), then call it Demelza
A glass of Demelza, Like Madeira but sexier
Which leads me to this thought for the future:
Mind the Gap > the Gender Gap
You put the most radioactive stuff (which isn't much) into a secure underground geological facility - even gamma rays can't get through 3m of concrete, and it's no threat to anyone.
You shell the old reactor for 100 years and then can bulldoze the site and turn into, say, a nature reserve.
You're at more risk of radiation from taking a holiday in Cornwall than living near a nuclear power station.
If the beam loses lock on the target receiver, it will automatically spread and become even less of a threat.
The issue is loses and cost.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx
Climate change is a big game changer for nuclear as is energy security.
{Harry Wimperis has entered the chat, to ask if someone can build a death ray}
I’ve no idea if she was right. I didn’t like her anyway
Cause they're warned that 'otherwise, Chernobyl fall out.'
Global Warming is happening because of a modification of the environment, trapping heat.
Simply adding more heat to the surface of the Earth will not noticeably warm the Earth. It will just radiate into spaces as usual.
But lots of factors both ways. OTOH we are exporting a lot at present, and Boris Borisov the useless ^&*( has been sitting on his butt when he could have mitigated the current supply prices, and inflation, in one hit.
This means that all of the SNP is totally committed to nuclear defence, and to the nuclear deterrent; so their opposition to Trident is reduced to “we don’t want them in Scotland but we do want them, we just want someone else to take the risk on our behalf, thanks, because we are proud free Scots and we are also afraid and selfish”
I suggest this is not sustainable; you can imagine the scorn of the USA, for a start.
Sturgeon is about 6 months away from saying Trident can stay in Scotland
I'm not sure what you are driving at with this 'crank' stuff - the research in question is totally unrelated to the Perthshire rock dust people, they have just curated the studies on their website. Are the Chinese scientists and the journal they published their work in all comedy nutter cranks? Lest we forget, your first 'debunking' was courtesy of a gardening blog.
I'm not really annoyed with you, I regret calling you a name - you are showing yourself up somewhat though. Hopefully in the long run, this broadens your mind somewhat and helps your cultivation efforts.
Why?
Because their generators were happy to enter into long-term supply contracts with Qatar, PNG and Australia.
We've been hammered because all our LNG is spot cargoes.
The SNP’s position is actually quite an interesting dilemma. It is surely an unspoken, unwritten criterion of NATO membership that you are prepared to have nukes on your land, or in your airspace. You cannot simultaneously be anti nukes on principle yet join a military alliance whereof the basis is the American (and, to a lesser extent, UK and French) nuclear umbrella?
Why should Americans take the risk of housing nukes to protect Scotland, which refuses to have nukes?
One of the reasons NZ was excluded from AUKUS was the NZ nuke-free policy
An Indy Scotland would find it very hard to join NATO without clarifying that it would allow nukes in and around Scotland, in which case what is the point in removing Trident? RUK could just veto Scottish membership of NATO, end of
London just has to say: we will veto Scottish membership of NATO, unless it allows England to keep Trident on the Clyde
WTF does the SNP do then?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/21/boris-johnson-to-sacrifice-top-official-over-partygate-to-save-himself
It's the core reason the alliance has endured - it literally underpins the security of the whole Western system.
This thread has just been encased in concrete.
Edit: apologies, I forgot that you are in fact a feeble clone.
But Case deserves no sympathy.
What would you have in its place?
https://mobile.twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1528082681673678848
At a Q and A session in Yekaterinburg today, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was asked how Russians should respond to friends and family abroad who tell them that Russia has become like Orwell's 1984. Her answer is just something else...
Still, at least Scottish independence would deliver a tangible increase in sovereignty, as opposed to Brexit’s rather notional outcome.