I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
Those saying it should be left to the market and the BBC should not be promoting it are just showing a complete lack of historical understanding.
53,000 watched a womens game back in 1921, so the FA decided to ban them from playing at grounds used by men. Without that decision womens football would have had a century of more positive development, time to develop its traditions, clubs and icons just as the mens game has. It was blatant and unnecessary sexism.
And the BBC has played a significant part in promoting the mens game throughout its history, and rightly so. It has given the UK a genuinely world leading industry that brings in decent money for the country, far more than the BBC spend. Investing in the womens game will do the same, albeit likely on a smaller scale.
It wasn't sexism - it was a desperate attempt to stop women's football taking off - which given the impact WW1 had had on the male football playing population was highly possible at the time.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
That's just the market, though. Solar is inherently a distributed means of generation, so individual households or businesses will make their own decisions.
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
Those saying it should be left to the market and the BBC should not be promoting it are just showing a complete lack of historical understanding.
53,000 watched a womens game back in 1921, so the FA decided to ban them from playing at grounds used by men. Without that decision womens football would have had a century of more positive development, time to develop its traditions, clubs and icons just as the mens game has. It was blatant and unnecessary sexism.
And the BBC has played a significant part in promoting the mens game throughout its history, and rightly so. It has given the UK a genuinely world leading industry that brings in decent money for the country, far more than the BBC spend. Investing in the womens game will do the same, albeit likely on a smaller scale.
It wasn't sexism - it was a desperate attempt to stop women's football taking off - which given the impact WW1 had had on the male football playing population was highly possible at the time.
Sure I am missing something but isnt trying to stop womens football taking off just a little bit sexist?
According to the NY Times, the US is quietly sharing its assessment of Russian casualties in Ukraine - more than 75,000 killed or injured.
In under 6 months.
Jesus. That's more than 1 in every 2000 of the population. Some of that must be filtering through to the ordinary citizen, surely?
If you live in Moscow, you're about 100x less likely to be a casualty, though. Russia doesn't care - and has never cared - about those who live in the provinces. While the current regime is in place, the political effect is minimal.
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
As one of pb.com's leading reactionary wokehunters, I've been enjoying the tournament quite a lot (and certainly more than the men's tournaments). I'd be disappointed if it wasn't getting the coverage it does. I find the BBC's coverage grating for all sorts of reasons - foremost of which: stop covering it as a culture war, just cover it as a sporting tournament - but the BBC will always find a way to make coverage of a sporting event grating these days.
I'm not as emotionally invested as I am with the men's tournament. But I think this is how sport should be: if 'my' side wins, great, I'm elated: if it loses, well, it's only a game. With England's men's team I get almost the opposite feeling: disappointment if they lose, but if they win, huh, it's only a game.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
That's just the market, though. Solar is inherently a distributed means of generation, so individual households or businesses will make their own decisions.
I'm thinking more of the huge solar farms bespoiling the countryside and taking agricultural land out of productive use.
We could have organic carrots, rewilding and offshore wind instead.
According to the NY Times, the US is quietly sharing its assessment of Russian casualties in Ukraine - more than 75,000 killed or injured.
In under 6 months.
Jesus. That's more than 1 in every 2000 of the population. Some of that must be filtering through to the ordinary citizen, surely?
Russia's attitude toward war death is like the red states of the USA to Covid mortality I think. It's a nation steeped in huge casualty figures as part of national mythos.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
For lots of people combining solar panels with a battery will make a huge amount of sense, particularly when they want to charge their electric car.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
As I learnt recently*, electricity transmission is very expensive. A high capacity transmission line costs the same as a gas pipeline to build but it only carries 1/30th of the energy. As we move to a fully electric world, we need to localise electricity production.
* I got interested in energy policy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine . Despite Twitter's generally bad reputation, it's a great resource for expertise in niche topics you have an intelligent non-expert interest in
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
Those saying it should be left to the market and the BBC should not be promoting it are just showing a complete lack of historical understanding.
53,000 watched a womens game back in 1921, so the FA decided to ban them from playing at grounds used by men. Without that decision womens football would have had a century of more positive development, time to develop its traditions, clubs and icons just as the mens game has. It was blatant and unnecessary sexism.
And the BBC has played a significant part in promoting the mens game throughout its history, and rightly so. It has given the UK a genuinely world leading industry that brings in decent money for the country, far more than the BBC spend. Investing in the womens game will do the same, albeit likely on a smaller scale.
It wasn't sexism - it was a desperate attempt to stop women's football taking off - which given the impact WW1 had had on the male football playing population was highly possible at the time.
Sure I am missing something but isnt trying to stop womens football taking off just a little bit sexist?
This article implies it was a multitude of motivations. Sexism being one of the main ones.
The story of the evolution of lactose tolerance has been rewritten. Ancient lactose intolerant populations drank as much dairy as the lactose tolerant.
The evolutionary mechanism was very probably susceptibility to disease or famine conditions.
Dairying, diseases and the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05010-7 In European and many African, Middle Eastern and southern Asian populations, lactase persistence (LP) is the most strongly selected monogenic trait to have evolved over the past 10,000 years. Although the selection of LP and the consumption of prehistoric milk must be linked, considerable uncertainty remains concerning their spatiotemporal configuration and specific interactions. Here we provide detailed distributions of milk exploitation across Europe over the past 9,000 years using around 7,000 pottery fat residues from more than 550 archaeological sites. European milk use was widespread from the Neolithic period onwards but varied spatially and temporally in intensity. Notably, LP selection varying with levels of prehistoric milk exploitation is no better at explaining LP allele frequency trajectories than uniform selection since the Neolithic period. In the UK Biobank cohort of 500,000 contemporary Europeans, LP genotype was only weakly associated with milk consumption and did not show consistent associations with improved fitness or health indicators. This suggests that other reasons for the beneficial effects of LP should be considered for its rapid frequency increase. We propose that lactase non-persistent individuals consumed milk when it became available but, under conditions of famine and/or increased pathogen exposure, this was disadvantageous, driving LP selection in prehistoric Europe. Comparison of model likelihoods indicates that population fluctuations, settlement density and wild animal exploitation—proxies for these drivers—provide better explanations of LP selection than the extent of milk exploitation. These findings offer new perspectives on prehistoric milk exploitation and LP evolution....
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
Those saying it should be left to the market and the BBC should not be promoting it are just showing a complete lack of historical understanding.
53,000 watched a womens game back in 1921, so the FA decided to ban them from playing at grounds used by men. Without that decision womens football would have had a century of more positive development, time to develop its traditions, clubs and icons just as the mens game has. It was blatant and unnecessary sexism.
And the BBC has played a significant part in promoting the mens game throughout its history, and rightly so. It has given the UK a genuinely world leading industry that brings in decent money for the country, far more than the BBC spend. Investing in the womens game will do the same, albeit likely on a smaller scale.
It wasn't sexism - it was a desperate attempt to stop women's football taking off - which given the impact WW1 had had on the male football playing population was highly possible at the time.
Sure I am missing something but isnt trying to stop womens football taking off just a little bit sexist?
Currently reading, as it happens, the Haynes 'Manual' (sic) for the Bentley 4 1/2 Litre: 1927 onwards (all models, including 'Blower'). Fascinating stuff, but what I did notice by coincidence last night was that ca 1930 there was the 'Good Housekeeping Cup' for the Best Lady's Performance in certain motor-racing/trials events, which is confirmed here:
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
As I learnt recently*, electricity transmission is very expensive. A high capacity transmission line costs the same as a gas pipeline to build but it only carries 1/30th of the energy. As we move to a fully electric world, we need to localise electricity production.
* I got interested in energy policy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine . Despite Twitter's generally bad reputation, it's a great resource for expertise in niche topics you have an intelligent non-expert interest in
It's one reason for Rolls Royce's mini nuke power stations. Can be placed nearly anywhere to provide local baseline power and reduce the need for interconnections.
According to the NY Times, the US is quietly sharing its assessment of Russian casualties in Ukraine - more than 75,000 killed or injured.
In under 6 months.
Jesus. That's more than 1 in every 2000 of the population. Some of that must be filtering through to the ordinary citizen, surely?
If you live in Moscow, you're about 100x less likely to be a casualty, though. Russia doesn't care - and has never cared - about those who live in the provinces. While the current regime is in place, the political effect is minimal.
There were reports at the start of the war, than many of the original invasion brigades were from the East of the country, a deliberate choice to minimise the potential political fallout from Moscow and the Western areas near Ukraine.
With up to a sixth (Ukraine’s figure) or a tenth (US figure) of the entire Russian army taken out in only five months, there are going to be a lot more soldiers from Moscow getting involved. It’s been reported that mobilisation of reserve forces is happening quietly in the Eastern regions already. The attrition rate in this war is shockingly high.
Talking of Birmingham, this is in today’s Groaniad
Photos of Birmingham then and now
Thing is, in almost every picture, Birmingham “then” is obviously more beautiful than Birmingham “now”. Even the picture of bomb damage is more aesthetically pleasing than the picture of what replaced it
It's almost as if whoever selected the pictures of Birmingham today was deliberately choosing the most unflattering photos of streets and buildings, taken from the worst possible angle. For instance the photo of New Street which includes a lot of scaffolding.
I agree. When I visited a few times in the 1980s and early 90s Birmingham seemed quite a grim place. I didn't go for about 20 years but have been since 2010 regularly for work or to visit my daughter at Uni and the City Centre is so much nicer than it used to be, and some of the suburbs seem more appealing than I remember too.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
As I learnt recently*, electricity transmission is very expensive. A high capacity transmission line costs the same as a gas pipeline to build but it only carries 1/30th of the energy. As we move to a fully electric world, we need to localise electricity production.
* I got interested in energy policy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine . Despite Twitter's generally bad reputation, it's a great resource for expertise in niche topics you have an intelligent non-expert interest in
It's one reason for Rolls Royce's mini nuke power stations. Can be placed nearly anywhere to provide local baseline power and reduce the need for interconnections.
But you then need to have the armed guards to make sure someone doesn't try to blow it up. They will end up being at a small number of sites which can be more easily guarded.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
As I learnt recently*, electricity transmission is very expensive. A high capacity transmission line costs the same as a gas pipeline to build but it only carries 1/30th of the energy. As we move to a fully electric world, we need to localise electricity production.
* I got interested in energy policy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine . Despite Twitter's generally bad reputation, it's a great resource for expertise in niche topics you have an intelligent non-expert interest in
It's one reason for Rolls Royce's mini nuke power stations. Can be placed nearly anywhere to provide local baseline power and reduce the need for interconnections.
Try placing them "everywhere". They need a dedicated 24 hour armed police force to protect them.
Plus you try convincing the good LibDem voters of Nimby West to have a nuclear submarine moored up on their bit of the Thames (or wherever). Electoral suicide.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
As I learnt recently*, electricity transmission is very expensive. A high capacity transmission line costs the same as a gas pipeline to build but it only carries 1/30th of the energy. As we move to a fully electric world, we need to localise electricity production.
* I got interested in energy policy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine . Despite Twitter's generally bad reputation, it's a great resource for expertise in niche topics you have an intelligent non-expert interest in
But there is also value in non-localisation if the energy generated is both cheap enough and temporally convenient. As pointed out upthread, building mega scale solar farms in North Africa coupled with HVDC transmission to the UK is likely to be something that's commercially viable.
Pan European interconnects also make something close to 100% renewables a great deal more feasible for Europe than having everything localised.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
As I learnt recently*, electricity transmission is very expensive. A high capacity transmission line costs the same as a gas pipeline to build but it only carries 1/30th of the energy. As we move to a fully electric world, we need to localise electricity production.
* I got interested in energy policy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine . Despite Twitter's generally bad reputation, it's a great resource for expertise in niche topics you have an intelligent non-expert interest in
It's one reason for Rolls Royce's mini nuke power stations. Can be placed nearly anywhere to provide local baseline power and reduce the need for interconnections.
They could put loads of them in the green belt to power London
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
Those saying it should be left to the market and the BBC should not be promoting it are just showing a complete lack of historical understanding.
53,000 watched a womens game back in 1921, so the FA decided to ban them from playing at grounds used by men. Without that decision womens football would have had a century of more positive development, time to develop its traditions, clubs and icons just as the mens game has. It was blatant and unnecessary sexism.
And the BBC has played a significant part in promoting the mens game throughout its history, and rightly so. It has given the UK a genuinely world leading industry that brings in decent money for the country, far more than the BBC spend. Investing in the womens game will do the same, albeit likely on a smaller scale.
It wasn't sexism - it was a desperate attempt to stop women's football taking off - which given the impact WW1 had had on the male football playing population was highly possible at the time.
Sure I am missing something but isnt trying to stop womens football taking off just a little bit sexist?
Currently reading, as it happens, the Haynes 'Manual' (sic) for the Bentley 4 1/2 Litre: 1927 onwards (all models, including 'Blower'). Fascinating stuff, but what I did notice by coincidence last night was that ca 1930 there was the 'Good Housekeeping Cup' for the Best Lady's Performance in certain motor-racing/trials events, which is confirmed here:
According to the NY Times, the US is quietly sharing its assessment of Russian casualties in Ukraine - more than 75,000 killed or injured.
In under 6 months.
Jesus. That's more than 1 in every 2000 of the population. Some of that must be filtering through to the ordinary citizen, surely?
If you live in Moscow, you're about 100x less likely to be a casualty, though. Russia doesn't care - and has never cared - about those who live in the provinces. While the current regime is in place, the political effect is minimal.
There were reports at the start of the war, than many of the original invasion brigades were from the East of the country, a deliberate choice to minimise the potential political fallout from Moscow and the Western areas near Ukraine.
With up to a sixth (Ukraine’s figure) or a tenth (US figure) of the entire Russian army taken out in only five months, there are going to be a lot more soldiers from Moscow getting involved. It’s been reported that mobilisation of reserve forces is happening quietly in the Eastern regions already. The attrition rate in this war is shockingly high.
It's easier to recruit volunteers in the poorer regions away from Moscow by waving a promise of hundreds of thousands of roubles at people. This is keeping the numbers up for Russia at the moment.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
As I learnt recently*, electricity transmission is very expensive. A high capacity transmission line costs the same as a gas pipeline to build but it only carries 1/30th of the energy. As we move to a fully electric world, we need to localise electricity production.
* I got interested in energy policy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine . Despite Twitter's generally bad reputation, it's a great resource for expertise in niche topics you have an intelligent non-expert interest in
It's one reason for Rolls Royce's mini nuke power stations. Can be placed nearly anywhere to provide local baseline power and reduce the need for interconnections.
Try placing them "everywhere". They need a dedicated 24 hour armed police force to protect them.
Plus you try convincing the good LibDem voters of Nimby West to have a nuclear submarine moored up on their bit of the Thames (or wherever). Electoral suicide.
Probably why the factory is being built in Catterick (not that that's been announced yet but it's the only explanation as to why that location is on the list of options).
Going to be strange driving into a national park past a massive factory where once it was all fields..
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
Those saying it should be left to the market and the BBC should not be promoting it are just showing a complete lack of historical understanding.
53,000 watched a womens game back in 1921, so the FA decided to ban them from playing at grounds used by men. Without that decision womens football would have had a century of more positive development, time to develop its traditions, clubs and icons just as the mens game has. It was blatant and unnecessary sexism.
And the BBC has played a significant part in promoting the mens game throughout its history, and rightly so. It has given the UK a genuinely world leading industry that brings in decent money for the country, far more than the BBC spend. Investing in the womens game will do the same, albeit likely on a smaller scale.
It wasn't sexism - it was a desperate attempt to stop women's football taking off - which given the impact WW1 had had on the male football playing population was highly possible at the time.
Sure I am missing something but isnt trying to stop womens football taking off just a little bit sexist?
Currently reading, as it happens, the Haynes 'Manual' (sic) for the Bentley 4 1/2 Litre: 1927 onwards (all models, including 'Blower'). Fascinating stuff, but what I did notice by coincidence last night was that ca 1930 there was the 'Good Housekeeping Cup' for the Best Lady's Performance in certain motor-racing/trials events, which is confirmed here:
Talking of Birmingham, this is in today’s Groaniad
Photos of Birmingham then and now
Thing is, in almost every picture, Birmingham “then” is obviously more beautiful than Birmingham “now”. Even the picture of bomb damage is more aesthetically pleasing than the picture of what replaced it
It's almost as if whoever selected the pictures of Birmingham today was deliberately choosing the most unflattering photos of streets and buildings, taken from the worst possible angle. For instance the photo of New Street which includes a lot of scaffolding.
Mrs PtP has been doing an MA there and believe us, it is ugly. People are nice though.
That's gotta be better than, say, Primrose Hill which is very lovely, but....
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
As I learnt recently*, electricity transmission is very expensive. A high capacity transmission line costs the same as a gas pipeline to build but it only carries 1/30th of the energy. As we move to a fully electric world, we need to localise electricity production.
* I got interested in energy policy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine . Despite Twitter's generally bad reputation, it's a great resource for expertise in niche topics you have an intelligent non-expert interest in
But there is also value in non-localisation if the energy generated is both cheap enough and temporally convenient. As pointed out upthread, building mega scale solar farms in North Africa coupled with HVDC transmission to the UK is likely to be something that's commercially viable.
Pan European interconnects also make something close to 100% renewables a great deal more feasible for Europe than having everything localised.
Interconnects for load-balancing definitely. I think it gets difficult to make the business case for largescale transmission of energy from Point A to Point B because producing baseload electricity locally will always be more cost-effective. Not an expert though.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
For lots of people combining solar panels with a battery will make a huge amount of sense, particularly when they want to charge their electric car.
Except that the battery is in the car. However, you will be able to use the residual charge to meet the evening peak before charging overnight. If there is the incentive and mechanism to do so.
Inicdentally, a Merit Award certificate from the General Secretary popped through the post for me yesterday, reflecting 50 years' membership, a nice thought. The progressive alternative to a telegram from the Queen. (Do telegrams still exist?)
Congratulations Nick. When can we expect the drift rightwards?
From me? I'm thinking of subscribing to the Morning Star...
According to the NY Times, the US is quietly sharing its assessment of Russian casualties in Ukraine - more than 75,000 killed or injured.
In under 6 months.
Jesus. That's more than 1 in every 2000 of the population. Some of that must be filtering through to the ordinary citizen, surely?
If you live in Moscow, you're about 100x less likely to be a casualty, though. Russia doesn't care - and has never cared - about those who live in the provinces. While the current regime is in place, the political effect is minimal.
There were reports at the start of the war, than many of the original invasion brigades were from the East of the country, a deliberate choice to minimise the potential political fallout from Moscow and the Western areas near Ukraine.
With up to a sixth (Ukraine’s figure) or a tenth (US figure) of the entire Russian army taken out in only five months, there are going to be a lot more soldiers from Moscow getting involved. It’s been reported that mobilisation of reserve forces is happening quietly in the Eastern regions already. The attrition rate in this war is shockingly high.
It's easier to recruit volunteers in the poorer regions away from Moscow by waving a promise of hundreds of thousands of roubles at people. This is keeping the numbers up for Russia at the moment.
As the Economist notes:
“These are not middle-class kids from St. Petersburg or Moscow,” noted MI6’s Mr Moore. “These are poor kids from rural parts of Russia. They’re from blue-collar towns in Siberia. They are disproportionately from ethnic minorities. These are his cannon fodder.”
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
For lots of people combining solar panels with a battery will make a huge amount of sense, particularly when they want to charge their electric car.
Except that the battery is in the car. However, you will be able to use the residual charge to meet the evening peak before charging overnight. If there is the incentive and mechanism to do so.
People will end up having another battery for the house. There will be lots of batteries.
According to the NY Times, the US is quietly sharing its assessment of Russian casualties in Ukraine - more than 75,000 killed or injured.
In under 6 months.
Jesus. That's more than 1 in every 2000 of the population. Some of that must be filtering through to the ordinary citizen, surely?
If you live in Moscow, you're about 100x less likely to be a casualty, though. Russia doesn't care - and has never cared - about those who live in the provinces. While the current regime is in place, the political effect is minimal.
There were reports at the start of the war, than many of the original invasion brigades were from the East of the country, a deliberate choice to minimise the potential political fallout from Moscow and the Western areas near Ukraine.
With up to a sixth (Ukraine’s figure) or a tenth (US figure) of the entire Russian army taken out in only five months, there are going to be a lot more soldiers from Moscow getting involved. It’s been reported that mobilisation of reserve forces is happening quietly in the Eastern regions already. The attrition rate in this war is shockingly high.
This thread is also on point. https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1549402457549295616 Many wondered: why during the Chechen wars many families opposed the war, while now almost nobody does? Well, one answer is that during the Chechen wars monetary compensations to families were negligible, while now the "coffin money" (гробовые) are quite good. You can buy a car...
The system is potentially very brittle, but for now quite solid.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
As I learnt recently*, electricity transmission is very expensive. A high capacity transmission line costs the same as a gas pipeline to build but it only carries 1/30th of the energy. As we move to a fully electric world, we need to localise electricity production.
* I got interested in energy policy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine . Despite Twitter's generally bad reputation, it's a great resource for expertise in niche topics you have an intelligent non-expert interest in
It's one reason for Rolls Royce's mini nuke power stations. Can be placed nearly anywhere to provide local baseline power and reduce the need for interconnections.
Try placing them "everywhere". They need a dedicated 24 hour armed police force to protect them.
Plus you try convincing the good LibDem voters of Nimby West to have a nuclear submarine moored up on their bit of the Thames (or wherever). Electoral suicide.
They really need to be placed in former nuclear power stations to make sense.
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
Those saying it should be left to the market and the BBC should not be promoting it are just showing a complete lack of historical understanding.
53,000 watched a womens game back in 1921, so the FA decided to ban them from playing at grounds used by men. Without that decision womens football would have had a century of more positive development, time to develop its traditions, clubs and icons just as the mens game has. It was blatant and unnecessary sexism.
And the BBC has played a significant part in promoting the mens game throughout its history, and rightly so. It has given the UK a genuinely world leading industry that brings in decent money for the country, far more than the BBC spend. Investing in the womens game will do the same, albeit likely on a smaller scale.
It wasn't sexism - it was a desperate attempt to stop women's football taking off - which given the impact WW1 had had on the male football playing population was highly possible at the time.
Sure I am missing something but isnt trying to stop womens football taking off just a little bit sexist?
Currently reading, as it happens, the Haynes 'Manual' (sic) for the Bentley 4 1/2 Litre: 1927 onwards (all models, including 'Blower'). Fascinating stuff, but what I did notice by coincidence last night was that ca 1930 there was the 'Good Housekeeping Cup' for the Best Lady's Performance in certain motor-racing/trials events, which is confirmed here:
I had quite a lot to do with the recent Bentley "Continuation" blowers... My conclusion was that the originals were truly spectacularly terrible peices of engineering, and had Bentley have had a single decent engineer available quite a lot of the issues had easy fixes. It's entirely unsurprising that they went bust - what is surprising is that anybody ever wanted one.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
The odd thing from my point of view is that at work I've two 2000l bulk LPG tanks. I had them filled in January - 49p/l (which was expensive compared to the previous fill of about 35p/l). Just had them refilled again - 49p/l. I've no fancy contract, being industrial I'm outside of any price caps - my supplier is presumably charging me his spot price plus a margin and delivery.
There is a *lot* of energy in one of those tanks - I would think each one would supply my house for a winter, and they currently cost about £1k each to fill.
Why is natural gas supplied through the gas grid going up so much more than lpg has?
From your numbers LPG for you is up from 35p last year to 49p now, which is approx +40%. That presumably was from last autumn to now.
For domestic we had a cap increase of +54% iirc in April, which includes a honking (+80%) increase in the electricity standing charge to cover increased regulation costs in moving customers from bankrupt companies, and other overheads. That has not affected gas standing charge
That's not *that* different wrt last summer for gas costs if you take off the regulatory costs, especially as prices we saw quoted back then were often different for switchers - saving another 20% or so for some.
It *will* be very different if we get a further +65% at the next cap increase. Is it worth a check how your suppliers expect prices to go? I've just accounted for an air conditioner / heat pump out of savings on next winter's gas heating bill.
Perhaps your supplier may have a little more control through *his* supplier being vertically integrated - eg Calor have their own storage system? But much of the extra difference seems to me to be costs you just don't have in the commercial sector.
There is also issue that we mainly debate prices 6 months in advance in the public sphere.
IMO HMG need to nobble the cap formula, as they should have done last time - but did not.
I make 2000l of LPG about 14,000 kWh, which is a little more than the amount of gas used annually by the average 2-3 bedroom house, so is in the ballpark taking account for perhaps a slightly larger PB house taking into account 90-95% efficient usage, and perhaps 85% of gas being used in winter.
Arsenal icon Jens Lehmann 'damages his neighbour's garage with a CHAINSAW in a frenzy over long-standing row over spoiled view of a lake' - with German police now investigating
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
Because the Commonwealth is "British" and therefore it's somehow our fault/responsibility whilst at the same that ironically demonstrates the colonial mindset they criticise.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
For lots of people combining solar panels with a battery will make a huge amount of sense, particularly when they want to charge their electric car.
Except that the battery is in the car. However, you will be able to use the residual charge to meet the evening peak before charging overnight. If there is the incentive and mechanism to do so.
People will end up having another battery for the house. There will be lots of batteries.
Tesla are already selling “Powerwall”, which is half a car battery with a solar panel. Charge that battery during the day, and use it to charge your car at night. Depending on where you live, you can also use it to sell power back to the grid during periods of high demand.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
For lots of people combining solar panels with a battery will make a huge amount of sense, particularly when they want to charge their electric car.
Except that the battery is in the car. However, you will be able to use the residual charge to meet the evening peak before charging overnight. If there is the incentive and mechanism to do so.
People will end up having another battery for the house. There will be lots of batteries.
Tesla are already selling “Powerwall”, which is half a car battery with a solar panel. Charge that battery during the day, and use it to charge your car at night. Depanding on where you live, you can also use it to sell power back to the grid during periods of high demand.
Equally if your car is at home - drip feed the energy into the car battery during the day - use it for power when electricity prices are at peak levels and the top up during the night if electricity is cheap again
There are a number of models where batteries will be used to flatten peak demand..
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
As one of pb.com's leading reactionary wokehunters, I've been enjoying the tournament quite a lot (and certainly more than the men's tournaments). I'd be disappointed if it wasn't getting the coverage it does. I find the BBC's coverage grating for all sorts of reasons - foremost of which: stop covering it as a culture war, just cover it as a sporting tournament - but the BBC will always find a way to make coverage of a sporting event grating these days.
I'm not as emotionally invested as I am with the men's tournament. But I think this is how sport should be: if 'my' side wins, great, I'm elated: if it loses, well, it's only a game. With England's men's team I get almost the opposite feeling: disappointment if they lose, but if they win, huh, it's only a game.
I don’t usually watch the punditry and the build up hogwash and dip into pb at half time, so I might miss all the stuff you perceive to be culture war, but I’ve not got that impression at all. I mean, they’re bound to comment on how much this tournament will - hopefully - raise the profile of the women’s game, and I get that. There was something I saw about the lack of non-white players in the English team, ‘cos they put the academies in green leafy areas miles from the cities, but that’s being addressed.
The women’s game has got a lot of catching up to do; debates that went on for years in the men’s game will inevitably be compressed as the women’s game catches up speedily, I guess.
One bit of punditry I did particularly enjoy was former Dutch player Anouk Hoogendijk. Phwoar, etc. If my missus can drool over Grealish I can drool over her. Equality is wonderful.
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
The Commonwealth is notionally about shared values including human rights.
If the contest ended prematurely, there's still time to deny Johnson having more days as PM than May.
Either Rishi needs to stick to his economic sensibility guns or pull out. He's just debasing himself by saying tax cuts bad and unaffordable one moment and pivoting to try and wring a few votes out next.
His last chance to change the narrative were the debates but Truss did well on those so he's really got no chance.
"It is clear that the membership prefer Liz Truss so I have decided to withdraw".
We'd also then get 6 weeks less govermental drift which isn't doing anyone any good.
Talking of Birmingham, this is in today’s Groaniad
Photos of Birmingham then and now
Thing is, in almost every picture, Birmingham “then” is obviously more beautiful than Birmingham “now”. Even the picture of bomb damage is more aesthetically pleasing than the picture of what replaced it
Well its a matter of taste, I would say New St looks a whole lot better now, for example. On the other hand since you became Pbs resident reactionary I would kind of expect you to take shelter in the past. Your bleats about COVID, Climate change, Putin et al does rather show someone who takes refuge in the past, because the present and the future are very scary to you. Personally I am an optimist: I think that there is no human problem that humans can not work out. Compared to 20 or 30 years ago I think Birmingham has improved greatly, so I wish a successful Commonwealth Games to all participating and I hope it remains the friendly games in a friendly and prosperous city.
Putin is winning. Time to flee west
Needs more 'mate'.
Back to Leon's original point: I'm all in with your position on Derby, but having looked at the Birmingham pics I simply don't agree. Admittedly it's difficult to take too much cheer from a black and white photo on an overcast day, but for me, from those photos - and from my own experience - Birmingham is looking better than at any stage in the past 100 years. Conceivably it was more handsome before the first world war. But even the interwar period - where other cities have a robust optimism, Birmingham looks an unprepossessing jumble. This isn't driven by economics - Birmingham did very very well in the pre- and post-war period - to the extent where government tried to constrain its growth (in theory to divert growth to struggling towns further north; in practice growth was diverted to London; cynical Brummies suspect this was the real motive all along). It's always been a bit of a jumble. My view is that the aesthetic trend in the 21st century for Birmnigham is much more positive than in the 20th.
Really??
Even in black and white on a miserable day, the old Bull Ring is infinitely preferable: humane, elegant, curving, lovely. You can imagine it now, spruced up, the stonework cleaned, all those shops would be super-pricey boutiques because it would be an obviously desirable place to shop
Instead, Brum has..... THAT
It is hideous. Shoot every town planner who worked from 1950-2019
And I LIKE much modern architecture. Manhattan, central Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore (and several others), are some of the most exhilarating cityscapes on earth
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
The Commonwealth is notionally about shared values including human rights.
According to the NY Times, the US is quietly sharing its assessment of Russian casualties in Ukraine - more than 75,000 killed or injured.
In under 6 months.
Jesus. That's more than 1 in every 2000 of the population. Some of that must be filtering through to the ordinary citizen, surely?
If you live in Moscow, you're about 100x less likely to be a casualty, though. Russia doesn't care - and has never cared - about those who live in the provinces. While the current regime is in place, the political effect is minimal.
There were reports at the start of the war, than many of the original invasion brigades were from the East of the country, a deliberate choice to minimise the potential political fallout from Moscow and the Western areas near Ukraine.
With up to a sixth (Ukraine’s figure) or a tenth (US figure) of the entire Russian army taken out in only five months, there are going to be a lot more soldiers from Moscow getting involved. It’s been reported that mobilisation of reserve forces is happening quietly in the Eastern regions already. The attrition rate in this war is shockingly high.
This thread is also on point. https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1549402457549295616 Many wondered: why during the Chechen wars many families opposed the war, while now almost nobody does? Well, one answer is that during the Chechen wars monetary compensations to families were negligible, while now the "coffin money" (гробовые) are quite good. You can buy a car...
The system is potentially very brittle, but for now quite solid.
I'm really struggling to believe that Russian mothers and fathers don't give a shit about their sons being shot or blown to smithereens so long as they get a new car.
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
I suspect the answer lies in the original name of the Commonwealth Games.
After nearly 12 years of having solar panels on my roof,and generating over 20,000 Kw-hours, I wondered if I could use it somehow to power an electric car in the future. I'm paid for everything I generate, even if I use it all myself. Thanks, Ed M.
Theoretically, I could, but new cars are out the question, and even secondhand ones are fiendishly expensive. Batteries are an option, I suppose, but I thought there was a loss of efficiency.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
For lots of people combining solar panels with a battery will make a huge amount of sense, particularly when they want to charge their electric car.
Except that the battery is in the car. However, you will be able to use the residual charge to meet the evening peak before charging overnight. If there is the incentive and mechanism to do so.
People will end up having another battery for the house. There will be lots of batteries.
The concern I have with this at the moment is the raw material resources needed to do this. We are talking vast amounts of material that has to be mined and refined.
Don't get me wrong, I think you are right and the battery route is sensible and welcome. I just don't see how we do it at the moment.
According to the NY Times, the US is quietly sharing its assessment of Russian casualties in Ukraine - more than 75,000 killed or injured.
In under 6 months.
Jesus. That's more than 1 in every 2000 of the population. Some of that must be filtering through to the ordinary citizen, surely?
Russia's attitude toward war death is like the red states of the USA to Covid mortality I think. It's a nation steeped in huge casualty figures as part of national mythos.
Grandson one and his wife are currently on holiday in Canada. They hired a car, sight unseen, and it's turned out to be a Tesla! I'm looking forward to the to the reports of their holiday!
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
The Commonwealth is notionally about shared values including human rights.
And the Olympics aren't?
Not really, no. Every country is invited regardless of values.
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
Those saying it should be left to the market and the BBC should not be promoting it are just showing a complete lack of historical understanding.
53,000 watched a womens game back in 1921, so the FA decided to ban them from playing at grounds used by men. Without that decision womens football would have had a century of more positive development, time to develop its traditions, clubs and icons just as the mens game has. It was blatant and unnecessary sexism.
And the BBC has played a significant part in promoting the mens game throughout its history, and rightly so. It has given the UK a genuinely world leading industry that brings in decent money for the country, far more than the BBC spend. Investing in the womens game will do the same, albeit likely on a smaller scale.
I understand that, and agree with nearly all of it. But the women's game is clearly inferior as SPORT (absenting gender): slower, clumsier, ploddier, less skilful, comically inept at times
However I entirely concur that given time it might develop its own unique following, and - speaking as a father of two daughters with little interest in sport - that would be great! It should then be seen as its own sport, really - not unflatteringly compared with the men's game. As in tennis. Or, even more, gymnastics, or skating
If it does become successful and lucrative Lord knows how they will deal with the trans issue tho
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
Those saying it should be left to the market and the BBC should not be promoting it are just showing a complete lack of historical understanding.
53,000 watched a womens game back in 1921, so the FA decided to ban them from playing at grounds used by men. Without that decision womens football would have had a century of more positive development, time to develop its traditions, clubs and icons just as the mens game has. It was blatant and unnecessary sexism.
And the BBC has played a significant part in promoting the mens game throughout its history, and rightly so. It has given the UK a genuinely world leading industry that brings in decent money for the country, far more than the BBC spend. Investing in the womens game will do the same, albeit likely on a smaller scale.
I understand that, and agree with nearly all of it. But the women's game is clearly inferior as SPORT (absenting gender): slower, clumsier, ploddier, less skilful, comically inept at times
However I entirely concur that given time it might develop its own unique following, and - speaking as a father of two daughters with little interest in sport - that would be great! It should then be seen as its own sport, really - not unflatteringly compared with the men's game. As in tennis. Or, even more, gymnastics, or skating
If it does become successful and lucrative Lord knows how they will deal with the trans issue tho
The cleanest identifier for sports is (original/potential) gamete production I think.
Grandson one and his wife are currently on holiday in Canada. They hired a car, sight unseen, and it's turned out to be a Tesla! I'm looking forward to the to the reports of their holiday!
Talking of Birmingham, this is in today’s Groaniad
Photos of Birmingham then and now
Thing is, in almost every picture, Birmingham “then” is obviously more beautiful than Birmingham “now”. Even the picture of bomb damage is more aesthetically pleasing than the picture of what replaced it
Well its a matter of taste, I would say New St looks a whole lot better now, for example. On the other hand since you became Pbs resident reactionary I would kind of expect you to take shelter in the past. Your bleats about COVID, Climate change, Putin et al does rather show someone who takes refuge in the past, because the present and the future are very scary to you. Personally I am an optimist: I think that there is no human problem that humans can not work out. Compared to 20 or 30 years ago I think Birmingham has improved greatly, so I wish a successful Commonwealth Games to all participating and I hope it remains the friendly games in a friendly and prosperous city.
Putin is winning. Time to flee west
Needs more 'mate'.
Back to Leon's original point: I'm all in with your position on Derby, but having looked at the Birmingham pics I simply don't agree. Admittedly it's difficult to take too much cheer from a black and white photo on an overcast day, but for me, from those photos - and from my own experience - Birmingham is looking better than at any stage in the past 100 years. Conceivably it was more handsome before the first world war. But even the interwar period - where other cities have a robust optimism, Birmingham looks an unprepossessing jumble. This isn't driven by economics - Birmingham did very very well in the pre- and post-war period - to the extent where government tried to constrain its growth (in theory to divert growth to struggling towns further north; in practice growth was diverted to London; cynical Brummies suspect this was the real motive all along). It's always been a bit of a jumble. My view is that the aesthetic trend in the 21st century for Birmnigham is much more positive than in the 20th.
Derby's an interesting city in this respect. It did not get comparatively heavily-bombed in the war, but if you look at the NLS maps, the city centre has totally changed over the last hundred years, with many of the city-centre streets not even respecting the previous layout. It has changed massively.
My dad is partly responsible for this; he claims there is not a street in the city centre that he has not demolished a building on, built on, or done footings for a building on...
A large part of the city centre (around Becketwall Lane and the old Debenhams) is currently being rebuilt, and a large portion of the area between the station and the shopping centre (Intu?) will be rebuilt in the next few years.
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
The Commonwealth is notionally about shared values including human rights.
And the Olympics aren't?
Not really, no. Every country is invited regardless of values.
IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau, however, indicated that the Committee "would not mandate that the Saudis have female representation in London", arguing that "the IOC does not give ultimatums nor deadlines but rather believes that a lot can be achieved through dialogue".
If their principles were "we only care about sport; we don't give a **** about human rights", then you'd have a point. But that's clearly not the case.
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
The Commonwealth is notionally about shared values including human rights.
And the Olympics aren't?
Not really, no. Every country is invited regardless of values.
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
The Commonwealth is notionally about shared values including human rights.
And the Olympics aren't?
Correct. The Olympic movement's goals include sporting, international understanding and peace. They are not about a shared approach to human rights and values.
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
The Commonwealth is notionally about shared values including human rights.
And the Olympics aren't?
Not really, no. Every country is invited regardless of values.
Is Russia competing in Paris ?
Nah, they've already won and Macron will buy their gas.
Talking of Birmingham, this is in today’s Groaniad
Photos of Birmingham then and now
Thing is, in almost every picture, Birmingham “then” is obviously more beautiful than Birmingham “now”. Even the picture of bomb damage is more aesthetically pleasing than the picture of what replaced it
Well its a matter of taste, I would say New St looks a whole lot better now, for example. On the other hand since you became Pbs resident reactionary I would kind of expect you to take shelter in the past. Your bleats about COVID, Climate change, Putin et al does rather show someone who takes refuge in the past, because the present and the future are very scary to you. Personally I am an optimist: I think that there is no human problem that humans can not work out. Compared to 20 or 30 years ago I think Birmingham has improved greatly, so I wish a successful Commonwealth Games to all participating and I hope it remains the friendly games in a friendly and prosperous city.
Putin is winning. Time to flee west
Needs more 'mate'.
Back to Leon's original point: I'm all in with your position on Derby, but having looked at the Birmingham pics I simply don't agree. Admittedly it's difficult to take too much cheer from a black and white photo on an overcast day, but for me, from those photos - and from my own experience - Birmingham is looking better than at any stage in the past 100 years. Conceivably it was more handsome before the first world war. But even the interwar period - where other cities have a robust optimism, Birmingham looks an unprepossessing jumble. This isn't driven by economics - Birmingham did very very well in the pre- and post-war period - to the extent where government tried to constrain its growth (in theory to divert growth to struggling towns further north; in practice growth was diverted to London; cynical Brummies suspect this was the real motive all along). It's always been a bit of a jumble. My view is that the aesthetic trend in the 21st century for Birmnigham is much more positive than in the 20th.
Derby's an interesting city in this respect. It did not get comparatively heavily-bombed in the war, but if you look at the NLS maps, the city centre has totally changed over the last hundred years, with many of the city-centre streets not even respecting the previous layout. It has changed massively.
My dad is partly responsible for this; he claims there is not a street in the city centre that he has not demolished a building on, built on, or done footings for a building on...
A large part of the city centre (around Becketwall Lane and the old Debenhams) is currently being rebuilt, and a large portion of the area between the station and the shopping centre (Intu?) will be rebuilt in the next few years.
Does your Dad feel guilty? With all due respect, I hope he does
Ex PB-er @SeanT wrote about Derby and all this with his usual footling ignorance in the Spectator
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
The Commonwealth is notionally about shared values including human rights.
And the Olympics aren't?
Not really, no. Every country is invited regardless of values.
IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau, however, indicated that the Committee "would not mandate that the Saudis have female representation in London", arguing that "the IOC does not give ultimatums nor deadlines but rather believes that a lot can be achieved through dialogue".
If their principles were "we only care about sport; we don't give a **** about human rights", then you'd have a point. But that's clearly not the case.
There is what they say or aim for and what they do and have done. The Olympics have allowed endless regimes in regardless of respect for human rights, let alone respect for a contemporary western versions of human rights.
And athletes protest during the Olympics just as they are doing during the Commonwealth Games this time. It really is incredible how worked up the reactionaries get about things that have always happened.
Gay sportsman condemns homophobia is really not worthy of complaining about.
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
The Commonwealth is notionally about shared values including human rights.
And the Olympics aren't?
Not really, no. Every country is invited regardless of values.
IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau, however, indicated that the Committee "would not mandate that the Saudis have female representation in London", arguing that "the IOC does not give ultimatums nor deadlines but rather believes that a lot can be achieved through dialogue".
If their principles were "we only care about sport; we don't give a **** about human rights", then you'd have a point. But that's clearly not the case.
The IOC has principles about women's equality in _sport_ , not human rights more broadly. Unlike the Commonwealth.
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
We (well, Octopus Energy and Xlinks) are building a massive 10.5GW solar farm with a direct cable to the UK in Morocco.
Interesting project - hybrid solar / wind / battery at the Morocco end plus interconnectors capable of supplying approx 10% of UK electricity demand, operating 20 hours a day, and due to come on stream before 2030 (2027 or 2029), at a striking price of 48 £/mWh, which is roughly where UK offshore wind is at present.
It will ironic if the most significant Africa / Europe interconnector goes via the UK. I think at present this will be the largest.
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
The Commonwealth is notionally about shared values including human rights.
And the Olympics aren't?
Not really, no. Every country is invited regardless of values.
Is Russia competing in Paris ?
Sadly that's business, not values. If Russia were currently welcome then too many rich countries would boycott.
Shutting down to avoid the torrent of lawsuits coming their way?
Not going to help much with that now - there's already a large crop of damaged kids thanks to their efforts, and shutting the clinic doesn't stop the relevant NHS trust getting sued.
More interesting will be what happens to the senior staff - imho most of them should be barred from working the profession, but I suspect most of them will end up doing the same things more quietetly elsewhere in the NHS.
Go and see all these great UK cities I haven't visited in many years: Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds, Glasgow
I've been to Bangkok probably a dozen times since 2010, yet I haven't been to any of the cities listed above (I have been to Manc, Edinburgh, Bristol)
That's an idea. See it for myself. Are there really "Muslim no-go zones" in Bradford or Luton or Rotherham? (I very seriously doubt it, but I've never been, so I can't say for sure). How bad is the drugs stuff in Gorbals? Is Salford really "hip"??
Kind of like Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier except with better wine and probably not quite as good observation, TBH
Maybe I will find the Worst town in Britain. What is it?? West Bromwich? Watford? Any of them ones near Glasgow?
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
For lots of people combining solar panels with a battery will make a huge amount of sense, particularly when they want to charge their electric car.
Except that the battery is in the car. However, you will be able to use the residual charge to meet the evening peak before charging overnight. If there is the incentive and mechanism to do so.
People will end up having another battery for the house. There will be lots of batteries.
The concern I have with this at the moment is the raw material resources needed to do this. We are talking vast amounts of material that has to be mined and refined.
Don't get me wrong, I think you are right and the battery route is sensible and welcome. I just don't see how we do it at the moment.
There's potential for a lot of technological development that might help us here, because the future demand will be so high. Different batteries that use more common materials. New mining and refining techniques.
It is a big ask, but government can play a useful role with some targeted investment to help things along.
The commitment to phase out ICE vehicles is also really helpful, because it provides more certainty of a future market, and so encourages private investment.
It is amusing to watch lefties arguing "yeah, but the IOC don't give a fuck about homophobia, so that's alright then."
I am no leftie and am just trying to write things that are relevant and true. The Commonwealth has a shared human rights mandate from its members, the IOC does not.
Go and see all these great UK cities I haven't visited in many years: Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds, Glasgow
I've been to Bangkok probably a dozen times since 2010, yet I haven't been to any of the cities listed above (I have been to Manc, Edinburgh, Bristol)
That's an idea. See it for myself. Are there really "Muslim no-go zones" in Bradford or Luton or Rotherham? (I very seriously doubt it, but I've never been, so I can't say for sure). How bad is the drugs stuff in Gorbals? Is Salford really "hip"??
Kind of like Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier except with better wine and probably not quite as good observation, TBH
Maybe I will find the Worst town in Britain. What is it?? West Bromwich? Watford? Any of them ones near Glasgow?
NEWENT?
Horden is awful.
Newcastle is fantastic, Sunderland less so but they are doing alot to improve it especially along the sea front. Leeds is also a great place to visit.
The endpoint of the Trans Madness is obvious. Doctors, shrinks and the rest will end up going to prison for what they have done to a lot of vulnerable kids (and their families)
Sadly, the lefty sociologists, pundits and Wokeists who pushed this creed, in the beginning, will probably get tenure
That’s why it deserves the same prominence as the men’s game. For her. For my ten year-old niece who’s the goalie for her local team. For young girls all over the country.
Ian Wright made a great point after the match. This tournament needs a legacy of getting girls into the game. Of them playing it in PE. A lasting, tangible legacy. Unlike the Olympics.
The standard of the football has been excellent. The games are physical, tough, but flow better than the men’s game ‘cos these women don’t fling themselves to the ground and roll around in theatrical agony at the merest hint of contact.
I’ve loved every minute of it. You forget you’re watching women. It’s just a good game of football.
God I hope we win on Sunday. I’m accustomed to being disappointed by the men’s team, I hope the women can bring it home.
Those saying it should be left to the market and the BBC should not be promoting it are just showing a complete lack of historical understanding.
53,000 watched a womens game back in 1921, so the FA decided to ban them from playing at grounds used by men. Without that decision womens football would have had a century of more positive development, time to develop its traditions, clubs and icons just as the mens game has. It was blatant and unnecessary sexism.
And the BBC has played a significant part in promoting the mens game throughout its history, and rightly so. It has given the UK a genuinely world leading industry that brings in decent money for the country, far more than the BBC spend. Investing in the womens game will do the same, albeit likely on a smaller scale.
I understand that, and agree with nearly all of it. But the women's game is clearly inferior as SPORT (absenting gender): slower, clumsier, ploddier, less skilful, comically inept at times
However I entirely concur that given time it might develop its own unique following, and - speaking as a father of two daughters with little interest in sport - that would be great! It should then be seen as its own sport, really - not unflatteringly compared with the men's game. As in tennis. Or, even more, gymnastics, or skating
If it does become successful and lucrative Lord knows how they will deal with the trans issue tho
Fishing in a much smaller pool ATM. 99% of boys dream of football stardom vs 1% of girls. There is a theory that women are inherently faster marathon runners than men but it doesn't show up for the same reason
I wonder if the Government (Truss) may need to temporarily effectively nationalise the gas supply.
If she does I expect it to command broad public support.
The free market works brilliantly at efficiently allocating resources and stimulating production and distribution, competitively, in normal times but if we get to the stage where we have a highly constrained supply and it costs households over £500 a month then we'll be in a bidding war where the wealthiest will be able to carry on as normal, at a very high cost, whilst a lot of ordinary people freeze.
That can't be allowed to happen.
And how exactly will nationalisation help? It's not possible with current technology to physical constrain the volume of gas used by domestic users, other than by giving them price signals which result in them voluntarily reducing consumption. Short of disconnecting users who use over a certain volume, all nationalisation will achieve is making the whole thing even more of the government's problem.
Do smart meters not allow the companies to switch the gas off and on to your house. This is certainly my understanding and there would be little difficulty for them to turn off gas till the following week when you reach the weekly cap
Smart meters do feck all.
If they were smart, they would have differential pricing built in, to encourage consumers to load switch to low demand periods, such as doing your laundry over night. But no such incentive exists, so our washing machine is chugging away right now.
Depends what tariff you are on but there is a further problem that low demand overnight correlates nicely with low solar electricity generation overnight. That might change once most drivers are charging their cars between getting home from work and leaving in the morning.
Which is why solar is a daft idea in the UK. Great where the peak power demand correlates with air conditioning use on hot sunny days, but useless on grim January evenings when our demand is at its maximum.
Not daft if it's cheap enough, which is increasingly the case. And it tends to be negatively correlated with the amount of wind.
It's always going to be relatively niche in the UK (unless we build solar farms in North Africa), but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Building a load of capacity with not only low load factor but which generates counter-cyclically with demand just means that we end up spending even more on capacity payments for dispatchable capacity to sit around not generating, and have to invest even more in storage vectors.
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
For lots of people combining solar panels with a battery will make a huge amount of sense, particularly when they want to charge their electric car.
Except that the battery is in the car. However, you will be able to use the residual charge to meet the evening peak before charging overnight. If there is the incentive and mechanism to do so.
People will end up having another battery for the house. There will be lots of batteries.
The concern I have with this at the moment is the raw material resources needed to do this. We are talking vast amounts of material that has to be mined and refined.
Don't get me wrong, I think you are right and the battery route is sensible and welcome. I just don't see how we do it at the moment.
There's potential for a lot of technological development that might help us here, because the future demand will be so high. Different batteries that use more common materials. New mining and refining techniques.
It is a big ask, but government can play a useful role with some targeted investment to help things along.
The commitment to phase out ICE vehicles is also really helpful, because it provides more certainty of a future market, and so encourages private investment.
A commercially competitive zinc sulphur battery, fairly likely within the decade, would solve the raw materials problem.
Go and see all these great UK cities I haven't visited in many years: Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds, Glasgow
I've been to Bangkok probably a dozen times since 2010, yet I haven't been to any of the cities listed above (I have been to Manc, Edinburgh, Bristol)
That's an idea. See it for myself. Are there really "Muslim no-go zones" in Bradford or Luton or Rotherham? (I very seriously doubt it, but I've never been, so I can't say for sure). How bad is the drugs stuff in Gorbals? Is Salford really "hip"??
Kind of like Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier except with better wine and probably not quite as good observation, TBH
Maybe I will find the Worst town in Britain. What is it?? West Bromwich? Watford? Any of them ones near Glasgow?
NEWENT?
Horden is awful.
Newcastle is fantastic, Sunderland less so but they are doing alot to improve it especially along the sea front. Leeds is also a great place to visit.
Why don't you do it just drinking British wines ?
We have some banging wines these days.
I think I'm going to do it. I sit here pontificating about Britain - a lot - from my nice flat in north London (or my rented apartment in Montenegro or Armenia or wherever) - and yet what do I actually know of actual Britain?
My forays around the country are nearly always to obviously attractive places (or where I have friends and fam) - Cornwall, Devon, Bristol, Herefordshire, Brighton, Dorset, the Home Counties, the Highlands and Islands, occasionally the Lakes or the Welsh hills, Edinburgh, Shetland, Wick
It's time for me to see the real Britain, or I should shut up. For a start, I have to actually see NEWENT. It may have improved
Go and see all these great UK cities I haven't visited in many years: Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds, Glasgow
I've been to Bangkok probably a dozen times since 2010, yet I haven't been to any of the cities listed above (I have been to Manc, Edinburgh, Bristol)
That's an idea. See it for myself. Are there really "Muslim no-go zones" in Bradford or Luton or Rotherham? (I very seriously doubt it, but I've never been, so I can't say for sure). How bad is the drugs stuff in Gorbals? Is Salford really "hip"??
Kind of like Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier except with better wine and probably not quite as good observation, TBH
Maybe I will find the Worst town in Britain. What is it?? West Bromwich? Watford? Any of them ones near Glasgow?
NEWENT?
Birmingham not been to in years - more canals than Venice though Liverpool is lovely - Albert Dock is great, Liverpool One reasonable for shops and the Cathedrals and museums are great. Likewise Leeds great for shopping. Newcastle is of course brilliant https://unherd.com/2022/07/the-rebirth-of-newcastle/ has a great overview of the architecture. Sheffield and Glasgow both have problems - Glasgow especially with both shopping centres (Sauchiehall and Argyle streets) dying leaving scattered bits and pieces alongside Buchanan Street.
The endpoint of the Trans Madness is obvious. Doctors, shrinks and the rest will end up going to prison getting OBEs for what they have done to a lot of vulnerable kids (and their families)
Seriously. If this isn't the time for a no-holds barred journalistic dive into the totally amoral, ideologically bonkers racket that is Mermaids, I don't know what is. They held the Tavistock ransom for years. They are still going. They are crazy. Children's bodies are at stake.
Go and see all these great UK cities I haven't visited in many years: Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds, Glasgow
I've been to Bangkok probably a dozen times since 2010, yet I haven't been to any of the cities listed above (I have been to Manc, Edinburgh, Bristol)
That's an idea. See it for myself. Are there really "Muslim no-go zones" in Bradford or Luton or Rotherham? (I very seriously doubt it, but I've never been, so I can't say for sure). How bad is the drugs stuff in Gorbals? Is Salford really "hip"??
Kind of like Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier except with better wine and probably not quite as good observation, TBH
Maybe I will find the Worst town in Britain. What is it?? West Bromwich? Watford? Any of them ones near Glasgow?
NEWENT?
Horden is awful.
Newcastle is fantastic, Sunderland less so but they are doing alot to improve it especially along the sea front. Leeds is also a great place to visit.
Why don't you do it just drinking British wines ?
We have some banging wines these days.
I think I'm going to do it. I sit here pontificating about Britain - a lot - from my nice flat in north London (or my rented apartment in Montenegro or Armenia or wherever) - and yet what do I actually know of actual Britain?
My forays around the country are nearly always to obviously attractive places (or where I have friends and fam) - Cornwall, Devon, Bristol, Herefordshire, Brighton, Dorset, the Home Counties, the Highlands and Islands, occasionally the Lakes or the Welsh hills, Edinburgh, Shetland, Wick
It's time for me to see the real Britain, or I should shut up. For a start, I have to actually see NEWENT. It may have improved
Start in Hartlepool. It gets such a drubbing on here. Report back what you find. It might be the last Tory by-election win ever!
Seriously. If this isn't the time for a no-holds barred journalistic dive into the totally amoral, ideologically bonkers racket that is Mermaids, I don't know what is. They held the Tavistock ransom for years. They are still going. They are crazy. Children's bodies are at stake.
Comments
The solar generated on summer afternoons when it isn't needed can be used to produce electrolytic hydrogen which can then be stored until winter when it is needed for heating and peaking power generation.
That's more than 1 in every 2000 of the population. Some of that must be filtering through to the ordinary citizen, surely?
Solar is inherently a distributed means of generation, so individual households or businesses will make their own decisions.
Russia doesn't care - and has never cared - about those who live in the provinces.
While the current regime is in place, the political effect is minimal.
I'm not as emotionally invested as I am with the men's tournament. But I think this is how sport should be: if 'my' side wins, great, I'm elated: if it loses, well, it's only a game. With England's men's team I get almost the opposite feeling: disappointment if they lose, but if they win, huh, it's only a game.
We could have organic carrots, rewilding and offshore wind instead.
* I got interested in energy policy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine . Despite Twitter's generally bad reputation, it's a great resource for expertise in niche topics you have an intelligent non-expert interest in
Sexism being one of the main ones.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/13/how-the-fa-banned-womens-football-in-1921-and-tried-to-justify-it#:~:text=The ban was to last,and should not be encouraged.
Ancient lactose intolerant populations drank as much dairy as the lactose tolerant.
The evolutionary mechanism was very probably susceptibility to disease or famine conditions.
Dairying, diseases and the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05010-7
In European and many African, Middle Eastern and southern Asian populations, lactase persistence (LP) is the most strongly selected monogenic trait to have evolved over the past 10,000 years. Although the selection of LP and the consumption of prehistoric milk must be linked, considerable uncertainty remains concerning their spatiotemporal configuration and specific interactions. Here we provide detailed distributions of milk exploitation across Europe over the past 9,000 years using around 7,000 pottery fat residues from more than 550 archaeological sites. European milk use was widespread from the Neolithic period onwards but varied spatially and temporally in intensity. Notably, LP selection varying with levels of prehistoric milk exploitation is no better at explaining LP allele frequency trajectories than uniform selection since the Neolithic period. In the UK Biobank cohort of 500,000 contemporary Europeans, LP genotype was only weakly associated with milk consumption and did not show consistent associations with improved fitness or health indicators. This suggests that other reasons for the beneficial effects of LP should be considered for its rapid frequency increase. We propose that lactase non-persistent individuals consumed milk when it became available but, under conditions of famine and/or increased pathogen exposure, this was disadvantageous, driving LP selection in prehistoric Europe. Comparison of model likelihoods indicates that population fluctuations, settlement density and wild animal exploitation—proxies for these drivers—provide better explanations of LP selection than the extent of milk exploitation. These findings offer new perspectives on prehistoric milk exploitation and LP evolution....
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/august-1931/28/a-one-make-24-hour-trial
Putin's egothe denazification of Ukraine comes at a price, Comrade....But there soon won't be a village in Russia where somebody hasn't come back minus limbs. Or not come back at all. You can't hide those numbers.
With up to a sixth (Ukraine’s figure) or a tenth (US figure) of the entire Russian army taken out in only five months, there are going to be a lot more soldiers from Moscow getting involved. It’s been reported that mobilisation of reserve forces is happening quietly in the Eastern regions already. The attrition rate in this war is shockingly high.
Plus you try convincing the good LibDem voters of Nimby West to have a nuclear submarine moored up on their bit of the Thames (or wherever). Electoral suicide.
As pointed out upthread, building mega scale solar farms in North Africa coupled with HVDC transmission to the UK is likely to be something that's commercially viable.
Pan European interconnects also make something close to 100% renewables a great deal more feasible for Europe than having everything localised.
Going to be strange driving into a national park past a massive factory where once it was all fields..
That's gotta be better than, say, Primrose Hill which is very lovely, but....
https://twitter.com/archivetvmus71/status/1552591010244468736
“These are not middle-class kids from St. Petersburg or Moscow,” noted MI6’s Mr Moore. “These are poor kids from rural parts of Russia. They’re from blue-collar towns in Siberia. They are disproportionately from ethnic minorities. These are his cannon fodder.”
https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/07/24/how-heavy-are-russian-casualties-in-ukraine
Commonwealth Games must confront the truth about its sportswashing past
The Games remain an uneasy celebration of ‘common values’ with nations the British empire once exploited
Well, some think it has a sportswashing present:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/27/tom-daley-condemns-homophobia-across-commonwealth-ahead-of-games
Tom Daley condemns homophobia across Commonwealth ahead of Games
Gold medallist diver’s comments come ahead of opening ceremony in Birmingham on Friday
Quite why it's an issue when these awful countries compete at the Commonwealth Games but isn't an issue when they compete at the Olympic games is a bit of a mystery to me.
https://twitter.com/JournoStephen/status/1552605610201456642
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-russias-biggest-cities-ukraine-war-fades-to-background-noise-11656670347
This thread is also on point.
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1549402457549295616
Many wondered: why during the Chechen wars many families opposed the war, while now almost nobody does? Well, one answer is that during the Chechen wars monetary compensations to families were negligible, while now the "coffin money" (гробовые) are quite good. You can buy a car...
The system is potentially very brittle, but for now quite solid.
For domestic we had a cap increase of +54% iirc in April, which includes a honking (+80%) increase in the electricity standing charge to cover increased regulation costs in moving customers from bankrupt companies, and other overheads. That has not affected gas standing charge
That's not *that* different wrt last summer for gas costs if you take off the regulatory costs, especially as prices we saw quoted back then were often different for switchers - saving another 20% or so for some.
It *will* be very different if we get a further +65% at the next cap increase. Is it worth a check how your suppliers expect prices to go? I've just accounted for an air conditioner / heat pump out of savings on next winter's gas heating bill.
Perhaps your supplier may have a little more control through *his* supplier being vertically integrated - eg Calor have their own storage system? But much of the extra difference seems to me to be costs you just don't have in the commercial sector.
There is also issue that we mainly debate prices 6 months in advance in the public sphere.
IMO HMG need to nobble the cap formula, as they should have done last time - but did not.
I make 2000l of LPG about 14,000 kWh, which is a little more than the amount of gas used annually by the average 2-3 bedroom house, so is in the ballpark taking account for perhaps a slightly larger PB house taking into account 90-95% efficient usage, and perhaps 85% of gas being used in winter.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-11056813/Arsenal-icon-Jens-Lehmann-damages-neighbours-garage-CHAINSAW-frenzy-rage.html
Arsenal icon Jens Lehmann 'damages his neighbour's garage with a CHAINSAW in a frenzy over long-standing row over spoiled view of a lake' - with German police now investigating
There are a number of models where batteries will be used to flatten peak demand..
The women’s game has got a lot of catching up to do; debates that went on for years in the men’s game will inevitably be compressed as the women’s game catches up speedily, I guess.
One bit of punditry I did particularly enjoy was former Dutch player Anouk Hoogendijk. Phwoar, etc. If my missus can drool over Grealish I can drool over her. Equality is wonderful.
Even in black and white on a miserable day, the old Bull Ring is infinitely preferable: humane, elegant, curving, lovely. You can imagine it now, spruced up, the stonework cleaned, all those shops would be super-pricey boutiques because it would be an obviously desirable place to shop
Instead, Brum has..... THAT
It is hideous. Shoot every town planner who worked from 1950-2019
And I LIKE much modern architecture. Manhattan, central Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore (and several others), are some of the most exhilarating cityscapes on earth
After nearly 12 years of having solar panels on my roof,and generating over 20,000 Kw-hours, I wondered if I could use it somehow to power an electric car in the future. I'm paid for everything I generate, even if I use it all myself. Thanks, Ed M.
Theoretically, I could, but new cars are out the question, and even secondhand ones are fiendishly expensive. Batteries are an option, I suppose, but I thought there was a loss of efficiency.
Correction, it's 40,000 Kw-hours
Don't get me wrong, I think you are right and the battery route is sensible and welcome. I just don't see how we do it at the moment.
I'm looking forward to the to the reports of their holiday!
However I entirely concur that given time it might develop its own unique following, and - speaking as a father of two daughters with little interest in sport - that would be great! It should then be seen as its own sport, really - not unflatteringly compared with the men's game. As in tennis. Or, even more, gymnastics, or skating
If it does become successful and lucrative Lord knows how they will deal with the trans issue tho
My dad is partly responsible for this; he claims there is not a street in the city centre that he has not demolished a building on, built on, or done footings for a building on...
A large part of the city centre (around Becketwall Lane and the old Debenhams) is currently being rebuilt, and a large portion of the area between the station and the shopping centre (Intu?) will be rebuilt in the next few years.
The gender identity service at Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust has been ordered to close by spring 2023.
https://twitter.com/SexMattersOrg/status/1552614993488744448
Wonder if they’ve had sight of the Cass Report?
Nadine Dorries wishes the Lionesses all the best in the Euros final, and predicts they’ll win in three sets.
https://twitter.com/haveigotnews/status/1552617789881458692
IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau, however, indicated that the Committee "would not mandate that the Saudis have female representation in London", arguing that "the IOC does not give ultimatums nor deadlines but rather believes that a lot can be achieved through dialogue".
If their principles were "we only care about sport; we don't give a **** about human rights", then you'd have a point. But that's clearly not the case.
Oh,sorry, did you mean sport?
Ex PB-er @SeanT wrote about Derby and all this with his usual footling ignorance in the Spectator
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/rebuild-our-cities
And athletes protest during the Olympics just as they are doing during the Commonwealth Games this time. It really is incredible how worked up the reactionaries get about things that have always happened.
Gay sportsman condemns homophobia is really not worthy of complaining about.
Am determinedly not going to work out the whys and wherefores but that is enormous.
It will ironic if the most significant Africa / Europe interconnector goes via the UK. I think at present this will be the largest.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26043872
More interesting will be what happens to the senior staff - imho most of them should be barred from working the profession, but I suspect most of them will end up doing the same things more quietetly elsewhere in the NHS.
Go and see all these great UK cities I haven't visited in many years: Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds, Glasgow
I've been to Bangkok probably a dozen times since 2010, yet I haven't been to any of the cities listed above (I have been to Manc, Edinburgh, Bristol)
That's an idea. See it for myself. Are there really "Muslim no-go zones" in Bradford or Luton or Rotherham? (I very seriously doubt it, but I've never been, so I can't say for sure). How bad is the drugs stuff in Gorbals? Is Salford really "hip"??
Kind of like Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier except with better wine and probably not quite as good observation, TBH
Maybe I will find the Worst town in Britain. What is it?? West Bromwich? Watford? Any of them ones near Glasgow?
NEWENT?
It is a big ask, but government can play a useful role with some targeted investment to help things along.
The commitment to phase out ICE vehicles is also really helpful, because it provides more certainty of a future market, and so encourages private investment.
The Tory leadership hopeful has ensured she has the brightest and best policy and special advisers from well-known think tanks by her side
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/27/how-liz-truss-plundered-best-westminster-wonkland-take-rishi/ (£££)
The Telegraph's handy cut-out-and-keep guide to Liz Truss's 2024 resignation honours list.
Too late for THEM
I loathe this vile ideology
Newcastle is fantastic, Sunderland less so but they are doing alot to improve it especially along the sea front. Leeds is also a great place to visit.
Why don't you do it just drinking British wines ?
We have some banging wines these days.
Sadly, the lefty sociologists, pundits and Wokeists who pushed this creed, in the beginning, will probably get tenure
My forays around the country are nearly always to obviously attractive places (or where I have friends and fam) - Cornwall, Devon, Bristol, Herefordshire, Brighton, Dorset, the Home Counties, the Highlands and Islands, occasionally the Lakes or the Welsh hills, Edinburgh, Shetland, Wick
It's time for me to see the real Britain, or I should shut up. For a start, I have to actually see NEWENT. It may have improved
Liverpool is lovely - Albert Dock is great, Liverpool One reasonable for shops and the Cathedrals and museums are great.
Likewise Leeds great for shopping.
Newcastle is of course brilliant https://unherd.com/2022/07/the-rebirth-of-newcastle/ has a great overview of the architecture.
Sheffield and Glasgow both have problems - Glasgow especially with both shopping centres (Sauchiehall and Argyle streets) dying leaving scattered bits and pieces alongside Buchanan Street.
https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1552622918148018177