I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
An evil virus ravages mankind. 20 million people die. Economies are demolished. The world reels
So a bunch of scientists conspire to cover up the highly plausible explanation that this virus came from a lab where they were TRYING to make exactly this kind of virus EVEN MORE EVIL, hence all the millions of dead people
And you say “that’s not great”
Yes. That’s not great
They panicked. They were not alone. Some people fled big cities to bolt holes in Wales. By that time the virus was out. If they had said up front ‘we think it came from the lab’ how many of those 20 million would be alive right now? Personally I think it would have made no difference to how the pandemic played out.
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
I was going to comment on the latest Swedish poll but I've now realised Bulgaria is voting AGAIN on October 2nd. This will be their fourth election in two years after three in 2021.
From what I gather, the coalition put together by Petkov after last November's election (which was ostensibly a defeat for Borisov's GERB) fell apart when Trifonov's ITN party left the Government on June 8th causing it to lose a confidence motion in the National Assembly two weeks later.
The latest polling has the combined We Continue The Change (PP) electoral alliance on 26.2% with GERB and their allies SDS on 22.6%, Movement of Rights and Freedoms on 12.4% and the Socialists on 11.6%. ITN look set to be wiped out with their support down to just 3.2% but Revival, an ultranationalist, anti-EU and anti-West party up to 8.9%.
I've got no idea either - maybe I should just stick with Sweden or Latvia.
Four elections in two years it is fitting to see We Continue the Change out in front.
I really really don’t get how Liz is favourite. She is going to be absolutely dire
She peddles the snake oil that a majority of the ageing, keep brexit safe, triple lock loving, nothing has been the same since Maggie was removed, membership want to hear.
Having said that I am going to predict that this will actually be a damn sight closer than these membership polls suggest.
How is reversing the NI Tax rise that was roundly deplored on here when it was announced, or the Corporation Tax rise which was roundly deplored on here when it was announced, a form of "snake oil"?
How is having the same rate of National Insurance as we had only five months ago "snake oil"?
And how is claiming you'll cut Income Tax down to 16p not snake oil by the same logic?
Liz is advocating the right thing to do, that's not snake oil.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
I really really don’t get how Liz is favourite. She is going to be absolutely dire
She peddles the snake oil that a majority of the ageing, keep brexit safe, triple lock loving, nothing has been the same since Maggie was removed, membership want to hear.
Having said that I am going to predict that this will actually be a damn sight closer than these membership polls suggest.
I have the same feeling. But part of me thinks I’m just evidently now totally out of touch with core Tory ideology. Quite clearly the status quo isn’t working
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
No you don’t want to see the evidence. You don’t want anything like that at all. You probably want us to move on and forget about it. Because, I suspect, you’re another scientist who thinks the truth might make science “look bad”
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
No you don’t want to see the evidence. You don’t want anything like that at all. You probably want us to move on and forget about it. Because, I suspect, you’re another scientist who thinks the truth might make science “look bad”
Nope, I’d willingly see the evidence. It’s not right the NIH has redacted the report on projects in the area, and hopefully that line will not stand. What I don’t like is you calling for the death penalty. As it happens you’ve been consistent on the lab leak from the start and you are almost certainly right, so kudos, if that’s what you want. But I go by the Swiss cheese model for accident prevention. There is never just one failure that leads to disaster.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
An evil virus ravages mankind. 20 million people die. Economies are demolished. The world reels
So a bunch of scientists conspire to cover up the highly plausible explanation that this virus came from a lab where they were TRYING to make exactly this kind of virus EVEN MORE EVIL, hence all the millions of dead people
And you say “that’s not great”
Yes. That’s not great
They panicked. They were not alone. Some people fled big cities to bolt holes in Wales. By that time the virus was out. If they had said up front ‘we think it came from the lab’ how many of those 20 million would be alive right now? Personally I think it would have made no difference to how the pandemic played out.
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
Are you really equating the average citizen trying to preserve his life and his family from a plague, with a cabal of scientists who conspired to cover up the origins of that same plague? Because both of them “panicked”?
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
No you don’t want to see the evidence. You don’t want anything like that at all. You probably want us to move on and forget about it. Because, I suspect, you’re another scientist who thinks the truth might make science “look bad”
I'm just a Toms come lately, but what I can glean here makes me think of "The Oxbow Incident".
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
An evil virus ravages mankind. 20 million people die. Economies are demolished. The world reels
So a bunch of scientists conspire to cover up the highly plausible explanation that this virus came from a lab where they were TRYING to make exactly this kind of virus EVEN MORE EVIL, hence all the millions of dead people
And you say “that’s not great”
Yes. That’s not great
They panicked. They were not alone. Some people fled big cities to bolt holes in Wales. By that time the virus was out. If they had said up front ‘we think it came from the lab’ how many of those 20 million would be alive right now? Personally I think it would have made no difference to how the pandemic played out.
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
Oil spills are accidental. The damage, both material and financial, is still paid for. This is many times worse than an oil spill, because it isn't carelessness in the process of procuring a necessary resource, it is carelessness in a process that was initiated because the US wanted to see if it could give a deadly disease superpowers.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
No you don’t want to see the evidence. You don’t want anything like that at all. You probably want us to move on and forget about it. Because, I suspect, you’re another scientist who thinks the truth might make science “look bad”
Of course that type of science looks bad. It looks terrible. They should legislate against gain of function research.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
She professes to be more free market than the great god Hayek and yet when a farmer chooses to use his/her freedom to stick a load of solar panels in a field instead of sprouts she has a hissy fit.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
No you don’t want to see the evidence. You don’t want anything like that at all. You probably want us to move on and forget about it. Because, I suspect, you’re another scientist who thinks the truth might make science “look bad”
Nope, I’d willingly see the evidence. It’s not right the NIH has redacted the report on projects in the area, and hopefully that line will not stand. What I don’t like is you calling for the death penalty. As it happens you’ve been consistent on the lab leak from the start and you are almost certainly right, so kudos, if that’s what you want. But I go by the Swiss cheese model for accident prevention. There is never just one failure that leads to disaster.
I don’t want kudos. I want justice for the billions of people who have suffered from this
And I think this calamity is so bad it merits capital punishment. On that we must politely disagree
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
An evil virus ravages mankind. 20 million people die. Economies are demolished. The world reels
So a bunch of scientists conspire to cover up the highly plausible explanation that this virus came from a lab where they were TRYING to make exactly this kind of virus EVEN MORE EVIL, hence all the millions of dead people
And you say “that’s not great”
Yes. That’s not great
They panicked. They were not alone. Some people fled big cities to bolt holes in Wales. By that time the virus was out. If they had said up front ‘we think it came from the lab’ how many of those 20 million would be alive right now? Personally I think it would have made no difference to how the pandemic played out.
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
Are you really equating the average citizen trying to preserve his life and his family from a plague, with a cabal of scientists who conspired to cover up the origins of that same plague? Because both of them “panicked”?
Do you think any of the 20 million would have been saved if they had not tried to cover it up?
Although I dont know why in 2022 every new building doesn’t have solar panels mandated by law.
Probably because that could be a very bad idea?
Considering the UK is a wintery island nation that needs peak energy demands when we put our heating on, how much use would a solar panel be on a north-facing roof, in December/January?
New buildings around here seem to be getting solar panels typically installed on South-facing roofs because its economic more than because of the environment now. If its economic then great, go for it, but if its not, its really not the best investment we can make either fiscally or environmentally.
Are either of the two Tory candidates promising to look at tidal again?
The economic case must be much stronger with current prices, and the energy security case has always been undeniable.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
An evil virus ravages mankind. 20 million people die. Economies are demolished. The world reels
So a bunch of scientists conspire to cover up the highly plausible explanation that this virus came from a lab where they were TRYING to make exactly this kind of virus EVEN MORE EVIL, hence all the millions of dead people
And you say “that’s not great”
Yes. That’s not great
They panicked. They were not alone. Some people fled big cities to bolt holes in Wales. By that time the virus was out. If they had said up front ‘we think it came from the lab’ how many of those 20 million would be alive right now? Personally I think it would have made no difference to how the pandemic played out.
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
You aren't very bright are you? If you think the accident vs deliberate release question is important. Silly question anyway, it was obviously a cock up. The question is whether gain of function fucking about has any sense at all. it hasn't. Academics will do anything for funding though (I know this because I have been one) and you don't have any first order argument justifying gof on a risk reward basis. which is why your fallback is Oooh it must be ok, it was SiGNeD oFf bY a coMmiTteE.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
Yes, but that's when most of these schemes were built.
I am not going to catastrophise about food - I am an optimist. However, I think the Ukraine war has thrown both food and energy security into the limelight. And I agree with Truss that in Britain, a field of food is a better used field than a field of solar panels. In the Sahara dessert, I'd disagree.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
How does the moral structure of your final sentence differ from "And any holocaust would have been signed off by the Wannsee conference"?
Good Godwin. The point is that Leon is wanting people put to death, and I’d like to see the evidence first. Who did what, and when. I don’t think that unreasonable.
No you don’t want to see the evidence. You don’t want anything like that at all. You probably want us to move on and forget about it. Because, I suspect, you’re another scientist who thinks the truth might make science “look bad”
Nope, I’d willingly see the evidence. It’s not right the NIH has redacted the report on projects in the area, and hopefully that line will not stand. What I don’t like is you calling for the death penalty. As it happens you’ve been consistent on the lab leak from the start and you are almost certainly right, so kudos, if that’s what you want. But I go by the Swiss cheese model for accident prevention. There is never just one failure that leads to disaster.
I don’t want kudos. I want justice for the billions of people who have suffered from this
And I think this calamity is so bad it merits capital punishment. On that we must politely disagree
Are you generally pro capital punishment? Say for evil bastards like Wayne Couzens?
It’s quite plausible to make the chain from funding gain of function research to the deaths of millions, and quite possibly this is science that should not be done. But at most any offence would be accidental, wouldn’t it? They did not set out to kill people deliberately.
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
Indeed.
Also a serious amount of work done and money spent in landscaping the old pits.
At one place it said 200k tonnes of spoil removed, 400k tonnes of top soil put down and 150k trees planted.
And that's been done every few miles in the old mining areas.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
She professes to be more free market than the great god Hayek and yet when a farmer chooses to use his/her freedom to stick a load of solar panels in a field instead of sprouts she has a hissy fit.
She's not going to let consistency or logic get in the way of the promises she feels will get her to No 10.
Although I dont know why in 2022 every new building doesn’t have solar panels mandated by law.
Probably because that could be a very bad idea?
Considering the UK is a wintery island nation that needs peak energy demands when we put our heating on, how much use would a solar panel be on a north-facing roof, in December/January?
New buildings around here seem to be getting solar panels typically installed on South-facing roofs because its economic more than because of the environment now. If its economic then great, go for it, but if its not, its really not the best investment we can make either fiscally or environmentally.
Are either of the two Tory candidates promising to look at tidal again?
The economic case must be much stronger with current prices, and the energy security case has always been undeniable.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
Yes but you have the wrong target. It matters not whether it came from a bat in the lab or a bat in the market. The scandal is America was paying for dangerous gain of function research in a country, China, that is bound to exploit that research for biowarfare. That's the real issue.
Actually, I've always felt that the really bad behaviour - the one that cost tens of millions of lives and lost livelihoods - was the Chinese allowing flights out the country when they knew there might very well be infected people on them.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
Although I dont know why in 2022 every new building doesn’t have solar panels mandated by law.
Probably because that could be a very bad idea?
Considering the UK is a wintery island nation that needs peak energy demands when we put our heating on, how much use would a solar panel be on a north-facing roof, in December/January?
New buildings around here seem to be getting solar panels typically installed on South-facing roofs because its economic more than because of the environment now. If its economic then great, go for it, but if its not, its really not the best investment we can make either fiscally or environmentally.
Are either of the two Tory candidates promising to look at tidal again?
The economic case must be much stronger with current prices, and the energy security case has always been undeniable.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
An evil virus ravages mankind. 20 million people die. Economies are demolished. The world reels
So a bunch of scientists conspire to cover up the highly plausible explanation that this virus came from a lab where they were TRYING to make exactly this kind of virus EVEN MORE EVIL, hence all the millions of dead people
And you say “that’s not great”
Yes. That’s not great
They panicked. They were not alone. Some people fled big cities to bolt holes in Wales. By that time the virus was out. If they had said up front ‘we think it came from the lab’ how many of those 20 million would be alive right now? Personally I think it would have made no difference to how the pandemic played out.
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
You aren't very bright are you? If you think the accident vs deliberate release question is important. Silly question anyway, it was obviously a cock up. The question is whether gain of function fucking about has any sense at all. it hasn't. Academics will do anything for funding though (I know this because I have been one) and you don't have any first order argument justifying gof on a risk reward basis. which is why your fallback is Oooh it must be ok, it was SiGNeD oFf bY a coMmiTteE.
You can debate with people without resorting to being rude.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
She professes to be more free market than the great god Hayek and yet when a farmer chooses to use his/her freedom to stick a load of solar panels in a field instead of sprouts she has a hissy fit.
2 things. One, it's an incredibly wasteful use of resources to put panels on South facing pasture when you can put them on South facing anything else. Two, this is driven by nimbies who think solar panels spoil the view.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
An evil virus ravages mankind. 20 million people die. Economies are demolished. The world reels
So a bunch of scientists conspire to cover up the highly plausible explanation that this virus came from a lab where they were TRYING to make exactly this kind of virus EVEN MORE EVIL, hence all the millions of dead people
And you say “that’s not great”
Yes. That’s not great
They panicked. They were not alone. Some people fled big cities to bolt holes in Wales. By that time the virus was out. If they had said up front ‘we think it came from the lab’ how many of those 20 million would be alive right now? Personally I think it would have made no difference to how the pandemic played out.
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
Are you really equating the average citizen trying to preserve his life and his family from a plague, with a cabal of scientists who conspired to cover up the origins of that same plague? Because both of them “panicked”?
Do you think any of the 20 million would have been saved if they had not tried to cover it up?
I think at the very least the 20 million families missing a loved one deserve to know where this virus came from, was it engineered, who paid for the engineering and why. They also deserve to see the conspirators who tried to prevent the truth emerging go on trial - with severe sentences at the end, if convicted
We would do this for any other disaster where human negligence and/or wrongdoing is an issue. This is the greatest disaster in a century
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
Yes, but that's when most of these schemes were built.
I am not going to catastrophise about food - I am an optimist. However, I think the Ukraine war has thrown both food and energy security into the limelight. And I agree with Truss that in Britain, a field of food is a better used field than a field of solar panels. In the Sahara dessert, I'd disagree.
For subsidy, read guaranteed purchase price agreement.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
An evil virus ravages mankind. 20 million people die. Economies are demolished. The world reels
So a bunch of scientists conspire to cover up the highly plausible explanation that this virus came from a lab where they were TRYING to make exactly this kind of virus EVEN MORE EVIL, hence all the millions of dead people
And you say “that’s not great”
Yes. That’s not great
They panicked. They were not alone. Some people fled big cities to bolt holes in Wales. By that time the virus was out. If they had said up front ‘we think it came from the lab’ how many of those 20 million would be alive right now? Personally I think it would have made no difference to how the pandemic played out.
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
You aren't very bright are you? If you think the accident vs deliberate release question is important. Silly question anyway, it was obviously a cock up. The question is whether gain of function fucking about has any sense at all. it hasn't. Academics will do anything for funding though (I know this because I have been one) and you don't have any first order argument justifying gof on a risk reward basis. which is why your fallback is Oooh it must be ok, it was SiGNeD oFf bY a coMmiTteE.
You can debate with people without resorting to being rude.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
An evil virus ravages mankind. 20 million people die. Economies are demolished. The world reels
So a bunch of scientists conspire to cover up the highly plausible explanation that this virus came from a lab where they were TRYING to make exactly this kind of virus EVEN MORE EVIL, hence all the millions of dead people
And you say “that’s not great”
Yes. That’s not great
They panicked. They were not alone. Some people fled big cities to bolt holes in Wales. By that time the virus was out. If they had said up front ‘we think it came from the lab’ how many of those 20 million would be alive right now? Personally I think it would have made no difference to how the pandemic played out.
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
Are you really equating the average citizen trying to preserve his life and his family from a plague, with a cabal of scientists who conspired to cover up the origins of that same plague? Because both of them “panicked”?
Do you think any of the 20 million would have been saved if they had not tried to cover it up?
I think at the very least the 20 million families missing a loved one deserve to know where this virus came from, was it engineered, who paid for the engineering and why. They also deserve to see the conspirators who tried to prevent the truth emerging go on trial - with severe sentences at the end, if convicted
We would do this for any other disaster where human negligence and/or wrongdoing is an issue. This is the greatest disaster in a century
You say that but do you expect anyone involved at Grenfell to serve time?
Shameless holiday snap masquerading as a comment about the weather, which itself is stretching 'on topic' to the extremes: Just had a sunset swim in the sea. It wasn't warm. It needed a bit of steeling to get in, but fun once you're in; the golden light sparkling off the water, the swell lifting you up. And not so cold you need a wetsuit, and not so cold it chases you out. And still pleasantly warm once you're out.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
Yes but you have the wrong target. It matters not whether it came from a bat in the lab or a bat in the market. The scandal is America was paying for dangerous gain of function research in a country, China, that is bound to exploit that research for biowarfare. That's the real issue.
Actually, I've always felt that the really bad behaviour - the one that cost tens of millions of lives and lost livelihoods - was the Chinese allowing flights out the country when they knew there might very well be infected people on them.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
And it's explainable.
They knew they were going down, and the consequences of that, and didn't want the rest of the world to escape it because geopower politics.
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Solar will be the greater when our battery technology develops megawatt capacity. I quit the Ramblers when they went anti-windmill and started sponsoring walking cruises. For me walking immerses me in plantigrade locomotion on the ground, preferably on footpaths.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
She professes to be more free market than the great god Hayek and yet when a farmer chooses to use his/her freedom to stick a load of solar panels in a field instead of sprouts she has a hissy fit.
2 things. One, it's an incredibly wasteful use of resources to put panels on South facing pasture when you can put them on South facing anything else. Two, this is driven by nimbies who think solar panels spoil the view.
Between planning rules, subsidies for farming various things, not growing various things etc, the idea that the free market applies very much to what you do with agricultural land is rather quaint.
This has been a deliberate policy of government since 1945. And before.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
Yes but you have the wrong target. It matters not whether it came from a bat in the lab or a bat in the market. The scandal is America was paying for dangerous gain of function research in a country, China, that is bound to exploit that research for biowarfare. That's the real issue.
Actually, I've always felt that the really bad behaviour - the one that cost tens of millions of lives and lost livelihoods - was the Chinese allowing flights out the country when they knew there might very well be infected people on them.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
The Chinese Government should never have allowed this research on their soil. Christ only knows what they were getting out of it. No Government should allow it. If Porton Down does this sort of research for the US, shut it the f*** down. Yesterday.
...and now look at it! Sun has gone down, and we've a bit of cloud which manages to make the aftermath more spectacular. Bats - who I presume are roosting in the half-built House down the way - are flitting about dramatically; crickets chirrupping, the sound of the sea...
“You say that but do you expect anyone involved at Grenfell to serve time?”
What the holy fuck has Grenfell got to do with the origins of Covid?
It’s like comparing World War 2 with a coach crash
The point about holding people to account. 80 odd people died at Grenfell because people made bad decisions, possibly criminal ones. I don’t expect anyone responsible to serve jail time. Sorry if the link wasn’t clear (it was in my head). If we can’t even hold people account for that, within our own country ( and I may be wrong) what chance is there for Covid?
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
Step back a bit. Doing the research is not the issue. There should have been oversight. There should be safety protocols in place. Never perfect, but still. Would you have stopped the nuclear weapons project in WW2?
Read the FOIAD emails.
In fact, start with the Sachs interview linked upthread. He’s the head of the Lancet Covid commission. Read that and see if you’re still shrugging
I’m not shrugging, but it’s not clear to me where the problem is. It really does seem likely that at best a bunch of scientists panicked about the possibility of a lab leak (whether true or not) and acted in bad faith to try to shut down that line of enquiry. That was not great, but it’s hardly a life sentence offence. At that point the virus was out, from whatever source. The Chinese government deliberately allowed spread out of China. That was unconscionable. They covered up, and it’s not clear when the outbreak really began. But we absolutely do not know for certain that the virus that caused the pandemic was engineered. It may have been, it may not. And any money from funding bodies would have been signed off by a committee.
An evil virus ravages mankind. 20 million people die. Economies are demolished. The world reels
So a bunch of scientists conspire to cover up the highly plausible explanation that this virus came from a lab where they were TRYING to make exactly this kind of virus EVEN MORE EVIL, hence all the millions of dead people
And you say “that’s not great”
Yes. That’s not great
They panicked. They were not alone. Some people fled big cities to bolt holes in Wales. By that time the virus was out. If they had said up front ‘we think it came from the lab’ how many of those 20 million would be alive right now? Personally I think it would have made no difference to how the pandemic played out.
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
Are you really equating the average citizen trying to preserve his life and his family from a plague, with a cabal of scientists who conspired to cover up the origins of that same plague? Because both of them “panicked”?
Do you think any of the 20 million would have been saved if they had not tried to cover it up?
I think at the very least the 20 million families missing a loved one deserve to know where this virus came from, was it engineered, who paid for the engineering and why. They also deserve to see the conspirators who tried to prevent the truth emerging go on trial - with severe sentences at the end, if convicted
We would do this for any other disaster where human negligence and/or wrongdoing is an issue. This is the greatest disaster in a century
You say that but do you expect anyone involved at Grenfell to serve time?
Grenfell involved too many people from the professional political administration for prosecutions to be “in the public interest”. So “lessons will be learned”.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
She professes to be more free market than the great god Hayek and yet when a farmer chooses to use his/her freedom to stick a load of solar panels in a field instead of sprouts she has a hissy fit.
She's not going to let consistency or logic get in the way of the promises she feels will get her to No 10.
I don't really see how this does help her to get into Number 10. It seems rather to me to be a strongly held opinion.
I really really don’t get how Liz is favourite. She is going to be absolutely dire
Have a guess. Who is she running against, and what is the demographic profile of the Tory membership?
Who was Boris Johnson playing to when he put it about that he might reintroduce imperial measures for the monarch's "platinum jubilee"?
The curious thing is that this is a political party and much of its membership don't care a sh*t (at the present moment) who wins the next general election. Nor do they care a sh*t how skilled Truss might or might not turn out to be at doing the job of PM.
They don't give a sh*t about the country either, but that's hardly news.
I'm looking at the graph and I don't know how you've drawn that conclusion - seriously, I don't apart from the usual asinine provocation.
A more reasoned analysis might be the forced sequestration of all the financial assets of the entire independent school sector and their re-allocation to the state sector.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
Yes, but that's when most of these schemes were built.
I am not going to catastrophise about food - I am an optimist. However, I think the Ukraine war has thrown both food and energy security into the limelight. And I agree with Truss that in Britain, a field of food is a better used field than a field of solar panels. In the Sahara dessert, I'd disagree.
For subsidy, read guaranteed purchase price agreement.
I'm looking at the graph and I don't know how you've drawn that conclusion - seriously, I don't apart from the usual asinine provocation.
A more reasoned analysis might be the forced sequestration of all the financial assets of the entire independent school sector and their re-allocation to the state sector.
Actually, that's not really any better, is it?
The Department for Education has utterly failed for decades.
I want every pupil in this country to have the kind of education that I had, small class sizes with thoughtful teachers who had the opportunity and willingness to help educate and improve their pupils.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
Yes but you have the wrong target. It matters not whether it came from a bat in the lab or a bat in the market. The scandal is America was paying for dangerous gain of function research in a country, China, that is bound to exploit that research for biowarfare. That's the real issue.
Actually, I've always felt that the really bad behaviour - the one that cost tens of millions of lives and lost livelihoods - was the Chinese allowing flights out the country when they knew there might very well be infected people on them.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
The bioengineering also REALLY matters. As does the cover up
Of course the Chinese government is evil, and yes what they did is a crime for the ages. It will be harder to bring them to account however
I'm looking at the graph and I don't know how you've drawn that conclusion - seriously, I don't apart from the usual asinine provocation.
A more reasoned analysis might be the forced sequestration of all the financial assets of the entire independent school sector and their re-allocation to the state sector.
Actually, that's not really any better, is it?
The Department for Education has utterly failed for decades.
I want every pupil in this country to have the kind of education that I had, small class sizes with thoughtful teachers who had the opportunity and willingness to help educate and improve their pupils.
Just been to the Cheltenham hustings. Sunak clearly had more passion and charisma for me. However Truss did have some good points I liked about scrapping housing targets and giving more power to local councils. She also made clear she would not call a general election before 2024
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
Undoubtedly there is some reduction, but not total. It would depend on the precise geometry. AQnd you'd want some grass to stop erosion and some sheep to keep the grass down. Or rabbits? Cattle are too large.
To be honestI agree with Eagles in principle, but I think this chart shows the opposite. In the 80s, private schools gave a very good education for a comparable spend to that in the state sector. And they were patronised by the middle classes - my friends' parents were university lecturers, salesmen, town planners... Nowadays, however, they spaff money up the wall on all sorts of unnecessary shit, thereby pricing all but the super-rich out. There is a massive gap in the market for mid-range private education.
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
Are you sure you are a scientist? If you have a finite amount of sunlight falling on a finite amount of field, and two things directly competing for the sunlight, what do you think the answer might be?
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
Yes but you have the wrong target. It matters not whether it came from a bat in the lab or a bat in the market. The scandal is America was paying for dangerous gain of function research in a country, China, that is bound to exploit that research for biowarfare. That's the real issue.
Actually, I've always felt that the really bad behaviour - the one that cost tens of millions of lives and lost livelihoods - was the Chinese allowing flights out the country when they knew there might very well be infected people on them.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
The bioengineering also REALLY matters. As does the cover up
Of course the Chinese government is evil, and yes what they did is a crime for the ages. It will be harder to bring them to account however
Correct, however the absolution of the US who actually decided they wanted to know what it'd be like to make a horrible disease loads worse, and the condemnation of the Chinese for their (horriffic) handling of the fallout, really won't wash. The US has visited this on the world. It transmitted because they worked to ensure it would be transmissible. It killed because they created it to kill.
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
Are you sure you are a scientist? If you have a finite amount of sunlight falling on a finite amount of field, and two things directly competing for the sunlight, what do you think the answer might be?
Did you read what I wrote? I assumed yes. You really are a patronising, rude areshole. I can see why other posters refuse to engage with you. Does it make you happy? It’s obvious that the panels will reduce the light hitting the field, but how much? And does that automatically preclude use for livestock?
To be honestI agree with Eagles in principle, but I think this chart shows the opposite. In the 80s, private schools gave a very good education for a comparable spend to that in the state sector. And they were patronised by the middle classes - my friends' parents were university lecturers, salesmen, town planners... Nowadays, however, they spaff money up the wall on all sorts of unnecessary shit, thereby pricing all but the super-rich out. There is a massive gap in the market for mid-range private education.
That’s my experience as well, both going to a private school for part of my education and sending my children private.
It has been interesting to be involved with a couple of Free Schools as well.
Rishi Sunak has set out plans that he hopes would cover the total cost of rising energy bills for up to 16 million vulnerable people, as he challenged Liz Truss to follow suit.
In an article for The Times the former chancellor said he was prepared to find up to £10 billion to soften the impact of this October’s price rise on top of the support announced by the government in May.
Every household would benefit from a £200 reduction in their bills by abolishing VAT on energy, in a challenge to Truss, who has said only that she would consider the measure
I'm looking at the graph and I don't know how you've drawn that conclusion - seriously, I don't apart from the usual asinine provocation.
A more reasoned analysis might be the forced sequestration of all the financial assets of the entire independent school sector and their re-allocation to the state sector.
Actually, that's not really any better, is it?
The Department for Education has utterly failed for decades.
I want every pupil in this country to have the kind of education that I had, small class sizes with thoughtful teachers who had the opportunity and willingness to help educate and improve their pupils.
Just been to the Cheltenham hustings. Sunak clearly had more passion and charisma for me. However Truss did have some good points I liked about scrapping housing targets and giving more power to local councils. She also made clear she would not call a general election before 2024
May said she wasn't calling a general election before 2020...until she changed her mind.
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
Are you sure you are a scientist? If you have a finite amount of sunlight falling on a finite amount of field, and two things directly competing for the sunlight, what do you think the answer might be?
Depends if sunlight is the limiting factor for grass growth in a British field or not. And I don't know the answer to that- it might be water; it certainly is this week. (Please, let the weather forecast for next week be true...). Or more likely, it varies depending on the time of day and time of the year. I wouldn't be shocked if grass has evolved to grow just fine in the light of a bright but cloudy day, and bright sunshine isn't that much extra benefit.
I bet the farmers involved have a better idea than I do, and I'm pretty confident that I have a better idea than Liz Truss.
Rishi Sunak has set out plans that he hopes would cover the total cost of rising energy bills for up to 16 million vulnerable people, as he challenged Liz Truss to follow suit.
In an article for The Times the former chancellor said he was prepared to find up to £10 billion to soften the impact of this October’s price rise on top of the support announced by the government in May.
Every household would benefit from a £200 reduction in their bills by abolishing VAT on energy, in a challenge to Truss, who has said only that she would consider the measure
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
Are you sure you are a scientist? If you have a finite amount of sunlight falling on a finite amount of field, and two things directly competing for the sunlight, what do you think the answer might be?
Depends if sunlight is the limiting factor for grass growth in a British field or not. And I don't know the answer to that- it might be water; it certainly is this week. (Please, let the weather forecast for next week be true...). Or more likely, it varies depending on the time of day and time of the year. I wouldn't be shocked if grass has evolved to grow just fine in the light of a bright but cloudy day, and bright sunshine isn't that much extra benefit.
I bet the farmers involved have a better idea than I do, and I'm pretty confident that I have a better idea than Liz Truss.
The Department for Education has utterly failed for decades.
I want every pupil in this country to have the kind of education that I had, small class sizes with thoughtful teachers who had the opportunity and willingness to help educate and improve their pupils.
Yes, that's basically the education I had as well so where has it gone wrong?
Is it just the Department of Education? Somehow, I doubt it. Attitudes to education have changed, attitudes to the role of teachers and teaching have changed.
Symptomatic, I'd argue, of wider socio-cultural changes. My mother always claimed the beginning of the end of civilisation was when they did away with park keepers - there's a point there somewhere about how modernity and technology became the modus vivendi rather than a modus operandi.
I prefer to think of it in simpler if not simplistic terms which unfortunately characterises much of our debate on here currently - "we know the cost of everything, and the value of nothing".
Just been to the Cheltenham hustings. Sunak clearly had more passion and charisma for me. However Truss did have some good points I liked about scrapping housing targets and giving more power to local councils. She also made clear she would not call a general election before 2024
May said she wasn't calling a general election before 2020...until she changed her mind.
Having a 15% poll lead can do that.
I doubt the same possibility will happen for Dizzy.
Just been to the Cheltenham hustings. Sunak clearly had more passion and charisma for me. However Truss did have some good points I liked about scrapping housing targets and giving more power to local councils. She also made clear she would not call a general election before 2024
May said she wasn't calling a general election before 2020...until she changed her mind.
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
Are you sure you are a scientist? If you have a finite amount of sunlight falling on a finite amount of field, and two things directly competing for the sunlight, what do you think the answer might be?
Did you read what I wrote? I assumed yes. You really are a patronising, rude areshole. I can see why other posters refuse to engage with you. Does it make you happy? It’s obvious that the panels will reduce the light hitting the field, but how much? And does that automatically preclude use for livestock?
Well, it depends, does it not, on the extent of the panel coverage?
And, sorry, but your relentless refusal to engage first hand with the actual morality of an action vs whether it has got past the morality-of-action committee stage, brings out the patronising, rude areshole in me. I have no doubt the fault is all on my side.
The thing is that nobody has a clue what will happen.
Current energy bill handouts are £400 for everyone, an extra £650 for everyone on benefits, a further extra £150 for disability.
Truss could simply double all those figures in 5 minutes and it's entirely possible she will. Whilst at the same time doing all the other things she's promised on NI, green levies etc.
Why wouldn't she? She wants to win. Best chance of winning is to handout as much as possible.
Nobody can be sure what she will do. So unwise to make confident predictions.
Blanket handouts are a) expensive and b) socialist.
I'm not in favour of subsidising the population. But maybe we should look at need, here? Cover 25% of this year's bills. Thereby incentivising jumpers and not having the heating on constantly.
I still don't understand how people manage to spend so much on gas.....
When doing charity collecting in winter I am often struck by how warm some people keep their homes. One chap came to the door in just his shorts, with the house aroun 28 deg C. In December.
I presume usage will come down as prices go up. It's a natural reaction to it. Hopefully not to the extent that pensioners freeze in their living rooms for fear of the gas bill.
It would be a good idea if people could provide easy advice on how to reduce your bill.
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
Are you sure you are a scientist? If you have a finite amount of sunlight falling on a finite amount of field, and two things directly competing for the sunlight, what do you think the answer might be?
Depends if sunlight is the limiting factor for grass growth in a British field or not. And I don't know the answer to that- it might be water; it certainly is this week. (Please, let the weather forecast for next week be true...). Or more likely, it varies depending on the time of day and time of the year. I wouldn't be shocked if grass has evolved to grow just fine in the light of a bright but cloudy day, and bright sunshine isn't that much extra benefit.
I bet the farmers involved have a better idea than I do, and I'm pretty confident that I have a better idea than Liz Truss.
Try looking under a tree.
Yes.
I had a pretty good grasp of what photosynthesis means by the age of, what, eight?
To be honestI agree with Eagles in principle, but I think this chart shows the opposite. In the 80s, private schools gave a very good education for a comparable spend to that in the state sector. And they were patronised by the middle classes - my friends' parents were university lecturers, salesmen, town planners... Nowadays, however, they spaff money up the wall on all sorts of unnecessary shit, thereby pricing all but the super-rich out. There is a massive gap in the market for mid-range private education.
Just round here, I would say that's not the case at all. You have Denstone, Newcastle under Lyme, Abbotsholme and Repton, who are definitely in that arms race but also Lichfield Cathedral, Stafford Grammar, Chase Grammar and St Dominic's who are certainly 'mid range private education' as you put it.
Similarly, in Bristol for every Badminton there is a Redland.
One thought that does occur to me though is how private schools will cope with the vast increases in fuel bills that are about to come their way. Particularly mid-range ones, usually limited companies and so not covered by the cap, whose parents will struggle most to pay the bills.
Could see quite a few going the way of Ockbrook and Abbot's Bromley.
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
Are you sure you are a scientist? If you have a finite amount of sunlight falling on a finite amount of field, and two things directly competing for the sunlight, what do you think the answer might be?
Did you read what I wrote? I assumed yes. You really are a patronising, rude areshole. I can see why other posters refuse to engage with you. Does it make you happy? It’s obvious that the panels will reduce the light hitting the field, but how much? And does that automatically preclude use for livestock?
Well, it depends, does it not, on the extent of the panel coverage?
And, sorry, but your relentless refusal to engage first hand with the actual morality of an action vs whether it has got past the morality-of-action committee stage, brings out the patronising, rude areshole in me. I have no doubt the fault is all on my side.
I don’t think I’ve expressed an opinion on whether gain of function research should be done. My point was more that Leon is thirsty for blood and I wondered where he would stop. If there is only one outcome from Covid, banning gain of function research would be a good one.
The Department for Education has utterly failed for decades.
I want every pupil in this country to have the kind of education that I had, small class sizes with thoughtful teachers who had the opportunity and willingness to help educate and improve their pupils.
Yes, that's basically the education I had as well so where has it gone wrong?
Is it just the Department of Education? Somehow, I doubt it. Attitudes to education have changed, attitudes to the role of teachers and teaching have changed.
Symptomatic, I'd argue, of wider socio-cultural changes. My mother always claimed the beginning of the end of civilisation was when they did away with park keepers - there's a point there somewhere about how modernity and technology became the modus vivendi rather than a modus operandi.
I prefer to think of it in simpler if not simplistic terms which unfortunately characterises much of our debate on here currently - "we know the cost of everything, and the value of nothing".
Perhaps when teachers began to be called teachers instead of schoolmasters.
I'm looking at the graph and I don't know how you've drawn that conclusion - seriously, I don't apart from the usual asinine provocation.
A more reasoned analysis might be the forced sequestration of all the financial assets of the entire independent school sector and their re-allocation to the state sector.
Actually, that's not really any better, is it?
The Department for Education has utterly failed for decades.
I want every pupil in this country to have the kind of education that I had, small class sizes with thoughtful teachers who had the opportunity and willingness to help educate and improve their pupils.
Just been to the Cheltenham hustings. Sunak clearly had more passion and charisma for me. However Truss did have some good points I liked about scrapping housing targets and giving more power to local councils. She also made clear she would not call a general election before 2024
May said she wasn't calling a general election before 2020...until she changed her mind.
Having a 15% poll lead can do that.
I doubt the same possibility will happen for Dizzy.
Given he died 141 years ago, it does seem improbable. But even his skeleton would be an improvement on the current front bench.
Just been to the Cheltenham hustings. Sunak clearly had more passion and charisma for me. However Truss did have some good points I liked about scrapping housing targets and giving more power to local councils. She also made clear she would not call a general election before 2024
May said she wasn't calling a general election before 2020...until she changed her mind.
Having a 15% poll lead can do that.
I doubt the same possibility will happen for Dizzy.
Given he died 141 years ago, it does seem improbable. But even his skeleton would be an improvement on the current front bench.
Shortly after the threat from COVID appeared, I came to this unhappy conclusion: Without the full cooperation of the Chinese government, we are unlikely to know definitively the origin of the virus. And unless "Emperor" Xi is overthrown, we won't get that cooperation. (I believe that, in principle, and with enough data, we could trace the "genealogy" of the virus back to an origin. Virologists should feel free to correct me, if I am wrong about that.)
I hope I am wrong.
However, we can come to tentatitive conclusions on our own governments' reactions to COVID. And I have read enough of Deborah Birx's "Silent Invasion" to conclude that Trump's blunders may have cost tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of American lives. And not just American lives, since it spread from the United States to, for example, Mexico.
(Whether Trump might deserve the death penalty for his COVID failures, perhaps "pour encourager les autres", is a question I will leave to others.)
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
Are you sure you are a scientist? If you have a finite amount of sunlight falling on a finite amount of field, and two things directly competing for the sunlight, what do you think the answer might be?
Depends if sunlight is the limiting factor for grass growth in a British field or not. And I don't know the answer to that- it might be water; it certainly is this week. (Please, let the weather forecast for next week be true...). Or more likely, it varies depending on the time of day and time of the year. I wouldn't be shocked if grass has evolved to grow just fine in the light of a bright but cloudy day, and bright sunshine isn't that much extra benefit.
I bet the farmers involved have a better idea than I do, and I'm pretty confident that I have a better idea than Liz Truss.
Try looking under a tree.
Funnily enough, depends on the tree. Some trees cause problems for grass due to shading, others becuase they absorb huge amounts of water and that dries out the soil.
I'm with Truss on this. Fields full of PV panels loom fecking awful.
Also the 70% number is shit.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Why does grass not count as a crop?
Quite. And the sheep etc that eat it and shelter under the panels etc.
Does having panels in a field reduce the amount of grass that grows (assuming yes - but clearly some still does)?
It depends. Light is not the only limiting factor on grass growth. Soil moisture and temperature are also factors. So in some situations providing a bit of shade might actually improve grass growth, because it would stop soil moisture dropping quite so low.
You'd expect that on average it would reduce grass growth, but it would be interesting to know by how much.
Comments
As I say, and you have not answered, do you you it was a deliberate release or an accident?
How is having the same rate of National Insurance as we had only five months ago "snake oil"?
And how is claiming you'll cut Income Tax down to 16p not snake oil by the same logic?
Liz is advocating the right thing to do, that's not snake oil.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
I have the same feeling. But part of me thinks I’m just evidently now totally out of touch with core Tory ideology. Quite clearly the status quo isn’t working
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
As it happens you’ve been consistent on the lab leak from the start and you are almost certainly right, so kudos, if that’s what you want. But I go by the Swiss cheese model for accident prevention. There is never just one failure that leads to disaster.
And I think this calamity is so bad it merits capital punishment. On that we must politely disagree
The economic case must be much stronger with current prices, and the energy security case has always been undeniable.
I am not going to catastrophise about food - I am an optimist. However, I think the Ukraine war has thrown both food and energy security into the limelight. And I agree with Truss that in Britain, a field of food is a better used field than a field of solar panels. In the Sahara dessert, I'd disagree.
It’s quite plausible to make the chain from funding gain of function research to the deaths of millions, and quite possibly this is science that should not be done. But at most any offence would be accidental, wouldn’t it? They did not set out to kill people deliberately.
Also a serious amount of work done and money spent in landscaping the old pits.
At one place it said 200k tonnes of spoil removed, 400k tonnes of top soil put down and 150k trees planted.
And that's been done every few miles in the old mining areas.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
We would do this for any other disaster where human negligence and/or wrongdoing is an issue. This is the greatest disaster in a century
Just had a sunset swim in the sea.
It wasn't warm. It needed a bit of steeling to get in, but fun once you're in; the golden light sparkling off the water, the swell lifting you up. And not so cold you need a wetsuit, and not so cold it chases you out. And still pleasantly warm once you're out.
https://twitter.com/BasitMahmood91/status/1557653724566364161/photo/1
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-end-of-the-world-with-josh-clark/id1437682381
The whole series is worth a listen - but that one specifically talks about gain-of-function etc.
They knew they were going down, and the consequences of that, and didn't want the rest of the world to escape it because geopower politics.
“You say that but do you expect anyone involved at Grenfell to serve time?”
What the holy fuck has Grenfell got to do with the origins of Covid?
It’s like comparing World War 2 with a coach crash
This has been a deliberate policy of government since 1945. And before.
Betfair next prime minister
1.12 Liz Truss 89%
9.6 Rishi Sunak 10%
Next Conservative leader
1.11 Liz Truss 90%
9.4 Rishi Sunak 11%
Who is she running against, and what is the demographic profile of the Tory membership?
Who was Boris Johnson playing to when he put it about that he might reintroduce imperial measures for the monarch's "platinum jubilee"?
The curious thing is that this is a political party and much of its membership don't care a sh*t (at the present moment) who wins the next general election. Nor do they care a sh*t how skilled Truss might or might not turn out to be at doing the job of PM.
They don't give a sh*t about the country either, but that's hardly news.
A more reasoned analysis might be the forced sequestration of all the financial assets of the entire independent school sector and their re-allocation to the state sector.
Actually, that's not really any better, is it?
I want every pupil in this country to have the kind of education that I had, small class sizes with thoughtful teachers who had the opportunity and willingness to help educate and improve their pupils.
36% of “agricultural land” is arable (crops)
So around 25% of the country has the potential to have crops on it. Not 70%.
Of course the Chinese government is evil, and yes what they did is a crime for the ages. It will be harder to bring them to account however
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/31/vladimir-putin-eton-boys-private-audience-kremlin
In the 80s, private schools gave a very good education for a comparable spend to that in the state sector. And they were patronised by the middle classes - my friends' parents were university lecturers, salesmen, town planners... Nowadays, however, they spaff money up the wall on all sorts of unnecessary shit, thereby pricing all but the super-rich out.
There is a massive gap in the market for mid-range private education.
https://twitter.com/GeoffYoung4KY
The Dem candidate for the Kentucky sixth district.
Never mentions the floods which are afflicting the area but continually rants about Ukro-Nazis, Israel and War Criminal Joe Biden.
It’s obvious that the panels will reduce the light hitting the field, but how much? And does that automatically preclude use for livestock?
It has been interesting to be involved with a couple of Free Schools as well.
In an article for The Times the former chancellor said he was prepared to find up to £10 billion to soften the impact of this October’s price rise on top of the support announced by the government in May.
Every household would benefit from a £200 reduction in their bills by abolishing VAT on energy, in a challenge to Truss, who has said only that she would consider the measure
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunaks-plan-set-to-cancel-out-energy-price-rises-kg2fm5vch
I bet the farmers involved have a better idea than I do, and I'm pretty confident that I have a better idea than Liz Truss.
Is it just the Department of Education? Somehow, I doubt it. Attitudes to education have changed, attitudes to the role of teachers and teaching have changed.
Symptomatic, I'd argue, of wider socio-cultural changes. My mother always claimed the beginning of the end of civilisation was when they did away with park keepers - there's a point there somewhere about how modernity and technology became the modus vivendi rather than a modus operandi.
I prefer to think of it in simpler if not simplistic terms which unfortunately characterises much of our debate on here currently - "we know the cost of everything, and the value of nothing".
I doubt the same possibility will happen for Dizzy.
And, sorry, but your relentless refusal to engage first hand with the actual morality of an action vs whether it has got past the morality-of-action committee stage, brings out the patronising, rude areshole in me. I have no doubt the fault is all on my side.
It would be a good idea if people could provide easy advice on how to reduce your bill.
I had a pretty good grasp of what photosynthesis means by the age of, what, eight?
Similarly, in Bristol for every Badminton there is a Redland.
One thought that does occur to me though is how private schools will cope with the vast increases in fuel bills that are about to come their way. Particularly mid-range ones, usually limited companies and so not covered by the cap, whose parents will struggle most to pay the bills.
Could see quite a few going the way of Ockbrook and Abbot's Bromley.
If there is only one outcome from Covid, banning gain of function research would be a good one.
It’s really good
I hope I am wrong.
However, we can come to tentatitive conclusions on our own governments' reactions to COVID. And I have read enough of Deborah Birx's "Silent Invasion" to conclude that Trump's blunders may have cost tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of American lives. And not just American lives, since it spread from the United States to, for example, Mexico.
(Whether Trump might deserve the death penalty for his COVID failures, perhaps "pour encourager les autres", is a question I will leave to others.)
You'd expect that on average it would reduce grass growth, but it would be interesting to know by how much.
Bread. In a salad. The dirty bastards!