Reading local election results since Johnson resigned, there has been a slight pick up and a stiffening of the Conservative vote. Lib Dems appear to have peaked and starting to slip.
Yes, i agree. Colchester recently and Spelthorne last night more solid whereas earlier July and before LDs and to a much lesser extent Labour were running rings. Pollimg suggests LDs have returned to a level base at 11 to 13% nationally. Still there is the Doddington in Worcestershire count today, they might surprise on the upside there, it was uncontested in 2019 so the current underlying position a bit more unclear
I am developing a deep hatred of the Met Office and BBC Weather apps. They continuously forecast rain in a few days time, get me really excited, then as the forecast wet days get closer the symbol changes to bright sunshine. Why do they do this? It’s cruel.
Yesterday evening, BBC Weather was forecasting at least three rainy days in the next fortnight for Sidmouth. This morning, we’re back to bone dry sunshine for as far as the eye can see. What has changed in the last 12 hours?
It feels like it is never going to rain again. What if this is it? The start of a new, much drier, status quo? One day there was no beginning of the Ice Age, the next day there was. Why not the same now with permanent drought? One thing is sure. If it’s happening, we’re done for.
Bad sleep last night!
One would have a lot more respect for weather forecasters if their daily reports mentioned how well they did yesterday. They are like tipsters who don't publish their results.
If you do some digging around you will find their accuracy is about 80/85% which sounds ok until you realise that if you or I guessed the weather daily using common sense and the windows in our house we'd probably be right about 70/75% of the time.
Is the extra ten percent or so worth all the expense and science that goes into forecasting? For some, yes, and it's a difficult area well worth investigating, but some honesty from the forecasters is long overdue.
That is both sort of true and really unfair.
It's sort of true because a persistence forecast - the weather tomorrow will be the same as the weather today - is mathematically surprisingly accurate, and mathematically the models only surpassed such a forecast embarrassingly recently.
It's really unfair because it's the changes in the weather that are most consequential, and the models are now able to forecast, with amazing accuracy, the impact of storms before they are even a ripple in the jet stream, or record-breaking heatwaves a week in advance.
This is of huge benefit to society, even if it only looks like a small mathematical advantage over a persistence forecast.
Why do I know this? Because of publicly available information from the Met Office. Bit unfair to call them dishonest.
Every major energy trader I've worked with / for has hired meteorological experts. Now maybe it's just a Red Queen or arms race situation, to avoid missing out, but it seems to be worth it to investors.
It is common to a lot of British thinking that resilience is inefficiency and that assets should be sweated to the maximum at all times. Indeed that is a large part of the NHS's problems. The system gets logjammed very easily by getting overwhelmed in one area, meaning other areas cannot function. Surgeons sitting idle because medical emergency patients are occupying their wards for example, as insufficient medical bedbase.
18 November 2015 – UK becomes first major country to announce coal phase-out
UK Energy Secretary Amber Rudd announced that the UK would close all its coal-fired power plants by 2025, with proposals to replace coal power generation with gas and nuclear plants. The announcement came less than two weeks before the start of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which negotiated the Paris Agreement.
LOL
Gas is probably the cleanest fossil fuel there is.
To be honest, I don't blame them for that - as a 15-20 year fix. I do blame them for killing all gas storage, and can-kicking on new nuclear, and assuming the gas market would always remain JIT, cheap and liquid.
Yes, the UK has got no economic resilience, which for an island nation seems a bit suicidal. Unfortunately when the healthcare service becomes a national religion governments of any stripe will cut costs to the bone elsewhere to protect the NHS and that means cutting away at economic resilience which requires state subsidies. Gas storage, energy development subsidies and even simple stuff like building more reservoirs requires state funding. It's a very easy thing to cut as well because it's £8-10bn per year for all of that which no one really notices anyway until it's too late.
To win over the Mail Truss has said she will scrap Sunak's NI rise. She will stick to her low tax, economically Thatcherite agenda by not putting a windfall tax on the energy companies and pushing tax cuts to keep bills down rather than the subsidies Sunak prefers.
Expect a Truss government to be the most economically rightwing and Thatcherite government we have had since Thatcher herself. A government committed to low tax and privatisation not nationalisation
I thought that you might come round to Truss!
Borrowing to fund tax cuts is not Thatcherite though. Thatcher is a blank canvas for people to project their right wing fantasies on, but she initially put up taxes (VAT from 8% to 15% for example) to squeeze inflation before tax cuts followed.
She also had two windfalls not available to Truss in North Sea Oil and Privatisation, and far lower pensions and health costs.
Cutting pensions and the NHS is unlikely to be a vote winner with the Tory voting demographic.
What would be the financial rewards of selling NHS hospitals to Cedar's Sinai Healthcare? There has to be a big income potential selling the infrastructure and management function to US privateers.
I understand state schools are not available to sell anymore as they have pretty much all been privatised for free to privately owned 50 plus school academy groups.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Truss must be really confident her lead is true and unassailable to defend energy company profits at this point in time.
I mean it's when they have record or near record profits at such a time that irritates people, not merely that they profit, since it looks like more then just passing on the costs of rises.
Yes, but there's also a long-game here.
BP and Shell are spearheading our ambitions for carbon capture, blue and green hydrogen, energy storage, and renewables, and have the engineering skills and financial depth to pull it off, so a knee-jerk response will have consequences.
But they will do those things anyway. We are talking about long term investment strategies which will generate them hundreds of billions in profits. They are hardly going to scrap all of that because of a one-off winter where they had to take a hit due to insane market conditions.
They need to have money to invest in new technologies initially, and not defer can-kick because all their profits have been kyboshed. They are also largely British based companies, and we want that tech/leadership her and not somewhere else.
This is absurdly complacent. Be careful what you wish for.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
I have quite a lot of sympathy with the poor lady. Being a house in which she brought up the children, lived mostly happily with her husband for many years and wants to leave something to her grandchildren. And worse, probably has no one with whom she can discuss things sensibly!
One can have sympathy, however in the end practicality and realism matter. We need houses to be houses, rather than a way of getting wealth.
If it's a large house she's perhaps better to downsize to something more practical now, and give lifetime gifts.
I had a dad who refused to leave the listed house they lived in; mum couldn't wait to get out of the cold, expensive house when he died.
Let's setup a state energy company which people on low incomes and those struggling to afford bills, can switch to over the winter and next few months.
We can fund it using a tax on the large energy companies.
Many local authorities tried that over the past few years - it didn't work out well for them....
Truss must be really confident her lead is true and unassailable to defend energy company profits at this point in time.
I mean it's when they have record or near record profits at such a time that irritates people, not merely that they profit, since it looks like more then just passing on the costs of rises.
Yes, but there's also a long-game here.
BP and Shell are spearheading our ambitions for carbon capture, blue and green hydrogen, energy storage, and renewables, and have the engineering skills and financial depth to pull it off, so a knee-jerk response will have consequences.
Talking of carbon capture, the government has published the shortlist of projects for potential funding...
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
Much, much worse.
Regulations against polluting the rivers etc were routinely flouted in the past and since it was all state owned, nothing much was done about it, since the vested interests just got in the way of fixing anything.
Post-privatisation pollution led to fines which cut profits, so the profit motive ensured firms worked to preventing pollution etc to reduce the cost of fines.
The quality of our rivers etc dramatically improved post-privatisation.
By the way Dr John Campbell, not normally one to get swept up by hyperbole, has said he has stopped consuming fresh fruit and milk. Reason being that he’s not confident we will get warning of nuclear fallout from Zaporizhzhia until after the fact.
IMV he's being silly, and will cause more harm (in terms of dietary issues) than it would cause.
When Chernobyl went boom on 26th April 1986. The west first knew about it in the 28th April, via radioactive particles on nuclear workers' clothes in Sweden. The world's attention was not focussed on Chernobyl at the time, and it is focussed on Ukraine and the reactors. Monitoring tech has also improved.
I have no doubt that if there was a radioactive release from any of their reactors, it would be detected rapidly.
Then there's the question of how long it takes to get into the foodchain. Milk might be the quickest: cows eat contaminated grass, and it gets into the milk. Perhaps two to three days - but levels would probably be very low. As for meat; the animal needs to eat the food, be slaughtered, and the meat consumed. Weeks or months. As for fruit; again, months.
This sort of scaremongering will cause more harm than good.
It depends on the vagaries of the plume, rainfall, etc - some areas can get much more concentrated fallout than others. But those are, or at least should be, monitored.
They are also well modelled now. I'd expect that the Met Office have been quietly producing forecasts of where the fallout would go from each of the nuclear power stations in Ukraine since the start of the war. This modelling capacity was developed as a direct result of the Chernobyl disaster.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
Just because she said "here in Derbyshire" it doesn't necessarily mean the "here" referred to Derbyshire. "Here" could be the UK, "in Derbyshire" narrowing it down
She probably did forget where she was, but those three words don't prove it.
Whether or not there is a comma to be understood, it's still very ambiguous, and if this were Mr Biden the PB conservatives would be all over him.
"Truss said something ambiguous that might have been a mistake" is rather weak sauce.
.
Politicians get very uppity about people 'misrepresenting' them even when they are directly quoted, calling it slurs even, Truss has done so in effect, so they get less sympathy from me about people making use of potential errors of ambiguity.
Well sure, but this isn't a policy "misunderstanding"
I really don't see how "You might have claimed to be in Derbyshire" is in any way an effective attack on her.
No one can prove that she actually made a mistake. And even if she did, so what?
If you want to defend Liz Truss by claiming an implied comma, then check on Youtube what she actually said and report back. Personally, I can't be bothered since I assume it was an inconsequential slip most likely caused by remembering what her notes from a recent or imminent visit to Derbyshire, but it is you who have gone into bat for her.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
Much, much worse.
Regulations against polluting the rivers etc were routinely flouted in the past and since it was all state owned, nothing much was done about it, since the vested interests just got in the way of fixing anything.
Post-privatisation pollution led to fines which cut profits, so the profit motive ensured firms worked to preventing pollution etc to reduce the cost of fines.
The quality of our rivers etc dramatically improved post-privatisation.
ROFL the quality of our rivers increased because New Labour passed a whole load of laws that gave out massive fines
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
You can do right the but unpopular thing (that was the justification given for the NI rise). I believe the public can accept that, they will simply moan at implementation but accept it persisting, as do the opposition on many things. In that situation you will benefit or at least not be harmed.
But people need to accept, in the end, either it is working or there was no choice. The choices Truss will make are very difficult, but she has been pretty clear about it being her choice, not necessity, as her being willing to go against orthodoxy has been talked up as her strength.
So for her doing the unpopular but right thing needs to work, and be seen to work. And there's not much time for that, as in the short to medium term things will feel crap for many.
To win over the Mail Truss has said she will scrap Sunak's NI rise. She will stick to her low tax, economically Thatcherite agenda by not putting a windfall tax on the energy companies and pushing tax cuts to keep bills down rather than the subsidies Sunak prefers.
Expect a Truss government to be the most economically rightwing and Thatcherite government we have had since Thatcher herself. A government committed to low tax and privatisation not nationalisation
I thought that you might come round to Truss!
Borrowing to fund tax cuts is not Thatcherite though. Thatcher is a blank canvas for people to project their right wing fantasies on, but she initially put up taxes (VAT from 8% to 15% for example) to squeeze inflation before tax cuts followed.
She also had two windfalls not available to Truss in North Sea Oil and Privatisation, and far lower pensions and health costs.
Cutting pensions and the NHS is unlikely to be a vote winner with the Tory voting demographic.
The income from NS oil was coming in at the rate of a brand new hospital a day at its peak. Not to mention privatisations. Proponents of a new Age of Thatcherism need to explain where a similar revenue stream is to be found.
I'm very happy to have privatisation with a strong state that regulates these twits properly but we have the Tories who prefer to give money to the French Government to run our services.
What could be less patriotic and more anti-British than that? We're supposedly so pro Britain but not to the degree we think we are capable of running anything ourselves. It is pathetic.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
To win over the Mail Truss has said she will scrap Sunak's NI rise. She will stick to her low tax, economically Thatcherite agenda by not putting a windfall tax on the energy companies and pushing tax cuts to keep bills down rather than the subsidies Sunak prefers.
Expect a Truss government to be the most economically rightwing and Thatcherite government we have had since Thatcher herself. A government committed to low tax and privatisation not nationalisation
None of this is what the Red Wall wants. And I am not sure it is what the Blue Wall now wants either.
I simply cannot see how she wins a majority on this platform.
It's utterly insane unless she plans to cut things immediately (she can't changing NI rates during a tax year is such a mare it's only been done once before) and calls an election.
Because what any politician will know is that voters are unappreciative - and will quickly forget the pressies if things go bad.
Indeed. It looks like a strong bet that 2022/23 at the least is going to feel like shit for a lot of people. How can she combat that feeling?
If she seeks to distract from it with EU squabbles and culture stuff we'll know she cannot.
Don't you mean When
These issues aren't fixable so all there is left is distraction
Truss must be really confident her lead is true and unassailable to defend energy company profits at this point in time.
I mean it's when they have record or near record profits at such a time that irritates people, not merely that they profit, since it looks like more then just passing on the costs of rises.
Yes, but there's also a long-game here.
BP and Shell are spearheading our ambitions for carbon capture, blue and green hydrogen, energy storage, and renewables, and have the engineering skills and financial depth to pull it off, so a knee-jerk response will have consequences.
But they will do those things anyway. We are talking about long term investment strategies which will generate them hundreds of billions in profits. They are hardly going to scrap all of that because of a one-off winter where they had to take a hit due to insane market conditions.
They need to have money to invest in new technologies initially, and not defer can-kick because all their profits have been kyboshed. They are also largely British based companies, and we want that tech/leadership her and not somewhere else.
This is absurdly complacent. Be careful what you wish for.
Who said anything about all of their profits being taken? Again, the reality is that billions of pounds of energy bills will be generated collectively which will not be paid. So it is a question of who covers this loss. It will have to be a collective effort of the industry - big producers and small distributors - backed by the government.
I don't see how this reality stops BP from investing long term in Hydrogen.
I am developing a deep hatred of the Met Office and BBC Weather apps. They continuously forecast rain in a few days time, get me really excited, then as the forecast wet days get closer the symbol changes to bright sunshine. Why do they do this? It’s cruel.
Yesterday evening, BBC Weather was forecasting at least three rainy days in the next fortnight for Sidmouth. This morning, we’re back to bone dry sunshine for as far as the eye can see. What has changed in the last 12 hours?
It feels like it is never going to rain again. What if this is it? The start of a new, much drier, status quo? One day there was no beginning of the Ice Age, the next day there was. Why not the same now with permanent drought? One thing is sure. If it’s happening, we’re done for.
Bad sleep last night!
One would have a lot more respect for weather forecasters if their daily reports mentioned how well they did yesterday. They are like tipsters who don't publish their results.
If you do some digging around you will find their accuracy is about 80/85% which sounds ok until you realise that if you or I guessed the weather daily using common sense and the windows in our house we'd probably be right about 70/75% of the time.
Is the extra ten percent or so worth all the expense and science that goes into forecasting? For some, yes, and it's a difficult area well worth investigating, but some honesty from the forecasters is long overdue.
That is both sort of true and really unfair.
It's sort of true because a persistence forecast - the weather tomorrow will be the same as the weather today - is mathematically surprisingly accurate, and mathematically the models only surpassed such a forecast embarrassingly recently.
It's really unfair because it's the changes in the weather that are most consequential, and the models are now able to forecast, with amazing accuracy, the impact of storms before they are even a ripple in the jet stream, or record-breaking heatwaves a week in advance.
This is of huge benefit to society, even if it only looks like a small mathematical advantage over a persistence forecast.
Why do I know this? Because of publicly available information from the Met Office. Bit unfair to call them dishonest.
Every major energy trader I've worked with / for has hired meteorological experts. Now maybe it's just a Red Queen or arms race situation, to avoid missing out, but it seems to be worth it to investors.
Whinging about weather forecasts is a national pastime. It drove poor Admiral Fitzroy to suicide.
I am developing a deep hatred of the Met Office and BBC Weather apps. They continuously forecast rain in a few days time, get me really excited, then as the forecast wet days get closer the symbol changes to bright sunshine. Why do they do this? It’s cruel.
Yesterday evening, BBC Weather was forecasting at least three rainy days in the next fortnight for Sidmouth. This morning, we’re back to bone dry sunshine for as far as the eye can see. What has changed in the last 12 hours?
It feels like it is never going to rain again. What if this is it? The start of a new, much drier, status quo? One day there was no beginning of the Ice Age, the next day there was. Why not the same now with permanent drought? One thing is sure. If it’s happening, we’re done for.
Bad sleep last night!
One would have a lot more respect for weather forecasters if their daily reports mentioned how well they did yesterday. They are like tipsters who don't publish their results.
If you do some digging around you will find their accuracy is about 80/85% which sounds ok until you realise that if you or I guessed the weather daily using common sense and the windows in our house we'd probably be right about 70/75% of the time.
Is the extra ten percent or so worth all the expense and science that goes into forecasting? For some, yes, and it's a difficult area well worth investigating, but some honesty from the forecasters is long overdue.
I totally agree - but isn't it an extra 10 percentage points, not an extra 10%? I am not in a good mood!
Yes, and I would pull up another punter for making a similar mistake but I was in sloppy mode. The point was simply that all the expense and paraphernalia of professional forecasting makes surprisingly little difference, although in some areas that difference is crucial and vital.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
That is quite difficult though. My dad is 96. Still lives alone in his house. Admittedly just a small semi detached, so fuel costs not an issue, but he shouldn't be there. Can't get him to move out. He should have been in sheltered housing a decade ago. Stubborn doesn't cover it. Doesn't eat properly, can't wash properly, stairs to negotiate. Won't move.
Yes I hear you. But the reality is that @Foxy's patient lives in a big house and was complaining about her bills.
If she doesn't want to move then do an equity release job done.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
Much, much worse.
Regulations against polluting the rivers etc were routinely flouted in the past and since it was all state owned, nothing much was done about it, since the vested interests just got in the way of fixing anything.
Post-privatisation pollution led to fines which cut profits, so the profit motive ensured firms worked to preventing pollution etc to reduce the cost of fines.
The quality of our rivers etc dramatically improved post-privatisation.
ROFL the quality of our rivers increased because New Labour passed a whole load of laws that gave out massive fines
Fines existed post-privatisation pre-New Labour and the quality of the rivers was already improving, New Labour built upon the framework that was already working - as things improve from a poor baseline it makes sense to raise expectations which is what New Labour did. Either way though fines only really work as a motivator in a privatised industry.
In a state owned industry where there's no profit motive and all profit or loss is going to the Exchequer anyway, then a "fine" is meaningless.
So even if you want to claim credit for New Labour, New Labour's policy was only viable because of privatisation. Privatisation and fines for pollution worked and has done a great job. 👍
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
That is quite difficult though. My dad is 96. Still lives alone in his house. Admittedly just a small semi detached, so fuel costs not an issue, but he shouldn't be there. Can't get him to move out. He should have been in sheltered housing a decade ago. Stubborn doesn't cover it. Doesn't eat properly, can't wash properly, stairs to negotiate. Won't move.
My parents in their eighties moved recently to a retirement village but are already enjoying it more than their bigger home of many decades. And if their health deteriorates at any point it will be so much more practical for them. They were hesitant of the move even though it all made sense logically.
18 November 2015 – UK becomes first major country to announce coal phase-out
UK Energy Secretary Amber Rudd announced that the UK would close all its coal-fired power plants by 2025, with proposals to replace coal power generation with gas and nuclear plants. The announcement came less than two weeks before the start of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which negotiated the Paris Agreement.
LOL
Gas is probably the cleanest fossil fuel there is.
To be honest, I don't blame them for that - as a 15-20 year fix. I do blame them for killing all gas storage, and can-kicking on new nuclear, and assuming the gas market would always remain JIT, cheap and liquid.
Yes, the UK has got no economic resilience, which for an island nation seems a bit suicidal. Unfortunately when the healthcare service becomes a national religion governments of any stripe will cut costs to the bone elsewhere to protect the NHS and that means cutting away at economic resilience which requires state subsidies. Gas storage, energy development subsidies and even simple stuff like building more reservoirs requires state funding. It's a very easy thing to cut as well because it's £8-10bn per year for all of that which no one really notices anyway until it's too late.
True but its not just the NHS.
Its house prices and consumer spending which have to be kept increasing with cuts elsewhere if necessary.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
Much, much worse.
Regulations against polluting the rivers etc were routinely flouted in the past and since it was all state owned, nothing much was done about it, since the vested interests just got in the way of fixing anything.
Post-privatisation pollution led to fines which cut profits, so the profit motive ensured firms worked to preventing pollution etc to reduce the cost of fines.
The quality of our rivers etc dramatically improved post-privatisation.
ROFL the quality of our rivers increased because New Labour passed a whole load of laws that gave out massive fines
Fines existed post-privatisation pre-New Labour and the quality of the rivers was already improving, New Labour built upon the framework that was already working - as things improve from a poor baseline it makes sense to raise expectations which is what New Labour did. Either way though fines only really work as a motivator in a privatised industry.
In a state owned industry where there's no profit motive and all profit or loss is going to the Exchequer anyway, then a "fine" is meaningless.
So even if you want to claim credit for New Labour, New Labour's policy was only viable because of privatisation. Privatisation and fines for pollution worked and has done a great job. 👍
What a load of utter nonsense. The idea only a private company can respond to fines is so silly I laughed reading it.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
I have quite a lot of sympathy with the poor lady. Being a house in which she brought up the children, lived mostly happily with her husband for many years and wants to leave something to her grandchildren. And worse, probably has no one with whom she can discuss things sensibly!
She cannot simply move because that will mean leaving behind the neighbours on whom she is already dependent. Equity release sounds promising but the fact she is discussing her plight in an outpatients clinic suggests a lack of financial sophistication. Dunno.
People of her, and my, generation have an often (IMHO) unwarranted trust in medical practitioners. It may be that the poor lady has got to the end of her tether, too. There is a belief too that equity release is the latest fraud to be wished upon the older generation!
Further there may be a sudden catastrophic deterioration in one circumstances, as has happened to me, which forces one to face a situation which one did not really expect.
Mr. Sandpit, a problem with the one room heating approach is that if temperatures fall below zero it's essential to avoid burst pipes.
How mild the winter is will be critical this year.
I think my patient was most depressed about the bleakness of her future, which is fairly short, but now going to be devoid of even simple pleasures like getting a newspaper delivered.
I think people in her situation would be well -advised to move in with someone else, or have someone else move in with them.
It will directly help the problem at hand - sharing the burden of the heating costs - and also provide some company to share what will still be a tough winter. I know the bits of Covid I didn't with my in-laws were easier to tolerate because there were more people to exchange gallows humour with.
I know this can be easier said then done, but efforts in this direction should be made.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
Don't be horrible. Too large for one don't mean huge, most people at 80 simply don't have it in them to move house of their own volition, and the helpful neighbours are a knockdown argument. You can't move house and build a brand new support group just like that.
80 old? god help you and me. 80 yr olds these days fly around and are super active. Not all, obvs, but for those then there is help up to and including LPA.
Fine she wants to stay rattling around in her house no problem. Equity release frees up cash, lets her stay there and gives her peace of mind.
We just can't live with people in large houses saying woe is me. Who would you have help her? The family squished into a 2-bed council house? Or someone who is asset rich?
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
Much, much worse.
Regulations against polluting the rivers etc were routinely flouted in the past and since it was all state owned, nothing much was done about it, since the vested interests just got in the way of fixing anything.
Post-privatisation pollution led to fines which cut profits, so the profit motive ensured firms worked to preventing pollution etc to reduce the cost of fines.
The quality of our rivers etc dramatically improved post-privatisation.
ROFL the quality of our rivers increased because New Labour passed a whole load of laws that gave out massive fines
Fines existed post-privatisation pre-New Labour and the quality of the rivers was already improving, New Labour built upon the framework that was already working - as things improve from a poor baseline it makes sense to raise expectations which is what New Labour did. Either way though fines only really work as a motivator in a privatised industry.
In a state owned industry where there's no profit motive and all profit or loss is going to the Exchequer anyway, then a "fine" is meaningless.
So even if you want to claim credit for New Labour, New Labour's policy was only viable because of privatisation. Privatisation and fines for pollution worked and has done a great job. 👍
What a load of utter nonsense. The idea only a private company can respond to fines is so silly I laughed reading it.
The proof is in the pudding. The nationalised water pre-privatisation flouted the rules and got away with it.
Privatised water fixed the problem and did a measurably better job.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
Sympathetic or not, there will be many thousands in her situation, without the practical, emotional or financial wherewithal to deal with it.
The coming energy crunch is going to create massive upheavals in the lives of millions, and government will be judged on how they deal (or don't) with it. The way you feel about their plight isn't even a secondary consideration, in terms of the politics.
That is undoubtedly true and it is her good luck that she in particular will be able to weather the storm better than many others.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
That is quite difficult though. My dad is 96. Still lives alone in his house. Admittedly just a small semi detached, so fuel costs not an issue, but he shouldn't be there. Can't get him to move out. He should have been in sheltered housing a decade ago. Stubborn doesn't cover it. Doesn't eat properly, can't wash properly, stairs to negotiate. Won't move.
My parents in their eighties moved recently to a retirement village but are already enjoying it more than their bigger home of many decades. And if their health deteriorates at any point it will be so much more practical for them. They were hesitant of the move even though it all made sense logically.
My parents are desperately waiting for a flat to come up in the retirement village they wish to move to.
Even the developer says if they had known how popular it was going to be they should have made it twice the size.
Just because she said "here in Derbyshire" it doesn't necessarily mean the "here" referred to Derbyshire. "Here" could be the UK, "in Derbyshire" narrowing it down
She probably did forget where she was, but those three words don't prove it.
Whether or not there is a comma to be understood, it's still very ambiguous, and if this were Mr Biden the PB conservatives would be all over him.
"Truss said something ambiguous that might have been a mistake" is rather weak sauce.
.
Politicians get very uppity about people 'misrepresenting' them even when they are directly quoted, calling it slurs even, Truss has done so in effect, so they get less sympathy from me about people making use of potential errors of ambiguity.
Well sure, but this isn't a policy "misunderstanding"
I really don't see how "You might have claimed to be in Derbyshire" is in any way an effective attack on her.
No one can prove that she actually made a mistake. And even if she did, so what?
If you want to defend Liz Truss by claiming an implied comma, then check on Youtube what she actually said and report back. Personally, I can't be bothered since I assume it was an inconsequential slip most likely caused by remembering what her notes from a recent or imminent visit to Derbyshire, but it is you who have gone into bat for her.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
SNCF EDF Swiss Rail German rail All other water companies in the world including Scotland French post German post Italian post Swiss post
You are an ideological nut job. Some things are best privatised and others not, the fact you cling to this just shows how out of touch you are.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
And we would still have independent private operators providing competition! As they do in France, Germany etc
One problem with the price setting mechanism for energy in this country is that the most expensive generation method (Currently gas) forms the price for the whole of the market. So even if we got down to say 5% gas use over the year (OK we won't any time soon but hey ho) the price would still be the same even though the generation cost is lower. That doesn't feel right to me, and excludes the benefit of adding additional excellent value wind & solar from the consumer ?
Do I have that right ?
Broadly speaking I think you have that right, although because wind is an intermittent source it doesn't exactly work that way, as there will be times with high wind energy production that gas production will fall to zero even if we still use 5% gas on average, and at those times the price of electricity will fall very low.
The price differences between when gas is setting the market price and when it isn't are then useful in providing an incentive and income stream for grid scale storage.
In a state owned industry where there's no profit motive and all profit or loss is going to the Exchequer anyway, then a "fine" is meaningless.
I'm not sure that's true, I think in this day and age the public, media and government would be infuriated at fines being levied at a state owned industry.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
And we would still have independent private operators providing competition! As they do in France, Germany etc
Yes if the French Government still wants to run a railway company they can have their subsidies removed and can run purely for profit. I am very happy with that.
If we got rid of all subsidies which is Bart wants to go, we'd have no railways left. And then the whole argument for privatisation disappears. If something cannot exist on its own merits you either say it's for the public good in which case profit is irrelevant or you get rid of it. I prefer the latter but I am human
One benefit of privatisation is that companies can actually get capital rather than compete against the NHS or multi-billion pound perpetual railway schemes, instead of some British Rail entity that looks like it is being depreciated and wound down over time.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
Don't be horrible. Too large for one don't mean huge, most people at 80 simply don't have it in them to move house of their own volition, and the helpful neighbours are a knockdown argument. You can't move house and build a brand new support group just like that.
80 old? god help you and me. 80 yr olds these days fly around and are super active. Not all, obvs, but for those then there is help up to and including LPA.
Fine she wants to stay rattling around in her house no problem. Equity release frees up cash, lets her stay there and gives her peace of mind.
We just can't live with people in large houses saying woe is me. Who would you have help her? The family squished into a 2-bed council house? Or someone who is asset rich?
Better late than never. The North Sea Rough gas storage is planned to reopen in the Autumn. Phased return to storage: 30 billion cubic feet in 2022/3; 60 bcf 2023/4; 200 bcf ultimate potential Investments: £150 million in 2023; £2 billion over the long term (subsequently storing hydrogen) Government support: No state funding required; "regulatory support model to underpin infrastructure investment'' - i.e. guarantees on price from govt.
Has to be said, Labour not proposing to nationalise the water industry by inflicting losses via the regulator and making them fail is a big error. Everyone hates them, they don't do a good job and water is one specific area where privatisation has clearly failed. We're an island nation that is facing water shortages, it's truly laughable.
How strange, the NI railways are publicly owned. They must be a disaster - oh wait, they are not.
Perhaps it was deliberate under-investment and flogging off assets on the cheap that did it for the railways we invented.
You see other countries invest, we cut and sell things to their governments for cheap. They must think we're morons
Then the Chancellor of the Exchequer each month writes subsidy cheques to foreign presidents and prime ministers.
I bet Macron and the Italians love it. Billions of pounds flowing into their country to pay for new railway lines, paid for by the British taxpayer. How lovely
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
SNCF EDF Swiss Rail German rail All other water companies in the world including Scotland French post German post Italian post Swiss post
You are an ideological nut job. Some things are best privatised and others not, the fact you cling to this just shows how out of touch you are.
public and private rail are both bad in this country - network rail (public ) is rubbish (how many signal failures) and so are the trains . So why not try consumer cooperatives or mutuals to run them - better customer service (as they are the owners ) and no profit taking out of needed investment
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
That is quite difficult though. My dad is 96. Still lives alone in his house. Admittedly just a small semi detached, so fuel costs not an issue, but he shouldn't be there. Can't get him to move out. He should have been in sheltered housing a decade ago. Stubborn doesn't cover it. Doesn't eat properly, can't wash properly, stairs to negotiate. Won't move.
My parents in their eighties moved recently to a retirement village but are already enjoying it more than their bigger home of many decades. And if their health deteriorates at any point it will be so much more practical for them. They were hesitant of the move even though it all made sense logically.
My parents are desperately waiting for a flat to come up in the retirement village they wish to move to.
Even the developer says if they had known how popular it was going to be they should have made it twice the size.
The husband of one of my wife's oldest friends has recently, and very suddenly, died.
Another of her friends who has visited the widow has reported to the 'gang' how supportive her neighbours in the retirement village are.
Has to be said, Labour not proposing to nationalise the water industry by inflicting losses via the regulator and making them fail is a big error. Everyone hates them, they don't do a good job and water is one specific area where privatisation has clearly failed. We're an island nation that is facing water shortages, it's truly laughable.
No it's all about efficiency because privatisation always works, just ask Bart and all the other countries that privatised their water supplies
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
You mention "xenophobia". So in the British system we accept that state-run railway companies are a Good Thing. We have companies owned by the French and Dutch and German and Italian governments. But we only allow the UK government to run things when the private contract fails.
I think barring people based on their nationality is xenophobia. In this case self-xenophobia. And not just the trains - how many foreign StateCo operators run our "privatised" buses?
StateCo works. Is literally the model we use for "privatised". I am not proposing that BritCo have a monopoly - that is not how these other governments do it. But barring BritCo from existing to allow FrenchCo / DutchCo free access is "not rational".
Yet you claim rationality whilst stating that StateCo's are a terrible idea and all fail, whilst extolling a private operator system where the majority are StateCos...
I am developing a deep hatred of the Met Office and BBC Weather apps. They continuously forecast rain in a few days time, get me really excited, then as the forecast wet days get closer the symbol changes to bright sunshine. Why do they do this? It’s cruel.
Yesterday evening, BBC Weather was forecasting at least three rainy days in the next fortnight for Sidmouth. This morning, we’re back to bone dry sunshine for as far as the eye can see. What has changed in the last 12 hours?
It feels like it is never going to rain again. What if this is it? The start of a new, much drier, status quo? One day there was no beginning of the Ice Age, the next day there was. Why not the same now with permanent drought? One thing is sure. If it’s happening, we’re done for.
Bad sleep last night!
One would have a lot more respect for weather forecasters if their daily reports mentioned how well they did yesterday. They are like tipsters who don't publish their results.
If you do some digging around you will find their accuracy is about 80/85% which sounds ok until you realise that if you or I guessed the weather daily using common sense and the windows in our house we'd probably be right about 70/75% of the time.
Is the extra ten percent or so worth all the expense and science that goes into forecasting? For some, yes, and it's a difficult area well worth investigating, but some honesty from the forecasters is long overdue.
That is both sort of true and really unfair.
It's sort of true because a persistence forecast - the weather tomorrow will be the same as the weather today - is mathematically surprisingly accurate, and mathematically the models only surpassed such a forecast embarrassingly recently.
It's really unfair because it's the changes in the weather that are most consequential, and the models are now able to forecast, with amazing accuracy, the impact of storms before they are even a ripple in the jet stream, or record-breaking heatwaves a week in advance.
This is of huge benefit to society, even if it only looks like a small mathematical advantage over a persistence forecast.
Why do I know this? Because of publicly available information from the Met Office. Bit unfair to call them dishonest.
I agree with most of this, but just want to qualify the last bit.
It's not so much dishonesty as a lack of accountability, something that irks me in many areas of life. Yes, I know you can find accuracy reports if you dig around and for the professionals that's fine, but the weather forecasts are a prominent feature of public life, even a form of entertainment at times. What I'm asking for is a simple easily understood score for how they did yesterday, prominently displayed. A percentage accuracy figure on screen, or mentioned as part of the radio forecast, would do fine.
We shouldn't have to search for it any more than we have to search for the racing results. It would assist their credibility if they did this, and it would placate those members of the public who took their kids to the beach on the basis of a bad forecast and it pissed down all day.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
SNCF EDF Swiss Rail German rail All other water companies in the world including Scotland French post German post Italian post Swiss post
You are an ideological nut job. Some things are best privatised and others not, the fact you cling to this just shows how out of touch you are.
Those firms you're quoting aren't nationalised industries, they're mostly legacy firms operating in competitive industries.
Most flagships nations have set up have been dismal failures, which is why most countries now have ceased to try to set up flagship firms anymore. The only reason states tend to do that now is because they have more money than sense and see a gap in the market, eg the Saudis going into Golf. Is that the situation you think the UK is in?
What can a nationalised UK firm do better than EDF? EDF are operating in a privatised industry, if they're the best then they're the best and if they're not then someone else can compete.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
Much, much worse.
Regulations against polluting the rivers etc were routinely flouted in the past and since it was all state owned, nothing much was done about it, since the vested interests just got in the way of fixing anything.
Post-privatisation pollution led to fines which cut profits, so the profit motive ensured firms worked to preventing pollution etc to reduce the cost of fines.
The quality of our rivers etc dramatically improved post-privatisation.
That is such an absolute crock...or rather river of shit!
This year alone the EA are fining water companies tens of thousands for breaching their exceedence limits for pumping raw, untreated sewage, i.e. shit into rivers and the sea.
The pumping stations can't cope so the effluent gates are opened and untreated shit is pumped out. Unbelievable on the back of COVID and in the light of the polio virus living happily in the sewerage system.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
You mention "xenophobia". So in the British system we accept that state-run railway companies are a Good Thing. We have companies owned by the French and Dutch and German and Italian governments. But we only allow the UK government to run things when the private contract fails.
I think barring people based on their nationality is xenophobia. In this case self-xenophobia. And not just the trains - how many foreign StateCo operators run our "privatised" buses?
StateCo works. Is literally the model we use for "privatised". I am not proposing that BritCo have a monopoly - that is not how these other governments do it. But barring BritCo from existing to allow FrenchCo / DutchCo free access is "not rational".
Yet you claim rationality whilst stating that StateCo's are a terrible idea and all fail, whilst extolling a private operator system where the majority are StateCos...
It's very simple.
Non-British nationalised company = good British nationalised company = bad
This is all about ideology, not common sense or actually running our railways properly.
Mr. Pioneers, self-xenophobia is an oxymoron as xeno- is from the Greek meaning a foreigner from another Greek city (barbaros being even worse: a non-Greek).
It's so weird, TfL is a publicly owned company operated independently, its job is to run trains and that is what it does. London has the best transport system in the country.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
That is quite difficult though. My dad is 96. Still lives alone in his house. Admittedly just a small semi detached, so fuel costs not an issue, but he shouldn't be there. Can't get him to move out. He should have been in sheltered housing a decade ago. Stubborn doesn't cover it. Doesn't eat properly, can't wash properly, stairs to negotiate. Won't move.
My parents in their eighties moved recently to a retirement village but are already enjoying it more than their bigger home of many decades. And if their health deteriorates at any point it will be so much more practical for them. They were hesitant of the move even though it all made sense logically.
My parents are desperately waiting for a flat to come up in the retirement village they wish to move to.
Even the developer says if they had known how popular it was going to be they should have made it twice the size.
Yes they are in demand, expensive and not that many of them. Fortunately my parents were extremely flexible on location which won't be true for most.
They should definitely be a bigger part of the housing mix going forward with our demographics. Reading the t&cs some of them were borderline exploitative on charging a percentage of asset value on future sales so think the government could look at capping those.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
Wfh, running fewer trains and running them more slowly seems sensible to me as a pretty quick win.
I was rather struck by Foxy’s widow story. It feels a lot like since Feb we’ve been in the phoney war stage in Western Europe. The public large are going to realise pretty soon that you can’t have a war waged against Europe by a non allied superpower without it touching our lives somehow. If a period of energy rationing is all we end up facing we’ll have got off lightly historically speaking.
But you are still championing the energy companies. What is your proposal to stop millions sliding into penury this winter? These bills aren't getting paid which leaves someone holding the baby...
I think that is the great unknown. Many people will be unable to pay, and will fall into arrears. How soon will they be cut off?
I was discussing this last night, you're looking at non payment of 3 months/£1200 arrears for the energy companies to apply to the courts for a warrant of entry to fit a prepayment meter.
Given how sclerotic the courts are at the moment, you could probably get away without paying your bills for about 6 to 8 months before a prepayment meter is fitted.
Those on prepayment meters are another story that isn’t being told. AIUI, it’s very easy to be cut off by default when the credit runs out.
Is it possible to legislate to prevent this from happening, or would it require replacing the meters themselves?
By law a prepayment meters has to provide you with a certain level of credit so that, if you run out in the middle of the night when nowhere is open for you to top-up your credit, you can still use a limited amount of energy. When I was on a prepayment meter a couple of decades ago, this credit was five pounds or so.
I would guess that, in principle, it would be possible to increase the amount of this credit, but I wouldn't know how the meters are programmed, and whether it could be done remotely.
Has to be said, Labour not proposing to nationalise the water industry by inflicting losses via the regulator and making them fail is a big error. Everyone hates them, they don't do a good job and water is one specific area where privatisation has clearly failed. We're an island nation that is facing water shortages, it's truly laughable.
And yet BR eulogises the likes of Thames Water and says how marvellous they are. Surely they can't simultaneously be awful (general perspective, regulator perspective, growing political issue) and wonderful (BR, shareholders)....?
I simply cannot see how she wins a majority on this platform.
I don't see how she makes it through the winter on this platform
Very sobering read from those notorious media lefties at... (Checks notes) Talk TV;
Some more reflections on our focus group for @TalkTV in Bury North. In all our recent discussions we've heard sobering stories about people's struggles with the cost of living. But what we heard from this group was a magnitude worse. (1/n)
But if Truss is elected next month, it's hard to see how the Conservatives get shot of her, absent a medical emergency. Changing PM mid-parliament for the third time in a row is already stretching the elastic of democracy to a dangerous degree. Raising and deposing a PM in a year with zero public input would surely be seen as taking the piss.
I don't know much about Tryl, other than he used to be Nicky Morgan's SPAD, but that certainly chimes with my thinking.
The reality is that the shocks to the economy this winter render the debate over Truss's tax cuts irrelevant for the time being. I'm not sure we can afford for the Treasury to be distracted by all of that this autumn. At the moment government is effectively AWOL as far as making serious preparations is concerned.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
SNCF EDF Swiss Rail German rail All other water companies in the world including Scotland French post German post Italian post Swiss post
You are an ideological nut job. Some things are best privatised and others not, the fact you cling to this just shows how out of touch you are.
Those firms you're quoting aren't nationalised industries, they're mostly legacy firms operating in competitive industries.
Most flagships nations have set up have been dismal failures, which is why most countries now have ceased to try to set up flagship firms anymore. The only reason states tend to do that now is because they have more money than sense and see a gap in the market, eg the Saudis going into Golf. Is that the situation you think the UK is in?
What can a nationalised UK firm do better than EDF? EDF are operating in a privatised industry, if they're the best then they're the best and if they're not then someone else can compete.
If they are majority state owned they are nationalised.
You mention EDF specifically, and competition. Why can't we commercialise BritPost to compete with EDF not just in our market but in theirs? You think its great that a French StateCo delivers post in the UK, but want to continue the bar in a British version doing the reverse.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
That is quite difficult though. My dad is 96. Still lives alone in his house. Admittedly just a small semi detached, so fuel costs not an issue, but he shouldn't be there. Can't get him to move out. He should have been in sheltered housing a decade ago. Stubborn doesn't cover it. Doesn't eat properly, can't wash properly, stairs to negotiate. Won't move.
My parents in their eighties moved recently to a retirement village but are already enjoying it more than their bigger home of many decades. And if their health deteriorates at any point it will be so much more practical for them. They were hesitant of the move even though it all made sense logically.
My parents are desperately waiting for a flat to come up in the retirement village they wish to move to.
Even the developer says if they had known how popular it was going to be they should have made it twice the size.
Nice to know some are more enlightened. I think my dad leads a miserable life and unnecessarily so. He struggles to cope, but as soon as we suggest stuff to make it better he refuses. It took years to get him to accept a gardener and cleaner. He refuses any other type of help. I had to confiscate his car keys a couple of years ago. He won't take a taxi. He tells me all sorts of stories about friends who hate their sheltered housing. When you meet them they love it. He lies to avoid doing stuff and at 96 he isn't good at it, but you just bang your head against the wall to make things better. Nothing is allowed to change. I hope I don't go that way. I want to die attempting the land speed record when I am 134.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
You mention "xenophobia". So in the British system we accept that state-run railway companies are a Good Thing. We have companies owned by the French and Dutch and German and Italian governments. But we only allow the UK government to run things when the private contract fails.
I think barring people based on their nationality is xenophobia. In this case self-xenophobia. And not just the trains - how many foreign StateCo operators run our "privatised" buses?
StateCo works. Is literally the model we use for "privatised". I am not proposing that BritCo have a monopoly - that is not how these other governments do it. But barring BritCo from existing to allow FrenchCo / DutchCo free access is "not rational".
Yet you claim rationality whilst stating that StateCo's are a terrible idea and all fail, whilst extolling a private operator system where the majority are StateCos...
No we don't accept that state-run railway companies are a Good Thing, we accept that the best companies available to do the job is a Good Thing, whether that's a surviving legacy state-run company or a privately owned company, or a publicly traded company.
StateCo doesn't work, as a general rule. The overwhelming majority of StateCo's set up are terrible, terrible failures, but you don't think about them as they don't exist anymore or if they do you don't hear about them, its pure survivorship bias. If you want a BritCo to be set up then go set it up yourself, there's nothing stopping you from doing so, but the State shouldn't be doing so that's not rational.
Thinking that StateCo's work because you're looking at the miniscule proportion of legacy StateCo's that had been set up that have survived to the present day and are thriving is as logical as saying that everyone should sign up to play the Squid Game because everyone you've spoken to that has completed the Squid Games have done well from it.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
That is quite difficult though. My dad is 96. Still lives alone in his house. Admittedly just a small semi detached, so fuel costs not an issue, but he shouldn't be there. Can't get him to move out. He should have been in sheltered housing a decade ago. Stubborn doesn't cover it. Doesn't eat properly, can't wash properly, stairs to negotiate. Won't move.
My parents in their eighties moved recently to a retirement village but are already enjoying it more than their bigger home of many decades. And if their health deteriorates at any point it will be so much more practical for them. They were hesitant of the move even though it all made sense logically.
My parents are desperately waiting for a flat to come up in the retirement village they wish to move to.
Even the developer says if they had known how popular it was going to be they should have made it twice the size.
I once had to organise a photoshoot in a retirement 'complex' . Pride of place was a large, airy, well-furnished common room. "Could we arrange for a couple of residents to sit there?" I asked, naively. "You must be joking," came the reply, "they never use it". I should have gone to a model agency for a selection of well-groomed OAPs but the budget didn't stretch. Potemkin springs to mind.
Mr. Pioneers, self-xenophobia is an oxymoron as xeno- is from the Greek meaning a foreigner from another Greek city (barbaros being even worse: a non-Greek).
Indeed. Almost as oxyMoronic as saying state companies are bad whilst allowing a flood of state companies from abroad to provide services that our own state is barred from doing.
There's no strategic difference between a German government firm in the UK and a private firm in the UK. Neither acts like a charity. A UK Gov firm would be strategically different because of the temptation to under-invest in anything delivering returns beyond one election, and to set prices at levels that comprise hundred- or thousand-quid bungs to voters.
There is no logical reason why British Railways Plc should or could not exist, beyond pointless ideology.
Clearly all of the EU countries and Japan have got it wrong. We know better, so we pay the French...
Isn't loads of the memories of "Bad old BR" because boomers remember train travel in the 70s, and everything was a bit shit, beige and dull (Bar the music) in the 70s ?
One of the quickest boomer identifiers "bad old days of BR"
How strange, the NI railways are publicly owned. They must be a disaster - oh wait, they are not.
Perhaps it was deliberate under-investment and flogging off assets on the cheap that did it for the railways we invented.
You see other countries invest, we cut and sell things to their governments for cheap. They must think we're morons
Then the Chancellor of the Exchequer each month writes subsidy cheques to foreign presidents and prime ministers.
I bet Macron and the Italians love it. Billions of pounds flowing into their country to pay for new railway lines, paid for by the British taxpayer. How lovely
I am often persuaded against inclination to think rail privatisation is ok given the comments on here about how things used to be, which I've never experienced.
But that with various privatised industries state run companies from elsewhere do run them it just seems very peculiar - clearly we cannot argue state run is inherently worse if we think a foreign state run company is the best choice, so the additional question has to be why did our state run companies fail and what are theirs doing right that we could copy?
Edit - EPG makes a decent stab at why it is as it is, but question is still why that apparently is not the case elsewhere to the point they can run ours too like a private company.
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
SNCF EDF Swiss Rail German rail All other water companies in the world including Scotland French post German post Italian post Swiss post
You are an ideological nut job. Some things are best privatised and others not, the fact you cling to this just shows how out of touch you are.
public and private rail are both bad in this country - network rail (public ) is rubbish (how many signal failures) and so are the trains . So why not try consumer cooperatives or mutuals to run them - better customer service (as they are the owners ) and no profit taking out of needed investment
It's possible (albeit depressing to contemplate) that British-run organisations are just badly-run, whether state or private.
An electorate that rewards sweeties now over longer-term investment, and a financial system that does much the same. And sometimes both at the same time, as with the demutualisation of building societies.
StateCo doesn't work, as a general rule. The overwhelming majority of StateCo's set up are terrible, terrible failures, but you don't think about them as they don't exist anymore or if they do you don't hear about them, its pure survivorship bias. If you want a BritCo to be set up then go set it up yourself, there's nothing stopping you from doing so, but the State shouldn't be doing so that's not rational.
Thinking that StateCo's work because you're looking at the miniscule proportion of legacy StateCo's that had been set up that have survived to the present day and are thriving is as logical as saying that everyone should sign up to play the Squid Game because everyone you've spoken to that has completed the Squid Games have done well from it.
So you're saying every state-owned water company in Europe, every train operator and energy company, postal company, is a terrible failure? This is crazy Bart
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
SNCF EDF Swiss Rail German rail All other water companies in the world including Scotland French post German post Italian post Swiss post
You are an ideological nut job. Some things are best privatised and others not, the fact you cling to this just shows how out of touch you are.
Those firms you're quoting aren't nationalised industries, they're mostly legacy firms operating in competitive industries.
Most flagships nations have set up have been dismal failures, which is why most countries now have ceased to try to set up flagship firms anymore. The only reason states tend to do that now is because they have more money than sense and see a gap in the market, eg the Saudis going into Golf. Is that the situation you think the UK is in?
What can a nationalised UK firm do better than EDF? EDF are operating in a privatised industry, if they're the best then they're the best and if they're not then someone else can compete.
If they are majority state owned they are nationalised.
You mention EDF specifically, and competition. Why can't we commercialise BritPost to compete with EDF not just in our market but in theirs? You think its great that a French StateCo delivers post in the UK, but want to continue the bar in a British version doing the reverse.
Since they're not owned by the UK state they're not nationalised in this country.
I don't run France, if I did I'd think British firms ought to be able to compete to improve their sector too, but that's up to them and their voters to determine. We only can and should control what happens in our own country, I have no desire to tell the rest of the world how to run their country.
If you want a commercial Brit firm to operate overseas or domestically then what in British law is preventing you from setting one up?
There are also independent living Housing Association flats for the over 55's (sometimes 50), which are purpose built. A bit smaller scale than a retirement village. With communal wardens, social facilities, laundry, gardens and the like. Which takes away many of the day-to-day problems of maintenance and provide company and support. We need more of them (and private ones too obviously). The stigma is of being moved into a "care home". But these places aren't. You just rent or own a manageable sized property in a building with peers. If we could somehow get folk to want to live in these (and it wouldn't suit everyone), it would free up a lot of housing capacity.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
Don't be horrible. Too large for one don't mean huge, most people at 80 simply don't have it in them to move house of their own volition, and the helpful neighbours are a knockdown argument. You can't move house and build a brand new support group just like that.
80 old? god help you and me. 80 yr olds these days fly around and are super active. Not all, obvs, but for those then there is help up to and including LPA.
Fine she wants to stay rattling around in her house no problem. Equity release frees up cash, lets her stay there and gives her peace of mind.
We just can't live with people in large houses saying woe is me. Who would you have help her? The family squished into a 2-bed council house? Or someone who is asset rich?
Hope I die before I get old
That's not a bad wish Mr Z! A few months ago I was planning that my wife and I would spend Christmas in Thailand with our son and his family there; now I'm beginning to wonder if I'll be able to spend Christmas in my own home, or whether I'll be in some sort of institution! Or at least having some sort of 'official care'!
There is no logical reason why British Railways Plc should or could not exist, beyond pointless ideology.
Clearly all of the EU countries and Japan have got it wrong. We know better, so we pay the French...
Isn't loads of the memories of "Bad old BR" because boomers remember train travel in the 70s, and everything was a bit shit, beige and dull (Bar the music) in the 70s ?
One of the quickest boomer identifiers "bad old days of BR"
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
That is quite difficult though. My dad is 96. Still lives alone in his house. Admittedly just a small semi detached, so fuel costs not an issue, but he shouldn't be there. Can't get him to move out. He should have been in sheltered housing a decade ago. Stubborn doesn't cover it. Doesn't eat properly, can't wash properly, stairs to negotiate. Won't move.
My parents in their eighties moved recently to a retirement village but are already enjoying it more than their bigger home of many decades. And if their health deteriorates at any point it will be so much more practical for them. They were hesitant of the move even though it all made sense logically.
My parents are desperately waiting for a flat to come up in the retirement village they wish to move to.
Even the developer says if they had known how popular it was going to be they should have made it twice the size.
Yes they are in demand, expensive and not that many of them. Fortunately my parents were extremely flexible on location which won't be true for most.
They should definitely be a bigger part of the housing mix going forward with our demographics. Reading the t&cs some of them were borderline exploitative on charging a percentage of asset value on future sales so think the government could look at capping those.
You tend to get quite a bit of local objection to retirement villages, to my surprise, which probably impacts on scale. I've heard others talk against them on the basis a mixed community works better for the elderly.
StateCo doesn't work, as a general rule. The overwhelming majority of StateCo's set up are terrible, terrible failures, but you don't think about them as they don't exist anymore or if they do you don't hear about them, its pure survivorship bias. If you want a BritCo to be set up then go set it up yourself, there's nothing stopping you from doing so, but the State shouldn't be doing so that's not rational.
Thinking that StateCo's work because you're looking at the miniscule proportion of legacy StateCo's that had been set up that have survived to the present day and are thriving is as logical as saying that everyone should sign up to play the Squid Game because everyone you've spoken to that has completed the Squid Games have done well from it.
So you're saying every state-owned water company in Europe, every train operator and energy company, postal company, is a terrible failure? This is crazy Bart
No, I never said "every". I said "majority set up".
Survivorship bias means that the majority set up no longer even exist anymore today.
Mr. Pioneers, self-xenophobia is an oxymoron as xeno- is from the Greek meaning a foreigner from another Greek city (barbaros being even worse: a non-Greek).
"Even worse" is a misrepresentation. The original meaning is guest-friend, so foreign but you have them to stay and vv.
There are also independent living Housing Association flats for the over 55's (sometimes 50), which are purpose built. With communal wardens, social facilities, laundry, gardens and the like. Which takes away many of the day-to-day problems of maintenance and provide company and support. We need more of them (and private ones too obviously). The stigma is of being moved into a "care home". But these places aren't. You just rent or own a manageable sized property in a building with peers. If we could somehow get folk to want to live in these (and it wouldn't suit everyone), it would free up a lot of housing capacity.
There is no logical reason why British Railways Plc should or could not exist, beyond pointless ideology.
Clearly all of the EU countries and Japan have got it wrong. We know better, so we pay the French...
Define BR PLC.
"British Railways" ran infrastructure, passenger and freight services, built rolling stock and delivered world-leading research.
I disagree with your proposal because: Infrastructure is already state owned Freight is hugely successful, with state-owned DRS one of the competing operators Some rolling stock is now state owned and is largely all state-procured.
So what is needed is to bring the remaining passenger franchise operations in-house and then spin them off. Leave freight as it is, regulate the rolling stock owners (they literally have no other use for their assets), and leave the InfraCo as a separate body.
How strange, the NI railways are publicly owned. They must be a disaster - oh wait, they are not.
Perhaps it was deliberate under-investment and flogging off assets on the cheap that did it for the railways we invented.
You see other countries invest, we cut and sell things to their governments for cheap. They must think we're morons
Then the Chancellor of the Exchequer each month writes subsidy cheques to foreign presidents and prime ministers.
I bet Macron and the Italians love it. Billions of pounds flowing into their country to pay for new railway lines, paid for by the British taxpayer. How lovely
I am often persuaded against inclination to think rail privatisation is ok given the comments on here about how things used to be, which I've never experienced.
But that with various privatised industries state run companies from elsewhere do run them it just seems very peculiar - clearly we cannot argue state run is inherently worse if we think a foreign state run company is the best choice, so the additional question has to be why did our state run companies fail and what are theirs doing right that we could copy?
Underinvestment and prioritising car travel over public transport. It happens whether privatised or not.
I am not arguing that BR wasn't crap, I am arguing that it was not crap because it was nationalised.
In France ironically many of the roads are tolls, weird we didn't copy that if we want to be ideologically "coherent"
Forget bad old days of BR, what about bad old days of SWR! An hour and a half late, again!
If you don't like SWR take your business elsewhere. Get a car, work from home, find a different job that doesn't require that commute - nobody forces you to use SWR that's your private choice.
There’s also: 1. A £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment for around 8 million households on means tested benefits 2. A one-off £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment for over 8 million pensioner households to be paid alongside the Winter Fuel Payment 3. Payment of £150 for around 6 million people across the UK who receive certain disability benefits 4. £500 million increase and extension of the Household Support Fund
In total, this is planned to cost the government £37bn.
My question is, how much publicity have these schemes been given? Has there yet been, or is there planned to be, any public information advertising - both about the scheme itself, and more generally about how to reduce usage of electricity and gas over the winter, for example by wearing more clothing and only heating occupied rooms, by moving Granny in with family etc?
As well as making sure people can pay their bills, we also need to incentivise people to use a lot less energy than normal. We know that price elasticity of demand for energy is very low, albeit not as low as for petrol, so there may need to be significant lifestyle changes to appreciably reduce demand.
Another issue, which has so far received litle publicity, is commercial users of electricity. Not just large industries, but offices and retail business that will be affected by much higher bills than expected. Will we see supermarkets turn off half their lights, or reduce the number of fridges and freezers? Will white-collar companies institute WFH over the winter, to enable them to close offices? The large users of electricity in factories etc, already have contracts with energy companies that pay them to shut down at times of peak demand, although usually only for a few hours at a time - how can this be extended to cover a period of several months over the winter, for non-essential industry?
I had an eighty something frail widow burst into tears in my clinic yesterday. Her house is 100 years old and expensive to heat, and larger than she now needs, but not only does she love it, but also gets a lot of practical support from her neighbours. Without those neighbours she couldn't live independently.
She tearfully ran through her sums in the consulting room as to the economies she would have to make, and the meagre savings that she had to run down. Every modest pleasure would be gone. I could do no more than listen sympathetically, and let the clinic fall behind.
She should move or take out an equity release loan on it. Poor old woman with a huge house that she struggles to heat. Finding it difficult to produce a tear.
That is quite difficult though. My dad is 96. Still lives alone in his house. Admittedly just a small semi detached, so fuel costs not an issue, but he shouldn't be there. Can't get him to move out. He should have been in sheltered housing a decade ago. Stubborn doesn't cover it. Doesn't eat properly, can't wash properly, stairs to negotiate. Won't move.
My parents in their eighties moved recently to a retirement village but are already enjoying it more than their bigger home of many decades. And if their health deteriorates at any point it will be so much more practical for them. They were hesitant of the move even though it all made sense logically.
My parents are desperately waiting for a flat to come up in the retirement village they wish to move to.
Even the developer says if they had known how popular it was going to be they should have made it twice the size.
Yes they are in demand, expensive and not that many of them. Fortunately my parents were extremely flexible on location which won't be true for most.
They should definitely be a bigger part of the housing mix going forward with our demographics. Reading the t&cs some of them were borderline exploitative on charging a percentage of asset value on future sales so think the government could look at capping those.
You tend to get quite a bit of local objection to retirement villages, to my surprise, which probably impacts on scale. I've heard others talk against them on the basis a mixed community works better for the elderly.
Forget bad old days of BR, what about bad old days of SWR! An hour and a half late, again!
If you don't like SWR take your business elsewhere. Get a car, work from home, find a different job that doesn't require that commute - nobody forces you to use SWR that's your private choice.
Apparently the Enough is Enough website is being flagged as "adult content" and blocked by some ISP porn filters. Who could have foreseen such a use of giving people the power to censor the internet?
To be committed to privatisation for ideology's sake at a time like this is nuts.
It's time we had a grown up discussion away from "privatisation is always the best option because efficiency" and instead had a discussion about what ought to be in public hands and what not.
Railways clearly. Privatisation has failed on its own terms - and we are now paying private companies to run things in a way we tell them to, so money leaves our country and funds the French's for no tangible benefit at all.
Energy companies are causing people to become homeless or starve. A state provider should be available that is used in times of crisis to stop this. On a purely moral level the debt involved for the government is irrelevant, this is about human lives.
Water. The water companies have done a piss poor job, they either need a massive tax placed on them or they need to be stripped. I note Scotland's water supply is not privatised and I cannot find a single thing the English companies do better.
This is not ideological, this is about what is best for us all. I am not proposing nationalising BP, or BT, or EON, or the National Grid.
On here I've seen robust pushback against rail nationalisation before, but I dont know that I've seen the current water company situation defended.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
There is no benefit in this country to railway privatisation. It is impossible to defend the new arrangement as anything other than sending money out of this country.
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
"The middle man" is doing a good job, they are experts, which is why they're doing it. What would "state owned" achieve apart from an increase in cost and a deterioration of services?
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
I wonder why the Swiss haven't privatised their railways, perhaps because they have common sense
Or perhaps because unlike the failure that was British Rail their system was working so they had no need to.
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
You mention "xenophobia". So in the British system we accept that state-run railway companies are a Good Thing. We have companies owned by the French and Dutch and German and Italian governments. But we only allow the UK government to run things when the private contract fails.
I think barring people based on their nationality is xenophobia. In this case self-xenophobia. And not just the trains - how many foreign StateCo operators run our "privatised" buses?
StateCo works. Is literally the model we use for "privatised". I am not proposing that BritCo have a monopoly - that is not how these other governments do it. But barring BritCo from existing to allow FrenchCo / DutchCo free access is "not rational".
Yet you claim rationality whilst stating that StateCo's are a terrible idea and all fail, whilst extolling a private operator system where the majority are StateCos...
No we don't accept that state-run railway companies are a Good Thing, we accept that the best companies available to do the job is a Good Thing, whether that's a surviving legacy state-run company or a privately owned company, or a publicly traded company.
StateCo doesn't work, as a general rule. The overwhelming majority of StateCo's set up are terrible, terrible failures, but you don't think about them as they don't exist anymore or if they do you don't hear about them, its pure survivorship bias. If you want a BritCo to be set up then go set it up yourself, there's nothing stopping you from doing so, but the State shouldn't be doing so that's not rational.
Thinking that StateCo's work because you're looking at the miniscule proportion of legacy StateCo's that had been set up that have survived to the present day and are thriving is as logical as saying that everyone should sign up to play the Squid Game because everyone you've spoken to that has completed the Squid Games have done well from it.
You keep saying "StateCo's don't work as a general rule" whilst listing StateCo entities which do work.
So on one side we have your rhetoric On the other hand we have demonstrable reality.
You are simply wrong on this one. The same as you are when you want farming to go in the bin, the railways to be closed down etc etc.
Cue another patronising straw man defence and that "I'm a twat" shrug emoji.
Comments
Still there is the Doddington in Worcestershire count today, they might surprise on the upside there, it was uncontested in 2019 so the current underlying position a bit more unclear
I understand state schools are not available to sell anymore as they have pretty much all been privatised for free to privately owned 50 plus school academy groups.
I'd be very interested in one as from a layman's perspective it's the most obvious in lacking any benefit to the public in service, cost or choice.
Did they use to be worse?
This is absurdly complacent. Be careful what you wish for.
If it's a large house she's perhaps better to downsize to something more practical now, and give lifetime gifts.
I had a dad who refused to leave the listed house they lived in; mum couldn't wait to get out of the cold, expensive house when he died.
This EDF?
Just like all of the railways being privatised, oh wait
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cluster-sequencing-phase-2-eligible-projects-power-ccus-hydrogen-and-icc/cluster-sequencing-phase-2-shortlisted-projects-power-ccus-hydrogen-and-icc-august-2022
Regulations against polluting the rivers etc were routinely flouted in the past and since it was all state owned, nothing much was done about it, since the vested interests just got in the way of fixing anything.
Post-privatisation pollution led to fines which cut profits, so the profit motive ensured firms worked to preventing pollution etc to reduce the cost of fines.
The quality of our rivers etc dramatically improved post-privatisation.
Imagine how much money that would raise for the NHS
DfT does the timetables, fares, trains and then gives money to a private company to do what they tell them. Utterly pointless and ideological because they won't accept privatisation has failed us all.
Cut out the middle man, setup British Railways Plc as a state company separated from the state but owned 100% by it and have it managed by experts. The German or Swiss model.
OK. Here you go. 1 hour, 8 and a half minutes in:-
https://youtu.be/I_BbN2PZjIU?t=4110s
If its so easy to do the job the experts that have been contracted to do are doing, then set up a private British Railways Plc, there's no need for it to be state owned, and you can make a fortune. Or maybe its not as easy as that.
But people need to accept, in the end, either it is working or there was no choice. The choices Truss will make are very difficult, but she has been pretty clear about it being her choice, not necessity, as her being willing to go against orthodoxy has been talked up as her strength.
So for her doing the unpopular but right thing needs to work, and be seen to work. And there's not much time for that, as in the short to medium term things will feel crap for many.
Proponents of a new Age of Thatcherism need to explain where a similar revenue stream is to be found.
What could be less patriotic and more anti-British than that? We're supposedly so pro Britain but not to the degree we think we are capable of running anything ourselves. It is pathetic.
I can't help but feel Truss' comments, though they have not moved the markets, aren't going to win many votes.
I don't see how this reality stops BP from investing long term in Hydrogen.
If she doesn't want to move then do an equity release job done.
In a state owned industry where there's no profit motive and all profit or loss is going to the Exchequer anyway, then a "fine" is meaningless.
So even if you want to claim credit for New Labour, New Labour's policy was only viable because of privatisation. Privatisation and fines for pollution worked and has done a great job. 👍
@BritainElects
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 39% (-)
CON: 35% (+1)
LDEM: 12% (-1)
GRN: 5% (-)
via @techneUK, 10 - 11 Aug"
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1557994885340340224
Its house prices and consumer spending which have to be kept increasing with cuts elsewhere if necessary.
There is a belief too that equity release is the latest fraud to be wished upon the older generation!
Further there may be a sudden catastrophic deterioration in one circumstances, as has happened to me, which forces one to face a situation which one did not really expect.
And for which one had not planned.
It will directly help the problem at hand - sharing the burden of the heating costs - and also provide some company to share what will still be a tough winter. I know the bits of Covid I didn't with my in-laws were easier to tolerate because there were more people to exchange gallows humour with.
I know this can be easier said then done, but efforts in this direction should be made.
Fine she wants to stay rattling around in her house no problem. Equity release frees up cash, lets her stay there and gives her peace of mind.
We just can't live with people in large houses saying woe is me. Who would you have help her? The family squished into a 2-bed council house? Or someone who is asset rich?
Nationalised industries are in general a terrible idea and almost all flagship firms attempted are failures. There's a few exceptions across time, but the odds of setting up a new flagship in a competitive sector and seeing it succeed is miniscule which is why people don't do it.
That Swiss rail firms are doing a better job now than British Rail did or any private British firm is not a reason to replace the Swiss firm with a newly created British firm. That's just xenophobic, not rational.
Privatised water fixed the problem and did a measurably better job.
Even the developer says if they had known how popular it was going to be they should have made it twice the size.
As I said: even if she did make a mistake, so what?
Are affairs in Cheltenham from now on going to be handled by Derbyshire County Council if Truss wins?
Or is she going to have to make a dramatic policy U turn?
Or does it mean fuck all?
EDF
Swiss Rail
German rail
All other water companies in the world including Scotland
French post
German post
Italian post
Swiss post
You are an ideological nut job. Some things are best privatised and others not, the fact you cling to this just shows how out of touch you are.
Perhaps it was deliberate under-investment and flogging off assets on the cheap that did it for the railways we invented.
You see other countries invest, we cut and sell things to their governments for cheap. They must think we're morons
The price differences between when gas is setting the market price and when it isn't are then useful in providing an incentive and income stream for grid scale storage.
If we got rid of all subsidies which is Bart wants to go, we'd have no railways left. And then the whole argument for privatisation disappears. If something cannot exist on its own merits you either say it's for the public good in which case profit is irrelevant or you get rid of it. I prefer the latter but I am human
The North Sea Rough gas storage is planned to reopen in the Autumn.
Phased return to storage: 30 billion cubic feet in 2022/3; 60 bcf 2023/4; 200 bcf ultimate potential
Investments: £150 million in 2023; £2 billion over the long term (subsequently storing hydrogen)
Government support: No state funding required; "regulatory support model to underpin infrastructure investment'' - i.e. guarantees on price from govt.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-28/centrica-says-uk-rough-gas-storage-could-be-ready-for-winter-l64sts8t
Another of her friends who has visited the widow has reported to the 'gang' how supportive her neighbours in the retirement village are.
I think barring people based on their nationality is xenophobia. In this case self-xenophobia. And not just the trains - how many foreign StateCo operators run our "privatised" buses?
StateCo works. Is literally the model we use for "privatised". I am not proposing that BritCo have a monopoly - that is not how these other governments do it. But barring BritCo from existing to allow FrenchCo / DutchCo free access is "not rational".
Yet you claim rationality whilst stating that StateCo's are a terrible idea and all fail, whilst extolling a private operator system where the majority are StateCos...
It's not so much dishonesty as a lack of accountability, something that irks me in many areas of life. Yes, I know you can find accuracy reports if you dig around and for the professionals that's fine, but the weather forecasts are a prominent feature of public life, even a form of entertainment at times. What I'm asking for is a simple easily understood score for how they did yesterday, prominently displayed. A percentage accuracy figure on screen, or mentioned as part of the radio forecast, would do fine.
We shouldn't have to search for it any more than we have to search for the racing results. It would assist their credibility if they did this, and it would placate those members of the public who took their kids to the beach on the basis of a bad forecast and it pissed down all day.
A word of acknowledgement would do no harm.
Most flagships nations have set up have been dismal failures, which is why most countries now have ceased to try to set up flagship firms anymore. The only reason states tend to do that now is because they have more money than sense and see a gap in the market, eg the Saudis going into Golf. Is that the situation you think the UK is in?
What can a nationalised UK firm do better than EDF? EDF are operating in a privatised industry, if they're the best then they're the best and if they're not then someone else can compete.
This year alone the EA are fining water companies tens of thousands for breaching their exceedence limits for pumping raw, untreated sewage, i.e. shit into rivers and the sea.
The pumping stations can't cope so the effluent gates are opened and untreated shit is pumped out. Unbelievable on the back of COVID and in the light of the polio virus living happily in the sewerage system.
Non-British nationalised company = good
British nationalised company = bad
This is all about ideology, not common sense or actually running our railways properly.
Nationalisation fails again
They should definitely be a bigger part of the housing mix going forward with our demographics. Reading the t&cs some of them were borderline exploitative on charging a percentage of asset value on future sales so think the government could look at capping those.
I would guess that, in principle, it would be possible to increase the amount of this credit, but I wouldn't know how the meters are programmed, and whether it could be done remotely.
Clearly all of the EU countries and Japan have got it wrong. We know better, so we pay the French...
The reality is that the shocks to the economy this winter render the debate over Truss's tax cuts irrelevant for the time being. I'm not sure we can afford for the Treasury to be distracted by all of that this autumn.
At the moment government is effectively AWOL as far as making serious preparations is concerned.
You mention EDF specifically, and competition. Why can't we commercialise BritPost to compete with EDF not just in our market but in theirs? You think its great that a French StateCo delivers post in the UK, but want to continue the bar in a British version doing the reverse.
StateCo doesn't work, as a general rule. The overwhelming majority of StateCo's set up are terrible, terrible failures, but you don't think about them as they don't exist anymore or if they do you don't hear about them, its pure survivorship bias. If you want a BritCo to be set up then go set it up yourself, there's nothing stopping you from doing so, but the State shouldn't be doing so that's not rational.
Thinking that StateCo's work because you're looking at the miniscule proportion of legacy StateCo's that had been set up that have survived to the present day and are thriving is as logical as saying that everyone should sign up to play the Squid Game because everyone you've spoken to that has completed the Squid Games have done well from it.
There are massive state owned companies that are crap.
There are massive privatised companies that are crap.
Both are riddled with red tape and pointless processes and people. But the common thing here is that they are both crap.
One of the quickest boomer identifiers "bad old days of BR"
But that with various privatised industries state run companies from elsewhere do run them it just seems very peculiar - clearly we cannot argue state run is inherently worse if we think a foreign state run company is the best choice, so the additional question has to be why did our state run companies fail and what are theirs doing right that we could copy?
Edit - EPG makes a decent stab at why it is as it is, but question is still why that apparently is not the case elsewhere to the point they can run ours too like a private company.
An electorate that rewards sweeties now over longer-term investment, and a financial system that does much the same. And sometimes both at the same time, as with the demutualisation of building societies.
And national mindsets are much harder to change.
I don't run France, if I did I'd think British firms ought to be able to compete to improve their sector too, but that's up to them and their voters to determine. We only can and should control what happens in our own country, I have no desire to tell the rest of the world how to run their country.
If you want a commercial Brit firm to operate overseas or domestically then what in British law is preventing you from setting one up?
With communal wardens, social facilities, laundry, gardens and the like. Which takes away many of the day-to-day problems of maintenance and provide company and support.
We need more of them (and private ones too obviously).
The stigma is of being moved into a "care home". But these places aren't. You just rent or own a manageable sized property in a building with peers. If we could somehow get folk to want to live in these (and it wouldn't suit everyone), it would free up a lot of housing capacity.
Or at least having some sort of 'official care'!
surprise, which probably impacts on scale. I've heard others talk against them on the basis a mixed community works better for the elderly.
Survivorship bias means that the majority set up no longer even exist anymore today.
"British Railways" ran infrastructure, passenger and freight services, built rolling stock and delivered world-leading research.
I disagree with your proposal because:
Infrastructure is already state owned
Freight is hugely successful, with state-owned DRS one of the competing operators
Some rolling stock is now state owned and is largely all state-procured.
So what is needed is to bring the remaining passenger franchise operations in-house and then spin them off. Leave freight as it is, regulate the rolling stock owners (they literally have no other use for their assets), and leave the InfraCo as a separate body.
And "PLC"? That's privatised. You mean "Ltd".
I am not arguing that BR wasn't crap, I am arguing that it was not crap because it was nationalised.
In France ironically many of the roads are tolls, weird we didn't copy that if we want to be ideologically "coherent"
So on one side we have your rhetoric
On the other hand we have demonstrable reality.
You are simply wrong on this one. The same as you are when you want farming to go in the bin, the railways to be closed down etc etc.
Cue another patronising straw man defence and that "I'm a twat" shrug emoji.
When Demosthenes insulted the Macedonians he did so by calling them barbaros, and unfit even to be slaves.