Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
What's the actual issue with joining the euro. The horror of our politicians having to actually stick to some fiscal rules ? Foreign exchanges being less busy in August ? The Queens head being removed from our notes and coins ? Andrew Bailey losing his job ?
We'd lose the invaluable freedom to debase our currency and trigger hyperinflation.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Ukraine's biggest mistake was giving up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees that have turned out to be worthless.
NATO is not going to go to war for Ukraine. Indirect support such as supplying them with arms is as far as we're going to go.
I expect a lot of nuclear proliferation from non-nuclear states over the next decade or so.
Perhaps we should cut out the middle man and give the Ukrainians a suitcase nuke and a first class ticket to Moscow?
Putin thinks that the Ukrainians will do just that, using the contents of the expended fuel rod ponds at the Ukrainian power stations, the moment they can.
Yep, that's why I said cut out the middle man.
It's a rare example of where I think Putin is probably right - Ukraine has seen the limits of western support against a nuclear superpower, so it makes sense that they will seek to re-develop nuclear weapons of their own.
Even if Russia is pushed back to its borders, long term having their own nuclear weapons is probably the only guarantee of territorial integrity.
Would Russia have invaded if they knew the Ukrainians still had nukes?
No - but the Ukrainians do not want nukes. If nothing else, acquiring them would probably lose all the conventional military support they are getting. And need.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
Well that's lucky. What will come first, the end of the world or the end of the England second innings? Could be tight.
From what I remember from Blair WMDs take 45 minutes, the England second innings surely can take less time than that?
I’d actually missed that there was proper cricket going on at Lord’s this week, thought it was this hundred bollocks. Sadly looks like an innings defeat coming up.
Stretching the term "proper cricket" as far as it goes before snapping.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
The Western leaders who are not going to go to World War 3 with Russia because a bit of radiation drifts into Eastern Poland. I am sorry, that is just realpolitik reality
There isn't a binary decision to start World War 3, just a sliding scale of escalation
People like you would have thought that sinking Russia's Black Sea flagship or destroying a Russian airbase in Crimea would be enough to start WW3, but they happened, and there's still no sign of it.
“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”
You have to ask why it stipulates armed attack, bit prescient to be ruling out cyberattack in 1949. But anyway use of weapon in Zap - irradiation of Poland inevitable because wind, looks like a good fit to me.
Re immigration. This will increasingly return as an issue, especially the channel migrants
I read an interview with the likely new Italian PM last night. A hard right leader. The article explained her rise as being due to extreme levels of illegal migration that dwarf those in Britain
We might get 40k channel migrants this year and it is doubling every couple of years or less. It will soon be a massive debate if this continues
And Farage would then look to seize his chance as Meloni has in Italy
Farage doesn't have the discipline or inclination required to make serious inroads in domestic politics.
He got 12% of the UK vote at the 2015 General election, 3 times the 4% Meloni's Brothers of Italy got at the 2018 general election
Rather crucially, she's currently in the Italian Parliament with three dozen of her colleagues, whereas Farage has lost every parliamentary election he's ever stood in and is currently on a TV channel very few people watch.
Very different system in Italy, of course, but the bottom line in both countries is that if you're not turning votes into seats, you're not making serious inroads in domestic politics.
Re immigration. This will increasingly return as an issue, especially the channel migrants
I read an interview with the likely new Italian PM last night. A hard right leader. The article explained her rise as being due to extreme levels of illegal migration that dwarf those in Britain
We might get 40k channel migrants this year and it is doubling every couple of years or less. It will soon be a massive debate if this continues
And Farage would then look to seize his chance as Meloni has in Italy
Farage doesn't have the discipline or inclination required to make serious inroads in domestic politics.
Yeah it won’t be Farage. But a British version of Meloni, quite possible
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
What's the actual issue with joining the euro. The horror of our politicians having to actually stick to some fiscal rules ? Foreign exchanges being less busy in August ? The Queens head being removed from our notes and coins ? Andrew Bailey losing his job ?
We'd lose the invaluable freedom to debase our currency and trigger hyperinflation.
At least we can counter hyperinflation with interest rate increases.
See the actual facts below on German prices at the factory gate. Not UK ones, German ones.
Try to think about what (if anything), the ECB can do about this, given the weaker economies in the region are already struggling with rates at zero.
Remainers ignore what is actually going on in the EU countries. And why wouldn't they. Look at the state of it.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
And if the radiation drifts into a NATO country in serious life threatening levels? That sounds like an attack on NATO to me.
Not unless accompanied by troops and certainly not to the extent the US and UK are going to go to WW3 with Russia, whatever neighbouring States of Ukraine do
What happens is that the affected states declare this is an act of war against their countries and NATO - at least part of it - becomes directly involved in the war triggering Article 5. At that point it is either the end of NATO or we are fully committed. You cannot bury your head in the sand over this.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
My generation, who actually remembered the war and the immediate aftermath, were offered no more war war & grabbed it with both hands. Those a few years younger, whose 'wartime' memories were formed by Biggles and the like rejected the idea of Membership, but for those a bit younger it seemed a good idea. We who remembered the war are now dying out and now so are the Biggles generation. In a few years time those who who freely Inter-railed, worked in Europe and so on, and who resent restrictions on their freedom, will be the vast majority, and will vote to go back!
That the people who suffered living through the war were more likely than average to want to stay in a union that includes the (mostly descendants of) people they fought against was the most positive bit of polling around Brexit for me. A triumph of human nature showing both pragmatism and forgiveness.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
Tbf it was pretty far out at that point to consider that a proposition supported by Farage, Griffin, Tommeh R, the Le Pens, Trump, Starkey, Morrisey, BNP, NF, The Sun, The Express, Spiked and Right Said Fred could in any way be racist.
Well, I think my response to that was, all those people probably believe in heliocentricity too. Technically it still is, but I have lost the will to make it.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
You would still need luggage scanning for the Eurostar, for security reasons, but less friction certainly.
We’d also need to keep security on ferries and the tunnel. Do we really want people driving vans full of guns into the country when we’ve worked so hard to eliminate them?
Also, you now have 500,000 asylum seekers a year instead of 100,000. This would be quite hard to manage.
You can have intelligence led operations against guns, drugs etc as now, that doesn't need to change. You are going to get a lot more people seeking asylum, that is for sure. I would expect that an initial surge (of people in France who want to come to the UK for family or other reasons) would slow as you clear the camps around Calais but it would still be higher than before in the new steady state. To be honest, I think there is going to be a surge in migration globally in the years ahead because of climate breakdown, and trying to turn ourselves into fortress Britain won't work. What we need is a wholesale rethinking of the issue including much higher public tolerance of it. I should add that I don't think this will happen which is why I am intensely pessimistic about politics in coming decades.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Ukraine's biggest mistake was giving up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees that have turned out to be worthless.
NATO is not going to go to war for Ukraine. Indirect support such as supplying them with arms is as far as we're going to go.
I expect a lot of nuclear proliferation from non-nuclear states over the next decade or so.
Perhaps we should cut out the middle man and give the Ukrainians a suitcase nuke and a first class ticket to Moscow?
Putin thinks that the Ukrainians will do just that, using the contents of the expended fuel rod ponds at the Ukrainian power stations, the moment they can.
Yep, that's why I said cut out the middle man.
It's a rare example of where I think Putin is probably right - Ukraine has seen the limits of western support against a nuclear superpower, so it makes sense that they will seek to re-develop nuclear weapons of their own.
Even if Russia is pushed back to its borders, long term having their own nuclear weapons is probably the only guarantee of territorial integrity.
Would Russia have invaded if they knew the Ukrainians still had nukes?
I really think that question should be directed to the Green party in Scotland every time they open their mouths about anything.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
Tbf it was pretty far out at that point to consider that a proposition supported by Farage, Griffin, Tommeh R, the Le Pens, Trump, Starkey, Morrisey, BNP, NF, The Sun, The Express, Spiked and Right Said Fred could in any way be racist.
Well, I think my response to that was, all those people probably believe in heliocentricity too. Technically it still is, but I have lost the will to make it.
Probably not for Right Said Fred, Morrisey or the Daily Express.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
Anybody who is actually paying attention to what is happening to the European economy, and not their cottage in the Dordogne, can see rejoining is going to completely crash and burn at the slightest serious examination.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
The Western leaders who are not going to go to World War 3 with a nuclear missile armed Russia because a bit of radiation drifts into Eastern Poland. I am sorry, that is just realpolitik reality
As far as I can see, the main prevailing winds at Z are towards Russia.
The most astonishing figure of the day is German producer prices. Up more than five per cent on the month. Up more than thirty five per cent on the year!
Anybody remember what happened the last time the Germans had rampant inflation....?
Wheelbarrow sales went through the roof. But that was before contactless.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
Tbf it was pretty far out at that point to consider that a proposition supported by Farage, Griffin, Tommeh R, the Le Pens, Trump, Starkey, Morrisey, BNP, NF, The Sun, The Express, Spiked and Right Said Fred could in any way be racist.
Well, I think my response to that was, all those people probably believe in heliocentricity too. Technically it still is, but I have lost the will to make it.
I've always wondered what the result would have been if every actual racist in the UK vanished the day before the referendum took place. Remain wins by a miniscule margin?
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
Really dislike 65+ as a category. It's simply out of date. Far too large a cohort as a percentage of the population. If you're 65 you're as close to a 35 yo as a 95 yo. Born in 1957 rather than 1927.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
The Western leaders who are not going to go to World War 3 with a nuclear missile armed Russia because a bit of radiation drifts into Eastern Poland. I am sorry, that is just realpolitik reality
As far as I can see, the main prevailing winds at Z are towards Russia.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
New countries joining agree to entering the Eurozone at some point in the future but there’s no legal mechanism to force them so it’s basically an aspiration which can never be met .
What are the odds of Brussels wanting to introduce such a mechanism?
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
The Western leaders who are not going to go to World War 3 with a nuclear missile armed Russia because a bit of radiation drifts into Eastern Poland. I am sorry, that is just realpolitik reality
Sorry, young HY, but I think you are one of those Conservative appeasers, followers of Chamberlain. I think a pseudo Churchill Conservative, like your hero Johnson, would disown you.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
Well that's lucky. What will come first, the end of the world or the end of the England second innings? Could be tight.
From what I remember from Blair WMDs take 45 minutes, the England second innings surely can take less time than that?
I’d actually missed that there was proper cricket going on at Lord’s this week, thought it was this hundred bollocks. Sadly looks like an innings defeat coming up.
You forget recent fourth innings heroics!
But the South Africans have a cunning plan. They have stopped us getting a fourth innings to do the heroics in. Looks to be working so far.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
A 'stay out' campaign would be more broad-based than the original 'leave' campaign, so hypothetical polls which only reflect the legacy of the previous referendum don't tell us much about the prospects for rejoining.
The most astonishing figure of the day is German producer prices. Up more than five per cent on the month. Up more than thirty five per cent on the year!
Anybody remember what happened the last time the Germans had rampant inflation....?
Wheelbarrow sales went through the roof. But that was before contactless.
We can only imagine the atmosphere at what remains of the Bundesbank. Inflationary control was their iron rule.
They refused point blank to cut rates when Ken Clark went cap in hand to them during the EMS crisis.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
The Western leaders who are not going to go to World War 3 with Russia because a bit of radiation drifts into Eastern Poland. I am sorry, that is just realpolitik reality
There isn't a binary decision to start World War 3, just a sliding scale of escalation
People like you would have thought that sinking Russia's Black Sea flagship or destroying a Russian airbase in Crimea would be enough to start WW3, but they happened, and there's still no sign of it.
Looks like Russia's main airbase in Crimea was massively whacked last night. Although the planes may have been moved in advance. Their weapons? Not so much...
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
The closest we're seeing to racism in this thread, and even that isn't it, is @nico679 banging on about how immigration isn't down when Brexit wasn't said to be about cutting immigration it was about controlling it.
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Just pushes up house prices. Demand side answer to nimbyism.
Homeowner are you?
We have plenty of land to build on. Just build more houses and immigration isn't an issue.
People advocating both NIMBYism and high immigration are the problem, like the Lib Dems. People advocating immigration combined with house building is entirely reasonable.
Yes it is an issue, we are already one of the most densely populated nations on the planet.
If the government does not get a grip on non EU immigration as it has reduced EU immigration and cut cost of living it will likely lose the redwall and the next general election whether Truss or Sunak is PM. Building all over the greenbelt would just seal its fate, as scores of Home counties seats would follow Chesham and Amersham and go LD
I couldn't care less if you lose your Home Counties seat.
Where are the opinion polls showing Red Wall voters are unhappy with immigration today? The fact you've never visited the Red Wall in your life, let alone lived here, shows why like Theresa May you reduce everything down to "cut immigration" despite not having voted for it.
We wouldn't lose Epping Forest but we will lose lots of seats in Surrey, Bucks, Oxfordshire etc to the LDs building all over the greenbelt.
What we're the biggest issues working class redwall voters gave for voting for Brexit, regaining sovereignty AND reducing immigration. If the Tories have not done that by the next general election overall despite ending free movement they will lose the redwall seats too
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
If age profile were all that mattered we'd have a permanent Labour government by now as all the Tories would have died off in the past.
Brexit doesn't have to go brilliantly to change minds, if it even goes mediocrely then it will be displaced from the agenda by other issues and people will evolve and move on. And the UK and the EU will evolve and move on.
The voters in 2036 won't be the same as the voters in 2016, that's true, but nor will the UK be the same, nor will the EU be the same and nor will the priorities be the same.
Even Sir Keir Starmer has resigned to Brexit now. Reopening that whole can of worms is going to require something traumatic to happen.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
The Western leaders who are not going to go to World War 3 with a nuclear missile armed Russia because a bit of radiation drifts into Eastern Poland. I am sorry, that is just realpolitik reality
As far as I can see, the main prevailing winds at Z are towards Russia.
Has anyone told Putin?
Would be ironic if giant clouds of radiation rolling into Russia had a great big Z on them....
The most astonishing figure of the day is German producer prices. Up more than five per cent on the month. Up more than thirty five per cent on the year!
Anybody remember what happened the last time the Germans had rampant inflation....?
Wheelbarrow sales went through the roof. But that was before contactless.
{Hugo Stinnes has entered the chat and bought PB.com with some lose change}
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
If age profile were all that mattered we'd have a permanent Labour government by now as all the Tories would have died off in the past.
Brexit doesn't have to go brilliantly to change minds, if it even goes mediocrely then it will be displaced from the agenda by other issues and people will evolve and move on. And the UK and the EU will evolve and move on.
The voters in 2036 won't be the same as the voters in 2016, that's true, but nor will the UK be the same, nor will the EU be the same and nor will the priorities be the same.
Even Sir Keir Starmer has resigned to Brexit now. Reopening that whole can of worms is going to require something traumatic to happen.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
The Western leaders who are not going to go to World War 3 with Russia because a bit of radiation drifts into Eastern Poland. I am sorry, that is just realpolitik reality
There isn't a binary decision to start World War 3, just a sliding scale of escalation
People like you would have thought that sinking Russia's Black Sea flagship or destroying a Russian airbase in Crimea would be enough to start WW3, but they happened, and there's still no sign of it.
Here's a plan: if Poland gets irradiated we take everything the Russians say at face value, and NATO declares war on Ukraine. Hi guys, thanks for the SMO but your work here is done and you can all go home while we invade the shit out of these motherfuckers.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
Really dislike 65+ as a category. It's simply out of date. Far too large a cohort as a percentage of the population. If you're 65 you're as close to a 35 yo as a 95 yo. Born in 1957 rather than 1927.
In reality, the vast majority of those aged over 65 are also aged under 85.
feel a bit sorry for and admire in a way the guy who got two years for making up qualifications to land top NHS jobs . Obviously he was not pretending to be medically qualified but more managerial qualifications .Apparently he then went and did these top jobs giving full value and seemingly competently for 10 years . In a way you have to admire his determination to do this and also shows that a lot of qualifications dont really mean much in non specialist positions .Had to pay back his last 80K as well. Its got the makings of a film anyway
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
The closest we're seeing to racism in this thread, and even that isn't it, is @nico679 banging on about how immigration isn't down when Brexit wasn't said to be about cutting immigration it was about controlling it.
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Just pushes up house prices. Demand side answer to nimbyism.
Homeowner are you?
We have plenty of land to build on. Just build more houses and immigration isn't an issue.
People advocating both NIMBYism and high immigration are the problem, like the Lib Dems. People advocating immigration combined with house building is entirely reasonable.
Yes it is an issue, we are already one of the most densely populated nations on the planet.
If the government does not get a grip on non EU immigration as it has reduced EU immigration and cut cost of living it will likely lose the redwall and the next general election whether Truss or Sunak is PM. Building all over the greenbelt would just seal its fate, as scores of Home counties seats would follow Chesham and Amersham and go LD
I couldn't care less if you lose your Home Counties seat.
Where are the opinion polls showing Red Wall voters are unhappy with immigration today? The fact you've never visited the Red Wall in your life, let alone lived here, shows why like Theresa May you reduce everything down to "cut immigration" despite not having voted for it.
We wouldn't lose Epping Forest but we will lose lots of seats in Surrey, Bucks, Oxfordshire etc to the LDs building all over the greenbelt.
What we're the biggest issues working class redwall voters gave for voting for Brexit, regaining sovereignty AND reducing immigration. If the Tories have not done that by the next general election overall despite ending free movement they will lose the redwall seats too
Epping Hemnall went LD this May, didn't it?
Epping Hemnall is almost always LD, Epping Forest Council however is Tory controlled still unlike district councils in most of Oxfordshire and Surrey
@EJ_Burrows NEW: Western intelligence official just told reporters attack on Saky airfield in Crimea by Ukraine 'put more than half of Russia's Black Sea Fleet naval aviation combat jets out of use. The Russian system is busy seeking to allocate blame for the debacle.'
'The real story is about (Russia's) Black Sea Fleet. They've lost their flagship Moskva, they lost Snake Island, they lost half of their naval aviation package and their military headquarters was struck.'
'What we are seeing now is (Russia's) Black Sea Fleet taking a very defensive position, trying to avoid getting in the line of fire. This is a proud fleet with a long history. The credibility of that entity has been diminished.'
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
The Western leaders who are not going to go to World War 3 with a nuclear missile armed Russia because a bit of radiation drifts into Eastern Poland. I am sorry, that is just realpolitik reality
Sorry, young HY, but I think you are one of those Conservative appeasers, followers of Chamberlain. I think a pseudo Churchill Conservative, like your hero Johnson, would disown you.
We didn't go to war with Germany when they took over Austria or Czechoslovakia did we, only when Hitler invaded Poland. Hitler also didn't have nuclear weapons unlike Putin
feel a bit sorry for and admire in a way the guy who got two years for making up qualifications to land top NHS jobs . Obviously he was not pretending to be medically qualified but more managerial qualifications .Apparently he then went and did these top jobs giving full value and seemingly competently for 10 years . In a way you have to admire his determination to do this and also shows that a lot of qualifications dont really mean much in non specialist positions .Had to pay back his last 80K as well. Its got the makings of a film anyway
Bit like the guy who had a programming job - outsourced it to a guy he hired in China. They only realised when they noticed he did work at funny hours....
feel a bit sorry for and admire in a way the guy who got two years for making up qualifications to land top NHS jobs . Obviously he was not pretending to be medically qualified but more managerial qualifications .Apparently he then went and did these top jobs giving full value and seemingly competently for 10 years . In a way you have to admire his determination to do this and also shows that a lot of qualifications dont really mean much in non specialist positions .Had to pay back his last 80K as well. Its got the makings of a film anyway
Bit like the guy who had a programming job - outsourced it to a guy he hired in China. They only realised when they noticed he did work at funny hours....
also you could argue that requiring things like master degrees and Phds are ageist as more open and common to the young now than when 50 -70 years olds were young.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
The Western leaders who are not going to go to World War 3 with Russia because a bit of radiation drifts into Eastern Poland. I am sorry, that is just realpolitik reality
There isn't a binary decision to start World War 3, just a sliding scale of escalation
People like you would have thought that sinking Russia's Black Sea flagship or destroying a Russian airbase in Crimea would be enough to start WW3, but they happened, and there's still no sign of it.
Here's a plan: if Poland gets irradiated we take everything the Russians say at face value, and NATO declares war on Ukraine. Hi guys, thanks for the SMO but your work here is done and you can all go home while we invade the shit out of these motherfuckers.
...and to make absolutely sure of clearing all the Nazis out, we will peacekeep into Crimea and Donbas..
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
Really dislike 65+ as a category. It's simply out of date. Far too large a cohort as a percentage of the population. If you're 65 you're as close to a 35 yo as a 95 yo. Born in 1957 rather than 1927.
In reality, the vast majority of those aged over 65 are also aged under 85.
Well indeed. But why do we never get 65-75 polling? And 75+?
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
Well that's lucky. What will come first, the end of the world or the end of the England second innings? Could be tight.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time in the future.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the logistics sector.
We may not need to use farmland at all.
That is very sensible. Although I would question how much of the pre existing roofing of warehousing is suitable for solar panels. They do weigh a fair bit and some of the warehousing I have seen put up over the last few decades looks decidedly flimsy.
I had a panic there and thought that was Pope Francis, then realised it was only the cricket
I knew that deep down you thought El Papa was the real supreme head of the CoE.
No I don't, though on a forced choice on the 2 wings of Christianity I would be more Catholic than evangelical. Though I am really in between, as the Church of England contains Anglo Catholics, liberals and evangelicals
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
We dictate land use in all kinds of ways.
Buy a field. Find out what you are allowed to do with it, and what you can get paid to do with it.
One thing is certain - we don't have a free market in land usage in the UK.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Sheep are quite happy to wonder in and around solar panels.
They can philosophise pretty much anywhere. In practice they are rigorously excluded to stop them banging in to and damaging things, and anyway you can't have your insolation and eat it. You get grass or electric, not both.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
surely rooftops face all directions?
The old style of factory/warehouses, with the multiple pitched roofs is perfect for solar. If strong enough and oriented right.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
We dictate land use in all kinds of ways.
Buy a field. Find out what you are allowed to do with it, and what you can get paid to do with it.
One thing is certain - we don't have a free market in land usage in the UK.
Indeed we don't, but we should.
We have farmers dedicating land to provide bio-fuels. We just increased Unleaded from 5% to 10% bio-fuels. Why should farmers be providing bio-fuels, rather than food, but providing electricity instead of food is supposedly a threat?
If a farmer wants to provide electricity plus sheep from their farm, that should be their prerogative.
feel a bit sorry for and admire in a way the guy who got two years for making up qualifications to land top NHS jobs . Obviously he was not pretending to be medically qualified but more managerial qualifications .Apparently he then went and did these top jobs giving full value and seemingly competently for 10 years . In a way you have to admire his determination to do this and also shows that a lot of qualifications dont really mean much in non specialist positions .Had to pay back his last 80K as well. Its got the makings of a film anyway
Bit like the guy who had a programming job - outsourced it to a guy he hired in China. They only realised when they noticed he did work at funny hours....
also you could argue that requiring things like master degrees and Phds are ageist as more open and common to the young now than when 50 -70 years olds were young.
On that specific point, we always advertise for masters (usually PhD, depending on role) or equivalent experience and this is in academia. It's rare, but we sometimes for example take on someone who has been doing similar things in industry but never picked up a PhD (generally they get a PhD by publication at some point down the line, using papers generated in the course of their employment).
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
We dictate land use in all kinds of ways.
Buy a field. Find out what you are allowed to do with it, and what you can get paid to do with it.
One thing is certain - we don't have a free market in land usage in the UK.
The deal on offer on farmland down here is apparently £1,000/acre/year, indexed, for 40 years. Pension right there.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
Really dislike 65+ as a category. It's simply out of date. Far too large a cohort as a percentage of the population. If you're 65 you're as close to a 35 yo as a 95 yo. .
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
I'd imagine it is farmers who have been lobbying Rishi and Liz to support agriculture so they do not need to plant solar panels.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
If age profile were all that mattered we'd have a permanent Labour government by now as all the Tories would have died off in the past.
Brexit doesn't have to go brilliantly to change minds, if it even goes mediocrely then it will be displaced from the agenda by other issues and people will evolve and move on. And the UK and the EU will evolve and move on.
The voters in 2036 won't be the same as the voters in 2016, that's true, but nor will the UK be the same, nor will the EU be the same and nor will the priorities be the same.
Even Sir Keir Starmer has resigned to Brexit now. Reopening that whole can of worms is going to require something traumatic to happen.
I think it would be better if the government instead of complaining about the NIP declared it a success (as in many ways it is) and said it only needed a few adjustments.
Of course the Camparis ** would be outraged but when aren't they.
** Camparis = bitter orange. Am I the first person to call the DUP that ?
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
I'd imagine it is farmers who have been lobbying Rishi and Liz to support agriculture so they do not need to plant solar panels.
Alternatively its NIMBYs not farmers who think that solar panels "spoil their view" while bio-fuels do not.
We should empower and trust farmers to do what they think is best with their own land.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Sheep are quite happy to wonder in and around solar panels.
Wondering "WTF? Give me some proper pasture, not a place that has been engineered by computers to absorb as much of the grass-growing sunlight as it possible...."
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
Well that's lucky. What will come first, the end of the world or the end of the England second innings? Could be tight.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time in the future.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the logistics sector.
We may not need to use farmland at all.
That is very sensible. Although I would question how much of the pre existing roofing of warehousing is suitable for solar panels. They do weigh a fair bit and some of the warehousing I have seen put up over the last few decades looks decidedly flimsy.
Very fair comment.
From what I see, portal frame buildings are likely to be the least suitable, and perhaps old and small ones - our 7000 sqft gym, for example, is in a medium height former warehouse (ceiling 6-9m). But if a roof is carrying aircon, water, and heating, then it bears a look.
There is also surrounding land, and surrounding car parks.
I think there are various unaddressed opportunities - perhaps airfields is one of the most obvious. Heathrow is 2 square miles, for example.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
surely rooftops face all directions?
The old style of factory/warehouses, with the multiple pitched roofs is perfect for solar. If strong enough and oriented right.
There's another issue here: loadings. Even light solar panels with their fixings weigh something, and rooves are designed to cope with a certain 'live' load. Adding solar panels increases the 'dead' load, and may not be feasible from a weight perspective, especially if you factor in additional 'live' loads (e.g. wind and snow loadings). Adding the weight of the panels plus the snow and wind might take it over its safety tolerances.
edit: I see Richard made the same point below, in a plainer manner.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
We dictate land use in all kinds of ways.
Buy a field. Find out what you are allowed to do with it, and what you can get paid to do with it.
One thing is certain - we don't have a free market in land usage in the UK.
The deal on offer on farmland down here is apparently £1,000/acre/year, indexed, for 40 years. Pension right there.
And to think I passed on 35 acres of farmland, a couple of years back. £240K for the lot....
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
The modern Conservative party seems to wish to follow the modern Republican Party in believing that the State telling people what to do is the best way of preserving liberty.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
I'd imagine it is farmers who have been lobbying Rishi and Liz to support agriculture so they do not need to plant solar panels.
If it is profitable for them why would farmers be concerned about solar panels? My understanding was policy was against use of higher quality agricultural land in any case, so it is the less productive parts that would be used.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
surely rooftops face all directions?
The old style of factory/warehouses, with the multiple pitched roofs is perfect for solar. If strong enough and oriented right.
There's another issue here: loadings. Even light solar panels with their fixings weigh something, and rooves are designed to cope with a certain 'live' load. Adding solar panels increases the 'dead' load, and may not be feasible from a weight perspective, especially if you factor in additional 'live' loads (e.g. wind and snow loadings). Adding the weight of the panels plus the snow and wind might take it over its safety tolerances.
edit: I see Richard made the same point below, in a plainer manner.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
Really dislike 65+ as a category. It's simply out of date. Far too large a cohort as a percentage of the population. If you're 65 you're as close to a 35 yo as a 95 yo. .
Not in attitude and interests.
In some ways yes. In others no. You're far closer in terms of computer literacy, being on social media, and music tastes. 65 isn't that old.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
Really dislike 65+ as a category. It's simply out of date. Far too large a cohort as a percentage of the population. If you're 65 you're as close to a 35 yo as a 95 yo. .
Not in attitude and interests.
Probably the 65yo is closer to the 35yo in attitudes and interests. Count back to when each was in their early 20s and think about what was happening. For the 65yo it was punk and disco, then mullets and Mrs Thatcher and early home computers. For the 95yo, there was no Radio 1, probably no television, but there was national service.
What the Rishi move is really all about. Further evidence of how shit he is at politics and how good Liz is (if not at anything else).
Agrivoltaics (sheepies n crops co existing with panels) is a complete red herring, because it doesn't happen here. Possibly great in theory, say in countries where crops benefit from shade over noon, but depends on panels being at head height. They are all at ground level here.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
Really dislike 65+ as a category. It's simply out of date. Far too large a cohort as a percentage of the population. If you're 65 you're as close to a 35 yo as a 95 yo. .
Not in attitude and interests.
In some ways yes. In others no. You're far closer in terms of computer literacy, being on social media, and music tastes. 65 isn't that old.
Whilst that may be true, in their political interests its much closer to being aligned however (thesedays 70+ probably works better than 65+, with the pushing back of retirement).
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
This looks like the most recent poll on Rejoin/Stay Out. Deltapoll, Mail on Sunday, end of last month;
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
Really dislike 65+ as a category. It's simply out of date. Far too large a cohort as a percentage of the population. If you're 65 you're as close to a 35 yo as a 95 yo. .
Not in attitude and interests.
Probably the 65yo is closer to the 35yo in attitudes and interests. Count back to when each was in their early 20s and think about what was happening. For the 65yo it was punk and disco, then mullets and Mrs Thatcher and early home computers. For the 95yo, there was no Radio 1, probably no television, but there was national service.
There are, however, very few 95 year olds, so you’re not going to get a polling breakdown with a 95+ category. You include the small number of respondents who are 95+ in with the 65+ or you exclude them entirely.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
I'd imagine it is farmers who have been lobbying Rishi and Liz to support agriculture so they do not need to plant solar panels.
If it is profitable for them why would farmers be concerned about solar panels? My understanding was policy was against use of higher quality agricultural land in any case, so it is the less productive parts that would be used.
Maybe they like farming. I suspect what farmers really want is subsidy and protection rather than a blanket ban on solar panels, but that Rishi has misunderstood and Liz Truss has chosen to misunderstand, since it is her trade deals farmers worry about.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
The modern Conservative party seems to wish to follow the modern Republican Party in believing that the State telling people what to do is the best way of preserving liberty.
At least they've not yet transitioned to Final Fantasy villain style, 'I must destroy everyone in order to save them'.
What the Rishi move is really all about. Further evidence of how shit he is at politics and how good Liz is (if not at anything else).
Agrivoltaics (sheepies n crops co existing with panels) is a complete red herring, because it doesn't happen here. Possibly great in theory, say in countries where crops benefit from shade over noon, but depends on panels being at head height. They are all at ground level here.
So yes, objected to by contemptible NIMBY scum objecting to "views", not the farmer with the land.
NIMBY fuckwits really are a pox upon this country.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Sheep are quite happy to wonder in and around solar panels.
Wondering "WTF? Give me some proper pasture, not a place that has been engineered by computers to absorb as much of the grass-growing sunlight as it possible...."
The sheep are probably glad of the shade on hot days.
As is the grass- it grows best around 20 degrees, and exposure to full summer sun takes it way beyond that.
Light is far from the only limiting factor for photosynthesis- otherwise houseplants wouldn't be happy.
The people who don't like solar farms are those who either a) want to discredit solar power full stop, or b) think it spoils the view from the kitchen of Ye Olde Farmhouse or on their country walks.
And whilst I'm not full-on Libertarian "do what you like with your land", you need better arguments than that.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
The modern Conservative party seems to wish to follow the modern Republican Party in believing that the State telling people what to do is the best way of preserving liberty.
At least they've not yet transitioned to Final Fantasy villain style, 'I must destroy everyone in order to save them'.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
I'd imagine it is farmers who have been lobbying Rishi and Liz to support agriculture so they do not need to plant solar panels.
Absolutely not. Remember this is pitched at the tory membership only. It's nimbies
The most astonishing figure of the day is German producer prices. Up more than five per cent on the month. Up more than thirty five per cent on the year!
Anybody remember what happened the last time the Germans had rampant inflation....?
Wheelbarrow sales went through the roof. But that was before contactless.
We can only imagine the atmosphere at what remains of the Bundesbank. Inflationary control was their iron rule.
They refused point blank to cut rates when Ken Clark went cap in hand to them during the EMS crisis.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Sheep are quite happy to wonder in and around solar panels.
Wondering "WTF? Give me some proper pasture, not a place that has been engineered by computers to absorb as much of the grass-growing sunlight as it possible...."
The sheep are probably glad of the shade on hot days.
As is the grass- it grows best around 20 degrees, and exposure to full summer sun takes it way beyond that.
Light is far from the only limiting factor for photosynthesis- otherwise houseplants wouldn't be happy.
The people who don't like solar farms are those who either a) want to discredit solar power full stop, or b) think it spoils the view from the kitchen of Ye Olde Farmhouse or on their country walks.
And whilst I'm not full-on Libertarian "do what you like with your land", you need better arguments than that.
Again: I look at a fairfew of these things. What you claim may happen in foreign parts, not here. They are all at ground level and fenced like Colditz.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Sheep are quite happy to wonder in and around solar panels.
Wondering "WTF? Give me some proper pasture, not a place that has been engineered by computers to absorb as much of the grass-growing sunlight as it possible...."
The sheep are probably glad of the shade on hot days.
As is the grass- it grows best around 20 degrees, and exposure to full summer sun takes it way beyond that.
Light is far from the only limiting factor for photosynthesis- otherwise houseplants wouldn't be happy.
The people who don't like solar farms are those who either a) want to discredit solar power full stop, or b) think it spoils the view from the kitchen of Ye Olde Farmhouse or on their country walks.
And whilst I'm not full-on Libertarian "do what you like with your land", you need better arguments than that.
Again: I look at a fairfew of these things. What you claim may happen in foreign parts, not here. They are all at ground level and fenced like Colditz.
You mean, they're meant to be fenced but in reality the sheep get through them all the time?
The most astonishing figure of the day is German producer prices. Up more than five per cent on the month. Up more than thirty five per cent on the year!
Anybody remember what happened the last time the Germans had rampant inflation....?
Wheelbarrow sales went through the roof. But that was before contactless.
We can only imagine the atmosphere at what remains of the Bundesbank. Inflationary control was their iron rule.
They refused point blank to cut rates when Ken Clark went cap in hand to them during the EMS crisis.
Do you mean Norman Lamont?
Lamont was chancellor, indeed, but I think I remember the Bundesbank guy saying it was Clark who actually appeared before him in person.
Clark become chancellor later in the parliament, and very good he was, too.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Rooftops, especially if they're not South-facing, may not always be the best option though.
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
I'd imagine it is farmers who have been lobbying Rishi and Liz to support agriculture so they do not need to plant solar panels.
Absolutely not. Remember this is pitched at the tory membership only. It's nimbies
Actually short sighted of them, because at least solar is low profile and once a farm is installed, that's that land safe for 40 years
You think farmers in rural constituencies (where the hustings started) are not Conservative members? That they are not worried about the loss of CAP subsidies and the impact of trade deals increasing competition from Australia and in future America? They are not complaining about solar panels, they are complaining (or even threatening) that they may be forced into them if traditional agriculture dies.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
I think this fails the Occam's Razor test - at least for a long time.
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
Sheep are quite happy to wonder in and around solar panels.
Wondering "WTF? Give me some proper pasture, not a place that has been engineered by computers to absorb as much of the grass-growing sunlight as it possible...."
The sheep are probably glad of the shade on hot days.
As is the grass- it grows best around 20 degrees, and exposure to full summer sun takes it way beyond that.
Light is far from the only limiting factor for photosynthesis- otherwise houseplants wouldn't be happy.
The people who don't like solar farms are those who either a) want to discredit solar power full stop, or b) think it spoils the view from the kitchen of Ye Olde Farmhouse or on their country walks.
And whilst I'm not full-on Libertarian "do what you like with your land", you need better arguments than that.
Again: I look at a fairfew of these things. What you claim may happen in foreign parts, not here. They are all at ground level and fenced like Colditz.
In which case, a fairly obvious solution presents itself. (Guessing, putting the panels low down is done to reduce the visual blight.)
Comments
People like you would have thought that sinking Russia's Black Sea flagship or destroying a Russian airbase in Crimea would be enough to start WW3, but they happened, and there's still no sign of it.
Article 5
“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”
You have to ask why it stipulates armed attack, bit prescient to be ruling out cyberattack in 1949. But anyway use of weapon in Zap - irradiation of Poland inevitable because wind, looks like a good fit to me.
Very different system in Italy, of course, but the bottom line in both countries is that if you're not turning votes into seats, you're not making serious inroads in domestic politics.
Yeah it won’t be Farage. But a British version of Meloni, quite possible
See the actual facts below on German prices at the factory gate. Not UK ones, German ones.
Try to think about what (if anything), the ECB can do about this, given the weaker economies in the region are already struggling with rates at zero.
Remainers ignore what is actually going on in the EU countries. And why wouldn't they. Look at the state of it.
https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/should-the-united-kingdom-join-the-european-union-or-stay-out-of-the-european-union/
There is a slice of "we're out, it's a mistake, but it's too late." But that slice is smaller than I thought. And I wouldn't want to do a Euroreferendum on those numbers.
But- to return to my main point- look at that age profile.
To be honest, I think there is going to be a surge in migration globally in the years ahead because of climate breakdown, and trying to turn ourselves into fortress Britain won't work. What we need is a wholesale rethinking of the issue including much higher public tolerance of it. I should add that I don't think this will happen which is why I am intensely pessimistic about politics in coming decades.
https://twitter.com/IpsosUK/status/1560585319480565763?t=TiqccFQAA4MDGvJgRtnneA&s=19
Has anyone told Putin?
It's simply out of date. Far too large a cohort as a percentage of the population. If you're 65 you're as close to a 35 yo as a 95 yo.
Born in 1957 rather than 1927.
Ever Closer Union ...
*The ones that aren't retired of course.
They refused point blank to cut rates when Ken Clark went cap in hand to them during the EMS crisis.
https://twitter.com/uasupport999/status/1560394461443944448
Brexit doesn't have to go brilliantly to change minds, if it even goes mediocrely then it will be displaced from the agenda by other issues and people will evolve and move on. And the UK and the EU will evolve and move on.
The voters in 2036 won't be the same as the voters in 2016, that's true, but nor will the UK be the same, nor will the EU be the same and nor will the priorities be the same.
Even Sir Keir Starmer has resigned to Brexit now. Reopening that whole can of worms is going to require something traumatic to happen.
In a way you have to admire his determination to do this and also shows that a lot of qualifications dont really mean much in non specialist positions .Had to pay back his last 80K as well.
Its got the makings of a film anyway
NEW: Western intelligence official just told reporters attack on Saky airfield in Crimea by Ukraine 'put more than half of Russia's Black Sea Fleet naval aviation combat jets out of use. The Russian system is busy seeking to allocate blame for the debacle.'
'The real story is about (Russia's) Black Sea Fleet. They've lost their flagship Moskva, they lost Snake Island, they lost half of their naval aviation package and their military headquarters was struck.'
'What we are seeing now is (Russia's) Black Sea Fleet taking a very defensive position, trying to avoid getting in the line of fire. This is a proud fleet with a long history. The credibility of that entity has been diminished.'
https://www.twitter.com/EJ_Burrows/status/1560592023383445504
1.06 Liz Truss 94%
16 Rishi Sunak 6%
Next Conservative leader
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
17.5 Rishi Sunak 6%
Colvile is proposing 175 square miles of solar farms on farmland. It fails the "necessary" test.
We should not even be touching that - with the impact on food production, recreation etc - until we have used all suitable available large roofs, car parks etc - which are situated in conirbations where the electricity is actually needed.
Amazon have just installed 20,000 sqm of solar panels on top of their Tilbury warehouse. That alone is 2 Hectares, and they have 20 fulfilment centres, just for one example.
In the UK we have something like 16 sqm of space in warehouses over 100k sqft, which will be divided by perhaps 1.x to get the roof area. That's just in the warehousing sector.
We may not need to use farmland at all.
https://www.cambridgeshirechamber.co.uk/downloadlibrary/UKWA Savills.pdf
But surely it comes down to personal choice? If a firm like Amazon wants to install solar then that should be their choice and they should be able to do so.
If a farmer wants to install solar, then that should be their choice, and why should they be denied that choice while Amazon get to choose to do so?
Buy a field. Find out what you are allowed to do with it, and what you can get paid to do with it.
One thing is certain - we don't have a free market in land usage in the UK.
We have farmers dedicating land to provide bio-fuels. We just increased Unleaded from 5% to 10% bio-fuels. Why should farmers be providing bio-fuels, rather than food, but providing electricity instead of food is supposedly a threat?
If a farmer wants to provide electricity plus sheep from their farm, that should be their prerogative.
16sqm -> 16 million sqm !
And that is several square miles of warehouse roof available where suitable, just for a start.
They stopped after I kept referring to the "Virreinato"...
Of course the Camparis ** would be outraged but when aren't they.
** Camparis = bitter orange. Am I the first person to call the DUP that ?
We should empower and trust farmers to do what they think is best with their own land.
From what I see, portal frame buildings are likely to be the least suitable, and perhaps old and small ones - our 7000 sqft gym, for example, is in a medium height former warehouse (ceiling 6-9m). But if a roof is carrying aircon, water, and heating, then it bears a look.
There is also surrounding land, and surrounding car parks.
I think there are various unaddressed opportunities - perhaps airfields is one of the most obvious. Heathrow is 2 square miles, for example.
edit: I see Richard made the same point below, in a plainer manner.
You're far closer in terms of computer literacy, being on social media, and music tastes. 65 isn't that old.
What the Rishi move is really all about. Further evidence of how shit he is at politics and how good Liz is (if not at anything else).
Agrivoltaics (sheepies n crops co existing with panels) is a complete red herring, because it doesn't happen here. Possibly great in theory, say in countries where crops benefit from shade over noon, but depends on panels being at head height. They are all at ground level here.
NIMBY fuckwits really are a pox upon this country.
As is the grass- it grows best around 20 degrees, and exposure to full summer sun takes it way beyond that.
Light is far from the only limiting factor for photosynthesis- otherwise houseplants wouldn't be happy.
The people who don't like solar farms are those who either
a) want to discredit solar power full stop, or
b) think it spoils the view from the kitchen of Ye Olde Farmhouse or on their country walks.
And whilst I'm not full-on Libertarian "do what you like with your land", you need better arguments than that.
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/20628464.controversial-plans-ramsden-solar-farm-withdrawn-days-planning-meeting/
Actually short sighted of them, because at least solar is low profile and once a farm is installed, that's that land safe for 40 years
Is he plural of 'roof' roofs or rooves?
I was taught 'rooves', but it always looks wrong to me when written, but better when spoken.
Clark become chancellor later in the parliament, and very good he was, too.
Therefore, almost everyone including autocorrect uses 'roofs.'
(Guessing, putting the panels low down is done to reduce the visual blight.)