WATCH: Our Chair, Professor Graeme Roy, discusses the key messages from our paper on trends in Scotland’s population and their effects on the economy and income tax, published this morning alongside our Fiscal Sustainability Report consultation paper.
Scotland: Population, -900,000 (-16%) Working age population from 64%>56%, as a result GDP -0.5% / year vs UK on average.
We are going to need a lot of immigration to offset that. A working population down to 56% would be beyond disastrous without a productivity miracle which has not shown any signs of existing yet. But how do we persuade any newcomers to stay here when the bright, shiny lights of London beckon??
Quite a large chunk of net migration comes from RUK, too. A dilemma, from an indy perspective.
The bigger issue, imo, is that people have fewer kids in Scotland, even when taking account of our slightly older population compared with the UK. Why?
I would guess that we have a much smaller immigrant population than rUK and the propensity of immigrants to have larger families has kept the birth rate above replacement for rUk but not for us. The massive scale of immigration in England in particular has also kept the working age/total population ratio at a much healthier place.
These have been longterm issues for Scotland. In the 1951 census the Scottish population was 5,095,969. It has not even grown 10% since then. In1951 the population of England was 41,164,356 and it is now 56,489,800 an increase of 37%. This has had political consequences. Scotland forms a significantly smaller proportion of MPs than it did 70 years ago. This trend looks set to continue.
Which is why the Scottish Government has a pro-migration policy being thwarted by the parochial jingoism south of the wall. Its another of the "unless something is done to address this, the arguments for independence go stronger" points. We need to fix the union if we are to stay together.
Its not being thwarted by jingoism. Not only is recorded immigration currently at record levels (I emphasise the word "recorded" because we frankly have no idea how many EU citizens moved here, not even to the nearest couple of million) but rUk does not need immigration as much as Scotland because it is simply not facing this demographic time bomb.
Scotland does have a pro immigration stance, and rightly so, but it makes no difference when the Scottish government shows so little interest in the Scottish economy and Nicola's eyes glaze over when economics is mentioned.
As I have said before on here a government that was serious about independence would be doing all within its considerable range of powers to attract new businesses to Scotland, to improve rather than damage our tax competitiveness, to overcome the infrastructure issues that impede investment and to improve our education systems so that we have the skilled workforce of tomorrow. If the SG was doing these things and the jobs were being created people would come to fill those jobs. But it is so much easier to whine and blame the Tories.
Can't do much about those things in the decaying husk of the current union settlement. Create a new UK fit for the future with full home rule for each nation and maybe. As for infrastructure, I see way more investment in roads and rail and broadband than I did in England.
Is that not partly as each Scottish citizen gets two grand a year more U.K. government spend than those in England each year?
It notable that whose who continually emphasise this - and are constant critics of the SNP government - tend also to be those most opposed to Scottish independence. Which would get rid of both of those things quite rapidly.
Don’t include me in this. If Scots want independence they should go. But before they do the route map must be a damn sight clearer than Brexit…
I posted a brief sketch upthread:
It (independence) would mean, for example, that the SNP no longer had a monopoly on government.
An independent Scotland could join the EU - which would facilitate migration through freedom of movement. It would also find it much easier to achieve full energy self sufficiency than would the UK as a whole, both in absolute terms, and in terms of the financing.
It would be a pretty tough first decade for any independent Scottish government - which if there is ever another referendum would be the basis of the No campaign - but it's entirely feasible. And if those population projections are anywhere near the reality, they make quite a compelling case for it.
There was freedom of movement from the EU until really recently and almost no-one came to Scotland. There is clearly no draw there, no attraction. I’m not sure why, although a Greek FOAF blamed the poor weather (Glasgow) and that his wife was miserable the whole time.
It's the lack of light I think. Once you've lived somewhere with significantly more winter light than the UK then London is just about bearable but Scotland is off the scale miserable. It's a tough sell. But if Scotland allows free movement and England doesn't then the draw of Scotland will be bigger than before.
But the same problem obtains. The weather and the light. Scotland is not an attractive place to live for these reasons. It takes an unusual mentality to endure it
So if iScotland is in the EU Europeans who want to live in “Britain” will move to Scotland then simply move south across an open border to London, which has a much more pleasant climate
The only way to stop this would be a very hard border along Hadrian’s. All roads closed and passport checks 24/7
That’s quite a hard sell for the SNP. Yes you can be independent but No there won’t be a free moving common travel area like Ireland
Nonsense as usual. While the percentage of any given population who find Scotland's climate appealing might be quite small, with a hinterland of 447m people that doesn't matter much when your own population is only 5m.
So why didn’t any of these EU citizens move to Scotland before Brexit?
Two reasons
1 Shit weather and no light 2 The overwhelming attraction of southern England/London to the S (ie they’d go to Scotland, experience a winter, head down the A1)
1 will still be a factor post indy. 2 suggests a hard border post indy
Johnson was right to announce his departure, but he's been far too long about it. I don't see Truss as the saviour of the nation either. In other words Old King Cole doesn't see a very bright future at all!
It is at times like this that we value our family and our soon to be born 5th grandchild ( due1st September )
Indeed Mr G. And your fifth grandchild is due on the ideal date, educationally, I understand.
Oldest child in the class; starts just after its fifth birthday!
Indeed and actually our next door neighbours first grandchild was due last friday and so far no signs and she is due to be admitted to the maternity hospital on the 2nd September which could see both our grandchildren arrive the same day
WATCH: Our Chair, Professor Graeme Roy, discusses the key messages from our paper on trends in Scotland’s population and their effects on the economy and income tax, published this morning alongside our Fiscal Sustainability Report consultation paper.
Scotland: Population, -900,000 (-16%) Working age population from 64%>56%, as a result GDP -0.5% / year vs UK on average.
We are going to need a lot of immigration to offset that. A working population down to 56% would be beyond disastrous without a productivity miracle which has not shown any signs of existing yet. But how do we persuade any newcomers to stay here when the bright, shiny lights of London beckon??
Quite a large chunk of net migration comes from RUK, too. A dilemma, from an indy perspective.
The bigger issue, imo, is that people have fewer kids in Scotland, even when taking account of our slightly older population compared with the UK. Why?
I would guess that we have a much smaller immigrant population than rUK and the propensity of immigrants to have larger families has kept the birth rate above replacement for rUk but not for us. The massive scale of immigration in England in particular has also kept the working age/total population ratio at a much healthier place.
These have been longterm issues for Scotland. In the 1951 census the Scottish population was 5,095,969. It has not even grown 10% since then. In1951 the population of England was 41,164,356 and it is now 56,489,800 an increase of 37%. This has had political consequences. Scotland forms a significantly smaller proportion of MPs than it did 70 years ago. This trend looks set to continue.
Which is why the Scottish Government has a pro-migration policy being thwarted by the parochial jingoism south of the wall. Its another of the "unless something is done to address this, the arguments for independence go stronger" points. We need to fix the union if we are to stay together.
Its not being thwarted by jingoism. Not only is recorded immigration currently at record levels (I emphasise the word "recorded" because we frankly have no idea how many EU citizens moved here, not even to the nearest couple of million) but rUk does not need immigration as much as Scotland because it is simply not facing this demographic time bomb.
Scotland does have a pro immigration stance, and rightly so, but it makes no difference when the Scottish government shows so little interest in the Scottish economy and Nicola's eyes glaze over when economics is mentioned.
As I have said before on here a government that was serious about independence would be doing all within its considerable range of powers to attract new businesses to Scotland, to improve rather than damage our tax competitiveness, to overcome the infrastructure issues that impede investment and to improve our education systems so that we have the skilled workforce of tomorrow. If the SG was doing these things and the jobs were being created people would come to fill those jobs. But it is so much easier to whine and blame the Tories.
Can't do much about those things in the decaying husk of the current union settlement. Create a new UK fit for the future with full home rule for each nation and maybe. As for infrastructure, I see way more investment in roads and rail and broadband than I did in England.
Is that not partly as each Scottish citizen gets two grand a year more U.K. government spend than those in England each year?
It notable that whose who continually emphasise this - and are constant critics of the SNP government - tend also to be those most opposed to Scottish independence. Which would get rid of both of those things quite rapidly.
Don’t include me in this. If Scots want independence they should go. But before they do the route map must be a damn sight clearer than Brexit…
I posted a brief sketch upthread:
It (independence) would mean, for example, that the SNP no longer had a monopoly on government.
An independent Scotland could join the EU - which would facilitate migration through freedom of movement. It would also find it much easier to achieve full energy self sufficiency than would the UK as a whole, both in absolute terms, and in terms of the financing.
It would be a pretty tough first decade for any independent Scottish government - which if there is ever another referendum would be the basis of the No campaign - but it's entirely feasible. And if those population projections are anywhere near the reality, they make quite a compelling case for it.
There was freedom of movement from the EU until really recently and almost no-one came to Scotland. There is clearly no draw there, no attraction. I’m not sure why, although a Greek FOAF blamed the poor weather (Glasgow) and that his wife was miserable the whole time.
It's the lack of light I think. Once you've lived somewhere with significantly more winter light than the UK then London is just about bearable but Scotland is off the scale miserable. It's a tough sell. But if Scotland allows free movement and England doesn't then the draw of Scotland will be bigger than before.
But the same problem obtains. The weather and the light. Scotland is not an attractive place to live for these reasons. It takes an unusual mentality to endure it
So if iScotland is in the EU Europeans who want to live in “Britain” will move to Scotland then simply move south across an open border to London, which has a much more pleasant climate
The only way to stop this would be a very hard border along Hadrian’s. All roads closed and passport checks 24/7
That’s quite a hard sell for the SNP. Yes you can be independent but No there won’t be a free moving common travel area like Ireland
It will be just like the situation with Ireland, which is inside the common travel area; EU citizens can travel to Ireland freely but they can't work in the UK. As you know there is no hard border in Ireland and the common travel area works fine. It will be the same in Scotland. Independence comes with many short term costs but that is unlikely to be one of them.
And that is the point. Anyone can walk from the EU to the UK. They can travel but they are not entitled to work or claim social security. So all the rUK needs to do to control its open CTA border is (a) ensure companies are checking employment status as they are required to do anyway, (b) don't pay benefits to non-residents and (c) shut down the black economy companies paying illegals in cash.
The CTA is on its last legs. It won’t survive in its current form. No way would it be repeated for iScotland
The CTA is going nowhere, unless you fancy manning the Irish border yourself. The second article is just another example of why the Rwanda policy is a bad one - it is this policy that will end up getting ditched, not the CTA. If the UK tried to ditch the CTA the Irish will just join Schengen and invite the UK government to try to control the border. I will order in multo popcorn for that.
Johnson was right to announce his departure, but he's been far too long about it. I don't see Truss as the saviour of the nation either. In other words Old King Cole doesn't see a very bright future at all!
It is at times like this that we value our family and our soon to be born 5th grandchild ( due1st September )
Indeed Mr G. And your fifth grandchild is due on the ideal date, educationally, I understand.
Oldest child in the class; starts just after its fifth birthday!
Indeed and actually our next door neighbours first grandchild was due last friday and so far no signs and she is due to be admitted to the maternity hospital on the 2nd September which could see both our grandchildren arrive the same day
All the best to both sets of parents. And especially the mothers!
WATCH: Our Chair, Professor Graeme Roy, discusses the key messages from our paper on trends in Scotland’s population and their effects on the economy and income tax, published this morning alongside our Fiscal Sustainability Report consultation paper.
Scotland: Population, -900,000 (-16%) Working age population from 64%>56%, as a result GDP -0.5% / year vs UK on average.
We are going to need a lot of immigration to offset that. A working population down to 56% would be beyond disastrous without a productivity miracle which has not shown any signs of existing yet. But how do we persuade any newcomers to stay here when the bright, shiny lights of London beckon??
Quite a large chunk of net migration comes from RUK, too. A dilemma, from an indy perspective.
The bigger issue, imo, is that people have fewer kids in Scotland, even when taking account of our slightly older population compared with the UK. Why?
I would guess that we have a much smaller immigrant population than rUK and the propensity of immigrants to have larger families has kept the birth rate above replacement for rUk but not for us. The massive scale of immigration in England in particular has also kept the working age/total population ratio at a much healthier place.
These have been longterm issues for Scotland. In the 1951 census the Scottish population was 5,095,969. It has not even grown 10% since then. In1951 the population of England was 41,164,356 and it is now 56,489,800 an increase of 37%. This has had political consequences. Scotland forms a significantly smaller proportion of MPs than it did 70 years ago. This trend looks set to continue.
Which is why the Scottish Government has a pro-migration policy being thwarted by the parochial jingoism south of the wall. Its another of the "unless something is done to address this, the arguments for independence go stronger" points. We need to fix the union if we are to stay together.
Its not being thwarted by jingoism. Not only is recorded immigration currently at record levels (I emphasise the word "recorded" because we frankly have no idea how many EU citizens moved here, not even to the nearest couple of million) but rUk does not need immigration as much as Scotland because it is simply not facing this demographic time bomb.
Scotland does have a pro immigration stance, and rightly so, but it makes no difference when the Scottish government shows so little interest in the Scottish economy and Nicola's eyes glaze over when economics is mentioned.
As I have said before on here a government that was serious about independence would be doing all within its considerable range of powers to attract new businesses to Scotland, to improve rather than damage our tax competitiveness, to overcome the infrastructure issues that impede investment and to improve our education systems so that we have the skilled workforce of tomorrow. If the SG was doing these things and the jobs were being created people would come to fill those jobs. But it is so much easier to whine and blame the Tories.
Can't do much about those things in the decaying husk of the current union settlement. Create a new UK fit for the future with full home rule for each nation and maybe. As for infrastructure, I see way more investment in roads and rail and broadband than I did in England.
Is that not partly as each Scottish citizen gets two grand a year more U.K. government spend than those in England each year?
It notable that whose who continually emphasise this - and are constant critics of the SNP government - tend also to be those most opposed to Scottish independence. Which would get rid of both of those things quite rapidly.
Don’t include me in this. If Scots want independence they should go. But before they do the route map must be a damn sight clearer than Brexit…
I posted a brief sketch upthread:
It (independence) would mean, for example, that the SNP no longer had a monopoly on government.
An independent Scotland could join the EU - which would facilitate migration through freedom of movement. It would also find it much easier to achieve full energy self sufficiency than would the UK as a whole, both in absolute terms, and in terms of the financing.
It would be a pretty tough first decade for any independent Scottish government - which if there is ever another referendum would be the basis of the No campaign - but it's entirely feasible. And if those population projections are anywhere near the reality, they make quite a compelling case for it.
There was freedom of movement from the EU until really recently and almost no-one came to Scotland. There is clearly no draw there, no attraction. I’m not sure why, although a Greek FOAF blamed the poor weather (Glasgow) and that his wife was miserable the whole time.
It's the lack of light I think. Once you've lived somewhere with significantly more winter light than the UK then London is just about bearable but Scotland is off the scale miserable. It's a tough sell. But if Scotland allows free movement and England doesn't then the draw of Scotland will be bigger than before.
But the same problem obtains. The weather and the light. Scotland is not an attractive place to live for these reasons. It takes an unusual mentality to endure it
So if iScotland is in the EU Europeans who want to live in “Britain” will move to Scotland then simply move south across an open border to London, which has a much more pleasant climate
The only way to stop this would be a very hard border along Hadrian’s. All roads closed and passport checks 24/7
That’s quite a hard sell for the SNP. Yes you can be independent but No there won’t be a free moving common travel area like Ireland
It will be just like the situation with Ireland, which is inside the common travel area; EU citizens can travel to Ireland freely but they can't work in the UK. As you know there is no hard border in Ireland and the common travel area works fine. It will be the same in Scotland. Independence comes with many short term costs but that is unlikely to be one of them.
The Common Travel Area with Ireland is now a problem for both sides. It would not be repeated between England and iScotland
Not having it would be more of a problem for both the UK and Ireland - it would in fact be impossible to implement. It would be very hard for rUK to impose a full border with passport checks on Scotland although of course they could if they wanted to be dicks about it and didn't mind Faslane closing on day 1.
If Indy Scotland adopts a much more pro-immigration policy than rUK - and I can see why it would do so, it needs migrants - then there would have to be a hard border with England. It’s as simple as that. Otherwise these new Scots - mainly from Africa - will simply move south at the first opportunity
Also: asylum. Look at the Channel crossings. Why bother risking that if you can just fly to Scotland then drive, bus walk to England, losing your documents on the way in Berwick
Why would they move? They would not be able to legally work in England. They would not be able to claim social security benefits in England. And I have to assume the English government would stop companies employing illegals as it is supposed to be doing now.
If people can't work in your country, and can't live in your country, and can't scrounge from your country, why would they come? The issue remains that the UK does not sufficiently crack down on companies employing illegals.
WATCH: Our Chair, Professor Graeme Roy, discusses the key messages from our paper on trends in Scotland’s population and their effects on the economy and income tax, published this morning alongside our Fiscal Sustainability Report consultation paper.
Scotland: Population, -900,000 (-16%) Working age population from 64%>56%, as a result GDP -0.5% / year vs UK on average.
We are going to need a lot of immigration to offset that. A working population down to 56% would be beyond disastrous without a productivity miracle which has not shown any signs of existing yet. But how do we persuade any newcomers to stay here when the bright, shiny lights of London beckon??
Quite a large chunk of net migration comes from RUK, too. A dilemma, from an indy perspective.
The bigger issue, imo, is that people have fewer kids in Scotland, even when taking account of our slightly older population compared with the UK. Why?
I would guess that we have a much smaller immigrant population than rUK and the propensity of immigrants to have larger families has kept the birth rate above replacement for rUk but not for us. The massive scale of immigration in England in particular has also kept the working age/total population ratio at a much healthier place.
These have been longterm issues for Scotland. In the 1951 census the Scottish population was 5,095,969. It has not even grown 10% since then. In1951 the population of England was 41,164,356 and it is now 56,489,800 an increase of 37%. This has had political consequences. Scotland forms a significantly smaller proportion of MPs than it did 70 years ago. This trend looks set to continue.
Which is why the Scottish Government has a pro-migration policy being thwarted by the parochial jingoism south of the wall. Its another of the "unless something is done to address this, the arguments for independence go stronger" points. We need to fix the union if we are to stay together.
Its not being thwarted by jingoism. Not only is recorded immigration currently at record levels (I emphasise the word "recorded" because we frankly have no idea how many EU citizens moved here, not even to the nearest couple of million) but rUk does not need immigration as much as Scotland because it is simply not facing this demographic time bomb.
Scotland does have a pro immigration stance, and rightly so, but it makes no difference when the Scottish government shows so little interest in the Scottish economy and Nicola's eyes glaze over when economics is mentioned.
As I have said before on here a government that was serious about independence would be doing all within its considerable range of powers to attract new businesses to Scotland, to improve rather than damage our tax competitiveness, to overcome the infrastructure issues that impede investment and to improve our education systems so that we have the skilled workforce of tomorrow. If the SG was doing these things and the jobs were being created people would come to fill those jobs. But it is so much easier to whine and blame the Tories.
Can't do much about those things in the decaying husk of the current union settlement. Create a new UK fit for the future with full home rule for each nation and maybe. As for infrastructure, I see way more investment in roads and rail and broadband than I did in England.
Is that not partly as each Scottish citizen gets two grand a year more U.K. government spend than those in England each year?
It notable that whose who continually emphasise this - and are constant critics of the SNP government - tend also to be those most opposed to Scottish independence. Which would get rid of both of those things quite rapidly.
Don’t include me in this. If Scots want independence they should go. But before they do the route map must be a damn sight clearer than Brexit…
I posted a brief sketch upthread:
It (independence) would mean, for example, that the SNP no longer had a monopoly on government.
An independent Scotland could join the EU - which would facilitate migration through freedom of movement. It would also find it much easier to achieve full energy self sufficiency than would the UK as a whole, both in absolute terms, and in terms of the financing.
It would be a pretty tough first decade for any independent Scottish government - which if there is ever another referendum would be the basis of the No campaign - but it's entirely feasible. And if those population projections are anywhere near the reality, they make quite a compelling case for it.
There was freedom of movement from the EU until really recently and almost no-one came to Scotland. There is clearly no draw there, no attraction. I’m not sure why, although a Greek FOAF blamed the poor weather (Glasgow) and that his wife was miserable the whole time.
It's the lack of light I think. Once you've lived somewhere with significantly more winter light than the UK then London is just about bearable but Scotland is off the scale miserable. It's a tough sell. But if Scotland allows free movement and England doesn't then the draw of Scotland will be bigger than before.
Maybe, but Scotland just isn’t that attractive. Look at DickStuartson, the biggest Scottish booster on here, and even he can’t be arsed to live there. It’s great at times, the short summer nights and endless daylight. But my god the darkness of winter, an worse the further north you go. Stumpy, one story houses, a lack of trees, a lack of sun, and you don’t wonder why people don’t come.
I live her and don't recognise what you have just described. There is part of Scotland north of the tree line, but most of it has trees. An awful lot of them.
There is no shortage of trees in Scotland until you reach Caithness Sutherland, Orkney and Shetland, far from it
Sometimes I get a sharp sense of existential despair on this site. Like a cracked rib piercing a lung. When I suddenly realise I am debating - at length - someone with the IQ of a dead hedgehog
Peers will just keep voting this down, and there is nothing the government can do about it. Parliament Act you say? The Lords are UPHOLDING the government manifesto which the government are now trying to scrap.
Now down to an amazing 76.1. It’s not just Covid, it’s drugs, guns, obesity
For Native Americans it’s a staggering 65
Fentanyl.
The US really needs to start legalising currently illegal drugs, and selling them in measured doses in pharmacies.
No, that wouldn’t solve it. Fentanyl is more addictive than heroin and gives a more profound if troubling “high”. It’s a designer drug - designed to be hideously addictive and deranging. Instant schizophrenia
I have some sympathy for the conspiracy theorists who wonder if these drugs were expressly designed by the Chinese to bring down the USA
It may be hideously addictive but law enforcement doesn't work to stop it. Prohibition doesn't work.
Education and treatment does work.
No they don’t. I wish they did, but they don’t
I used to be a drug libertarian. Legalise them! But these new opioids are so brutally addictive and damaging I’ve changed my mind
What needs to be legalised is the regular heroin and cocaine - precisely to keep these new, addictive opioids off the streets.
But heroin and coke can’t compete, for addictivity, with the new drugs
The users don’t want the most addictive drugs, they just want to get high. The addictivity is being driven by the suppliers.
Sell the regular stuff for a couple of bucks at Walgreens or Boot’s, and people will take that instead - without totally f***ing up their lives in the process.
Forget existing drugs, governments should license the pharma companies to produce a range of legal highs that are relatively safe and not too addictive.
Sometimes I get a sharp sense of existential despair on this site. Like a cracked rib piercing a lung. When I suddenly realise I am debating - at length - someone with the IQ of a dead hedgehog
There are only really two great intellectual and debating titans on this site - @BartholomewRoberts and yourself. You should set up a debate and sell tickets. I'd come, because in about five minutes it would descend into History Today and five minutes after that "your mum smells"
We really should have a thread on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of the people's princess.
The great Welsh Conservative Journalist John Humphreys said at the time Diana's death was not a seminal moment. We all thought it was, he was right.
I once passed Diana on a platform at Cardiff Central Station on a 5 Nations match day circa 1993. Our eyes met, I ventured a cheery hello and she smiled knowingly. I don't know where the security detail were, they must have been deep, deep undercover.
I've gone the other way - at the time I wondered what all the fuss was about but now I totally understand the outpouring of grief. Diana was a central figure - perhaps the most important at that time - in the Royal soap opera. It is the soap opera that keeps the Royals in business, as they well understand. And people are genuinely emotially invested in their favourite soap. Whether it was a seminal moment or not I doubt it - the royal family has tremendous emotional and ceremonial power in the UK but is really quite tangential to anything important.
Indeed, if the heir to the throne was the son of Charles and Camilla not Charles and Diana it would be a whole different story for the Royal family
Peers will just keep voting this down, and there is nothing the government can do about it. Parliament Act you say? The Lords are UPHOLDING the government manifesto which the government are now trying to scrap.
Great fun.
Inconveniently for that argument, the Conservative manifesto said: "We will ensure that Northern Ireland’s businesses and producers enjoy unfettered access to the rest of the UK and that in the implementation of our Brexit deal, we maintain and strengthen the integrity and smooth operation of our internal market."
WATCH: Our Chair, Professor Graeme Roy, discusses the key messages from our paper on trends in Scotland’s population and their effects on the economy and income tax, published this morning alongside our Fiscal Sustainability Report consultation paper.
Scotland: Population, -900,000 (-16%) Working age population from 64%>56%, as a result GDP -0.5% / year vs UK on average.
We are going to need a lot of immigration to offset that. A working population down to 56% would be beyond disastrous without a productivity miracle which has not shown any signs of existing yet. But how do we persuade any newcomers to stay here when the bright, shiny lights of London beckon??
Quite a large chunk of net migration comes from RUK, too. A dilemma, from an indy perspective.
The bigger issue, imo, is that people have fewer kids in Scotland, even when taking account of our slightly older population compared with the UK. Why?
I would guess that we have a much smaller immigrant population than rUK and the propensity of immigrants to have larger families has kept the birth rate above replacement for rUk but not for us. The massive scale of immigration in England in particular has also kept the working age/total population ratio at a much healthier place.
These have been longterm issues for Scotland. In the 1951 census the Scottish population was 5,095,969. It has not even grown 10% since then. In1951 the population of England was 41,164,356 and it is now 56,489,800 an increase of 37%. This has had political consequences. Scotland forms a significantly smaller proportion of MPs than it did 70 years ago. This trend looks set to continue.
Which is why the Scottish Government has a pro-migration policy being thwarted by the parochial jingoism south of the wall. Its another of the "unless something is done to address this, the arguments for independence go stronger" points. We need to fix the union if we are to stay together.
Its not being thwarted by jingoism. Not only is recorded immigration currently at record levels (I emphasise the word "recorded" because we frankly have no idea how many EU citizens moved here, not even to the nearest couple of million) but rUk does not need immigration as much as Scotland because it is simply not facing this demographic time bomb.
Scotland does have a pro immigration stance, and rightly so, but it makes no difference when the Scottish government shows so little interest in the Scottish economy and Nicola's eyes glaze over when economics is mentioned.
As I have said before on here a government that was serious about independence would be doing all within its considerable range of powers to attract new businesses to Scotland, to improve rather than damage our tax competitiveness, to overcome the infrastructure issues that impede investment and to improve our education systems so that we have the skilled workforce of tomorrow. If the SG was doing these things and the jobs were being created people would come to fill those jobs. But it is so much easier to whine and blame the Tories.
Can't do much about those things in the decaying husk of the current union settlement. Create a new UK fit for the future with full home rule for each nation and maybe. As for infrastructure, I see way more investment in roads and rail and broadband than I did in England.
Is that not partly as each Scottish citizen gets two grand a year more U.K. government spend than those in England each year?
It notable that whose who continually emphasise this - and are constant critics of the SNP government - tend also to be those most opposed to Scottish independence. Which would get rid of both of those things quite rapidly.
Don’t include me in this. If Scots want independence they should go. But before they do the route map must be a damn sight clearer than Brexit…
I posted a brief sketch upthread:
It (independence) would mean, for example, that the SNP no longer had a monopoly on government.
An independent Scotland could join the EU - which would facilitate migration through freedom of movement. It would also find it much easier to achieve full energy self sufficiency than would the UK as a whole, both in absolute terms, and in terms of the financing.
It would be a pretty tough first decade for any independent Scottish government - which if there is ever another referendum would be the basis of the No campaign - but it's entirely feasible. And if those population projections are anywhere near the reality, they make quite a compelling case for it.
There was freedom of movement from the EU until really recently and almost no-one came to Scotland. There is clearly no draw there, no attraction. I’m not sure why, although a Greek FOAF blamed the poor weather (Glasgow) and that his wife was miserable the whole time.
It's the lack of light I think. Once you've lived somewhere with significantly more winter light than the UK then London is just about bearable but Scotland is off the scale miserable. It's a tough sell. But if Scotland allows free movement and England doesn't then the draw of Scotland will be bigger than before.
Maybe, but Scotland just isn’t that attractive. Look at DickStuartson, the biggest Scottish booster on here, and even he can’t be arsed to live there. It’s great at times, the short summer nights and endless daylight. But my god the darkness of winter, an worse the further north you go. Stumpy, one story houses, a lack of trees, a lack of sun, and you don’t wonder why people don’t come.
I live her and don't recognise what you have just described. There is part of Scotland north of the tree line, but most of it has trees. An awful lot of them.
There is no shortage of trees in Scotland until you reach Caithness Sutherland, Orkney and Shetland, far from it
My paragraph was poorly written. I meant to imply that as you go north, the dark nights get worse, the houses shorter and you run out of trees, but I accept it was badly phrased. Of course most of Scotland has large amounts of trees, though sadly not as much native woodland as it would like.
Sometimes I get a sharp sense of existential despair on this site. Like a cracked rib piercing a lung. When I suddenly realise I am debating - at length - someone with the IQ of a dead hedgehog
One day you will realise that people disagreeing with you != people are stupid.
The CTA is on its last legs. It won’t survive in its current form. No way would it be repeated for iScotland
The CTA is going nowhere, unless you fancy manning the Irish border yourself. The second article is just another example of why the Rwanda policy is a bad one - it is this policy that will end up getting ditched, not the CTA. If the UK tried to ditch the CTA the Irish will just join Schengen and invite the UK government to try to control the border. I will order in multo popcorn for that.
My god you’re dumb
Why? What has he said that is dumb? I can't see the Irish joining Schengan because it is detached from the mainland, but it is a perfectly logical argument.
Did you just make that statement because you don't actually have a reply to it?
WATCH: Our Chair, Professor Graeme Roy, discusses the key messages from our paper on trends in Scotland’s population and their effects on the economy and income tax, published this morning alongside our Fiscal Sustainability Report consultation paper.
Peers will just keep voting this down, and there is nothing the government can do about it. Parliament Act you say? The Lords are UPHOLDING the government manifesto which the government are now trying to scrap.
Great fun.
Inconveniently for that argument, the Conservative manifesto said: "We will ensure that Northern Ireland’s businesses and producers enjoy unfettered access to the rest of the UK and that in the implementation of our Brexit deal, we maintain and strengthen the integrity and smooth operation of our internal market."
The obvious job for Truss to offer Johnson is Ambassador to Ukraine. Gets him out of her hair, they actually like him, oblivious to his faults, and he likes them, and he can enjoy himself passing on the liberal flow of goodies from the UK and making boosterish statements to the media about splendid Ukrainian morale, which is just the sort of thing he is good at. If Truss was planning to cut back on Ukraine support that would lead to trouble, but she doesn't seem so inclined. Yes, they might lose the by-election, but these things come and go.
WATCH: Our Chair, Professor Graeme Roy, discusses the key messages from our paper on trends in Scotland’s population and their effects on the economy and income tax, published this morning alongside our Fiscal Sustainability Report consultation paper.
Scotland: Population, -900,000 (-16%) Working age population from 64%>56%, as a result GDP -0.5% / year vs UK on average.
We are going to need a lot of immigration to offset that. A working population down to 56% would be beyond disastrous without a productivity miracle which has not shown any signs of existing yet. But how do we persuade any newcomers to stay here when the bright, shiny lights of London beckon??
Quite a large chunk of net migration comes from RUK, too. A dilemma, from an indy perspective.
The bigger issue, imo, is that people have fewer kids in Scotland, even when taking account of our slightly older population compared with the UK. Why?
I would guess that we have a much smaller immigrant population than rUK and the propensity of immigrants to have larger families has kept the birth rate above replacement for rUk but not for us. The massive scale of immigration in England in particular has also kept the working age/total population ratio at a much healthier place.
These have been longterm issues for Scotland. In the 1951 census the Scottish population was 5,095,969. It has not even grown 10% since then. In1951 the population of England was 41,164,356 and it is now 56,489,800 an increase of 37%. This has had political consequences. Scotland forms a significantly smaller proportion of MPs than it did 70 years ago. This trend looks set to continue.
Which is why the Scottish Government has a pro-migration policy being thwarted by the parochial jingoism south of the wall. Its another of the "unless something is done to address this, the arguments for independence go stronger" points. We need to fix the union if we are to stay together.
Its not being thwarted by jingoism. Not only is recorded immigration currently at record levels (I emphasise the word "recorded" because we frankly have no idea how many EU citizens moved here, not even to the nearest couple of million) but rUk does not need immigration as much as Scotland because it is simply not facing this demographic time bomb.
Scotland does have a pro immigration stance, and rightly so, but it makes no difference when the Scottish government shows so little interest in the Scottish economy and Nicola's eyes glaze over when economics is mentioned.
As I have said before on here a government that was serious about independence would be doing all within its considerable range of powers to attract new businesses to Scotland, to improve rather than damage our tax competitiveness, to overcome the infrastructure issues that impede investment and to improve our education systems so that we have the skilled workforce of tomorrow. If the SG was doing these things and the jobs were being created people would come to fill those jobs. But it is so much easier to whine and blame the Tories.
Can't do much about those things in the decaying husk of the current union settlement. Create a new UK fit for the future with full home rule for each nation and maybe. As for infrastructure, I see way more investment in roads and rail and broadband than I did in England.
Is that not partly as each Scottish citizen gets two grand a year more U.K. government spend than those in England each year?
It notable that whose who continually emphasise this - and are constant critics of the SNP government - tend also to be those most opposed to Scottish independence. Which would get rid of both of those things quite rapidly.
Don’t include me in this. If Scots want independence they should go. But before they do the route map must be a damn sight clearer than Brexit…
I posted a brief sketch upthread:
It (independence) would mean, for example, that the SNP no longer had a monopoly on government.
An independent Scotland could join the EU - which would facilitate migration through freedom of movement. It would also find it much easier to achieve full energy self sufficiency than would the UK as a whole, both in absolute terms, and in terms of the financing.
It would be a pretty tough first decade for any independent Scottish government - which if there is ever another referendum would be the basis of the No campaign - but it's entirely feasible. And if those population projections are anywhere near the reality, they make quite a compelling case for it.
There was freedom of movement from the EU until really recently and almost no-one came to Scotland. There is clearly no draw there, no attraction. I’m not sure why, although a Greek FOAF blamed the poor weather (Glasgow) and that his wife was miserable the whole time.
It's the lack of light I think. Once you've lived somewhere with significantly more winter light than the UK then London is just about bearable but Scotland is off the scale miserable. It's a tough sell. But if Scotland allows free movement and England doesn't then the draw of Scotland will be bigger than before.
But the same problem obtains. The weather and the light. Scotland is not an attractive place to live for these reasons. It takes an unusual mentality to endure it
So if iScotland is in the EU Europeans who want to live in “Britain” will move to Scotland then simply move south across an open border to London, which has a much more pleasant climate
The only way to stop this would be a very hard border along Hadrian’s. All roads closed and passport checks 24/7
That’s quite a hard sell for the SNP. Yes you can be independent but No there won’t be a free moving common travel area like Ireland
Nonsense as usual. While the percentage of any given population who find Scotland's climate appealing might be quite small, with a hinterland of 447m people that doesn't matter much when your own population is only 5m.
So why didn’t any of these EU citizens move to Scotland before Brexit?
Two reasons
1 Shit weather and no light 2 The overwhelming attraction of southern England/London to the S (ie they’d go to Scotland, experience a winter, head down the A1)
1 will still be a factor post indy. 2 suggests a hard border post indy
Work in Scotland legally or in England illegally? Not obvious that the second option would be preferable for many people, and for anyone interested in that option there are many ways of doing it that don't involve going anywhere near Scotland.
The obvious job for Truss to offer Johnson is Ambassador to Ukraine. Gets him out of her hair, they actually like him, oblivious to his faults, and he likes them, and he can enjoy himself passing on the liberal flow of goodies from the UK and making boosterish statements to the media about splendid Ukrainian morale, which is just the sort of thing he is good at. If Truss was planning to cut back on Ukraine support that would lead to trouble, but she doesn't seem so inclined. Yes, they might lose the by-election, but these things come and go.
The report is actually wrong - SKS hasn't banned payroll MPs from appearing on the picket lines, and lots of them have without any repercussions. He's banned them from giving impromptu media statements about what they think Labour policy ought to be. So they can attend the conference and take a few hours off to pop over to the picket lines. The RMT aren't going to picket the conference itself since it's not a place of RMT work.
Peers will just keep voting this down, and there is nothing the government can do about it. Parliament Act you say? The Lords are UPHOLDING the government manifesto which the government are now trying to scrap.
Great fun.
Inconveniently for that argument, the Conservative manifesto said: "We will ensure that Northern Ireland’s businesses and producers enjoy unfettered access to the rest of the UK and that in the implementation of our Brexit deal, we maintain and strengthen the integrity and smooth operation of our internal market."
But this IS their Brexit deal.
Yes, and the legislation before the Lords is to ensure that in its implementation, we maintain and strengthen the integrity and smooth operation of our internal market.
Sometimes I get a sharp sense of existential despair on this site. Like a cracked rib piercing a lung. When I suddenly realise I am debating - at length - someone with the IQ of a dead hedgehog
The obvious job for Truss to offer Johnson is Ambassador to Ukraine. Gets him out of her hair, they actually like him, oblivious to his faults, and he likes them, and he can enjoy himself passing on the liberal flow of goodies from the UK and making boosterish statements to the media about splendid Ukrainian morale, which is just the sort of thing he is good at. If Truss was planning to cut back on Ukraine support that would lead to trouble, but she doesn't seem so inclined. Yes, they might lose the by-election, but these things come and go.
I can't see relocating to a war torn shit hole just in time for its bitter winter being among Nut Nut's immediate life goals. I think he'd accept DC but certainly nothing less.
It would be entertaining though as the potential for him to get in sorts of financial and shagging trouble in Keev is simply immense.
WATCH: Our Chair, Professor Graeme Roy, discusses the key messages from our paper on trends in Scotland’s population and their effects on the economy and income tax, published this morning alongside our Fiscal Sustainability Report consultation paper.
Scotland: Population, -900,000 (-16%) Working age population from 64%>56%, as a result GDP -0.5% / year vs UK on average.
We are going to need a lot of immigration to offset that. A working population down to 56% would be beyond disastrous without a productivity miracle which has not shown any signs of existing yet. But how do we persuade any newcomers to stay here when the bright, shiny lights of London beckon??
Quite a large chunk of net migration comes from RUK, too. A dilemma, from an indy perspective.
The bigger issue, imo, is that people have fewer kids in Scotland, even when taking account of our slightly older population compared with the UK. Why?
I would guess that we have a much smaller immigrant population than rUK and the propensity of immigrants to have larger families has kept the birth rate above replacement for rUk but not for us. The massive scale of immigration in England in particular has also kept the working age/total population ratio at a much healthier place.
These have been longterm issues for Scotland. In the 1951 census the Scottish population was 5,095,969. It has not even grown 10% since then. In1951 the population of England was 41,164,356 and it is now 56,489,800 an increase of 37%. This has had political consequences. Scotland forms a significantly smaller proportion of MPs than it did 70 years ago. This trend looks set to continue.
Which is why the Scottish Government has a pro-migration policy being thwarted by the parochial jingoism south of the wall. Its another of the "unless something is done to address this, the arguments for independence go stronger" points. We need to fix the union if we are to stay together.
Its not being thwarted by jingoism. Not only is recorded immigration currently at record levels (I emphasise the word "recorded" because we frankly have no idea how many EU citizens moved here, not even to the nearest couple of million) but rUk does not need immigration as much as Scotland because it is simply not facing this demographic time bomb.
Scotland does have a pro immigration stance, and rightly so, but it makes no difference when the Scottish government shows so little interest in the Scottish economy and Nicola's eyes glaze over when economics is mentioned.
As I have said before on here a government that was serious about independence would be doing all within its considerable range of powers to attract new businesses to Scotland, to improve rather than damage our tax competitiveness, to overcome the infrastructure issues that impede investment and to improve our education systems so that we have the skilled workforce of tomorrow. If the SG was doing these things and the jobs were being created people would come to fill those jobs. But it is so much easier to whine and blame the Tories.
Can't do much about those things in the decaying husk of the current union settlement. Create a new UK fit for the future with full home rule for each nation and maybe. As for infrastructure, I see way more investment in roads and rail and broadband than I did in England.
Is that not partly as each Scottish citizen gets two grand a year more U.K. government spend than those in England each year?
It notable that whose who continually emphasise this - and are constant critics of the SNP government - tend also to be those most opposed to Scottish independence. Which would get rid of both of those things quite rapidly.
Don’t include me in this. If Scots want independence they should go. But before they do the route map must be a damn sight clearer than Brexit…
I posted a brief sketch upthread:
It (independence) would mean, for example, that the SNP no longer had a monopoly on government.
An independent Scotland could join the EU - which would facilitate migration through freedom of movement. It would also find it much easier to achieve full energy self sufficiency than would the UK as a whole, both in absolute terms, and in terms of the financing.
It would be a pretty tough first decade for any independent Scottish government - which if there is ever another referendum would be the basis of the No campaign - but it's entirely feasible. And if those population projections are anywhere near the reality, they make quite a compelling case for it.
There was freedom of movement from the EU until really recently and almost no-one came to Scotland. There is clearly no draw there, no attraction. I’m not sure why, although a Greek FOAF blamed the poor weather (Glasgow) and that his wife was miserable the whole time.
It's the lack of light I think. Once you've lived somewhere with significantly more winter light than the UK then London is just about bearable but Scotland is off the scale miserable. It's a tough sell. But if Scotland allows free movement and England doesn't then the draw of Scotland will be bigger than before.
Maybe, but Scotland just isn’t that attractive. Look at DickStuartson, the biggest Scottish booster on here, and even he can’t be arsed to live there. It’s great at times, the short summer nights and endless daylight. But my god the darkness of winter, an worse the further north you go. Stumpy, one story houses, a lack of trees, a lack of sun, and you don’t wonder why people don’t come.
I live her and don't recognise what you have just described. There is part of Scotland north of the tree line, but most of it has trees. An awful lot of them.
There is no shortage of trees in Scotland until you reach Caithness Sutherland, Orkney and Shetland, far from it
My paragraph was poorly written. I meant to imply that as you go north, the dark nights get worse, the houses shorter and you run out of trees, but I accept it was badly phrased. Of course most of Scotland has large amounts of trees, though sadly not as much native woodland as it would like.
The tree line is at 600m altitude in the Cairngorms, and probably not a vast amount lower elsewhere. It isn't the weather in Sutherland that causes the lack of trees, it is the lack of wolves and too many deer. I think we've passed the low point of Scottish tree native cover though.
The Flow Country might be too boggy but almost everywhere else would support trees, even if it was only low growing Willow in exposed places.
Weather, grim winters (particularly if you have to look at grey pebbledash), and job opportunities.
I just ate in the same restaurant as Marjorie Taylor Greene. What she was doing in the hotbed of liberalism that is West LA, I'm not clear...
Is the Marg Greene Alex Jones thing much like the hard metal head banging stars who take all that face paint off in the dressing room after gigs, travel back to terrace home in north of England where they sit in armchair in cardigan and slippers reading the Guardian whilst their mum brings them a mug of tea with their favourite jammy dodgers?
Sometimes I get a sharp sense of existential despair on this site. Like a cracked rib piercing a lung. When I suddenly realise I am debating - at length - someone with the IQ of a dead hedgehog
I just ate in the same restaurant as Marjorie Taylor Greene. What she was doing in the hotbed of liberalism that is West LA, I'm not clear...
Is the Marg Greene Alex Jones thing much like the hard metal head banging stars who take all that face paint off in the dressing room after gigs, travel back to terrace home in north of England where they sit in armchair in cardigan and slippers reading the Guardian whilst their mum brings them a mug of tea with their favourite jammy dodgers?
WATCH: Our Chair, Professor Graeme Roy, discusses the key messages from our paper on trends in Scotland’s population and their effects on the economy and income tax, published this morning alongside our Fiscal Sustainability Report consultation paper.
I've volunteered for Liz Truss's campaign team to help out with slogans for the next six months. Everyone's saying that 3 words do the trick, as with 'Get Brexit done'. I thought of 'Wrap up warm'. It's got that good mix of folkiness, urgency and gaslighting that wins votes. https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1564688909660979201
Whatever Russia is doing I'm struggling to understand why European gas prices are more than 10 times what they were a couple of years ago.
Current demand can't be met by supply. The demand is currently filling up reserves for winter - since those demands are Gov't backed at any price the buyers won't showing any agency in waiting a bit.
Oldest child in the class; starts just after its fifth birthday!
But one hormone fluctuation away from being the youngest. Best tie mum's knees together until the clock strikes midnight.
I was born at the tail end of August and I did fine (I would probably have been bored more in the year below). The school year sharp divide is one of those awkward discontinuities where some kids either side are in the "wrong" year -- for an example on the other side, one of my brothers was an early November birth and ended up moving up and effectively skipping a year at some point.
I've volunteered for Liz Truss's campaign team to help out with slogans for the next six months. Everyone's saying that 3 words do the trick, as with 'Get Brexit done'. I thought of 'Wrap up warm'. It's got that good mix of folkiness, urgency and gaslighting that wins votes. https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1564688909660979201
"The economy is about to go to hell in a handcart, with hundreds of thousands of households reduced to penury and aggregate demand hammered by soaring energy bills, yet neither of the candidates has anything worthwhile to say about it."
"The casualties are going to be off the scale if nothing is done."
It’s fair to argue that it’s not enough, or that there’s no support yet for small businesses - but to ignore it completelty it totally disengenuous. We wonder why there’s so little trust in the media.
The £37bn has unfortunately had a huge whiff of knee-jerkism about it. "Something must be done, shit! Let's bung a few £100 here and a few £100 there."
I dread to think how much has been wasted in bureaucracy, with some being paid by DWP, some by councils and some via the energy companies... some as shopping vouchers ffs!
Right at the start HMG should have just forced the price cap to remain at a level they decided was affordable, with similar support for those not covered by the price cap. Paid for by taxes on the wealthy to keep it progressive.
Would have had the massive benefit of keeping inflation down.
The other major failing of course has been failing to secure our energy security over many years (not just the Tories - Labour too). All this is the consequence of the neoliberal pursuit of 'the market rules' over every other consideration.
Keeping the price cap down is a terrible, terrible idea.
Do that and its "nice" politics, but it means that nobody cuts their fuel usage (as why bother) and so we have an energy shortage but no reduction in energy demand, so we have blackouts instead.
I'm no fan of government support in general, but having the price rise but government support available as required is the lesser of two evils. It means people can be helped to afford the energy, but they will still be looking at the price and cutting their usage as much as possible, which is what is required.
Yes but remember this is not a simple free market. The price of electricity is not determined by the scarcity of electricity but (now) by the cost of gas, which is artificially high owing to events elsewhere. As things stand, although of course they may change, there is no reason to cut electricity usage apart from to save money; there will not be rolling power cuts this week or next if you run the air conditioning and central heating simultaneously because we do not have a shortage of electricity; the price signal you rely on is (eta already) quite misleading.
Eh? A shortage of gas means a shortage of electricity, since we are generating our electricity from gas.
If we run out of gas, we run out of electricity, and we will run out of gas as a continent if we don't cut our usage, which means cutting electricity.
Whatever Russia is doing I'm struggling to understand why European gas prices are more than 10 times what they were a couple of years ago.
Supply has dropped but demand has remained relatively static as some firms are willing to pay 10 times more for the gas probably because it's cheaper than the cost of shutting down and restarting.....
If demand is static but supply drops a bit you often discover that market equilibrium is very different from where you thought it was.
Whatever Russia is doing I'm struggling to understand why European gas prices are more than 10 times what they were a couple of years ago.
Whilst Russia only supplied a relatively small percentage of the world's total gas market, gas is hard to transport - especially without pipelines. Countries who relied on Russian gas are panicking, and the cost of the ships and gas to supply those countries (and sadly partially us) have skyrocketed as they try to outbid each other.
The Justice Department asserts in a filing that some of the documents seized from Mar-A-Lago were so sensitive and classified that in some instances the FBI agents and DOJ attorneys needed additional security clearances to review them. https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1564821787250249729
If Trump is not jailed over this, then the US has definitely ceased to be a place where the rule of law applies to some people. And, yes, I know it already is, but this is way beyond anything already done.
Peers will just keep voting this down, and there is nothing the government can do about it. Parliament Act you say? The Lords are UPHOLDING the government manifesto which the government are now trying to scrap.
Great fun.
Inconveniently for that argument, the Conservative manifesto said: "We will ensure that Northern Ireland’s businesses and producers enjoy unfettered access to the rest of the UK and that in the implementation of our Brexit deal, we maintain and strengthen the integrity and smooth operation of our internal market."
But this IS their Brexit deal.
Yes, and the legislation before the Lords is to ensure that in its implementation, we maintain and strengthen the integrity and smooth operation of our internal market.
Nope. The protocol works, is supported by the people of NornIron and is directly the Brexit deal their manifesto was written around.
The Tories have changed their minds because (a) they didn't understand what the agreed and (b) its become politically unpopular in their party. Not the Lords problem if they want to dig their heels in. Which they already have.
"The economy is about to go to hell in a handcart, with hundreds of thousands of households reduced to penury and aggregate demand hammered by soaring energy bills, yet neither of the candidates has anything worthwhile to say about it."
"The casualties are going to be off the scale if nothing is done."
It’s fair to argue that it’s not enough, or that there’s no support yet for small businesses - but to ignore it completelty it totally disengenuous. We wonder why there’s so little trust in the media.
The £37bn has unfortunately had a huge whiff of knee-jerkism about it. "Something must be done, shit! Let's bung a few £100 here and a few £100 there."
I dread to think how much has been wasted in bureaucracy, with some being paid by DWP, some by councils and some via the energy companies... some as shopping vouchers ffs!
Right at the start HMG should have just forced the price cap to remain at a level they decided was affordable, with similar support for those not covered by the price cap. Paid for by taxes on the wealthy to keep it progressive.
Would have had the massive benefit of keeping inflation down.
The other major failing of course has been failing to secure our energy security over many years (not just the Tories - Labour too). All this is the consequence of the neoliberal pursuit of 'the market rules' over every other consideration.
Keeping the price cap down is a terrible, terrible idea.
Do that and its "nice" politics, but it means that nobody cuts their fuel usage (as why bother) and so we have an energy shortage but no reduction in energy demand, so we have blackouts instead.
I'm no fan of government support in general, but having the price rise but government support available as required is the lesser of two evils. It means people can be helped to afford the energy, but they will still be looking at the price and cutting their usage as much as possible, which is what is required.
Yes but remember this is not a simple free market. The price of electricity is not determined by the scarcity of electricity but (now) by the cost of gas, which is artificially high owing to events elsewhere. As things stand, although of course they may change, there is no reason to cut electricity usage apart from to save money; there will not be rolling power cuts this week or next if you run the air conditioning and central heating simultaneously because we do not have a shortage of electricity; the price signal you rely on is (eta already) quite misleading.
Eh? A shortage of gas means a shortage of electricity, since we are generating our electricity from gas.
If we run out of gas, we run out of electricity, and we will run out of gas as a continent if we don't cut our usage, which means cutting electricity.
There's no price signal for people on fixes though. Which is about 1/3 the population iirc ?
The obvious job for Truss to offer Johnson is Ambassador to Ukraine. Gets him out of her hair, they actually like him, oblivious to his faults, and he likes them, and he can enjoy himself passing on the liberal flow of goodies from the UK and making boosterish statements to the media about splendid Ukrainian morale, which is just the sort of thing he is good at. If Truss was planning to cut back on Ukraine support that would lead to trouble, but she doesn't seem so inclined. Yes, they might lose the by-election, but these things come and go.
I can't see relocating to a war torn shit hole just in time for its bitter winter being among Nut Nut's immediate life goals. I think he'd accept DC but certainly nothing less.
It would be entertaining though as the potential for him to get in sorts of financial and shagging trouble in Keev is simply immense.
He's got to realise that the tabloids will be waiting for him to start an affair behind Carrie's back - his fall from grace is prime time news.
So why is Boris Johnson set to approve spending £30 billion on a nuclear power plant but will leave how many poor people will freeze to death to Truss?
Boris Johnson is poised to give approval this week for a nuclear power station costing up to £30 billion as ministers close in on a deal to reopen Britain’s biggest gas storage facility.
The prime minister is preparing to announce an in-principle agreement to offer funding to the Sizewell C reactor in Suffolk before he leaves office, despite concerns about creating a multibillion-pound spending commitment for Liz Truss, the frontrunner to succeed him.
He's also allowed the civil service to shunt the Cumbria coal mine into the repair yard. What an utterly useless [wordthatgetsyoubanned]
Oh, I’m starting to warm to him.
The coal mine was an example of a very small project with an ability to do orders of magnitude greater damage to British soft power or influence on developing world environmental policies than it would ever generate either in GDP, energy security or indeed carbon emissions.
That's a rather odd argument. Do you use it against German soft power and their influence on developing world environmental policies, given Germany's vastly greater use of much worse types of coal?
Yes. Germany is rightly pilloried not only in the developing world but the rest of Europe for that, its reluctance on nuclear and its over dependence on Russian gas. German soft power is badly diminished by its energy policy - a perfect case study.
And do you realise the Cumbrian coal mine is *tiny* in comparison? A problem with your argument is that it can be used for anything we do that *you* don't like - however necessary it is.
"We're still allowing diesel cars in 2022? Don't you realise the damage to British soft power or influence on developing world environmental policies this has?"
You keep making my points for me. It’s the very tininess of it which makes the negative PR and signalling out of all proportion to any economic benefit.
Only if you're insane enough to make negative PR out of it.
Take preserved railways. Would you call for all coal-fired steam trains (i.e. the majority) to stop running because they use coal? Their impact is negligible, but surely it's bad PR to allow them to continue?
Whatever Russia is doing I'm struggling to understand why European gas prices are more than 10 times what they were a couple of years ago.
Whilst Russia only supplied a relatively small percentage of the world's total gas market, gas is hard to transport - especially without pipelines. Countries who relied on Russian gas are panicking, and the cost of the ships and gas to supply those countries (and sadly partially us) have skyrocketed as they try to outbid each other.
Gas is not a scarce resource. Gas transport is.
(This might be wrong.)
We'll need to just amend production on the Cly... oh wait.
Whatever Russia is doing I'm struggling to understand why European gas prices are more than 10 times what they were a couple of years ago.
Supply has dropped but demand has remained relatively static as some firms are willing to pay 10 times more for the gas probably because it's cheaper than the cost of shutting down and restarting.....
If demand is static but supply drops a bit you often discover that market equilibrium is very different from where you thought it was.
“Psssst. Wanna buy some gas?” “Where’s it originate from?” “Does it matter?” “No not really, how much?”
I've volunteered for Liz Truss's campaign team to help out with slogans for the next six months. Everyone's saying that 3 words do the trick, as with 'Get Brexit done'. I thought of 'Wrap up warm'. It's got that good mix of folkiness, urgency and gaslighting that wins votes. https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1564688909660979201
"The economy is about to go to hell in a handcart, with hundreds of thousands of households reduced to penury and aggregate demand hammered by soaring energy bills, yet neither of the candidates has anything worthwhile to say about it."
"The casualties are going to be off the scale if nothing is done."
It’s fair to argue that it’s not enough, or that there’s no support yet for small businesses - but to ignore it completelty it totally disengenuous. We wonder why there’s so little trust in the media.
The £37bn has unfortunately had a huge whiff of knee-jerkism about it. "Something must be done, shit! Let's bung a few £100 here and a few £100 there."
I dread to think how much has been wasted in bureaucracy, with some being paid by DWP, some by councils and some via the energy companies... some as shopping vouchers ffs!
Right at the start HMG should have just forced the price cap to remain at a level they decided was affordable, with similar support for those not covered by the price cap. Paid for by taxes on the wealthy to keep it progressive.
Would have had the massive benefit of keeping inflation down.
The other major failing of course has been failing to secure our energy security over many years (not just the Tories - Labour too). All this is the consequence of the neoliberal pursuit of 'the market rules' over every other consideration.
Keeping the price cap down is a terrible, terrible idea.
Do that and its "nice" politics, but it means that nobody cuts their fuel usage (as why bother) and so we have an energy shortage but no reduction in energy demand, so we have blackouts instead.
I'm no fan of government support in general, but having the price rise but government support available as required is the lesser of two evils. It means people can be helped to afford the energy, but they will still be looking at the price and cutting their usage as much as possible, which is what is required.
Yes but remember this is not a simple free market. The price of electricity is not determined by the scarcity of electricity but (now) by the cost of gas, which is artificially high owing to events elsewhere. As things stand, although of course they may change, there is no reason to cut electricity usage apart from to save money; there will not be rolling power cuts this week or next if you run the air conditioning and central heating simultaneously because we do not have a shortage of electricity; the price signal you rely on is (eta already) quite misleading.
Eh? A shortage of gas means a shortage of electricity, since we are generating our electricity from gas.
If we run out of gas, we run out of electricity, and we will run out of gas as a continent if we don't cut our usage, which means cutting electricity.
Britain can't store gas and can't store electricity (or wind or sunshine) so cutting down now might save money but will not affect shortfalls during January's blizzards. Your price signal is misleading (at least for now).
I've volunteered for Liz Truss's campaign team to help out with slogans for the next six months. Everyone's saying that 3 words do the trick, as with 'Get Brexit done'. I thought of 'Wrap up warm'. It's got that good mix of folkiness, urgency and gaslighting that wins votes. https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1564688909660979201
More Hot Air would sum up her promises so far.
Or perhaps Mere Hot Air.
I’m A Blonde
I can understand why you didn't suggest her slogan should be 'I'm a Yorkshirewoman.' Not that she allows us to forget it!
The Justice Department asserts in a filing that some of the documents seized from Mar-A-Lago were so sensitive and classified that in some instances the FBI agents and DOJ attorneys needed additional security clearances to review them. https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1564821787250249729
If Trump is not jailed over this, then the US has definitely ceased to be a place where the rule of law applies to some people. And, yes, I know it already is, but this is way beyond anything already done.
I'll leave verdict and sentencing to the court, but there is little or no doubt that he must be prosecuted.
So why is Boris Johnson set to approve spending £30 billion on a nuclear power plant but will leave how many poor people will freeze to death to Truss?
Boris Johnson is poised to give approval this week for a nuclear power station costing up to £30 billion as ministers close in on a deal to reopen Britain’s biggest gas storage facility.
The prime minister is preparing to announce an in-principle agreement to offer funding to the Sizewell C reactor in Suffolk before he leaves office, despite concerns about creating a multibillion-pound spending commitment for Liz Truss, the frontrunner to succeed him.
He's also allowed the civil service to shunt the Cumbria coal mine into the repair yard. What an utterly useless [wordthatgetsyoubanned]
Oh, I’m starting to warm to him.
The coal mine was an example of a very small project with an ability to do orders of magnitude greater damage to British soft power or influence on developing world environmental policies than it would ever generate either in GDP, energy security or indeed carbon emissions.
That's a rather odd argument. Do you use it against German soft power and their influence on developing world environmental policies, given Germany's vastly greater use of much worse types of coal?
Yes. Germany is rightly pilloried not only in the developing world but the rest of Europe for that, its reluctance on nuclear and its over dependence on Russian gas. German soft power is badly diminished by its energy policy - a perfect case study.
And do you realise the Cumbrian coal mine is *tiny* in comparison? A problem with your argument is that it can be used for anything we do that *you* don't like - however necessary it is.
"We're still allowing diesel cars in 2022? Don't you realise the damage to British soft power or influence on developing world environmental policies this has?"
You keep making my points for me. It’s the very tininess of it which makes the negative PR and signalling out of all proportion to any economic benefit.
I just ate in the same restaurant as Marjorie Taylor Greene. What she was doing in the hotbed of liberalism that is West LA, I'm not clear...
Is the Marg Greene Alex Jones thing much like the hard metal head banging stars who take all that face paint off in the dressing room after gigs, travel back to terrace home in north of England where they sit in armchair in cardigan and slippers reading the Guardian whilst their mum brings them a mug of tea with their favourite jammy dodgers?
Do you take sugar ?
Alex Jones did say in court, you can’t use that video of me doing that infowar clothes ripping, that’s not me. That’s not the real me.
I just ate in the same restaurant as Marjorie Taylor Greene. What she was doing in the hotbed of liberalism that is West LA, I'm not clear...
Is the Marg Greene Alex Jones thing much like the hard metal head banging stars who take all that face paint off in the dressing room after gigs, travel back to terrace home in north of England where they sit in armchair in cardigan and slippers reading the Guardian whilst their mum brings them a mug of tea with their favourite jammy dodgers?
Do you take sugar ?
Alex Jones did say in court, you can’t use that video of me doing that infowar clothes ripping, that’s not me. That’s not the real me.
Whatever Russia is doing I'm struggling to understand why European gas prices are more than 10 times what they were a couple of years ago.
Supply has dropped but demand has remained relatively static as some firms are willing to pay 10 times more for the gas probably because it's cheaper than the cost of shutting down and restarting.....
If demand is static but supply drops a bit you often discover that market equilibrium is very different from where you thought it was.
“Psssst. Wanna buy some gas?” “Where’s it originate from?” “Does it matter?” “No not really, how much?”
China's been making out like bandits arbitraging Russian gas.
I've volunteered for Liz Truss's campaign team to help out with slogans for the next six months. Everyone's saying that 3 words do the trick, as with 'Get Brexit done'. I thought of 'Wrap up warm'. It's got that good mix of folkiness, urgency and gaslighting that wins votes. https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1564688909660979201
I don't think we chose to squander Russia, we tried for many years to bring Russia in from the cold, and we succeeded as you say with most of Eastern Europe. Unfortunately Russia's leaders chose that a gangster state would be better for them than the path of freedom. That wasn't our choice.
From what I've read on the subject I think you could argue that if anything the West got too involved in transforming Russia. The abrupt switch to a market economy caused a lot of trouble and damage that the crooks were able to exploit, as they were the people with the capital and connections. Russia might have been better off with a much slower change, even if that meant the remnants of the Communist Party had clinged on to power for another decade or so.
I think that's spot on. Glasnost and perestroika were designed by Gorbachev as gradual, medium-term reforms. But events overtook them and a dose of rampant capitalism, encouraged by the West, happened too quickly and without safeguards. The main beneficiaries were the Russian Mafia equivalents and those who were in a political position to fill their financial boots.
I, again, recommend Lea Ypi's "Free", a memoir about growing up in Albania as it came out of communism. It's Albania, not Russia, but it covers the same rush to capitalism and what it meant to live through that.
Now down to an amazing 76.1. It’s not just Covid, it’s drugs, guns, obesity
For Native Americans it’s a staggering 65
Fentanyl.
The US really needs to start legalising currently illegal drugs, and selling them in measured doses in pharmacies.
No, that wouldn’t solve it. Fentanyl is more addictive than heroin and gives a more profound if troubling “high”. It’s a designer drug - designed to be hideously addictive and deranging. Instant schizophrenia
I have some sympathy for the conspiracy theorists who wonder if these drugs were expressly designed by the Chinese to bring down the USA
It may be hideously addictive but law enforcement doesn't work to stop it. Prohibition doesn't work.
Education and treatment does work.
No they don’t. I wish they did, but they don’t
I used to be a drug libertarian. Legalise them! But these new opioids are so brutally addictive and damaging I’ve changed my mind
But if anyone with access to a kitchen and $200 can set up creating this, then how do you stamp it out with law enforcement?
The obvious job for Truss to offer Johnson is Ambassador to Ukraine. Gets him out of her hair, they actually like him, oblivious to his faults, and he likes them, and he can enjoy himself passing on the liberal flow of goodies from the UK and making boosterish statements to the media about splendid Ukrainian morale, which is just the sort of thing he is good at. If Truss was planning to cut back on Ukraine support that would lead to trouble, but she doesn't seem so inclined. Yes, they might lose the by-election, but these things come and go.
Will the Truss government break a record for number of by-elections lost or number of defections?
I've volunteered for Liz Truss's campaign team to help out with slogans for the next six months. Everyone's saying that 3 words do the trick, as with 'Get Brexit done'. I thought of 'Wrap up warm'. It's got that good mix of folkiness, urgency and gaslighting that wins votes. https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1564688909660979201
How about 'Don't Blame Me' ?
In Gov't since 2012 with responsibilities directly affecting today's pinch points from 2014 ?
"Don't blame me" wouldn't be what I would go for.
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Incumbent Assumed office 15 September 2021
Minister for Women and Equalities Assumed office 10 September 2019
Secretary of State for International Trade President of the Board of Trade In office 24 July 2019 – 15 September 2021
Chief Secretary to the Treasury In office 11 June 2017 – 24 July 2019
Lord Chancellor In office 14 July 2016 – 11 June 2017
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs In office 15 July 2014 – 14 July 2016
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Childcare and Education In office 4 September 2012 – 15 July 2014
I just ate in the same restaurant as Marjorie Taylor Greene. What she was doing in the hotbed of liberalism that is West LA, I'm not clear...
Is the Marg Greene Alex Jones thing much like the hard metal head banging stars who take all that face paint off in the dressing room after gigs, travel back to terrace home in north of England where they sit in armchair in cardigan and slippers reading the Guardian whilst their mum brings them a mug of tea with their favourite jammy dodgers?
Do you take sugar ?
Alex Jones did say in court, you can’t use that video of me doing that infowar clothes ripping, that’s not me. That’s not the real me.
So the real him is a fake and a liar as well?
It’s about money making. It’s entertainment face paint not unlike my heavy metal star analogy.
Why presume Greene or even Trump actually believe something so clearly stupid to people with more than three active brain cells?
Sometimes I get a sharp sense of existential despair on this site. Like a cracked rib piercing a lung. When I suddenly realise I am debating - at length - someone with the IQ of a dead hedgehog
Pot kettle here, imo, if judged by your own posts. There are language skills and a rich vocab, there's a lively intelligence and a GSOH, but one doesn't sense a strong intellect or capacity for original thought.
So why is Boris Johnson set to approve spending £30 billion on a nuclear power plant but will leave how many poor people will freeze to death to Truss?
Boris Johnson is poised to give approval this week for a nuclear power station costing up to £30 billion as ministers close in on a deal to reopen Britain’s biggest gas storage facility.
The prime minister is preparing to announce an in-principle agreement to offer funding to the Sizewell C reactor in Suffolk before he leaves office, despite concerns about creating a multibillion-pound spending commitment for Liz Truss, the frontrunner to succeed him.
He's also allowed the civil service to shunt the Cumbria coal mine into the repair yard. What an utterly useless [wordthatgetsyoubanned]
Oh, I’m starting to warm to him.
The coal mine was an example of a very small project with an ability to do orders of magnitude greater damage to British soft power or influence on developing world environmental policies than it would ever generate either in GDP, energy security or indeed carbon emissions.
That's a rather odd argument. Do you use it against German soft power and their influence on developing world environmental policies, given Germany's vastly greater use of much worse types of coal?
Yes. Germany is rightly pilloried not only in the developing world but the rest of Europe for that, its reluctance on nuclear and its over dependence on Russian gas. German soft power is badly diminished by its energy policy - a perfect case study.
And do you realise the Cumbrian coal mine is *tiny* in comparison? A problem with your argument is that it can be used for anything we do that *you* don't like - however necessary it is.
"We're still allowing diesel cars in 2022? Don't you realise the damage to British soft power or influence on developing world environmental policies this has?"
You keep making my points for me. It’s the very tininess of it which makes the negative PR and signalling out of all proportion to any economic benefit.
Placing virtue signalling over energy security ?
Are you in the civil service ?
The Cumbrian coal was not intended for power, rather steelmaking.
I've volunteered for Liz Truss's campaign team to help out with slogans for the next six months. Everyone's saying that 3 words do the trick, as with 'Get Brexit done'. I thought of 'Wrap up warm'. It's got that good mix of folkiness, urgency and gaslighting that wins votes. https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1564688909660979201
More Hot Air would sum up her promises so far.
Or perhaps Mere Hot Air.
I’m A Blonde
I'm reminded of the classic "'Cause I'm a Blond" from the film "Earth Girls are Easy"
So why is Boris Johnson set to approve spending £30 billion on a nuclear power plant but will leave how many poor people will freeze to death to Truss?
Boris Johnson is poised to give approval this week for a nuclear power station costing up to £30 billion as ministers close in on a deal to reopen Britain’s biggest gas storage facility.
The prime minister is preparing to announce an in-principle agreement to offer funding to the Sizewell C reactor in Suffolk before he leaves office, despite concerns about creating a multibillion-pound spending commitment for Liz Truss, the frontrunner to succeed him.
He's also allowed the civil service to shunt the Cumbria coal mine into the repair yard. What an utterly useless [wordthatgetsyoubanned]
Oh, I’m starting to warm to him.
The coal mine was an example of a very small project with an ability to do orders of magnitude greater damage to British soft power or influence on developing world environmental policies than it would ever generate either in GDP, energy security or indeed carbon emissions.
That's a rather odd argument. Do you use it against German soft power and their influence on developing world environmental policies, given Germany's vastly greater use of much worse types of coal?
Yes. Germany is rightly pilloried not only in the developing world but the rest of Europe for that, its reluctance on nuclear and its over dependence on Russian gas. German soft power is badly diminished by its energy policy - a perfect case study.
And do you realise the Cumbrian coal mine is *tiny* in comparison? A problem with your argument is that it can be used for anything we do that *you* don't like - however necessary it is.
"We're still allowing diesel cars in 2022? Don't you realise the damage to British soft power or influence on developing world environmental policies this has?"
You keep making my points for me. It’s the very tininess of it which makes the negative PR and signalling out of all proportion to any economic benefit.
Placing virtue signalling over energy security ?
Are you in the civil service ?
The Cumbrian coal was not intended for power, rather steelmaking.
How do we supply West Burton A, Ratcliffe & Kilroot ? Are they all still being shut down as originally planned so we can willy wave at the next COP ?
It'd be really outrageous in these times of quiet progressive cooperation if the LibDems fought a high-p[rofile campaign in an Unxbridge by-election. Results last time:
I just ate in the same restaurant as Marjorie Taylor Greene. What she was doing in the hotbed of liberalism that is West LA, I'm not clear...
Is the Marg Greene Alex Jones thing much like the hard metal head banging stars who take all that face paint off in the dressing room after gigs, travel back to terrace home in north of England where they sit in armchair in cardigan and slippers reading the Guardian whilst their mum brings them a mug of tea with their favourite jammy dodgers?
Do you take sugar ?
Alex Jones did say in court, you can’t use that video of me doing that infowar clothes ripping, that’s not me. That’s not the real me.
So the real him is a fake and a liar as well?
It’s about money making. It’s entertainment face paint not unlike my heavy metal star analogy.
Why presume Greene or even Trump actually believe something so clearly stupid to people with more than three active brain cells?
I don't think Greene's is an act. She actually IS that stupid herself.
The Justice Department asserts in a filing that some of the documents seized from Mar-A-Lago were so sensitive and classified that in some instances the FBI agents and DOJ attorneys needed additional security clearances to review them. https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1564821787250249729
If Trump is not jailed over this, then the US has definitely ceased to be a place where the rule of law applies to some people. And, yes, I know it already is, but this is way beyond anything already done.
He ought to see jail, having broken countless laws with impunity for so long, but my sense is he won't. However I do think the prospect of him being President again is receding. I rate this a less than 10% chance now.
He doesn't give a toss about AGW which is a good thing in today's stretched times. My one worry is he'd throttle renewables unnecessarily.
Finding someone who is in favour of fracking (If it's viable), north sea oil & gas expansion, nuclear, wind, solar and tidal is a challenge in today's world though.
It'd be really outrageous in these times of quiet progressive cooperation if the LibDems fought a high-p[rofile campaign in an Unxbridge by-election. Results last time:
Con 52.6 Lab 37.6 LD 6.3 Gr 2.3 Others 1.1
Wouldn't have thought Selby and Ainsty was a good bet LibDem wise, either.
But if Truss really has considered that, she's mad. Truly, utterly, hopelessly mad.
Have to ask you, Doctor, what do you make of the ECB “only best v best from now on” initiative?
End of minor county west on horizon now? 🤭
Anything they do will be wrong, for two reasons: (1) they're not really interested in cricket, only in money and (2) they don't understand that actually the real issue is the way sport is being sidelined. It's not shown on TV and it's not played in schools - why then would any children take an interest in it unless they make the effort?
Tinkering with the county structure wouldn't help that. Arguably, it would have the reverse effect. At the moment the best counties would appear to be Hampshire, Surrey, Lancashire, Somerset, Essex and possibly Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire. If you took just those sides, you would leave huge swathes of the country without any representation at all. If you base it on Hundred franchises, you still won't get the best as that would keep Middlesex and Glamorgan (both of whom are very weak sides although Glamorgan are doing a bit better than usual) while dropping Somerset and Essex.
Ultimately the review appears to be largely an arse-covering exercise. The ECB have cocked up massively and repeatedly. In scheduling, in the coaching setup, in the competitions they put on, in the way they arrange series, in marketing they have not merely made poor choices but the worst imaginable choices. They appear to be trying to shift the blame onto the structure - which they know, realistically, can't be touched - in order to pretend it isn't their fault so they can continue to pay out their huge bonuses as the the entire game collapses around them.
I wonder however, if they have overreached themselves. The ECB is after all ultimately answerable to the county memberships it has spent so many years disparaging and belittling. If the counties vote not to accept the ECB's report but instead to abolish the ECB, or more embarrassingly, the Hundred (which is the cause of many immediate problems, not least the enormous losses the game is making, even if it is a symptom rather than a cause) they may have a small problem.
WATCH: Our Chair, Professor Graeme Roy, discusses the key messages from our paper on trends in Scotland’s population and their effects on the economy and income tax, published this morning alongside our Fiscal Sustainability Report consultation paper.
So why is Boris Johnson set to approve spending £30 billion on a nuclear power plant but will leave how many poor people will freeze to death to Truss?
Boris Johnson is poised to give approval this week for a nuclear power station costing up to £30 billion as ministers close in on a deal to reopen Britain’s biggest gas storage facility.
The prime minister is preparing to announce an in-principle agreement to offer funding to the Sizewell C reactor in Suffolk before he leaves office, despite concerns about creating a multibillion-pound spending commitment for Liz Truss, the frontrunner to succeed him.
He's also allowed the civil service to shunt the Cumbria coal mine into the repair yard. What an utterly useless [wordthatgetsyoubanned]
Oh, I’m starting to warm to him.
The coal mine was an example of a very small project with an ability to do orders of magnitude greater damage to British soft power or influence on developing world environmental policies than it would ever generate either in GDP, energy security or indeed carbon emissions.
That's a rather odd argument. Do you use it against German soft power and their influence on developing world environmental policies, given Germany's vastly greater use of much worse types of coal?
Yes. Germany is rightly pilloried not only in the developing world but the rest of Europe for that, its reluctance on nuclear and its over dependence on Russian gas. German soft power is badly diminished by its energy policy - a perfect case study.
And do you realise the Cumbrian coal mine is *tiny* in comparison? A problem with your argument is that it can be used for anything we do that *you* don't like - however necessary it is.
"We're still allowing diesel cars in 2022? Don't you realise the damage to British soft power or influence on developing world environmental policies this has?"
You keep making my points for me. It’s the very tininess of it which makes the negative PR and signalling out of all proportion to any economic benefit.
Placing virtue signalling over energy security ?
Are you in the civil service ?
The Cumbrian coal was not intended for power, rather steelmaking.
How do we supply West Burton A, Ratcliffe & Kilroot ? Are they all still being shut down as originally planned so we can willy wave at the next COP ?
Got to appease the middle class clowns who glue themselves to the M25.
"The economy is about to go to hell in a handcart, with hundreds of thousands of households reduced to penury and aggregate demand hammered by soaring energy bills, yet neither of the candidates has anything worthwhile to say about it."
"The casualties are going to be off the scale if nothing is done."
It’s fair to argue that it’s not enough, or that there’s no support yet for small businesses - but to ignore it completelty it totally disengenuous. We wonder why there’s so little trust in the media.
The £37bn has unfortunately had a huge whiff of knee-jerkism about it. "Something must be done, shit! Let's bung a few £100 here and a few £100 there."
I dread to think how much has been wasted in bureaucracy, with some being paid by DWP, some by councils and some via the energy companies... some as shopping vouchers ffs!
Right at the start HMG should have just forced the price cap to remain at a level they decided was affordable, with similar support for those not covered by the price cap. Paid for by taxes on the wealthy to keep it progressive.
Would have had the massive benefit of keeping inflation down.
The other major failing of course has been failing to secure our energy security over many years (not just the Tories - Labour too). All this is the consequence of the neoliberal pursuit of 'the market rules' over every other consideration.
Keeping the price cap down is a terrible, terrible idea.
Do that and its "nice" politics, but it means that nobody cuts their fuel usage (as why bother) and so we have an energy shortage but no reduction in energy demand, so we have blackouts instead.
I'm no fan of government support in general, but having the price rise but government support available as required is the lesser of two evils. It means people can be helped to afford the energy, but they will still be looking at the price and cutting their usage as much as possible, which is what is required.
Yes but remember this is not a simple free market. The price of electricity is not determined by the scarcity of electricity but (now) by the cost of gas, which is artificially high owing to events elsewhere. As things stand, although of course they may change, there is no reason to cut electricity usage apart from to save money; there will not be rolling power cuts this week or next if you run the air conditioning and central heating simultaneously because we do not have a shortage of electricity; the price signal you rely on is (eta already) quite misleading.
Eh? A shortage of gas means a shortage of electricity, since we are generating our electricity from gas.
If we run out of gas, we run out of electricity, and we will run out of gas as a continent if we don't cut our usage, which means cutting electricity.
Britain can't store gas and can't store electricity (or wind or sunshine) so cutting down now might save money but will not affect shortfalls during January's blizzards. Your price signal is misleading (at least for now).
This is not true. Britain does not operate in a vacuum. We absolutely can and are storing gas, in Germany and elsewhere. The UK is exporting gas as fast as is possible to fill German and other storage facilities, so that during January's blizzards the storage is full and so less gas imports are required across the continent.
Cutting down on your air conditioning today, means less gas consumed today, meaning more gas can be exported to Germany etc, which means more gets stored, which means more gas available for January.
Its all connected. Which is why that's showing in the price signal.
Sometimes I get a sharp sense of existential despair on this site. Like a cracked rib piercing a lung. When I suddenly realise I am debating - at length - someone with the IQ of a dead hedgehog
Pot kettle here, imo, if judged by your own posts. There are language skills and a rich vocab, there's a lively intelligence and a GSOH, but one doesn't sense a strong intellect or capacity for original thought.
No need to pile on. For all his bluster, I don't really doubt the existential despair.
To paraphrase Amy Winehouse, This is so boring without Leon. Apologies for precipitating his (hopefully temporary) exit by, I don't know what exactly, expressing an opinion contrary to his? Do you think he might come back if I promise to try harder in future?
It's a bit strange to call a resignation a seizure of the initiative when the resigner hasn't firmly positioned himself on a clear path to another stage in his career. It's not clear whether he will stay in politics. It's not clear what he will do if he leaves politics either, although given that he did actually do some stuff outside of politics it's easy to make a few guesses. Johnson had no choice but to go. A third of the government had resigned. That's far more than MPs making their opinions known to Graham Brady the Old Lady.
Most memories are short. How many remember now that Johnson had an unprecedented falling out with the crown prince? He called on critics to "shed some of those condescending attitudes towards Rwanda". A journalist asked him if Prince Charles was one of the condescending people. Johnson replied, "I can’t confirm that."
When has any other prime minister given an heir to the throne a public slap around the face like that?
Then stories started appearing about millions of quid being handed over in suitcases, donated by a charitable Qatari.
And flying out from the other corner, we had the warmed-up story about foreign secretary Johnson nipping over to a "former KGB" oligarch's castle in Umbria, no officials needed.
(Edit: and around the same time, "Big Dom" said he used to underestimate the importance that the prospect of a peerage played in British politics.)
The Justice Department asserts in a filing that some of the documents seized from Mar-A-Lago were so sensitive and classified that in some instances the FBI agents and DOJ attorneys needed additional security clearances to review them. https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1564821787250249729
If Trump is not jailed over this, then the US has definitely ceased to be a place where the rule of law applies to some people. And, yes, I know it already is, but this is way beyond anything already done.
He ought to see jail, having broken countless laws with impunity for so long, but my sense is he won't. However I do think the prospect of him being President again is receding. I rate this a less than 10% chance now.
To paraphrase Amy Winehouse, This is so boring without Leon. Apologies for precipitating his (hopefully temporary) exit by, I don't know what exactly, expressing an opinion contrary to his? Do you think he might come back if I promise to try harder in future?
It's a shame because I had another recent W3Ws failure to share
Sometimes I get a sharp sense of existential despair on this site. Like a cracked rib piercing a lung. When I suddenly realise I am debating - at length - someone with the IQ of a dead hedgehog
Pot kettle here, imo, if judged by your own posts. There are language skills and a rich vocab, there's a lively intelligence and a GSOH, but one doesn't sense a strong intellect or capacity for original thought.
Comments
Two reasons
1 Shit weather and no light
2 The overwhelming attraction of southern England/London to the S (ie they’d go to Scotland, experience a winter, head down the A1)
1 will still be a factor post indy. 2 suggests a hard border post indy
All of which should be happening now anyway.
"Country first!"
"And democracy", Nicola hurriedly interjected.....
If people can't work in your country, and can't live in your country, and can't scrounge from your country, why would they come? The issue remains that the UK does not sufficiently crack down on companies employing illegals.
https://www.politico.eu/article/liz-truss-first-parliamentary-battle-brexit-northern-ireland-protocol/
Great fun.
They plan to strike during the labour conference and ask MP's to the picket lines.
How will "forensic" Keir handle this direct challenge to his authority.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/new-rail-strike-called-in-overt-challenge-to-starmer-live-updates/ar-AA11iDKw?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=164a736b0ed7480b9441dedc61223b6a
I need to get off this site. Perhaps for good
Anon
Did you just make that statement because you don't actually have a reply to it?
2001 population projection for Scotland
Population in 2001 - 5,064,000
Projected Population in 2021 - 4,895,000
Actual population in 2020 - 5,470,000
Guess what I did when they were out of sight 😆
0.3 degree of difficulty. 0.1 for execution.
And a pair of zeroes from the Romanian judges
It would be entertaining though as the potential for him to get in sorts of financial and shagging trouble in Keev is simply immense.
The Flow Country might be too boggy but almost everywhere else would support trees, even if it was only low growing Willow in exposed places.
Weather, grim winters (particularly if you have to look at grey pebbledash), and job opportunities.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/2909663#Comment_2909663
https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1564688909660979201
Or perhaps Mere Hot Air.
If we run out of gas, we run out of electricity, and we will run out of gas as a continent if we don't cut our usage, which means cutting electricity.
But if Truss really has considered that, she's mad. Truly, utterly, hopelessly mad.
If demand is static but supply drops a bit you often discover that market equilibrium is very different from where you thought it was.
Gas is not a scarce resource. Gas transport is.
(This might be wrong.)
And, yes, I know it already is, but this is way beyond anything already done.
The Tories have changed their minds because (a) they didn't understand what the agreed and (b) its become politically unpopular in their party. Not the Lords problem if they want to dig their heels in. Which they already have.
Was Emms winning last year’s US Open the equivalent of winning the Tory leadership by default? Speculative leering by certain PB types in both cases.
Take preserved railways. Would you call for all coal-fired steam trains (i.e. the majority) to stop running because they use coal? Their impact is negligible, but surely it's bad PR to allow them to continue?
“Where’s it originate from?”
“Does it matter?”
“No not really, how much?”
Are you in the civil service ?
End of minor county west on horizon now? 🤭
— Tamworth
— Uxbridge
— NE Somerset
— Mid Beds
— Selby & Ainsty https://twitter.com/estwebber/status/1564910332715405313/photo/1
"Don't blame me" wouldn't be what I would go for.
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
Incumbent
Assumed office
15 September 2021
Minister for Women and Equalities
Assumed office
10 September 2019
Secretary of State for International Trade
President of the Board of Trade
In office
24 July 2019 – 15 September 2021
Chief Secretary to the Treasury
In office
11 June 2017 – 24 July 2019
Lord Chancellor
In office
14 July 2016 – 11 June 2017
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
In office
15 July 2014 – 14 July 2016
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Childcare and Education
In office
4 September 2012 – 15 July 2014
Why presume Greene or even Trump actually believe something so clearly stupid to people with more than three active brain cells?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGXkh6U9fzU
Are they all still being shut down as originally planned so we can willy wave at the next COP ?
Con 52.6
Lab 37.6
LD 6.3
Gr 2.3
Others 1.1
Finding someone who is in favour of fracking (If it's viable), north sea oil & gas expansion, nuclear, wind, solar and tidal is a challenge in today's world though.
Tinkering with the county structure wouldn't help that. Arguably, it would have the reverse effect. At the moment the best counties would appear to be Hampshire, Surrey, Lancashire, Somerset, Essex and possibly Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire. If you took just those sides, you would leave huge swathes of the country without any representation at all. If you base it on Hundred franchises, you still won't get the best as that would keep Middlesex and Glamorgan (both of whom are very weak sides although Glamorgan are doing a bit better than usual) while dropping Somerset and Essex.
Ultimately the review appears to be largely an arse-covering exercise. The ECB have cocked up massively and repeatedly. In scheduling, in the coaching setup, in the competitions they put on, in the way they arrange series, in marketing they have not merely made poor choices but the worst imaginable choices. They appear to be trying to shift the blame onto the structure - which they know, realistically, can't be touched - in order to pretend it isn't their fault so they can continue to pay out their huge bonuses as the the entire game collapses around them.
I wonder however, if they have overreached themselves. The ECB is after all ultimately answerable to the county memberships it has spent so many years disparaging and belittling. If the counties vote not to accept the ECB's report but instead to abolish the ECB, or more embarrassingly, the Hundred (which is the cause of many immediate problems, not least the enormous losses the game is making, even if it is a symptom rather than a cause) they may have a small problem.
https://twitter.com/RoyaNikkhah/status/1564916524422397957
Cutting down on your air conditioning today, means less gas consumed today, meaning more gas can be exported to Germany etc, which means more gets stored, which means more gas available for January.
Its all connected. Which is why that's showing in the price signal.
For all his bluster, I don't really doubt the existential despair.
Apologies for precipitating his (hopefully temporary) exit by, I don't know what exactly, expressing an opinion contrary to his?
Do you think he might come back if I promise to try harder in future?
Most memories are short. How many remember now that Johnson had an unprecedented falling out with the crown prince? He called on critics to "shed some of those condescending attitudes towards Rwanda". A journalist asked him if Prince Charles was one of the condescending people. Johnson replied, "I can’t confirm that."
When has any other prime minister given an heir to the throne a public slap around the face like that?
Then stories started appearing about millions of quid being handed over in suitcases, donated by a charitable Qatari.
And flying out from the other corner, we had the warmed-up story about foreign secretary Johnson nipping over to a "former KGB" oligarch's castle in Umbria, no officials needed.
(Edit: and around the same time, "Big Dom" said he used to underestimate the importance that the prospect of a peerage played in British politics.)
The fight was over quickly.
He'll be the nominee and he'll probably win.
https://keswickmrt.org.uk/rescue/crow-park-keswick-83/
If she’s not up to the job then she needs to abdicate, if not Charles needs to set up a regency.
I’m quite prepared to serve as regent.