Around 5% of total UK grid capacity (when it's operating at full chat).
And when the wind doesn't blow? f8ck all.
And the costs of that are not zero. Flexing electricity generators to go from renewable to gas when there is no wind costs money.
Not as much money as buying hydrocarbons like gas costs.
Wind more than pays for itself now, and is subsidy free. Your objection to it, so wanting our bills to go up as we consume even more gas, is just odd.
Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the supply stops. When it stops, we don't get any electricity and we can't store it yet. So that's no power, depending on what the weather is. A bit like it was three hundred year ago,
When the wind doesn't blow we have to use gas. The cost of the gas is the market price for gas, plus some extra to flex the generators onto gas.
The extra cost being the result of the intermittency of renewables.
Don't you get the word intermittency? don't you realise the implications of it?
I get the word intermittency, its just not that important since as it stands we always consume or export all of the wind energy produced. Whether it's a windy day, or a calm day.
If we ever reach a point where it's a windy day and we can neither consume nor export the wind electricity generated then we will have a problem, but that has never happened and isn't likely to happen any time soon. Storage is coming in volume, but it's not needed just yet.
If it wasn't for wind power we'd be burning more gas all of the time. With wind we burn less gas most of the time.
What's your preferred alternative?
My preferred alternative is to gather up a huge store of cheap renewable energy in the breezy sunny summer, and use it in the cold dark winter.
Its a fair way off sadly, but we need to be honest with people about that. There is no point deluding ourselves. Gas is going to be with us for a while, and a hard target for net zero is neither desirable nor achievable. We need to scrap it.
The point @BartholomewRoberts makes regarding us always using all the wind power that is produced is an interesting one - I am sure it contradicts something somebody else has said @rcs1000? That wind operators switch off when the grid is full, and are still paid for doing so. Can anyone confirm the real situation?
Wind power generators have occasionally been paid to not generate electricity. And HPC will also - from time-to-time - be paid for energy that it is not generating.
Because of grid constraints, it is perfectly possible to have the system as a whole needing power from natural gas and nuclear, while paying to disconnect some wind.
With that said, even without energy storage, this is much less of an issue than you might think.
Firstly, it only applies to wind turbines on fixed price supply contracts. And those prices are *way* below market prices. If Wind Farm One is getting 50 pounds per MWh and the average price of power is 100 pounds. Then even if it's paid 5% of the time not to produce power, that only raises the price of needed power from Wind Farm One by 2.50.
Secondly, as more wind becomes "merchant" (i.e. just recieves the prevailing price), then if prices go negative, then the Wind Farm will actually pay to put money into the grid.
Thirdly, this doesn't happen very often. Right now, it's almost always because of takeaway capacity on distribution lines. (And/or poor forecasting by system operators.) As the grid is improved, it should increasingly only happen on those very rare occasions (0.1% of the time) when pretty much every turbine is running well, the sun is shining, and power demand is low.
Rachel Wearmouth @REWearmouth · 4h 👀Starmer faces down Owen Jones: "The Labour Party has lost four elections in a row. Owen was a cheerleader at the last attempt and we failed."
I'm not sure that's a zinger because Jones has always supported Labour in elections.
Jones no longer supports Labour. He is an embittered Starmer Out heckler.
Unfair. He produces lots of strong anti-tory material (esp for the Guardian) and I bet he'll be campaigning and voting for Labour at the GE.
Unlike - it has to be said - some on the left (eg the BJOs) but then again also unlike plenty of "centrist" Labourites at both elections under Corbyn.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
There's two ways we can go. One is the USA with the uberrich living in gated colonies and the rest on the streets, and the other is Scandi prosperous socialism. it is blindingly obvious that Scandi is the better bet, but actually we will go USA.
The USA isn't really like that, yet. Most of the rich still live on streets you'd recognise as normal.
... once the heavily armed security guard lets you through the gates. Mind you, I would be fearful of the gun-toting trailer trash that have the MAGA bumper stickers on their F350 trucks too.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
5% seems artificially low for food and drink.
Though it does seem to vary wildly. Coffee beans seem to cost the same today as they did a year ago. Milk on the other hand seems to have gone up even more than Unleaded has. Paid £1.80 for a 4 pint bottle recently.
Coffee prices are harvest dependent more than anything, I would think. Such swings outweigh inflation.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
There's two ways we can go. One is the USA with the uberrich living in gated colonies and the rest on the streets, and the other is Scandi prosperous socialism. it is blindingly obvious that Scandi is the better bet, but actually we will go USA.
Ah, the "health systems" fallacy transferred to a larger canvas.
Ah, the bizarre phenomenon of the low to middle income tory pleading to be more completely shafted by his insect overlords than he already is. As English as pints of warm spinster penny farthinging their way across the cricket pitch to evensong.
You're upholding the other English stereotype of the champagne socialist sneering at the less well off for not having the same luxury beliefs.
Rachel Wearmouth @REWearmouth · 4h 👀Starmer faces down Owen Jones: "The Labour Party has lost four elections in a row. Owen was a cheerleader at the last attempt and we failed."
I'm not sure that's a zinger because Jones has always supported Labour in elections.
Jones no longer supports Labour. He is an embittered Starmer Out heckler.
Unfair. He produces lots of strong anti-tory material (esp for the Guardian) and I bet he'll be campaigning and voting for Labour at the GE.
Unlike - it has to be said - some on the left (eg the BJOs) but then again also unlike plenty of "centrist" Labourites at both elections under Corbyn.
He will vote Labour. I can't see him out there campaigning passionately for a Labour victory though. Against the Tories, yes. But that isn't the same thing.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
In the last couple weeks, I’ve suddenly started seeing new car lease/purchase deals appearing, at much more reasonable prices, with shorter wait times.
I suspect this is evidence of people cancelling/deferring new car purchases/leases and/or families going down to 1 car, reducing demand in the new car market.
There are figures suggesting supply bottlenecks are easing, but I suspect the bigger explanation is people really starting to feel the pinch re: CoL.
Biggest sign for me was the last time I was in Sainsburys, they had several end of aisle displays dedicated to their "hubbards" (cheap/basics) own store brand stuff, the 26p bags of pasta etc. That's the absolute prime real estate in any supermarket. Usually that stuff gets tucked far away on bottom shelves and you have to go looking for it, but now they're actively promoting it.
I don't recall seeing heavy promotion of a basics line in the supermarkets even in the depths of 2008.
Yeah, I think @RochdalePioneers is the resident expert on here, but my guess is, their rationale is they’re seeing their regular clientele shifting to Aldi/Lidl. They rely so heavily on habit and the stickiness of customers (that they then make their profits on from selling them higher margin products over time), that they’d rather keep these customers, even selling loss-leaders and forgoing prime shelf space.
Super-budget products on their high visibility prime marketing shelves screams “super-defensive” to me.
They wouldn’t be doing it if they weren’t seeing an alarming change in consumer behaviour.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
There's two ways we can go. One is the USA with the uberrich living in gated colonies and the rest on the streets, and the other is Scandi prosperous socialism. it is blindingly obvious that Scandi is the better bet, but actually we will go USA.
Ah, the "health systems" fallacy transferred to a larger canvas.
Ah, the bizarre phenomenon of the low to middle income tory pleading to be more completely shafted by his insect overlords than he already is. As English as pints of warm spinster penny farthinging their way across the cricket pitch to evensong.
You're upholding the other English stereotype of the champagne socialist sneering at the less well off for not having the same luxury beliefs.
More of a cava centrist, though there is a bottle of BBR 2013 on hand to toast the demise of pig dog on Tuesday.
I wanted shot of Johnson as much as the next sane person, but I strongly suspect it will be the end of any further new action on climate change or renewables until Starmer takes over.
Johnson probably didn't care either way, but his wife and her friends did.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
There's two ways we can go. One is the USA with the uberrich living in gated colonies and the rest on the streets, and the other is Scandi prosperous socialism. it is blindingly obvious that Scandi is the better bet, but actually we will go USA.
Ah, the "health systems" fallacy transferred to a larger canvas.
Ah, the bizarre phenomenon of the low to middle income tory pleading to be more completely shafted by his insect overlords than he already is. As English as pints of warm spinster penny farthinging their way across the cricket pitch to evensong.
You're upholding the other English stereotype of the champagne socialist sneering at the less well off for not having the same luxury beliefs.
I don't believe @IshmaelZ is a typical or very much of a champagne socialist.
I wear the badge of a sneering champagne centrist with pride nonetheless.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On a cultural/catastrophe note, we have spent several decades being told that as long as we act NOW, (now being ever shifting from moment to moment as it does from about 1990-2021/2) then it isn't too late to save the planet.
The evidence is mounting that the long delayed "Now is too late, and has been for some time" is gaining traction. For example:
I have no idea where the truth lies, but accept the precautionary principle.
But I do note that the behaviour (not words of course, words being cheap) of elites continues to indicate that they do not believe a single word of the climate change analysis.
Science is only our best guess - and as more data comes in it continues to look worse than we thought. My hope is that economics might help. Total Cost of Ownership of electric cars is probably already cheaper than ICE cars. Wind and Solar are probably cheaper than fossil fuels. We've got to hope we can muddle through with the help of technological advances and the adoption 'S' curve.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
I wanted shot of Johnson as much as the next sane person, but I strongly suspect it will be the end of any further new action on climate change or renewables until Starmer takes over.
Johnson probably didn't care either way, but his wife and her friends did.
It will be the end to further action on climate change but not renewables whilst renewables are cheaper (and more secure) than the other options....
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
Why is your contrast not grazed vs not grazed, but overgrazed vs not grazed? Inexplicable, almost.
NE's SSSI figures never seem to bear out your claim, and I don't think you know what you are talking about anyway. Grazed bits of Dartmoor are by no means exclusively grass, whereas your "thicket" in reality is wall to wall common gorse. Do you have any evidence at all for your claim?
By what mechanism does overgrazing imply flooding?
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
Around 5% of total UK grid capacity (when it's operating at full chat).
And when the wind doesn't blow? f8ck all.
And the costs of that are not zero. Flexing electricity generators to go from renewable to gas when there is no wind costs money.
Not as much money as buying hydrocarbons like gas costs.
Wind more than pays for itself now, and is subsidy free. Your objection to it, so wanting our bills to go up as we consume even more gas, is just odd.
Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the supply stops. When it stops, we don't get any electricity and we can't store it yet. So that's no power, depending on what the weather is. A bit like it was three hundred year ago,
When the wind doesn't blow we have to use gas. The cost of the gas is the market price for gas, plus some extra to flex the generators onto gas.
The extra cost being the result of the intermittency of renewables.
Don't you get the word intermittency? don't you realise the implications of it?
I get the word intermittency, its just not that important since as it stands we always consume or export all of the wind energy produced. Whether it's a windy day, or a calm day.
If we ever reach a point where it's a windy day and we can neither consume nor export the wind electricity generated then we will have a problem, but that has never happened and isn't likely to happen any time soon. Storage is coming in volume, but it's not needed just yet.
If it wasn't for wind power we'd be burning more gas all of the time. With wind we burn less gas most of the time.
What's your preferred alternative?
My preferred alternative is to gather up a huge store of cheap renewable energy in the breezy sunny summer, and use it in the cold dark winter.
Its a fair way off sadly, but we need to be honest with people about that. There is no point deluding ourselves. Gas is going to be with us for a while, and a hard target for net zero is neither desirable nor achievable. We need to scrap it.
The point @BartholomewRoberts makes regarding us always using all the wind power that is produced is an interesting one - I am sure it contradicts something somebody else has said @rcs1000? That wind operators switch off when the grid is full, and are still paid for doing so. Can anyone confirm the real situation?
Wind power generators have occasionally been paid to not generate electricity. And HPC will also - from time-to-time - be paid for energy that it is not generating.
Because of grid constraints, it is perfectly possible to have the system as a whole needing power from natural gas and nuclear, while paying to disconnect some wind.
With that said, even without energy storage, this is much less of an issue than you might think.
Firstly, it only applies to wind turbines on fixed price supply contracts. And those prices are *way* below market prices. If Wind Farm One is getting 50 pounds per MWh and the average price of power is 100 pounds. Then even if it's paid 5% of the time not to produce power, that only raises the price of needed power from Wind Farm One by 2.50.
Secondly, as more wind becomes "merchant" (i.e. just recieves the prevailing price), then if prices go negative, then the Wind Farm will actually pay to put money into the grid.
Thirdly, this doesn't happen very often. Right now, it's almost always because of takeaway capacity on distribution lines. (And/or poor forecasting by system operators.) As the grid is improved, it should increasingly only happen on those very rare occasions (0.1% of the time) when pretty much every turbine is running well, the sun is shining, and power demand is low.
As discussed downthread from the quoted post, it has clearly become a little more of a problem than one might think (though the issue may have peaked).
£50 per megawatt hour may seem cheap, but surely that's only under current circumstances where the gas price has been elevated artificially into the low hundreds per mwh. Under normal circumstances, is gas not £28 per mwh? That makes £50 fairly expensive for power, and hella expensive for no power.
One historical tidbit on the end of the Cold War: As the Soviet Union was collapsing, President George H. W. Bush did two things: He lowered the alert status for American forces, and announced unilateral cuts in our nuclear weapons. I've always thought those two moves were wise. Among other things, they made it more difficult for hard-liners in the Kremlin to argue against the changes that were happening.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
"And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "Tax the Rich""...
Kind of the opposite imo. Generating more tax revenue from the rich - including many who don't think they are - is necessary for the other stuff to have a chance of happening. Fail to mention it and all you have is that most unhelpful of things - a list of fluffy aspirations with which nobody disagrees.
Are there practical ways in which the United States can help Britain through this difficult coming winter, that we aren't doing?
Granted, any big public government effort will have to wait until after our mid-terms, but that doesn't mean we can't start thinking about the problem, now.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
"And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "Tax the Rich""...
Kind of the opposite imo. Generating more tax revenue from the rich - including many who don't think they are - is necessary for the other stuff to have a chance of happening. Fail to mention it and all you have is that most unhelpful of things - a list of fluffy aspirations with which nobody disagrees.
"Tax the rich" (or, to use its full version, "tax the people who are richer than me") is itself a fluffy aspiration with which nobody disagrees - and certainly much easier said than done.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
"And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "Tax the Rich""...
Kind of the opposite imo. Generating more tax revenue from the rich - including many who don't think they are - is necessary for the other stuff to have a chance of happening. Fail to mention it and all you have is that most unhelpful of things - a list of fluffy aspirations with which nobody disagrees.
"Tax the rich" (or, to use its full version, "tax the people who are richer than me") is itself a fluffy aspiration with which nobody disagrees - and certainly much easier said than done.
Are there practical ways in which the United States can help Britain through this difficult coming winter, that we aren't doing?
Granted, any big public government effort will have to wait until after our mid-terms, but that doesn't mean we can't start thinking about the problem, now.
Generous though your offer is, if I were the United States, I'd be considerably more worried about Pakistan. That's showing all the signs of collapsing under the pressure of galloping energy costs and coupled to the instability caused by Khan's removal with these floods on top, things look really grim.
And it has nuclear weapons that could very easily fall into the wrong hands if/when that happens, and it's surrounded by openly hostile states.
As Biden himself says, there's not a lot can be done about the price of gas unless Russia reverses its actions so we can lift sanctions. And I don't see what more he can do about it than he is already doing.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
Why is your contrast not grazed vs not grazed, but overgrazed vs not grazed? Inexplicable, almost.
NE's SSSI figures never seem to bear out your claim, and I don't think you know what you are talking about anyway. Grazed bits of Dartmoor are by no means exclusively grass, whereas your "thicket" in reality is wall to wall common gorse. Do you have any evidence at all for your claim?
By what mechanism does overgrazing imply flooding?
Because the wet parts of the uplands have had drains cut to make them dry enough to be grazed by sheep. These drains (often called moor grips) cause run off and soil erosion.
Blocking this drainage up to slow the run off, prevent flooding and allow bog plants to survive is the 'rewetting' you seem to be against.
Naturally, if you make the place wet then it won't support as many grazing animals.
There's an organisation doing some of this work in the Pennines, and no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
Agree. It isn't the job of nature to be entirely agreeable to us. Wetland, marsh, bog, impenetrable thicket are all naturally occurring forms. We have vastly tamed and civilised it. But nature does not always have built in accessibility, or even beauty (to us). In the UK there are vast areas which are tricky to inhabit at scale, and marginal to farm. A real diversity of land management should be encouraged.
BTW lots of people who are enthusiastic about preserving tigers elsewhere are strangely unsympathetic to wolves and bears in the UK. Bring it on.
On a cultural/catastrophe note, we have spent several decades being told that as long as we act NOW, (now being ever shifting from moment to moment as it does from about 1990-2021/2) then it isn't too late to save the planet.
The evidence is mounting that the long delayed "Now is too late, and has been for some time" is gaining traction. For example:
I have no idea where the truth lies, but accept the precautionary principle.
But I do note that the behaviour (not words of course, words being cheap) of elites continues to indicate that they do not believe a single word of the climate change analysis.
It is possible to 'go along' with what we are being told to do in relation to climate change on the basis that it reflects scientific consensus whilst disregarding these apocalyptic predictions. That is what I do. Much of the reporting on climate change is pseudo religious propoganda and it has gone in to overdrive since the early 2010's to the point where there is no point even reading it.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
Why is your contrast not grazed vs not grazed, but overgrazed vs not grazed? Inexplicable, almost.
NE's SSSI figures never seem to bear out your claim, and I don't think you know what you are talking about anyway. Grazed bits of Dartmoor are by no means exclusively grass, whereas your "thicket" in reality is wall to wall common gorse. Do you have any evidence at all for your claim?
By what mechanism does overgrazing imply flooding?
Because the wet parts of the uplands have had drains cut to make them dry enough to be grazed by sheep. These drains (often called moor grips) cause run off and soil erosion.
Blocking this drainage up to slow the run off, prevent flooding and allow bog plants to survive is the 'rewetting' you seem to be against.
Naturally, if you make the place wet then it won't support as many grazing animals.
There's an organisation doing some of this work in the Pennines, and no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor.
Like I say, you don't know what you are talking about. Blocking the drainage with leaky dams and stuff is one thing, actually there's thousands of tonnes of heavy machinery up there (on purpose-built tracks) trashing them at huge environmental cost. Funny how the photos in your link don't have a single jcb in them.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
"And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "Tax the Rich""...
Yes, this is always presented as a desirable outcome in itself, rather than the means by which other desirable outcomes might be achieved.
A "politics of envy" vibe, you mean? Ok, but I'd argue that "tax the rich" IS inherently desirable. The rich are disadvantaged by government tax & spend because they pay more than they get back in public services. Conversely the poor are advantaged because they get back more than they pay. Thus high tax & spend is redistributive. Its impact is to lessen inequality. Or at least it steers that way.
In the last couple weeks, I’ve suddenly started seeing new car lease/purchase deals appearing, at much more reasonable prices, with shorter wait times.
I suspect this is evidence of people cancelling/deferring new car purchases/leases and/or families going down to 1 car, reducing demand in the new car market.
There are figures suggesting supply bottlenecks are easing, but I suspect the bigger explanation is people really starting to feel the pinch re: CoL.
Biggest sign for me was the last time I was in Sainsburys, they had several end of aisle displays dedicated to their "hubbards" (cheap/basics) own store brand stuff, the 26p bags of pasta etc. That's the absolute prime real estate in any supermarket. Usually that stuff gets tucked far away on bottom shelves and you have to go looking for it, but now they're actively promoting it.
I don't recall seeing heavy promotion of a basics line in the supermarkets even in the depths of 2008.
Yeah, I think @RochdalePioneers is the resident expert on here, but my guess is, their rationale is they’re seeing their regular clientele shifting to Aldi/Lidl. They rely so heavily on habit and the stickiness of customers (that they then make their profits on from selling them higher margin products over time), that they’d rather keep these customers, even selling loss-leaders and forgoing prime shelf space.
Super-budget products on their high visibility prime marketing shelves screams “super-defensive” to me.
They wouldn’t be doing it if they weren’t seeing an alarming change in consumer behaviour.
In our local Sainsbury's is a sign apologising for things being moved around in preparation for some new legal requirement around high sugar (or maybe salt?) products. That said, they also have oddly-placed promotional shelves which I take as a sign that Lord Sainsbury is running a personal vendetta against me.
Are there practical ways in which the United States can help Britain through this difficult coming winter, that we aren't doing?
Granted, any big public government effort will have to wait until after our mid-terms, but that doesn't mean we can't start thinking about the problem, now.
The acting Chancellor Zahawi was in the US recently, not sure if anything came out of that
ydoethur said: "Generous though your offer is, if I were the United States, I'd be considerably more worried about Pakistan. That's showing all the signs of collapsing under the pressure of galloping energy costs and coupled to the instability caused by Khan's removal with these floods on top, things look really grim."
Good point. But I think we can and should do both, emergency aid now to Pakistan, and help of vearious sorts -- not necessarily aid -- to Britain soon.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
"And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "Tax the Rich""...
Kind of the opposite imo. Generating more tax revenue from the rich - including many who don't think they are - is necessary for the other stuff to have a chance of happening. Fail to mention it and all you have is that most unhelpful of things - a list of fluffy aspirations with which nobody disagrees.
"Tax the rich" (or, to use its full version, "tax the people who are richer than me") is itself a fluffy aspiration with which nobody disagrees - and certainly much easier said than done.
I can't speak for others but I did mean tax the rich (where as I say "rich" includes many who don't think they are) not that hackneyed old version, the objective of which it often seems to me is to keep it in the realms of the "not serious or doable", same stable as "they've all got clever accountants and won't pay anyway" or "they'll all just leave the country".
Are there practical ways in which the United States can help Britain through this difficult coming winter, that we aren't doing?
Granted, any big public government effort will have to wait until after our mid-terms, but that doesn't mean we can't start thinking about the problem, now.
Inflation in the US is also 8.5% and however cold it gets in the UK winter it won't be as cold as say Chicago, New Hampshire, Alaska and the Plains States will get
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
Why is your contrast not grazed vs not grazed, but overgrazed vs not grazed? Inexplicable, almost.
NE's SSSI figures never seem to bear out your claim, and I don't think you know what you are talking about anyway. Grazed bits of Dartmoor are by no means exclusively grass, whereas your "thicket" in reality is wall to wall common gorse. Do you have any evidence at all for your claim?
By what mechanism does overgrazing imply flooding?
Because the wet parts of the uplands have had drains cut to make them dry enough to be grazed by sheep. These drains (often called moor grips) cause run off and soil erosion.
Blocking this drainage up to slow the run off, prevent flooding and allow bog plants to survive is the 'rewetting' you seem to be against.
Naturally, if you make the place wet then it won't support as many grazing animals.
There's an organisation doing some of this work in the Pennines, and no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor.
Like I say, you don't know what you are talking about. Blocking the drainage with leaky dams and stuff is one thing, actually there's thousands of tonnes of heavy machinery up there (on purpose-built tracks) trashing them at huge environmental cost. Funny how the photos in your link don't have a single jcb in them.
There's no purpose built tracks as you'd know if you'd been there and talked to the people involved.
(Incidentally, this shows up one of the nonsenses of modern administrative areas. The fact that they have to list Derby and Nottingham separately from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire is on the face of it absurd.)
(Incidentally, this shows up one of the nonsenses of modern administrative areas. The fact that they have to list Derby and Nottingham separately from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire is on the face of it absurd.)
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
"And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "Tax the Rich""...
Kind of the opposite imo. Generating more tax revenue from the rich - including many who don't think they are - is necessary for the other stuff to have a chance of happening. Fail to mention it and all you have is that most unhelpful of things - a list of fluffy aspirations with which nobody disagrees.
"Tax the rich" (or, to use its full version, "tax the people who are richer than me") is itself a fluffy aspiration with which nobody disagrees - and certainly much easier said than done.
I can't speak for others but I did mean tax the rich (where as I say "rich" includes many who don't think they are) not that hackneyed old version, the objective of which it often seems to me is to keep it in the realms of the "not serious or doable", same stable as "they've all got clever accountants and won't pay anyway" or "they'll all just leave the country".
It's important to keep in mind that when taxes are raised, the increased revenue for some reason never seems to match the projections... can't imagine why.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
Why is your contrast not grazed vs not grazed, but overgrazed vs not grazed? Inexplicable, almost.
NE's SSSI figures never seem to bear out your claim, and I don't think you know what you are talking about anyway. Grazed bits of Dartmoor are by no means exclusively grass, whereas your "thicket" in reality is wall to wall common gorse. Do you have any evidence at all for your claim?
By what mechanism does overgrazing imply flooding?
Because the wet parts of the uplands have had drains cut to make them dry enough to be grazed by sheep. These drains (often called moor grips) cause run off and soil erosion.
Blocking this drainage up to slow the run off, prevent flooding and allow bog plants to survive is the 'rewetting' you seem to be against.
Naturally, if you make the place wet then it won't support as many grazing animals.
There's an organisation doing some of this work in the Pennines, and no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor.
Like I say, you don't know what you are talking about. Blocking the drainage with leaky dams and stuff is one thing, actually there's thousands of tonnes of heavy machinery up there (on purpose-built tracks) trashing them at huge environmental cost. Funny how the photos in your link don't have a single jcb in them.
There's no purpose built tracks as you'd know if you'd been there and talked to the people involved.
Anyway, I'm obviously wasting my time here.
Twit. I bloody live here, and graze stock on the Dartmoor commons. How much more here could I possibly get?
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
Why is your contrast not grazed vs not grazed, but overgrazed vs not grazed? Inexplicable, almost.
NE's SSSI figures never seem to bear out your claim, and I don't think you know what you are talking about anyway. Grazed bits of Dartmoor are by no means exclusively grass, whereas your "thicket" in reality is wall to wall common gorse. Do you have any evidence at all for your claim?
By what mechanism does overgrazing imply flooding?
Because the wet parts of the uplands have had drains cut to make them dry enough to be grazed by sheep. These drains (often called moor grips) cause run off and soil erosion.
Blocking this drainage up to slow the run off, prevent flooding and allow bog plants to survive is the 'rewetting' you seem to be against.
Naturally, if you make the place wet then it won't support as many grazing animals.
There's an organisation doing some of this work in the Pennines, and no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor.
Like I say, you don't know what you are talking about. Blocking the drainage with leaky dams and stuff is one thing, actually there's thousands of tonnes of heavy machinery up there (on purpose-built tracks) trashing them at huge environmental cost. Funny how the photos in your link don't have a single jcb in them.
There's no purpose built tracks as you'd know if you'd been there and talked to the people involved.
Anyway, I'm obviously wasting my time here.
Twit. I bloody live here, and graze stock on the Dartmoor commons. How much more here could I possibly get?
One of the perennial joys of PB: there’s always someone with actual real life experience on a topic.
Are there practical ways in which the United States can help Britain through this difficult coming winter, that we aren't doing?
Granted, any big public government effort will have to wait until after our mid-terms, but that doesn't mean we can't start thinking about the problem, now.
Didn't Biden go and try and get the Saudis to reduce the price of oil? - and fail?
What is possibly the longest tank-to-tank kill ever - a Ukrainian T-64BV tank crew reportedly managed to destroy a Russian tank from a distance of 10600 meters in indirect fire mode using 125mm HE-FRAG projectiles. As claimed, it took 20 projectiles to finish the tank. https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1564983903475175424
Nice one! Another dead Russian tank, they’re getting taken out at an astonishing rate these days.
Oryx Ukraine has been stuck on 990 Russian tanks for a while now. 1,000 independently confirmed Russian tank kills is going to be quite a moment.
Ukraine is remaining very tight-lipped about operations in the south. However, the Russians seem to be admitting a serious break through of their lines:
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
There's two ways we can go. One is the USA with the uberrich living in gated colonies and the rest on the streets, and the other is Scandi prosperous socialism. it is blindingly obvious that Scandi is the better bet, but actually we will go USA.
Ah, the "health systems" fallacy transferred to a larger canvas.
Ah, the bizarre phenomenon of the low to middle income tory pleading to be more completely shafted by his insect overlords than he already is. As English as pints of warm spinster penny farthinging their way across the cricket pitch to evensong.
You're upholding the other English stereotype of the champagne socialist sneering at the less well off for not having the same luxury beliefs.
I don't believe @IshmaelZ is a typical or very much of a champagne socialist.
I wear the badge of a sneering champagne centrist with pride nonetheless.
More champagne than socialist, Ishmael, I'd say. But a poster who has moved a touch leftwards, just observing from my time on here.
(Incidentally, this shows up one of the nonsenses of modern administrative areas. The fact that they have to list Derby and Nottingham separately from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire is on the face of it absurd.)
Though that would have also been the case prior to 1974, when both were county boroughs outside the jurisdiction of their respective eponymous counties. I'm agnostic as to whether or not this is absurd, but it's not exclusively modern.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
There's two ways we can go. One is the USA with the uberrich living in gated colonies and the rest on the streets, and the other is Scandi prosperous socialism. it is blindingly obvious that Scandi is the better bet, but actually we will go USA.
Ah, the "health systems" fallacy transferred to a larger canvas.
Ah, the bizarre phenomenon of the low to middle income tory pleading to be more completely shafted by his insect overlords than he already is. As English as pints of warm spinster penny farthinging their way across the cricket pitch to evensong.
You're upholding the other English stereotype of the champagne socialist sneering at the less well off for not having the same luxury beliefs.
I don't believe @IshmaelZ is a typical or very much of a champagne socialist.
I wear the badge of a sneering champagne centrist with pride nonetheless.
More champagne than socialist, Ishmael, I'd say. But a poster who has moved a touch leftwards, just observing from my time on here.
Perceptive.
Not all that creditable mind, I have just done the sums which suggest I have at least as much money as life left and my children seem to be doing OK. So I can take time to take in the scenery, and pull the ladder up...
OK I am going to post something that is probably ridiculously stupid so I await the responses ridiculing me (it will be along the lines of one of our more notorious posters in its simplicity, which is usually stupidly impossible). Particularly interested in @Richard_Tyndall's views.
Firstly to state, as I have done before, I do not believe in windfall taxes or caps for private industries, but we are in exceptional and extraordinary times.
Ideally we want to keep power supplies for both residents and business around what they were before the big hikes due the large increase in wholesale prices. Not just for hardship purposes, but to control inflation. We are faffing around with all sorts of schemes that will leave holes all over the place (particularly for businesses) and are very complex.
Why not windfall tax the wholesale supplies equivalent to the difference in current commodity price over the more normal price they would have charged before the commodity price increased and pass that onto the retail suppliers so they are basing their retail prices on the previous normal price rather than the higher wholesale price they are paying.
Suspect there are all sorts of flaws in that in terms of complexity and also issue with wholesale providers that aren't UK based.
OK standing by for the flak.
This is similar to my suggestion the other day. I agree that we are in an extraordinary period equivalent to a war footing. Therefore the normal rules on business do not apply - just as they didn't apply on other such occasions.
If that premise is accepted then it seems reasonable to me that the Government can take any economic action it deems necessary to protect consumers, both domestic and business. Like you I think windfall taxes are a poor way to do things. at least when operating under normal circumstances and just being used to prop up Government finances due to their own mishandling. But I think it might be reasonable to set a maximum profit that energy companies are allowed to earn for the duration of the crisis - say 5 or 10%. Anything over that is used to support consumers on the basis of preventing businesses shutting down and financial ruin for individuals.
There is an argument made on here that the only way to properly deal with the crisis is to reduce consumption or increase supply. I agree with this. But the suggestion that this should be done by simply driving people and businesses into bankruptcy and ruin is ludicrous. The damage it will do to the economy and social well being of the country as well as to individuals will be far more damaging than anything that would result from Government intervention. It would be a classic case of 'the operation was a success but the patient died'.
Ok so I wasn't being completely barmy then, although I want to know why you got 5 likes (admittedly one from me) and I got none? Obviously you put it more eloquently.
Re your last para this was @Sandpit's point and a very good point that I had overlooked, hence my suggestion of a partial implementation. So take the edge off the problem re hardship and businesses but still let the market play its part to reduce consumption without causing havoc.
I get more likes because I bribe more than you do.
ydoethur said: "Generous though your offer is, if I were the United States, I'd be considerably more worried about Pakistan. That's showing all the signs of collapsing under the pressure of galloping energy costs and coupled to the instability caused by Khan's removal with these floods on top, things look really grim."
Good point. But I think we can and should do both, emergency aid now to Pakistan, and help of vearious sorts -- not necessarily aid -- to Britain soon.
Peesonally, I think the main thing the USA could do to help the UK would be to continue to provide all the help it can to Ukraine.
On a cultural/catastrophe note, we have spent several decades being told that as long as we act NOW, (now being ever shifting from moment to moment as it does from about 1990-2021/2) then it isn't too late to save the planet.
The evidence is mounting that the long delayed "Now is too late, and has been for some time" is gaining traction. For example:
I have no idea where the truth lies, but accept the precautionary principle.
But I do note that the behaviour (not words of course, words being cheap) of elites continues to indicate that they do not believe a single word of the climate change analysis.
Science is only our best guess - and as more data comes in it continues to look worse than we thought. My hope is that economics might help. Total Cost of Ownership of electric cars is probably already cheaper than ICE cars. Wind and Solar are probably cheaper than fossil fuels. We've got to hope we can muddle through with the help of technological advances and the adoption 'S' curve.
I think our modern civilisation is sturdy enough to survive in the long term - yeah, we won't be as prosperous as our parents and grandparents, but I think most young people have already accepted that. The post-Covid collapse of the global supply chain has also introduced people to the concept of shortages and scarcity, and it'll probably continue to get worse, so most people won't notice the slow reduction of living standards over 50-100 years as much as they'd notice a sudden implosion.
However, governments in the northern hemisphere are going to have to make some extremely nasty and difficult decisions on what support they make available for people in equatorial, developing countries. Extreme weather, especially humid heatwaves, are going to make big regions of the planet (some of the most populated today) essentially uninhabitable. This either means the northern hemisphere opening up their borders and admitting hundreds of millions/billions from subsaharan Africa and south Asia, or the north spending trillions trying to mitigate the damage in those developing countries, or the north washing their hands of the global crisis they created and sinking refugee boats as they try to cross the Mediterranean.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
"And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "Tax the Rich""...
Yes, this is always presented as a desirable outcome in itself, rather than the means by which other desirable outcomes might be achieved.
A "politics of envy" vibe, you mean? Ok, but I'd argue that "tax the rich" IS inherently desirable. The rich are disadvantaged by government tax & spend because they pay more than they get back in public services. Conversely the poor are advantaged because they get back more than they pay. Thus high tax & spend is redistributive. Its impact is to lessen inequality. Or at least it steers that way.
I disagree. Tax the rich is a regrettable way of achieving other aims. It shouldn't be an end in itself. Not least because it makes us all poorer. Ideally we'd get the money to do it from other means, like finding a massive hidden seam of lithium. Absent that, somebody's got to pay to fund the goodies we want. But in no way is it desirable in itself.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
Why is your contrast not grazed vs not grazed, but overgrazed vs not grazed? Inexplicable, almost.
NE's SSSI figures never seem to bear out your claim, and I don't think you know what you are talking about anyway. Grazed bits of Dartmoor are by no means exclusively grass, whereas your "thicket" in reality is wall to wall common gorse. Do you have any evidence at all for your claim?
By what mechanism does overgrazing imply flooding?
Because the wet parts of the uplands have had drains cut to make them dry enough to be grazed by sheep. These drains (often called moor grips) cause run off and soil erosion.
Blocking this drainage up to slow the run off, prevent flooding and allow bog plants to survive is the 'rewetting' you seem to be against.
Naturally, if you make the place wet then it won't support as many grazing animals.
There's an organisation doing some of this work in the Pennines, and no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor.
Like I say, you don't know what you are talking about. Blocking the drainage with leaky dams and stuff is one thing, actually there's thousands of tonnes of heavy machinery up there (on purpose-built tracks) trashing them at huge environmental cost. Funny how the photos in your link don't have a single jcb in them.
There's no purpose built tracks as you'd know if you'd been there and talked to the people involved.
Anyway, I'm obviously wasting my time here.
Twit. I bloody live here, and graze stock on the Dartmoor commons. How much more here could I possibly get?
You didn't say where 'there' was.
I was referring to Moors for the Future. They don't use purpose built tracks and there's a reason there's no JCB's pictured, although they do use small ones sometimes.
What are your JCBs doing? And what constitutes trashing?
Just finished a chapter in my current fiction reading. I have had to look up a number of words - I now know the meaning of barrater, liripipe, houpalande, and sambocade.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
Why is your contrast not grazed vs not grazed, but overgrazed vs not grazed? Inexplicable, almost.
NE's SSSI figures never seem to bear out your claim, and I don't think you know what you are talking about anyway. Grazed bits of Dartmoor are by no means exclusively grass, whereas your "thicket" in reality is wall to wall common gorse. Do you have any evidence at all for your claim?
By what mechanism does overgrazing imply flooding?
Because the wet parts of the uplands have had drains cut to make them dry enough to be grazed by sheep. These drains (often called moor grips) cause run off and soil erosion.
Blocking this drainage up to slow the run off, prevent flooding and allow bog plants to survive is the 'rewetting' you seem to be against.
Naturally, if you make the place wet then it won't support as many grazing animals.
There's an organisation doing some of this work in the Pennines, and no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor.
Like I say, you don't know what you are talking about. Blocking the drainage with leaky dams and stuff is one thing, actually there's thousands of tonnes of heavy machinery up there (on purpose-built tracks) trashing them at huge environmental cost. Funny how the photos in your link don't have a single jcb in them.
There's no purpose built tracks as you'd know if you'd been there and talked to the people involved.
Anyway, I'm obviously wasting my time here.
Twit. I bloody live here, and graze stock on the Dartmoor commons. How much more here could I possibly get?
One of the perennial joys of PB: there’s always someone with actual real life experience on a topic.
Two in this case (of moorland restoration) but one seems to have a vested interest...
Around 5% of total UK grid capacity (when it's operating at full chat).
And when the wind doesn't blow? f8ck all.
And the costs of that are not zero. Flexing electricity generators to go from renewable to gas when there is no wind costs money.
Not as much money as buying hydrocarbons like gas costs.
Wind more than pays for itself now, and is subsidy free. Your objection to it, so wanting our bills to go up as we consume even more gas, is just odd.
Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the supply stops. When it stops, we don't get any electricity and we can't store it yet. So that's no power, depending on what the weather is. A bit like it was three hundred year ago,
When the wind doesn't blow we have to use gas. The cost of the gas is the market price for gas, plus some extra to flex the generators onto gas.
The extra cost being the result of the intermittency of renewables.
Don't you get the word intermittency? don't you realise the implications of it?
I get the word intermittency, its just not that important since as it stands we always consume or export all of the wind energy produced. Whether it's a windy day, or a calm day.
If we ever reach a point where it's a windy day and we can neither consume nor export the wind electricity generated then we will have a problem, but that has never happened and isn't likely to happen any time soon. Storage is coming in volume, but it's not needed just yet.
If it wasn't for wind power we'd be burning more gas all of the time. With wind we burn less gas most of the time.
What's your preferred alternative?
My preferred alternative is to gather up a huge store of cheap renewable energy in the breezy sunny summer, and use it in the cold dark winter.
Its a fair way off sadly, but we need to be honest with people about that. There is no point deluding ourselves. Gas is going to be with us for a while, and a hard target for net zero is neither desirable nor achievable. We need to scrap it.
The point @BartholomewRoberts makes regarding us always using all the wind power that is produced is an interesting one - I am sure it contradicts something somebody else has said @rcs1000? That wind operators switch off when the grid is full, and are still paid for doing so. Can anyone confirm the real situation?
Wind power generators have occasionally been paid to not generate electricity. And HPC will also - from time-to-time - be paid for energy that it is not generating.
Because of grid constraints, it is perfectly possible to have the system as a whole needing power from natural gas and nuclear, while paying to disconnect some wind.
With that said, even without energy storage, this is much less of an issue than you might think.
Firstly, it only applies to wind turbines on fixed price supply contracts. And those prices are *way* below market prices. If Wind Farm One is getting 50 pounds per MWh and the average price of power is 100 pounds. Then even if it's paid 5% of the time not to produce power, that only raises the price of needed power from Wind Farm One by 2.50.
Secondly, as more wind becomes "merchant" (i.e. just recieves the prevailing price), then if prices go negative, then the Wind Farm will actually pay to put money into the grid.
Thirdly, this doesn't happen very often. Right now, it's almost always because of takeaway capacity on distribution lines. (And/or poor forecasting by system operators.) As the grid is improved, it should increasingly only happen on those very rare occasions (0.1% of the time) when pretty much every turbine is running well, the sun is shining, and power demand is low.
As discussed downthread from the quoted post, it has clearly become a little more of a problem than one might think (though the issue may have peaked).
£50 per megawatt hour may seem cheap, but surely that's only under current circumstances where the gas price has been elevated artificially into the low hundreds per mwh. Under normal circumstances, is gas not £28 per mwh? That makes £50 fairly expensive for power, and hella expensive for no power.
Nobody is going to build a modern gas power plant to get £28/MWh.
If you've already built the plant, then you'll *accept* £28/MWh at certain gas prices.
Because your marginal cost of production might be £26 or £27/MWh.
Remember, your CCGT has three sets of costs:
- capital costs (i.e. what it cost you to build the plant that you amortize over its life) - maintenance costs (i.e. what it costs to keep it running, irrespective of how much power it generates) - marginal costs (i.e. how much the fuel costs)
You will run your plant whenever the price is above the marginal cost of production, even though that is likely to be well below your all-in cost.
In 2020 Russia’s male population aged 20-39 was 15.4% the national total, or about 22 million, which is an imperfect but reasonable proxy of rough pool for fighting.
Ukraine claims 48k Russian dead and current kill rates of 350 per day. Usual military estimates indicate 2x wounded for each KIA. So using Ukraine’s estimates, we’re looking at almost 150k Russian KIA and wounded. Or about two thirds of a percent of the total male fighting demographic. Which not coincidentally is not much smaller than the working demographic too. And that’s before the Kherson kill zone strategy has really swung into gear.
What’s notable of course is that troops have been raised predominantly from the regions, not the relatively wealthier and internationalised “centre”. One assumes there are towns upon towns where there was little work for young men but the military and where whole local regiments have been wiped out or very shortly will be. Very World War 1 in tone.
It’s my contention that if these losses continue, and it seems highly likely they will, it’s going to be very difficult indeed for Putin’s successor to keep the social fabric of his nation from running away from him (as indeed we saw even in post WW1 Britain).
If the war drags on until next summer, Putin’s successor may come to office finding not only that autonomous regions like Dagestan are in a state of agitation, but importantly that there has been a major degradation in his regional security apparatus, certainly to the extent that fighting multiple “Chechen Wars” simultaneously would beyond the Federal government.
So what does he do? Some people worry about the risk of another nationalist strongman, who would continue to wage war for the glory of Russia but be more competent. Hard to see this in my view. Firstly how would they come to power, secondly what means would they have that are unavailable to Putin?
I think we’re looking at one or both of two paths. A reproachment with the West, and the further Balkanisation of the Russian Federation. The second carries considerable risk for the world and would need a titanic figure to safely see it through. Perhaps this time, that figure would get the state funeral they deserve.
(UK is 5% as of today, but the graph above shows how quickly it can rise…)
I have met two people recently who are giving land over to rewilding. One with 30 acres (fair enough a fun project) and the other with two and a half thousand acres (blimmin' heck will no one think of the veg).
No offense to your acquaintances, but I really hope Truss bends them over and royally rogers them (financially), till they're out there themselves hacking down undergrowth and desperately planting seed potatoes.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Rewilding, as was explained to me, is often just husbandry with a different set of rules. It often includes razing the entire area and then replanting it with the "right" seeds to achieve whatever artificial outcome is required. Isabella Tree is the guru apparently.
On productive farmland it does seem a bit of a daft idea. You are just outsourcing the destruction to somewhere else which might already be wild.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
It doesn't really. There's a serious plot afoot to remove all the stock (sheep cattle ponies) from Dartmoor; Natural England's target figure at the moment is literally 0.04 beasts per hectare. What you get if it isn't grazed, is an impenetrable mess. Then they want to "rewet" it as if it wasn't the wettest place in the world anyway. What's the point of transforming a landscape into impenetrable thicket, and bog?
Because thicket has much more biodiversity, and bog absorbs serious amounts of carbon (more than trees), as well as being an interesting habitat.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
Why is your contrast not grazed vs not grazed, but overgrazed vs not grazed? Inexplicable, almost.
NE's SSSI figures never seem to bear out your claim, and I don't think you know what you are talking about anyway. Grazed bits of Dartmoor are by no means exclusively grass, whereas your "thicket" in reality is wall to wall common gorse. Do you have any evidence at all for your claim?
By what mechanism does overgrazing imply flooding?
Because the wet parts of the uplands have had drains cut to make them dry enough to be grazed by sheep. These drains (often called moor grips) cause run off and soil erosion.
Blocking this drainage up to slow the run off, prevent flooding and allow bog plants to survive is the 'rewetting' you seem to be against.
Naturally, if you make the place wet then it won't support as many grazing animals.
There's an organisation doing some of this work in the Pennines, and no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor.
Like I say, you don't know what you are talking about. Blocking the drainage with leaky dams and stuff is one thing, actually there's thousands of tonnes of heavy machinery up there (on purpose-built tracks) trashing them at huge environmental cost. Funny how the photos in your link don't have a single jcb in them.
There's no purpose built tracks as you'd know if you'd been there and talked to the people involved.
Anyway, I'm obviously wasting my time here.
Twit. I bloody live here, and graze stock on the Dartmoor commons. How much more here could I possibly get?
One of the perennial joys of PB: there’s always someone with actual real life experience on a topic.
Two in this case (of moorland restoration) but one seems to have a vested interest...
Jesus Christ you bloody arse, yes: I know what I am talking about. Nobody who did, would link to that pathetic, public-facing website about it.
So where is the "there" that you've been and which people involved have you talked to? Job descriptions fine if you don't want to give names.
You say you know something about the Pennines and "no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor." Of course because glacial, non-glacial, what's the difference? Have you ever been to Dartmoor? Because I've been to the Pennines. Different.
Never seen anyone embarrass themselve so comprehensively on line or indeed IRL. Why not pretend your internet has gone down or you're watching the hustings?
There is new metalled track in the Belstone/ Yes Tor/ Hangingstone area specifically for rewetting btw. I no bicoz I sene it. Bet on this?
Just finished a chapter in my current fiction reading. I have had to look up a number of words - I now know the meaning of barrater, liripipe, houpalande, and sambocade.
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
"And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "Tax the Rich""...
Yes, this is always presented as a desirable outcome in itself, rather than the means by which other desirable outcomes might be achieved.
A "politics of envy" vibe, you mean? Ok, but I'd argue that "tax the rich" IS inherently desirable. The rich are disadvantaged by government tax & spend because they pay more than they get back in public services. Conversely the poor are advantaged because they get back more than they pay. Thus high tax & spend is redistributive. Its impact is to lessen inequality. Or at least it steers that way.
I disagree. Tax the rich is a regrettable way of achieving other aims. It shouldn't be an end in itself. Not least because it makes us all poorer. Ideally we'd get the money to do it from other means, like finding a massive hidden seam of lithium. Absent that, somebody's got to pay to fund the goodies we want. But in no way is it desirable in itself.
Tax doesn't make us all poorer. It's a transfer of resource from private to public. The impact on total wealth depends on lots of other variables.
But that's by the by. Reason we disagree is we place a different value on a more equal wealth distribution compared to other things. Which is fair enough.
In 2020 Russia’s male population aged 20-39 was 15.4% the national total, or about 22 million, which is an imperfect but reasonable proxy of rough pool for fighting.
Ukraine claims 48k Russian dead and current kill rates of 350 per day. Usual military estimates indicate 2x wounded for each KIA. So using Ukraine’s estimates, we’re looking at almost 150k Russian KIA and wounded. Or about two thirds of a percent of the total male fighting demographic. Which not coincidentally is not much smaller than the working demographic too. And that’s before the Kherson kill zone strategy has really swung into gear.
What’s notable of course is that troops have been raised predominantly from the regions, not the relatively wealthier and internationalised “centre”. One assumes there are towns upon towns where there was little work for young men but the military and where whole local regiments have been wiped out or very shortly will be. Very World War 1 in tone.
It’s my contention that if these losses continue, and it seems highly likely they will, it’s going to be very difficult indeed for Putin’s successor to keep the social fabric of his nation from running away from him (as indeed we saw even in post WW1 Britain).
If the war drags on until next summer, Putin’s successor may come to office finding not only that autonomous regions like Dagestan are in a state of agitation, but importantly that there has been a major degradation in his regional security apparatus, certainly to the extent that fighting multiple “Chechen Wars” simultaneously would beyond the Federal government.
So what does he do? Some people worry about the risk of another nationalist strongman, who would continue to wage war for the glory of Russia but be more competent. Hard to see this in my view. Firstly how would they come to power, secondly what means would they have that are unavailable to Putin?
I think we’re looking at one or both of two paths. A reproachment with the West, and the further Balkanisation of the Russian Federation. The second carries considerable risk for the world and would need a titanic figure to safely see it through. Perhaps this time, that figure would get the state funeral they deserve.
This is spot on:
Russia does not have the manpower or the materiel for a long-conflict, and changing the strongman in the Kremlin doesn't change that. (And, by the way, I don't think they even have the manpower for the slow sapping of resources and morale that come with a long occupation, in the event that they were able to achieve a fragile peace.)
Just finished a chapter in my current fiction reading. I have had to look up a number of words - I now know the meaning of barrater, liripipe, houpalande, and sambocade.
Just finished a chapter in my current fiction reading. I have had to look up a number of words - I now know the meaning of barrater, liripipe, houpalande, and sambocade.
Are there practical ways in which the United States can help Britain through this difficult coming winter, that we aren't doing?
Granted, any big public government effort will have to wait until after our mid-terms, but that doesn't mean we can't start thinking about the problem, now.
Didn't Biden go and try and get the Saudis to reduce the price of oil? - and fail?
The Unions surely would prefer Labour in government . Are they too thick to understand that for Labour they have to be careful to not give no 10 and the right wing press an open goal. Burnham grates on me , he seems to think he’s some Labour messiah . If he wants to go for leader he needs to resign from his job as mayor of Manchester and find a seat .
There is a fine balance to tread. Ordinarily most "workers" are not in a union and have been weaponised as not liking unions by the right. But, and I think it is increasingly so, as this winter becomes more desperate, Labour figures standing with unions to represent desperate people will be required for them to be seen as credible.
This Enough is Enough campaign is run by the usual hard left loons. But its stated objectives will become increasingly relevant to most people:
1. A Real Pay Rise. 2. Slash Energy Bills. 3. End Food Poverty. 4. Decent Homes for All. 5. Tax the Rich.
"And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "Tax the Rich""...
Yes, this is always presented as a desirable outcome in itself, rather than the means by which other desirable outcomes might be achieved.
A "politics of envy" vibe, you mean? Ok, but I'd argue that "tax the rich" IS inherently desirable. The rich are disadvantaged by government tax & spend because they pay more than they get back in public services. Conversely the poor are advantaged because they get back more than they pay. Thus high tax & spend is redistributive. Its impact is to lessen inequality. Or at least it steers that way.
I disagree. Tax the rich is a regrettable way of achieving other aims. It shouldn't be an end in itself. Not least because it makes us all poorer. Ideally we'd get the money to do it from other means, like finding a massive hidden seam of lithium. Absent that, somebody's got to pay to fund the goodies we want. But in no way is it desirable in itself.
Tax doesn't make us all poorer. It's a transfer of resource from private to public. The impact on total wealth depends on lots of other variables.
But that's by the by. Reason we disagree is we place a different value on a more equal wealth distribution compared to other things. Which is fair enough.
It makes us all poorer because a)rich people make other arrangements, including working less, so the tax burden must be spread more widely, but also because we are moving money from a high value to a lower value use (this is broadly true in principle as per Wealth if Nations, but arguable in hundreds of individual cases - the principal argument against it being who values an extra £100 more, a millionaire or a minimum wage earner? So I won't push that line too hard.) I do value a more equal society, but not enough that us all being poorer in absolute terms seems worth it.
Around 5% of total UK grid capacity (when it's operating at full chat).
And when the wind doesn't blow? f8ck all.
And the costs of that are not zero. Flexing electricity generators to go from renewable to gas when there is no wind costs money.
Not as much money as buying hydrocarbons like gas costs.
Wind more than pays for itself now, and is subsidy free. Your objection to it, so wanting our bills to go up as we consume even more gas, is just odd.
Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the supply stops. When it stops, we don't get any electricity and we can't store it yet. So that's no power, depending on what the weather is. A bit like it was three hundred year ago,
When the wind doesn't blow we have to use gas. The cost of the gas is the market price for gas, plus some extra to flex the generators onto gas.
The extra cost being the result of the intermittency of renewables.
Don't you get the word intermittency? don't you realise the implications of it?
I get the word intermittency, its just not that important since as it stands we always consume or export all of the wind energy produced. Whether it's a windy day, or a calm day.
If we ever reach a point where it's a windy day and we can neither consume nor export the wind electricity generated then we will have a problem, but that has never happened and isn't likely to happen any time soon. Storage is coming in volume, but it's not needed just yet.
If it wasn't for wind power we'd be burning more gas all of the time. With wind we burn less gas most of the time.
What's your preferred alternative?
My preferred alternative is to gather up a huge store of cheap renewable energy in the breezy sunny summer, and use it in the cold dark winter.
Its a fair way off sadly, but we need to be honest with people about that. There is no point deluding ourselves. Gas is going to be with us for a while, and a hard target for net zero is neither desirable nor achievable. We need to scrap it.
The point @BartholomewRoberts makes regarding us always using all the wind power that is produced is an interesting one - I am sure it contradicts something somebody else has said @rcs1000? That wind operators switch off when the grid is full, and are still paid for doing so. Can anyone confirm the real situation?
Wind power generators have occasionally been paid to not generate electricity. And HPC will also - from time-to-time - be paid for energy that it is not generating.
Because of grid constraints, it is perfectly possible to have the system as a whole needing power from natural gas and nuclear, while paying to disconnect some wind.
With that said, even without energy storage, this is much less of an issue than you might think.
Firstly, it only applies to wind turbines on fixed price supply contracts. And those prices are *way* below market prices. If Wind Farm One is getting 50 pounds per MWh and the average price of power is 100 pounds. Then even if it's paid 5% of the time not to produce power, that only raises the price of needed power from Wind Farm One by 2.50.
Secondly, as more wind becomes "merchant" (i.e. just recieves the prevailing price), then if prices go negative, then the Wind Farm will actually pay to put money into the grid.
Thirdly, this doesn't happen very often. Right now, it's almost always because of takeaway capacity on distribution lines. (And/or poor forecasting by system operators.) As the grid is improved, it should increasingly only happen on those very rare occasions (0.1% of the time) when pretty much every turbine is running well, the sun is shining, and power demand is low.
As discussed downthread from the quoted post, it has clearly become a little more of a problem than one might think (though the issue may have peaked).
£50 per megawatt hour may seem cheap, but surely that's only under current circumstances where the gas price has been elevated artificially into the low hundreds per mwh. Under normal circumstances, is gas not £28 per mwh? That makes £50 fairly expensive for power, and hella expensive for no power.
Nobody is going to build a modern gas power plant to get £28/MWh.
If you've already built the plant, then you'll *accept* £28/MWh at certain gas prices.
Because your marginal cost of production might be £26 or £27/MWh.
Remember, your CCGT has three sets of costs:
- capital costs (i.e. what it cost you to build the plant that you amortize over its life) - maintenance costs (i.e. what it costs to keep it running, irrespective of how much power it generates) - marginal costs (i.e. how much the fuel costs)
You will run your plant whenever the price is above the marginal cost of production, even though that is likely to be well below your all-in cost.
Thanks. I don't pretend to understand this; it's well outside my field. But from those figures, the USA gets its wind for 25 dollars, which is £21.50. Ours is £48. Why is UK wind more than twice as expensive as American wind? Does God charge us more?
In 2020 Russia’s male population aged 20-39 was 15.4% the national total, or about 22 million, which is an imperfect but reasonable proxy of rough pool for fighting.
Ukraine claims 48k Russian dead and current kill rates of 350 per day. Usual military estimates indicate 2x wounded for each KIA. So using Ukraine’s estimates, we’re looking at almost 150k Russian KIA and wounded. Or about two thirds of a percent of the total male fighting demographic. Which not coincidentally is not much smaller than the working demographic too. And that’s before the Kherson kill zone strategy has really swung into gear.
What’s notable of course is that troops have been raised predominantly from the regions, not the relatively wealthier and internationalised “centre”. One assumes there are towns upon towns where there was little work for young men but the military and where whole local regiments have been wiped out or very shortly will be. Very World War 1 in tone.
It’s my contention that if these losses continue, and it seems highly likely they will, it’s going to be very difficult indeed for Putin’s successor to keep the social fabric of his nation from running away from him (as indeed we saw even in post WW1 Britain).
If the war drags on until next summer, Putin’s successor may come to office finding not only that autonomous regions like Dagestan are in a state of agitation, but importantly that there has been a major degradation in his regional security apparatus, certainly to the extent that fighting multiple “Chechen Wars” simultaneously would beyond the Federal government.
So what does he do? Some people worry about the risk of another nationalist strongman, who would continue to wage war for the glory of Russia but be more competent. Hard to see this in my view. Firstly how would they come to power, secondly what means would they have that are unavailable to Putin?
I think we’re looking at one or both of two paths. A reproachment with the West, and the further Balkanisation of the Russian Federation. The second carries considerable risk for the world and would need a titanic figure to safely see it through. Perhaps this time, that figure would get the state funeral they deserve.
This is spot on:
Russia does not have the manpower or the materiel for a long-conflict, and changing the strongman in the Kremlin doesn't change that. (And, by the way, I don't think they even have the manpower for the slow sapping of resources and morale that come with a long occupation, in the event that they were able to achieve a fragile peace.)
The end result would be a de facto partition though. The Russian controlled parts would probably repel most of their Ukrainian loyalist population, and likewise, life is unlikely to be made particularly easy in RUKr. for many who bear a Russian identity. It's not the ideal future, but it may be the neatest one now. I don't see a Mandela's rainbow nation future for Ukraine if it regains its borders, do you?
Around 5% of total UK grid capacity (when it's operating at full chat).
And when the wind doesn't blow? f8ck all.
And the costs of that are not zero. Flexing electricity generators to go from renewable to gas when there is no wind costs money.
Not as much money as buying hydrocarbons like gas costs.
Wind more than pays for itself now, and is subsidy free. Your objection to it, so wanting our bills to go up as we consume even more gas, is just odd.
Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the supply stops. When it stops, we don't get any electricity and we can't store it yet. So that's no power, depending on what the weather is. A bit like it was three hundred year ago,
When the wind doesn't blow we have to use gas. The cost of the gas is the market price for gas, plus some extra to flex the generators onto gas.
The extra cost being the result of the intermittency of renewables.
Don't you get the word intermittency? don't you realise the implications of it?
I get the word intermittency, its just not that important since as it stands we always consume or export all of the wind energy produced. Whether it's a windy day, or a calm day.
If we ever reach a point where it's a windy day and we can neither consume nor export the wind electricity generated then we will have a problem, but that has never happened and isn't likely to happen any time soon. Storage is coming in volume, but it's not needed just yet.
If it wasn't for wind power we'd be burning more gas all of the time. With wind we burn less gas most of the time.
What's your preferred alternative?
My preferred alternative is to gather up a huge store of cheap renewable energy in the breezy sunny summer, and use it in the cold dark winter.
Its a fair way off sadly, but we need to be honest with people about that. There is no point deluding ourselves. Gas is going to be with us for a while, and a hard target for net zero is neither desirable nor achievable. We need to scrap it.
The point @BartholomewRoberts makes regarding us always using all the wind power that is produced is an interesting one - I am sure it contradicts something somebody else has said @rcs1000? That wind operators switch off when the grid is full, and are still paid for doing so. Can anyone confirm the real situation?
Wind power generators have occasionally been paid to not generate electricity. And HPC will also - from time-to-time - be paid for energy that it is not generating.
Because of grid constraints, it is perfectly possible to have the system as a whole needing power from natural gas and nuclear, while paying to disconnect some wind.
With that said, even without energy storage, this is much less of an issue than you might think.
Firstly, it only applies to wind turbines on fixed price supply contracts. And those prices are *way* below market prices. If Wind Farm One is getting 50 pounds per MWh and the average price of power is 100 pounds. Then even if it's paid 5% of the time not to produce power, that only raises the price of needed power from Wind Farm One by 2.50.
Secondly, as more wind becomes "merchant" (i.e. just recieves the prevailing price), then if prices go negative, then the Wind Farm will actually pay to put money into the grid.
Thirdly, this doesn't happen very often. Right now, it's almost always because of takeaway capacity on distribution lines. (And/or poor forecasting by system operators.) As the grid is improved, it should increasingly only happen on those very rare occasions (0.1% of the time) when pretty much every turbine is running well, the sun is shining, and power demand is low.
As discussed downthread from the quoted post, it has clearly become a little more of a problem than one might think (though the issue may have peaked).
£50 per megawatt hour may seem cheap, but surely that's only under current circumstances where the gas price has been elevated artificially into the low hundreds per mwh. Under normal circumstances, is gas not £28 per mwh? That makes £50 fairly expensive for power, and hella expensive for no power.
Nobody is going to build a modern gas power plant to get £28/MWh.
If you've already built the plant, then you'll *accept* £28/MWh at certain gas prices.
Because your marginal cost of production might be £26 or £27/MWh.
Remember, your CCGT has three sets of costs:
- capital costs (i.e. what it cost you to build the plant that you amortize over its life) - maintenance costs (i.e. what it costs to keep it running, irrespective of how much power it generates) - marginal costs (i.e. how much the fuel costs)
You will run your plant whenever the price is above the marginal cost of production, even though that is likely to be well below your all-in cost.
Thanks. I don't pretend to understand this; it's well outside my field. But from those figures, the USA gets its wind for 25 dollars, which is £21.50. Ours is £48. Why is UK wind more than twice as expensive as American wind? Does God charge us more?
I think (but an actual expert will no doubt correct me) that the majority of US is onshore. Ours is roughly 50:50 onshore:offshore. The latter is obviously more expensive, but inshore would also be much cheaper in the US because of lower cost of land and fewer planning hurdles. Just buy a few thousand acres of Texas and bung a few turbines up.
In 2020 Russia’s male population aged 20-39 was 15.4% the national total, or about 22 million, which is an imperfect but reasonable proxy of rough pool for fighting.
Ukraine claims 48k Russian dead and current kill rates of 350 per day. Usual military estimates indicate 2x wounded for each KIA. So using Ukraine’s estimates, we’re looking at almost 150k Russian KIA and wounded. Or about two thirds of a percent of the total male fighting demographic. Which not coincidentally is not much smaller than the working demographic too. And that’s before the Kherson kill zone strategy has really swung into gear.
What’s notable of course is that troops have been raised predominantly from the regions, not the relatively wealthier and internationalised “centre”. One assumes there are towns upon towns where there was little work for young men but the military and where whole local regiments have been wiped out or very shortly will be. Very World War 1 in tone.
It’s my contention that if these losses continue, and it seems highly likely they will, it’s going to be very difficult indeed for Putin’s successor to keep the social fabric of his nation from running away from him (as indeed we saw even in post WW1 Britain).
If the war drags on until next summer, Putin’s successor may come to office finding not only that autonomous regions like Dagestan are in a state of agitation, but importantly that there has been a major degradation in his regional security apparatus, certainly to the extent that fighting multiple “Chechen Wars” simultaneously would beyond the Federal government.
So what does he do? Some people worry about the risk of another nationalist strongman, who would continue to wage war for the glory of Russia but be more competent. Hard to see this in my view. Firstly how would they come to power, secondly what means would they have that are unavailable to Putin?
I think we’re looking at one or both of two paths. A reproachment with the West, and the further Balkanisation of the Russian Federation. The second carries considerable risk for the world and would need a titanic figure to safely see it through. Perhaps this time, that figure would get the state funeral they deserve.
This is spot on:
Russia does not have the manpower or the materiel for a long-conflict, and changing the strongman in the Kremlin doesn't change that. (And, by the way, I don't think they even have the manpower for the slow sapping of resources and morale that come with a long occupation, in the event that they were able to achieve a fragile peace.)
The end result would be a de facto partition though. The Russian controlled parts would probably repel most of its Ukrainian loyalist population, and likewise, life is unlikely to be made particularly easy in RUKr. for many who bear a Russian identity. It's not the ideal future, but it may be the neatest one now. I don't see a Mandela's rainbow nation future for Ukraine if it regains its borders, do you?
If you anticipate movement of populations then why does it matter where you draw the arbitrary line?
Around 5% of total UK grid capacity (when it's operating at full chat).
And when the wind doesn't blow? f8ck all.
And the costs of that are not zero. Flexing electricity generators to go from renewable to gas when there is no wind costs money.
Not as much money as buying hydrocarbons like gas costs.
Wind more than pays for itself now, and is subsidy free. Your objection to it, so wanting our bills to go up as we consume even more gas, is just odd.
Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the supply stops. When it stops, we don't get any electricity and we can't store it yet. So that's no power, depending on what the weather is. A bit like it was three hundred year ago,
When the wind doesn't blow we have to use gas. The cost of the gas is the market price for gas, plus some extra to flex the generators onto gas.
The extra cost being the result of the intermittency of renewables.
Don't you get the word intermittency? don't you realise the implications of it?
I get the word intermittency, its just not that important since as it stands we always consume or export all of the wind energy produced. Whether it's a windy day, or a calm day.
If we ever reach a point where it's a windy day and we can neither consume nor export the wind electricity generated then we will have a problem, but that has never happened and isn't likely to happen any time soon. Storage is coming in volume, but it's not needed just yet.
If it wasn't for wind power we'd be burning more gas all of the time. With wind we burn less gas most of the time.
What's your preferred alternative?
My preferred alternative is to gather up a huge store of cheap renewable energy in the breezy sunny summer, and use it in the cold dark winter.
Its a fair way off sadly, but we need to be honest with people about that. There is no point deluding ourselves. Gas is going to be with us for a while, and a hard target for net zero is neither desirable nor achievable. We need to scrap it.
The point @BartholomewRoberts makes regarding us always using all the wind power that is produced is an interesting one - I am sure it contradicts something somebody else has said @rcs1000? That wind operators switch off when the grid is full, and are still paid for doing so. Can anyone confirm the real situation?
Wind power generators have occasionally been paid to not generate electricity. And HPC will also - from time-to-time - be paid for energy that it is not generating.
Because of grid constraints, it is perfectly possible to have the system as a whole needing power from natural gas and nuclear, while paying to disconnect some wind.
With that said, even without energy storage, this is much less of an issue than you might think.
Firstly, it only applies to wind turbines on fixed price supply contracts. And those prices are *way* below market prices. If Wind Farm One is getting 50 pounds per MWh and the average price of power is 100 pounds. Then even if it's paid 5% of the time not to produce power, that only raises the price of needed power from Wind Farm One by 2.50.
Secondly, as more wind becomes "merchant" (i.e. just recieves the prevailing price), then if prices go negative, then the Wind Farm will actually pay to put money into the grid.
Thirdly, this doesn't happen very often. Right now, it's almost always because of takeaway capacity on distribution lines. (And/or poor forecasting by system operators.) As the grid is improved, it should increasingly only happen on those very rare occasions (0.1% of the time) when pretty much every turbine is running well, the sun is shining, and power demand is low.
As discussed downthread from the quoted post, it has clearly become a little more of a problem than one might think (though the issue may have peaked).
£50 per megawatt hour may seem cheap, but surely that's only under current circumstances where the gas price has been elevated artificially into the low hundreds per mwh. Under normal circumstances, is gas not £28 per mwh? That makes £50 fairly expensive for power, and hella expensive for no power.
Nobody is going to build a modern gas power plant to get £28/MWh.
If you've already built the plant, then you'll *accept* £28/MWh at certain gas prices.
Because your marginal cost of production might be £26 or £27/MWh.
Remember, your CCGT has three sets of costs:
- capital costs (i.e. what it cost you to build the plant that you amortize over its life) - maintenance costs (i.e. what it costs to keep it running, irrespective of how much power it generates) - marginal costs (i.e. how much the fuel costs)
You will run your plant whenever the price is above the marginal cost of production, even though that is likely to be well below your all-in cost.
Thanks. I don't pretend to understand this; it's well outside my field. But from those figures, the USA gets its wind for 25 dollars, which is £21.50. Ours is £48. Why is UK wind more than twice as expensive as American wind? Does God charge us more?
All those numbers are ranges: but in general, the US will be cheaper for wind, because land is cheaper and you can build bigger installations.
In 2020 Russia’s male population aged 20-39 was 15.4% the national total, or about 22 million, which is an imperfect but reasonable proxy of rough pool for fighting.
Ukraine claims 48k Russian dead and current kill rates of 350 per day. Usual military estimates indicate 2x wounded for each KIA. So using Ukraine’s estimates, we’re looking at almost 150k Russian KIA and wounded. Or about two thirds of a percent of the total male fighting demographic. Which not coincidentally is not much smaller than the working demographic too. And that’s before the Kherson kill zone strategy has really swung into gear.
What’s notable of course is that troops have been raised predominantly from the regions, not the relatively wealthier and internationalised “centre”. One assumes there are towns upon towns where there was little work for young men but the military and where whole local regiments have been wiped out or very shortly will be. Very World War 1 in tone.
It’s my contention that if these losses continue, and it seems highly likely they will, it’s going to be very difficult indeed for Putin’s successor to keep the social fabric of his nation from running away from him (as indeed we saw even in post WW1 Britain).
If the war drags on until next summer, Putin’s successor may come to office finding not only that autonomous regions like Dagestan are in a state of agitation, but importantly that there has been a major degradation in his regional security apparatus, certainly to the extent that fighting multiple “Chechen Wars” simultaneously would beyond the Federal government.
So what does he do? Some people worry about the risk of another nationalist strongman, who would continue to wage war for the glory of Russia but be more competent. Hard to see this in my view. Firstly how would they come to power, secondly what means would they have that are unavailable to Putin?
I think we’re looking at one or both of two paths. A reproachment with the West, and the further Balkanisation of the Russian Federation. The second carries considerable risk for the world and would need a titanic figure to safely see it through. Perhaps this time, that figure would get the state funeral they deserve.
This is spot on:
Russia does not have the manpower or the materiel for a long-conflict, and changing the strongman in the Kremlin doesn't change that. (And, by the way, I don't think they even have the manpower for the slow sapping of resources and morale that come with a long occupation, in the event that they were able to achieve a fragile peace.)
The end result would be a de facto partition though. The Russian controlled parts would probably repel most of its Ukrainian loyalist population, and likewise, life is unlikely to be made particularly easy in RUKr. for many who bear a Russian identity. It's not the ideal future, but it may be the neatest one now. I don't see a Mandela's rainbow nation future for Ukraine if it regains its borders, do you?
If you anticipate movement of populations then why does it matter where you draw the arbitrary line?
It doesn't really, apart from a bit less displacement.
I nipped down to the library and cast my votes today. In the end I chose:
Riksdagen Centre Party Region Centre Party Local council Liberals
If I change my mind then I only need to turn up to my polling station on polling day (11 September) and re-cast my votes.
Note: these are not postal votes. The entire electorate is entitled to ”förtidsrösta” (advance vote) during the three weeks leading up to polling day. It was surprisingly busy down there today!
In 2020 Russia’s male population aged 20-39 was 15.4% the national total, or about 22 million, which is an imperfect but reasonable proxy of rough pool for fighting.
Ukraine claims 48k Russian dead and current kill rates of 350 per day. Usual military estimates indicate 2x wounded for each KIA. So using Ukraine’s estimates, we’re looking at almost 150k Russian KIA and wounded. Or about two thirds of a percent of the total male fighting demographic. Which not coincidentally is not much smaller than the working demographic too. And that’s before the Kherson kill zone strategy has really swung into gear.
What’s notable of course is that troops have been raised predominantly from the regions, not the relatively wealthier and internationalised “centre”. One assumes there are towns upon towns where there was little work for young men but the military and where whole local regiments have been wiped out or very shortly will be. Very World War 1 in tone.
It’s my contention that if these losses continue, and it seems highly likely they will, it’s going to be very difficult indeed for Putin’s successor to keep the social fabric of his nation from running away from him (as indeed we saw even in post WW1 Britain).
If the war drags on until next summer, Putin’s successor may come to office finding not only that autonomous regions like Dagestan are in a state of agitation, but importantly that there has been a major degradation in his regional security apparatus, certainly to the extent that fighting multiple “Chechen Wars” simultaneously would beyond the Federal government.
So what does he do? Some people worry about the risk of another nationalist strongman, who would continue to wage war for the glory of Russia but be more competent. Hard to see this in my view. Firstly how would they come to power, secondly what means would they have that are unavailable to Putin?
I think we’re looking at one or both of two paths. A reproachment with the West, and the further Balkanisation of the Russian Federation. The second carries considerable risk for the world and would need a titanic figure to safely see it through. Perhaps this time, that figure would get the state funeral they deserve.
This is spot on:
Russia does not have the manpower or the materiel for a long-conflict, and changing the strongman in the Kremlin doesn't change that. (And, by the way, I don't think they even have the manpower for the slow sapping of resources and morale that come with a long occupation, in the event that they were able to achieve a fragile peace.)
The end result would be a de facto partition though. The Russian controlled parts would probably repel most of their Ukrainian loyalist population, and likewise, life is unlikely to be made particularly easy in RUKr. for many who bear a Russian identity. It's not the ideal future, but it may be the neatest one now. I don't see a Mandela's rainbow nation future for Ukraine if it regains its borders, do you?
One of the big unknowns of the war, where it’s hard to find a trustworthy source: what is actual public opinion toward Ukraine and Russia in the Donbass and other Russian controlled areas.
Russian propaganda would have us believe there’s a whole downtrodden people yearning to return to the motherland. Ukrainian propaganda would have you believe the people of Luhansk, Donetsk, Mariupol et al are united in their hatred of the Russian occupier and longing for liberation. I suspect the truth is messier than either narrative. I do think the experience of period from 2014 has turned a lot of erstwhile Russian friendly people in those regions against the former colonial power.
In 2020 Russia’s male population aged 20-39 was 15.4% the national total, or about 22 million, which is an imperfect but reasonable proxy of rough pool for fighting.
Ukraine claims 48k Russian dead and current kill rates of 350 per day. Usual military estimates indicate 2x wounded for each KIA. So using Ukraine’s estimates, we’re looking at almost 150k Russian KIA and wounded. Or about two thirds of a percent of the total male fighting demographic. Which not coincidentally is not much smaller than the working demographic too. And that’s before the Kherson kill zone strategy has really swung into gear.
What’s notable of course is that troops have been raised predominantly from the regions, not the relatively wealthier and internationalised “centre”. One assumes there are towns upon towns where there was little work for young men but the military and where whole local regiments have been wiped out or very shortly will be. Very World War 1 in tone.
It’s my contention that if these losses continue, and it seems highly likely they will, it’s going to be very difficult indeed for Putin’s successor to keep the social fabric of his nation from running away from him (as indeed we saw even in post WW1 Britain).
If the war drags on until next summer, Putin’s successor may come to office finding not only that autonomous regions like Dagestan are in a state of agitation, but importantly that there has been a major degradation in his regional security apparatus, certainly to the extent that fighting multiple “Chechen Wars” simultaneously would beyond the Federal government.
So what does he do? Some people worry about the risk of another nationalist strongman, who would continue to wage war for the glory of Russia but be more competent. Hard to see this in my view. Firstly how would they come to power, secondly what means would they have that are unavailable to Putin?
I think we’re looking at one or both of two paths. A reproachment with the West, and the further Balkanisation of the Russian Federation. The second carries considerable risk for the world and would need a titanic figure to safely see it through. Perhaps this time, that figure would get the state funeral they deserve.
This is spot on:
Russia does not have the manpower or the materiel for a long-conflict, and changing the strongman in the Kremlin doesn't change that. (And, by the way, I don't think they even have the manpower for the slow sapping of resources and morale that come with a long occupation, in the event that they were able to achieve a fragile peace.)
The end result would be a de facto partition though. The Russian controlled parts would probably repel most of its Ukrainian loyalist population, and likewise, life is unlikely to be made particularly easy in RUKr. for many who bear a Russian identity. It's not the ideal future, but it may be the neatest one now. I don't see a Mandela's rainbow nation future for Ukraine if it regains its borders, do you?
If you anticipate movement of populations then why does it matter where you draw the arbitrary line?
It doesn't really, apart from a bit less displacement.
Based on what? Do you think the people of Kherson are happy under Russian occupation?
Comments
Because of grid constraints, it is perfectly possible to have the system as a whole needing power from natural gas and nuclear, while paying to disconnect some wind.
With that said, even without energy storage, this is much less of an issue than you might think.
Firstly, it only applies to wind turbines on fixed price supply contracts. And those prices are *way* below market prices. If Wind Farm One is getting 50 pounds per MWh and the average price of power is 100 pounds. Then even if it's paid 5% of the time not to produce power, that only raises the price of needed power from Wind Farm One by 2.50.
Secondly, as more wind becomes "merchant" (i.e. just recieves the prevailing price), then if prices go negative, then the Wind Farm will actually pay to put money into the grid.
Thirdly, this doesn't happen very often. Right now, it's almost always because of takeaway capacity on distribution lines. (And/or poor forecasting by system operators.) As the grid is improved, it should increasingly only happen on those very rare occasions (0.1% of the time) when pretty much every turbine is running well, the sun is shining, and power demand is low.
Unlike - it has to be said - some on the left (eg the BJOs) but then again also unlike plenty of "centrist" Labourites at both elections under Corbyn.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/28/wilding-isabella-tree-review-farm-return-nature
Seeing as how he posted back in 2015, “PSA to a couple of very confused people: I’m not related to Dick Cheney . . ."
Took me all of a minute to answer your (doubtless rhetorical) "question" via Google.
Adam Payne
@adampayne26
As per reports, figures in BEIS are currently preparing for Secretary of State Rees Mogg
===
I presume he is totally against renewables or climate change action? I guess that is why he is being put there?
Super-budget products on their high visibility prime marketing shelves screams “super-defensive” to me.
They wouldn’t be doing it if they weren’t seeing an alarming change in consumer behaviour.
Johnson probably didn't care either way, but his wife and her friends did.
I wear the badge of a sneering champagne centrist with pride nonetheless.
On land which really isn't very productive, then rewilding makes sense. Anders Povlsen has certainly used his money from Asos to go big on that front...
My hope is that economics might help. Total Cost of Ownership of electric cars is probably already cheaper than ICE cars. Wind and Solar are probably cheaper than fossil fuels. We've got to hope we can muddle through with the help of technological advances and the adoption 'S' curve.
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/31/uk-food-price-inflation-hits-highest-level-since-global-financial-crash
5% is the figure for all retail.
Overgrazed moor is dull dull dull and contributes to flooding.
NE's SSSI figures never seem to bear out your claim, and I don't think you know what you are talking about anyway. Grazed bits of Dartmoor are by no means exclusively grass, whereas your "thicket" in reality is wall to wall common gorse. Do you have any evidence at all for your claim?
By what mechanism does overgrazing imply flooding?
£50 per megawatt hour may seem cheap, but surely that's only under current circumstances where the gas price has been elevated artificially into the low hundreds per mwh. Under normal circumstances, is gas not £28 per mwh? That makes £50 fairly expensive for power, and hella expensive for no power.
Granted, any big public government effort will have to wait until after our mid-terms, but that doesn't mean we can't start thinking about the problem, now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton's_fork
Getting elected on a platform of doing it is the tricky bit
And it has nuclear weapons that could very easily fall into the wrong hands if/when that happens, and it's surrounded by openly hostile states.
As Biden himself says, there's not a lot can be done about the price of gas unless Russia reverses its actions so we can lift sanctions. And I don't see what more he can do about it than he is already doing.
Blocking this drainage up to slow the run off, prevent flooding and allow bog plants to survive is the 'rewetting' you seem to be against.
Naturally, if you make the place wet then it won't support as many grazing animals.
There's an organisation doing some of this work in the Pennines, and no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor.
https://www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk/
BTW lots of people who are enthusiastic about preserving tigers elsewhere are strangely unsympathetic to wolves and bears in the UK. Bring it on.
Red meat exports exceed pre-covid highs:
https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/markets-and-trends/meat-prices/exports-of-red-meat-from-the-uk-reach-record-levels
Election expected 2024.
Good point. But I think we can and should do both, emergency aid now to Pakistan, and help of vearious sorts -- not necessarily aid -- to Britain soon.
Anyway, I'm obviously wasting my time here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/east-midlands-devolution-deal
(Incidentally, this shows up one of the nonsenses of modern administrative areas. The fact that they have to list Derby and Nottingham separately from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire is on the face of it absurd.)
That would actually be the funniest thing to happen in politics since Theresa May's 'strong and stable' advertising van fell over.
Ukraine is remaining very tight-lipped about operations in the south. However, the Russians seem to be admitting a serious break through of their lines:
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1564961820271673346?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1564961820271673346|twgr^45c14c56c009be0ddfdb5e98de96523560ed6b02|twcon^s1_&ref_url=h
None more here...
I'm agnostic as to whether or not this is absurd, but it's not exclusively modern.
Not all that creditable mind, I have just done the sums which suggest I have at least as much money as life left and my children seem to be doing OK. So I can take time to take in the scenery, and pull the ladder up...
However, governments in the northern hemisphere are going to have to make some extremely nasty and difficult decisions on what support they make available for people in equatorial, developing countries. Extreme weather, especially humid heatwaves, are going to make big regions of the planet (some of the most populated today) essentially uninhabitable. This either means the northern hemisphere opening up their borders and admitting hundreds of millions/billions from subsaharan Africa and south Asia, or the north spending trillions trying to mitigate the damage in those developing countries, or the north washing their hands of the global crisis they created and sinking refugee boats as they try to cross the Mediterranean.
Ideally we'd get the money to do it from other means, like finding a massive hidden seam of lithium. Absent that, somebody's got to pay to fund the goodies we want. But in no way is it desirable in itself.
King of the North please explain!
I was referring to Moors for the Future. They don't use purpose built tracks and there's a reason there's no JCB's pictured, although they do use small ones sometimes.
What are your JCBs doing? And what constitutes trashing?
If you've already built the plant, then you'll *accept* £28/MWh at certain gas prices.
Because your marginal cost of production might be £26 or £27/MWh.
Remember, your CCGT has three sets of costs:
- capital costs (i.e. what it cost you to build the plant that you amortize over its life)
- maintenance costs (i.e. what it costs to keep it running, irrespective of how much power it generates)
- marginal costs (i.e. how much the fuel costs)
You will run your plant whenever the price is above the marginal cost of production, even though that is likely to be well below your all-in cost.
The all-in cost is generally known as the levelized cost of energy. There's a good chart - it's US but the numbers, except for solar, are broadly comparable with the UK - that the investment bank Lazard produced here: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/
In 2020 Russia’s male population aged 20-39 was 15.4% the national total, or about 22 million, which is an imperfect but reasonable proxy of rough pool for fighting.
Ukraine claims 48k Russian dead and current kill rates of 350 per day. Usual military estimates indicate 2x wounded for each KIA. So using Ukraine’s estimates, we’re looking at almost 150k Russian KIA and wounded. Or about two thirds of a percent of the total male fighting demographic. Which not coincidentally is not much smaller than the working demographic too. And that’s before the Kherson kill zone strategy has really swung into gear.
What’s notable of course is that troops have been raised predominantly from the regions, not the relatively wealthier and internationalised “centre”. One assumes there are towns upon towns where there was little work for young men but the military and where whole local regiments have been wiped out or very shortly will be. Very World War 1 in tone.
It’s my contention that if these losses continue, and it seems highly likely they will, it’s going to be very difficult indeed for Putin’s successor to keep the social fabric of his nation from running away from him (as indeed we saw even in post WW1 Britain).
If the war drags on until next summer, Putin’s successor may come to office finding not only that autonomous regions like Dagestan are in a state of agitation, but importantly that there has been a major degradation in his regional security apparatus, certainly to the extent that fighting multiple “Chechen Wars” simultaneously would beyond the Federal government.
So what does he do? Some people worry about the risk of another nationalist strongman, who would continue to wage war for the glory of Russia but be more competent. Hard to see this in my view. Firstly how would they come to power, secondly what means would they have that are unavailable to Putin?
I think we’re looking at one or both of two paths. A reproachment with the West, and the further Balkanisation of the Russian Federation. The second carries considerable risk for the world and would need a titanic figure to safely see it through. Perhaps this time, that figure would get the state funeral they deserve.
So where is the "there" that you've been and which people involved have you talked to? Job descriptions fine if you don't want to give names.
You say you know something about the Pennines and "no doubt the same benefits would apply to Dartmoor." Of course because glacial, non-glacial, what's the difference? Have you ever been to Dartmoor? Because I've been to the Pennines. Different.
Never seen anyone embarrass themselve so comprehensively on line or indeed IRL. Why not pretend your internet has gone down or you're watching the hustings?
There is new metalled track in the Belstone/ Yes Tor/ Hangingstone area specifically for rewetting btw. I no bicoz I sene it. Bet on this?
But that's by the by. Reason we disagree is we place a different value on a more equal wealth distribution compared to other things. Which is fair enough.
Russia does not have the manpower or the materiel for a long-conflict, and changing the strongman in the Kremlin doesn't change that. (And, by the way, I don't think they even have the manpower for the slow sapping of resources and morale that come with a long occupation, in the event that they were able to achieve a fragile peace.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCCJ2Qpr1nM
Dunno why Corbyn was so against it.
I do value a more equal society, but not enough that us all being poorer in absolute terms seems worth it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOj2Pij_tj4 (Sun)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EhiN8HBlhU (Independent)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr8RkpcAhsk (Talk TV)
Other hustings downstreaming pitches are available.
Betfair next prime minister
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
18 Rishi Sunak 6%
Next Conservative leader
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
19 Rishi Sunak 5%
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoGlHTWPXFk (LBC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOj2Pij_tj4 (Sun)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EhiN8HBlhU (Independent)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr8RkpcAhsk (Talk TV)
Other hustings downstreaming pitches are available.
In the end I chose:
Riksdagen Centre Party
Region Centre Party
Local council Liberals
If I change my mind then I only need to turn up to my polling station on polling day (11 September) and re-cast my votes.
Note: these are not postal votes. The entire electorate is entitled to ”förtidsrösta” (advance vote) during the three weeks leading up to polling day. It was surprisingly busy down there today!
https://www.val.se/servicelankar/other-languages/english-engelska.html
Russian propaganda would have us believe there’s a whole downtrodden people yearning to return to the motherland. Ukrainian propaganda would have you believe the people of Luhansk, Donetsk, Mariupol et al are united in their hatred of the Russian occupier and longing for liberation. I suspect the truth is messier than either narrative. I do think the experience of period from 2014 has turned a lot of erstwhile Russian friendly people in those regions against the former colonial power.