"Read My Lips, No New Taxes" - that went well for the last person who said it.
Who in their right mind makes such a hostage to fortune? No serious leader can or should ever rule out anything because you don't know what's going to happen.
Does this include a tax on renewable suppliers who are making a mint at moment?
It worries me rigid that this country has gone far too socialist.
Companies are paying taxes already.
Talk of windfall taxes is immoral, IMO.
Immoral ??
Do you think the likes of Shell and BP are going to be grateful when they've extracted all the gas and oil from the North sea ?
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
The very basis of the legitimacy of any state is its ability to keep the peace and deliver justice. It's why the very first thing that any wealth-appropriating elite did was to write a law code, to keep the peace between the people under their dominion. Nothing is more important then the criminal justice system delivering justice for victims of violence.
As I have been saying ad nauseam on here for years now.
And yet our criminal justice system is now a failing one. And there seems little chance of that changing.
I'm aware it's public knowledge, but on here, in this quoted thread, we were told that we use all the wind power we generate, and that, whilst strictly factual, was misleading. I think that it characterises the whole renewables debate.
Regarding your last point, I am not sure a few hundred million here and there encourages the Government to do much at all. If these costs were borne by the generators themselves, I'm far more convinced we'd see action.
I think some oddities of this form are inevitable if you want to have the electricity industry being a wide range of different companies doing different things. If it was still the old Central Electricity Generating Board building and running power generation and transmission facilities as they saw fit, there wouldn't be any internal payments like this, they'd just run the wind or gas or whatever stations it made sense to run at the time, and they'd build more interconnects if some engineers decided that would help and they had the budget for it. But because we want a bunch of different companies to do this work (which I don't disagree with, to be clear) that means a complicated set of financial agreements so those companies can get a workable business model and interoperate with each other, because the requirements for the system as a whole to function are more complicated than just "supply energy to it". Complicated financial arrangements have weird corner cases sometimes.
(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?
I'm not sure what is wrong with linking to the public facing website of an organisation doing pretty much what you seem to be complaining about with which I am familiar.
The Park Authority is full of ill informed teenage dweebs like you, and you think water behaves the same in an eroded granite landscape vs a heavily glaciated one. Which is about like thinking that water and petrol are interchangeable because they are both clear liquids.
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
It wryly amused me to see the plan for cyclists to have numberplates. I see half a dozen dirt motorbikes without plates speeding round the streets here every day. Making a right racket at all hours.
"Read My Lips, No New Taxes" - that went well for the last person who said it.
Who in their right mind makes such a hostage to fortune? No serious leader can or should ever rule out anything because you don't know what's going to happen.
Does this include a tax on renewable suppliers who are making a mint at moment?
It worries me rigid that this country has gone far too socialist.
Companies are paying taxes already.
Talk of windfall taxes is immoral, IMO.
Immoral ??
Do you think the likes of Shell and BP are going to be grateful when they've extracted all the gas and oil from the North sea ?
Yes. Immoral.
Businesses are there to make profit for their shareholders. Not be taxed til the pips squeak by a series of governments.
There is a reason why this country is up to its highest level of taxation as a share of GDP since the war. The county always thinks the government will bail them out....
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
It wryly amused me to see the plan for cyclists to have numberplates. I see half a dozen dirt motorbikes without plates speeding round the streets here every day. Making a right racket at all hours.
All Government consists of now is stupid people vomiting forth an endless stream of very stupid ideas, whilst everything burns down around us.
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.
Ah no, here you're bending things - or more accurately treating selective theory as objective fact - to avoid what is in fact a value judgement you're making. You can have a cake or eat a cake but not the both. And btw there is no problem at all in my view with people placing a different value on different things. Such is the heart of politics! - or much of it anyway.
Well I agree with the latter certainly. My belief is that by taxing people who are richer than me, I will ultimately be worse off, and by taxing me, people poorer than me will be worse off, because doing so will shrink the tax base. That isn't a value judgement, that's my expectation of how the economics play out. You might question that interpretation, but that's different. Now I do value a more equal society. And I would certainly support a policy which aimed to achieve that which I expected to work. Though I also value a prosperous society, and there is a bit of a trafe ofd between the two. If I could grow society in such a way that the proceeds of growth go primarily to the bottom half of society, great.
Wait.
So only people who should pay taxes are those poorer than 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?
There have been a handful of occasions when a strong storm has passed through overnight and wet haven't been able to use or export all the wind energy that could be generated.
These occasions have not yet been frequent enough for it to be economic to store the wind energy during those events for use at other times. We're talking about a few GWh a few times a year, whereas Dinorwig gets to shift energy from night to day every day.
As we add more wind capacity these events will become more frequent, and so it will become possible to make money by storing the electricity produced that would otherwise be wasted. It will come but we're not there yet.
There are times when all or part of some wind farms are 'switched off' when they could be generating, because it's easier to fine tune wind farm output than it is to reduce or increase output from a gas power station - when you're dealing with gas turbines the size of houses, you don't want to be stepping on the brakes or accelerator more than is necessary.
"In some cases, wind farm operators have been paid more to switch off than produce power."
"As the Scottish planning regime is not as restrictive for wind developments as England, operators are more likely to have their projects approved.
In addition, according to the REF, the growing desire for more renewable energy and the encouragement of wind production has led to less scrutiny for wind operators in Scotland, as well as lower charges for the electricity grid connection needed for their development."
"Could companies be targeting constraint payments?
The spokesperson for the REF believes that this practise can provide “a perverse incentive to seek out areas with low demand and weak grid connectivity,” therefore it can encourage more operators to take advantage of constraint payments by constructing more farms in such areas.
Furthermore, REF perceives wind farms as a foreseeable market risk which should not be eligible for financial compensations when they have to be restricted in order to prevent grid overloading.
The company does not see such compensations as justifiable, especially as they provide higher income for a restricted period of time compared to when wind farms are actually working."
So perhaps Scotland isn't the land of renewable milk and honey, given that it would appear that the grid (= the bill payer) is paying a great deal for non-delivery of power, from facilities where there's a reasonable suspicion that the owners built them in the least connected places precisely to benefit from such payments.
As connectivity has improved (eg the HVDC interconnect between England and Scotland), it's a declining issue. ...In 2020 constraint payments to onshore wind in Scotland amounted to 3,460 GWh (at a cost of £243m), whereas in 2021 this was 1,783 GWh (at a cost of £107m), a reduction of 48% by volume of energy...
Ok, I believe you - and that is an impressive reduction, though £107m for doing jack s**t seems like a fair bit to me. But the fact that these posting exchanges have ignored this issue doesn't reflect well on PB's wind proponents. We should have an open discussion of the pros and cons - not doing so previously is why we're in the current situation.
If the issue is in decline and the payments are diminishing, why continue with them at all? Not doing so incentives providers to support improvements in grid connectivity, build in areas with good connectivity, and potentially even to look for storage solutions, which at the moment they're actively disincentivised to do, because the constraint payments are worth more to them than providing power.
All this stuff has been discussed for a number of years - it’s just that you’re new to it.
Constraint payments are required contractually for generators who are part of the grid balancing mechanism; it’s not just wind power. There has to be a contractual arrangement to get generators to reduce power generation when demand drops, since up until now we have minimal storage.
It’s not all bad news - the cost gives government a very strong incentive to improve interconnects. And provides an immediate market for any storage technology with reasonable costs and capacity.
I'm aware it's public knowledge, but on here, in this quoted thread, we were told that we use all the wind power we generate, and that, whilst strictly factual, was misleading. I think that it characterises the whole renewables debate.
Regarding your last point, I am not sure a few hundred million here and there encourages the Government to do much at all. If these costs were borne by the generators themselves, I'm far more convinced we'd see action.
The longest HVDC interconnector in Europe - between Norway and the UK - was around €1.6 bn. The National Grid paid for half of that since it pays to import/export power when demand grows/falls.
That’s how the electric market works. You can find this stuff quite easily yourself, if you make the effort.
If you don’t like the market, and want to redesign it, feel free.
(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?
I'm not sure what is wrong with linking to the public facing website of an organisation doing pretty much what you seem to be complaining about with which I am familiar.
The Park Authority is full of ill informed teenage dweebs like you, and you think water behaves the same in an eroded granite landscape vs a heavily glaciated one. Which is about like thinking that water and petrol are interchangeable because they are both clear liquids.
You are a flailing arse. You pretend to know about shit when you don't and then go grasping for any bloody website which you think confirms your case. You do not have a clue. Dartmoor is an eroded granite plateau, not the result of glaciation.
I don't think we established whether you have ever been to Dartmoor?
There's more than an element of truth in this - we all want Russia to be "defeated" and Ukraine to be "free" but the devil is in the detail.
The obvious is a complete withdrawal of all Russian forces from the independently recognised borders of the Ukraine which includes Crimea and the separatist areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, the dissolution of the puppet republics and their full return under Kyiv control.
Even if that were to happen, peace wouldn't be guaranteed. Those in Donetsk and Luhansk who want to be in Russia won't stop wanting to be in Russia even if the Ukraine is in control and it's likely we'd soon see a new low-level conflict with pro-Russia groups supported by Moscow giving the Ukrainians a hard time.
I really don't know about Crimea - after all, the Ukrainians ended the Republic of Crimea, formed in 1992 and perhaps the solution is to restore Crimea's independence with both Kyiv and Moscow agreeing to recognise that independence. Rather as with Tartus in Syria, the existing Russian military presence at Sevastopol and elsewhere in the Crimea complicates that - perhaps a long term lease?
It's ironic to be considering the future of Russia less than 24 hours after the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the most significant political leaders of the second half of the 20th Century and the man, in my view, largely responsible for the ending of what we many end up calling the First Cold War and the ending of Communist rule across Eastern Europe - accomplished with surprisingly little bloodshed with the exception of Romania.
As others have argued, for Russia we can hope for a post-war rapprochement with the West though that would seem to require the removal of the entire political caste or we may see a post-Putin Russia move further from the West toward China and a renewed Sino-Russian Pact which would aid China economically in terms of raw materials and resources and effectively confirm the bi-polar world. As long predicted, you'd imagine then the emphasis would switch to the Pacific leaving Europe isolated on the wrong side of the globe.
It might have been better if Russia had bought Crimea back from Ukraine; historically it was part of Russia, and there is a history of land purchases especially in American history. Whether it is too late to work out some sort of deal around a peaceful and compensated return of Russian-majority states after appropriate referendum results, I don't know. Possibly it is.
We conveniently forget the issue of Crimea afflicted the Ukraine in the early 90s. In 1992, the Crimean Parliament proclaimed independence but over the next three years Kyiv re-asserted its control albeit with considerable autonomy for the region.
Crimea is not a problem which began in 2014 by any stretch and a comprehensive solution for its political and economic future has to be part of any longer-term treaty between Russia and the Ukraine.
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
The very basis of the legitimacy of any state is its ability to keep the peace and deliver justice. It's why the very first thing that any wealth-appropriating elite did was to write a law code, to keep the peace between the people under their dominion. Nothing is more important then the criminal justice system delivering justice for victims of violence.
And of course, to do this, it will need to rigidly focus on issues that matter.
No more covid related investigations. No more policing of thought or speech that offends people.
Focusing on crime and justice is important. It needs to be higher on the agenda than it is.
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...
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?
I'm not sure what is wrong with linking to the public facing website of an organisation doing pretty much what you seem to be complaining about with which I am familiar.
The Park Authority is full of ill informed teenage dweebs like you, and you think water behaves the same in an eroded granite landscape vs a heavily glaciated one. Which is about like thinking that water and petrol are interchangeable because they are both clear liquids.
You are a flailing arse. You pretend to know about shit when you don't and then go grasping for any bloody website which you think confirms your case. You do not have a clue. Dartmoor is an eroded granite plateau, not the result of glaciation.
I don't think we established whether you have ever been to Dartmoor?
What eroded the granite plateau if not glaciation?
"Read My Lips, No New Taxes" - that went well for the last person who said it.
Who in their right mind makes such a hostage to fortune? No serious leader can or should ever rule out anything because you don't know what's going to happen.
Does this include a tax on renewable suppliers who are making a mint at moment?
It worries me rigid that this country has gone far too socialist.
Companies are paying taxes already.
Talk of windfall taxes is immoral, IMO.
Fine - I appreciate that but I just don't see how you square the current circle. We continue to run a significant deficit and will have to contribute up to £100 billion of our wealth next year just to service the debt.
Many millions will struggle this winter and it seems perverse to see some energy companies making what will seem like obscene profits being able for example to pay their senior executives the kind of remuneration well beyond even the most asinine notions of an "aspiration nation".
You may claim it's not a Government's role to tax or to interfere in markets - I'd contend it's not a Government's role to have large numbers of its population struggling to keep warm.
I'm aware it's public knowledge, but on here, in this quoted thread, we were told that we use all the wind power we generate, and that, whilst strictly factual, was misleading. I think that it characterises the whole renewables debate.
Regarding your last point, I am not sure a few hundred million here and there encourages the Government to do much at all. If these costs were borne by the generators themselves, I'm far more convinced we'd see action.
I think some oddities of this form are inevitable if you want to have the electricity industry being a wide range of different companies doing different things. If it was still the old Central Electricity Generating Board building and running power generation and transmission facilities as they saw fit, there wouldn't be any internal payments like this, they'd just run the wind or gas or whatever stations it made sense to run at the time, and they'd build more interconnects if some engineers decided that would help and they had the budget for it. But because we want a bunch of different companies to do this work (which I don't disagree with, to be clear) that means a complicated set of financial agreements so those companies can get a workable business model and interoperate with each other, because the requirements for the system as a whole to function are more complicated than just "supply energy to it". Complicated financial arrangements have weird corner cases sometimes.
Even then they would need a mechanism for prioritising what gets turned up and down first - and market arrangements for foreign interconnects (which make a significant percentage of grid capacity). It’s complicated.
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...
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?
I'm not sure what is wrong with linking to the public facing website of an organisation doing pretty much what you seem to be complaining about with which I am familiar.
The Park Authority is full of ill informed teenage dweebs like you, and you think water behaves the same in an eroded granite landscape vs a heavily glaciated one. Which is about like thinking that water and petrol are interchangeable because they are both clear liquids.
You are a flailing arse. You pretend to know about shit when you don't and then go grasping for any bloody website which you think confirms your case. You do not have a clue. Dartmoor is an eroded granite plateau, not the result of glaciation.
I don't think we established whether you have ever been to Dartmoor?
What eroded the granite plateau if not glaciation?
(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?
I'm not sure what is wrong with linking to the public facing website of an organisation doing pretty much what you seem to be complaining about with which I am familiar.
The Park Authority is full of ill informed teenage dweebs like you, and you think water behaves the same in an eroded granite landscape vs a heavily glaciated one. Which is about like thinking that water and petrol are interchangeable because they are both clear liquids.
TBF that isn't much of an icecap - sounds rather bitty and localised and mainly in the northern (and northern facing) valleys. Now if you were a Yorkshireman ...
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.
Ah no, here you're bending things - or more accurately treating selective theory as objective fact - to avoid what is in fact a value judgement you're making. You can have a cake or eat a cake but not the both. And btw there is no problem at all in my view with people placing a different value on different things. Such is the heart of politics! - or much of it anyway.
Well I agree with the latter certainly. My belief is that by taxing people who are richer than me, I will ultimately be worse off, and by taxing me, people poorer than me will be worse off, because doing so will shrink the tax base. That isn't a value judgement, that's my expectation of how the economics play out. You might question that interpretation, but that's different. Now I do value a more equal society. And I would certainly support a policy which aimed to achieve that which I expected to work. Though I also value a prosperous society, and there is a bit of a trafe ofd between the two. If I could grow society in such a way that the proceeds of growth go primarily to the bottom half of society, great.
Wait.
So only people who should pay taxes are those poorer than you?
No! I just don't celebrate targeting the rich for punitive taxation.
"Read My Lips, No New Taxes" - that went well for the last person who said it.
Who in their right mind makes such a hostage to fortune? No serious leader can or should ever rule out anything because you don't know what's going to happen.
Does this include a tax on renewable suppliers who are making a mint at moment?
It worries me rigid that this country has gone far too socialist.
Companies are paying taxes already.
Talk of windfall taxes is immoral, IMO.
Immoral ??
Do you think the likes of Shell and BP are going to be grateful when they've extracted all the gas and oil from the North sea ?
Yes. Immoral.
Businesses are there to make profit for their shareholders. Not be taxed til the pips squeak by a series of governments.
There is a reason why this country is up to its highest level of taxation as a share of GDP since the war. The county always thinks the government will bail them out....
The country has staggered out of the most destructive pandemic disease outbreak in a century and straight into a major war - in socioeconomic terms even if not, thank Christ, an actual shooting conflict. If there ever was a time for simply abandoning the population to sink or swim based entirely on its own efforts, it's certainly not now.
Left to the current system, fuel bills will become so colossal that the majority of the entire population will be left facing "heat or eat" dilemmas (if they can afford to do either) and vast numbers of businesses will be bankrupted, resulting in millions of people being thrown on the dole and substantial destruction of what's left of the tax base. This can only be avoided by suppressing the energy bills, and that itself is going to cost enormous sums of money.
The energy producers are making money for old rope, courtesy of Vladimir Putin rather than any kind of entrepreneurial acumen, and concentrating all that wealth into the hands of a minuscule number of shareholders whilst the rest of the nation is at imminent risk of going to Hell in a handcart. Windfall taxation on those profits is an obvious source for some of the revenue required.
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.
Ah no, here you're bending things - or more accurately treating selective theory as objective fact - to avoid what is in fact a value judgement you're making. You can have a cake or eat a cake but not the both. And btw there is no problem at all in my view with people placing a different value on different things. Such is the heart of politics! - or much of it anyway.
Well I agree with the latter certainly. My belief is that by taxing people who are richer than me, I will ultimately be worse off, and by taxing me, people poorer than me will be worse off, because doing so will shrink the tax base. That isn't a value judgement, that's my expectation of how the economics play out. You might question that interpretation, but that's different. Now I do value a more equal society. And I would certainly support a policy which aimed to achieve that which I expected to work. Though I also value a prosperous society, and there is a bit of a trafe ofd between the two. If I could grow society in such a way that the proceeds of growth go primarily to the bottom half of society, great.
Wait.
So only people who should pay taxes are those poorer than you?
No! I just don't celebrate targeting the rich for punitive taxation.
What is punitive about tax? Punitive demands for money are called fines.
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.
Ah no, here you're bending things - or more accurately treating selective theory as objective fact - to avoid what is in fact a value judgement you're making. You can have a cake or eat a cake but not the both. And btw there is no problem at all in my view with people placing a different value on different things. Such is the heart of politics! - or much of it anyway.
Well I agree with the latter certainly. My belief is that by taxing people who are richer than me, I will ultimately be worse off, and by taxing me, people poorer than me will be worse off, because doing so will shrink the tax base. That isn't a value judgement, that's my expectation of how the economics play out. You might question that interpretation, but that's different. Now I do value a more equal society. And I would certainly support a policy which aimed to achieve that which I expected to work. Though I also value a prosperous society, and there is a bit of a trafe ofd between the two. If I could grow society in such a way that the proceeds of growth go primarily to the bottom half of society, great.
Ok, but economics is a mystery in many ways so let's park that. Here's what I mean: When assessing any political policy - inc tax & spend - someone will ask various questions (assuming they don't only look at how it affects them personally).
Will this make the country richer? Safer? Cleaner? More peaceful? More free? More equal? (And so on)
Different people will give greater or lesser weight to each of these - cf the others - depending on their political brain chemistry. And the basic core reason that (eg) you and I disagree on tax & spend is that I'll weight the 'more equal' question higher than you will. By the same token you'll give more (relative) weight than me to some of those other (good) things.
This is why we disagree. It's not that you truly think "tax makes us all poorer" and I think otherwise. Truth is, we both know the impact depends on the circumstances and on multiple variables.
So with that fulsome explanation now on the record I hope we can agree to agree on why we disagree on this matter.
I don't want to appear like a dog with a bone on this, because I honestly don't think we're too far apart. I do agree that what we value will differ. I value more equal, but I'm sure you value that more highly. I almost agree with everything you say. But we also vote on what we think will work. And that is where, primarily, this policy falls over, for me. And we also value on other things like managerialism and who makes our skin crawl.
(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?
I'm not sure what is wrong with linking to the public facing website of an organisation doing pretty much what you seem to be complaining about with which I am familiar.
The Park Authority is full of ill informed teenage dweebs like you, and you think water behaves the same in an eroded granite landscape vs a heavily glaciated one. Which is about like thinking that water and petrol are interchangeable because they are both clear liquids.
You are a flailing arse. You pretend to know about shit when you don't and then go grasping for any bloody website which you think confirms your case. You do not have a clue. Dartmoor is an eroded granite plateau, not the result of glaciation.
I don't think we established whether you have ever been to Dartmoor?
What eroded the granite plateau if not glaciation?
Weather. Wind n rain. This is not controversial.
Undoubtedly during the warmer Cenozoic ("Tertiary"). IIRC tors are the bits left with deep weathering of the granite andf the washing away of the erosion products. Like this
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
It wryly amused me to see the plan for cyclists to have numberplates. I see half a dozen dirt motorbikes without plates speeding round the streets here every day. Making a right racket at all hours.
The local news had a large group of them a few weeks ago on a street in Boro driving past a police car doing nothing. The bikers drove from Redcar to Boro and nothing was done.
There was also the case of the guy in Darlington area who filmed a trials bike pulling wheelies on a road. Posted it to Facebook, complaining about police inaction.
Next thing the caravan on his drive is set on fire which then spreads to his home.
Suffice to say the police were useless in both cases. Doing nothing apart from a few warm words of reassurance while saying they will act tough but never do.
(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?
I'm not sure what is wrong with linking to the public facing website of an organisation doing pretty much what you seem to be complaining about with which I am familiar.
The Park Authority is full of ill informed teenage dweebs like you, and you think water behaves the same in an eroded granite landscape vs a heavily glaciated one. Which is about like thinking that water and petrol are interchangeable because they are both clear liquids.
You are a flailing arse. You pretend to know about shit when you don't and then go grasping for any bloody website which you think confirms your case. You do not have a clue. Dartmoor is an eroded granite plateau, not the result of glaciation.
I don't think we established whether you have ever been to Dartmoor?
What eroded the granite plateau if not glaciation?
And that gets a like from Mr Clueless. It's like liking a post saying If the earth is a globe how come the Aussies don't fall off the bottom.
Dominic Cummings was complaining recently that politicians have not worked out what they want the Ukraine end game to be.
There's more than an element of truth in this - we all want Russia to be "defeated" and Ukraine to be "free" but the devil is in the detail.
The obvious is a complete withdrawal of all Russian forces from the independently recognised borders of the Ukraine which includes Crimea and the separatist areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, the dissolution of the puppet republics and their full return under Kyiv control.
Even if that were to happen, peace wouldn't be guaranteed. Those in Donetsk and Luhansk who want to be in Russia won't stop wanting to be in Russia even if the Ukraine is in control and it's likely we'd soon see a new low-level conflict with pro-Russia groups supported by Moscow giving the Ukrainians a hard time.
I really don't know about Crimea - after all, the Ukrainians ended the Republic of Crimea, formed in 1992 and perhaps the solution is to restore Crimea's independence with both Kyiv and Moscow agreeing to recognise that independence. Rather as with Tartus in Syria, the existing Russian military presence at Sevastopol and elsewhere in the Crimea complicates that - perhaps a long term lease?
It's ironic to be considering the future of Russia less than 24 hours after the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the most significant political leaders of the second half of the 20th Century and the man, in my view, largely responsible for the ending of what we many end up calling the First Cold War and the ending of Communist rule across Eastern Europe - accomplished with surprisingly little bloodshed with the exception of Romania.
As others have argued, for Russia we can hope for a post-war rapprochement with the West though that would seem to require the removal of the entire political caste or we may see a post-Putin Russia move further from the West toward China and a renewed Sino-Russian Pact which would aid China economically in terms of raw materials and resources and effectively confirm the bi-polar world. As long predicted, you'd imagine then the emphasis would switch to the Pacific leaving Europe isolated on the wrong side of the globe.
I think it is a mistake to think of an end game in terms of a permanent settled state. I'm an idealist, and so I know it's always very tempting to want to draw up a comprehensive plan for permanent peace, but it's simply never going to turn out that way. So it's a mistake to think in terms of a set of SMART objectives. History is never going to stop, and so necessarily it is an iterative process.
Instead we should be guided by our principles - democracy, self-determination, human rights - and seek to ensure that they are defended, or advanced, as much as circumstances allow. We do not know how the war in Ukraine will develop, so it is impossible for us to come up with a perfect plan of what the best achievable end state to the war would look like. What we can do is to recognise that Ukraine is largely a democracy, and Ukrainians are prepared to fight for their democracy, and so we should seek to provide them with as much support as possible so that democracy wins as much as possible in the present war.
Of course, there may come a point where we have to compromise with reality and accept less then would be ideal, just as the democratic allies in WWII accepted the reality that they could not free Eastern Europe from Soviet domination in the late 1940s, which must have been a bitter realisation for many idealistic Britons at the time, bearing in mind that we'd entered the war in 1939 to defend Poland's independence from Nazi Germany. But that point is not now.
I also think you are too pessimistic about the attractions of Western democracy. The experience of Russian-style gangster dictatorship in the occupied areas of Ukraine since 2014 has turned many ethnic Russian Ukrainians against Russia. Ukraine is likely to face more difficulties with organised criminals having access to large numbers of weapons, than they are to face from an insurgency of those sympathetic to Moscow. It's also worth remembering - again - that in the latest legitimate referendums to be held on the issue, all areas of Ukraine - including Crimea and the Donbas - voted for independence as part of Ukraine, in preference to being part of Russia.
As to the risks posed by a close alliance between Russia and China, it is, unfortunately, largely too late to prevent that, except insofar as Russian nationalists will always chafe at being dominated by China. Perhaps if we had engaged with 90s Russia in a more constructive, rather than triumphalist manner, it might have been possible. It certainly feels like it was a massive missed opportunity, but perhaps the democratic advances that there have been in Eastern Europe were more than might have been achieved if the Western democracies had really messed things up.
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
The very basis of the legitimacy of any state is its ability to keep the peace and deliver justice. It's why the very first thing that any wealth-appropriating elite did was to write a law code, to keep the peace between the people under their dominion. Nothing is more important then the criminal justice system delivering justice for victims of violence.
As I have been saying ad nauseam on here for years now.
And yet our criminal justice system is now a failing one. And there seems little chance of that changing.
One does wonder what the state is for, sometimes. In mediaeval times, a king who couldn't maintain the peace ...
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
The very basis of the legitimacy of any state is its ability to keep the peace and deliver justice. It's why the very first thing that any wealth-appropriating elite did was to write a law code, to keep the peace between the people under their dominion. Nothing is more important then the criminal justice system delivering justice for victims of violence.
And of course, to do this, it will need to rigidly focus on issues that matter.
No more covid related investigations. No more policing of thought or speech that offends people.
Focusing on crime and justice is important. It needs to be higher on the agenda than it is.
I suspect that we hear so many of these horror stories about the police "having words" with people who upset other people on Twitter for two reasons: (1) stirring by right wing newspapers; but also (2) a lot of this sort of thing probably does happen because it is easy for them. Whereas trying to detect burglars, for example, is hard work.
The police have a thankless task, but they often do themselves no favours.
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
The very basis of the legitimacy of any state is its ability to keep the peace and deliver justice. It's why the very first thing that any wealth-appropriating elite did was to write a law code, to keep the peace between the people under their dominion. Nothing is more important then the criminal justice system delivering justice for victims of violence.
As I have been saying ad nauseam on here for years now.
And yet our criminal justice system is now a failing one. And there seems little chance of that changing.
One does wonder what the state is for, sometimes. In mediaeval times, a king who couldn't maintain the peace ...
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?
There have been a handful of occasions when a strong storm has passed through overnight and wet haven't been able to use or export all the wind energy that could be generated.
These occasions have not yet been frequent enough for it to be economic to store the wind energy during those events for use at other times. We're talking about a few GWh a few times a year, whereas Dinorwig gets to shift energy from night to day every day.
As we add more wind capacity these events will become more frequent, and so it will become possible to make money by storing the electricity produced that would otherwise be wasted. It will come but we're not there yet.
There are times when all or part of some wind farms are 'switched off' when they could be generating, because it's easier to fine tune wind farm output than it is to reduce or increase output from a gas power station - when you're dealing with gas turbines the size of houses, you don't want to be stepping on the brakes or accelerator more than is necessary.
"In some cases, wind farm operators have been paid more to switch off than produce power."
"As the Scottish planning regime is not as restrictive for wind developments as England, operators are more likely to have their projects approved.
In addition, according to the REF, the growing desire for more renewable energy and the encouragement of wind production has led to less scrutiny for wind operators in Scotland, as well as lower charges for the electricity grid connection needed for their development."
"Could companies be targeting constraint payments?
The spokesperson for the REF believes that this practise can provide “a perverse incentive to seek out areas with low demand and weak grid connectivity,” therefore it can encourage more operators to take advantage of constraint payments by constructing more farms in such areas.
Furthermore, REF perceives wind farms as a foreseeable market risk which should not be eligible for financial compensations when they have to be restricted in order to prevent grid overloading.
The company does not see such compensations as justifiable, especially as they provide higher income for a restricted period of time compared to when wind farms are actually working."
So perhaps Scotland isn't the land of renewable milk and honey, given that it would appear that the grid (= the bill payer) is paying a great deal for non-delivery of power, from facilities where there's a reasonable suspicion that the owners built them in the least connected places precisely to benefit from such payments.
As connectivity has improved (eg the HVDC interconnect between England and Scotland), it's a declining issue. ...In 2020 constraint payments to onshore wind in Scotland amounted to 3,460 GWh (at a cost of £243m), whereas in 2021 this was 1,783 GWh (at a cost of £107m), a reduction of 48% by volume of energy...
Ok, I believe you - and that is an impressive reduction, though £107m for doing jack s**t seems like a fair bit to me. But the fact that these posting exchanges have ignored this issue doesn't reflect well on PB's wind proponents. We should have an open discussion of the pros and cons - not doing so previously is why we're in the current situation.
If the issue is in decline and the payments are diminishing, why continue with them at all? Not doing so incentives providers to support improvements in grid connectivity, build in areas with good connectivity, and potentially even to look for storage solutions, which at the moment they're actively disincentivised to do, because the constraint payments are worth more to them than providing power.
All this stuff has been discussed for a number of years - it’s just that you’re new to it.
Constraint payments are required contractually for generators who are part of the grid balancing mechanism; it’s not just wind power. There has to be a contractual arrangement to get generators to reduce power generation when demand drops, since up until now we have minimal storage.
It’s not all bad news - the cost gives government a very strong incentive to improve interconnects. And provides an immediate market for any storage technology with reasonable costs and capacity.
I'm aware it's public knowledge, but on here, in this quoted thread, we were told that we use all the wind power we generate, and that, whilst strictly factual, was misleading. I think that it characterises the whole renewables debate.
Regarding your last point, I am not sure a few hundred million here and there encourages the Government to do much at all. If these costs were borne by the generators themselves, I'm far more convinced we'd see action.
The longest HVDC interconnector in Europe - between Norway and the UK - was around €1.6 bn. The National Grid paid for half of that since it pays to import/export power when demand grows/falls.
That’s how the electric market works. You can find this stuff quite easily yourself, if you make the effort.
If you don’t like the market, and want to redesign it, feel free.
I have no idea what you're getting on your hind legs about, I have not asked you to provide me with any information - we were having a discussion.
And thanks for your permission to suggest improvements to what has now proven to be an utterly broken and shit system - much obliged.
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
The very basis of the legitimacy of any state is its ability to keep the peace and deliver justice. It's why the very first thing that any wealth-appropriating elite did was to write a law code, to keep the peace between the people under their dominion. Nothing is more important then the criminal justice system delivering justice for victims of violence.
And of course, to do this, it will need to rigidly focus on issues that matter.
No more covid related investigations. No more policing of thought or speech that offends people.
Focusing on crime and justice is important. It needs to be higher on the agenda than it is.
I suspect that we hear so many of these horror stories about the police "having words" with people who upset other people on Twitter for two reasons: (1) stirring by right wing newspapers; but also (2) a lot of this sort of thing probably does happen because it is easy for them. Whereas trying to detect burglars, for example, is hard work.
The police have a thankless task, but they often do themselves no favours.
Indeed. Not many burglars leave their email addresses, though, so given that the cops have to meet central government targets, the choice is obvious in terms of the low-hanging fruit.
US ammunition makes the old 105mm howitzers we sent to Ukraine considerably more potent.
It appears that the Ukrainian Army received not only classic M1 HE projectiles for their L119, but also more modern American M927 high-explosive rocket. They are more lethal and have range of 17 km instead of 11.5 km for M1 projectiles. https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1565048354328952836
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
I'm sure if the violent teenagers or bikers were misgendering their victims, the local police would come down on them like a ton of bricks.
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
The very basis of the legitimacy of any state is its ability to keep the peace and deliver justice. It's why the very first thing that any wealth-appropriating elite did was to write a law code, to keep the peace between the people under their dominion. Nothing is more important then the criminal justice system delivering justice for victims of violence.
As I have been saying ad nauseam on here for years now.
And yet our criminal justice system is now a failing one. And there seems little chance of that changing.
One does wonder what the state is for, sometimes. In mediaeval times, a king who couldn't maintain the peace ...
Ah, dear not-very-old Henry VI.
I do find it puzzling that a Conservative government should not consider that criminal justice is an important function of government.
(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?
I'm not sure what is wrong with linking to the public facing website of an organisation doing pretty much what you seem to be complaining about with which I am familiar.
The Park Authority is full of ill informed teenage dweebs like you, and you think water behaves the same in an eroded granite landscape vs a heavily glaciated one. Which is about like thinking that water and petrol are interchangeable because they are both clear liquids.
You are a flailing arse. You pretend to know about shit when you don't and then go grasping for any bloody website which you think confirms your case. You do not have a clue. Dartmoor is an eroded granite plateau, not the result of glaciation.
I don't think we established whether you have ever been to Dartmoor?
What eroded the granite plateau if not glaciation?
Weather. Wind n rain. This is not controversial.
Undoubtedly during the warmer Cenozoic ("Tertiary"). IIRC tors are the bits left with deep weathering of the granite andf the washing away of the erosion products. Like this
Sure, a bit, at the margins, which is really really not the case with the Pennines, as anyone who had been to both places ought to understand
It's very clear on Dartmoor on a clear day: if you climb a summit the surrounding summits are very obv the same elevation as you are to within a couple of metres, to the extent that until the 1890s people were wrong about the highest point on the moor
Well, while the country goes to hell in a hand basket etc, some small pieces of good news in the Cyclefree household -
- client likes my article and is singing my praises to various US media outlets
- More importantly, Youngest Son looks as if he has found himself somewhere to live. It was starting to stress him out as there was a dearth of reasonably priced accommodation and a lot of unhelpful agents. (Many thanks also to @kyf_100 for his valuable help.)
- And Eldest Son has passed his probationary period and is now a full time permanent employee of a well known and well regarded employer. Am SOO pleased for him. He has had some really tough times but has worked hard for this and is doing well and has found something he is good at and which will give him the self-confidence to build on what he has achieved.
So I'd quite like it please if the Tories could not fuck up the economy anymore than they have already. People's lives - like my sons' - depend on this.
As the late Seamus Heaney put it (about Ireland but it equally applies to us)
“We are not simply a credit rating or an economy but a history and a culture, a human population rather than a statistical phenomenon.”
Politicians would do well to remember the human population with whose care they are temporarily entrusted.
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.
Ah no, here you're bending things - or more accurately treating selective theory as objective fact - to avoid what is in fact a value judgement you're making. You can have a cake or eat a cake but not the both. And btw there is no problem at all in my view with people placing a different value on different things. Such is the heart of politics! - or much of it anyway.
Well I agree with the latter certainly. My belief is that by taxing people who are richer than me, I will ultimately be worse off, and by taxing me, people poorer than me will be worse off, because doing so will shrink the tax base. That isn't a value judgement, that's my expectation of how the economics play out. You might question that interpretation, but that's different. Now I do value a more equal society. And I would certainly support a policy which aimed to achieve that which I expected to work. Though I also value a prosperous society, and there is a bit of a trafe ofd between the two. If I could grow society in such a way that the proceeds of growth go primarily to the bottom half of society, great.
Wait.
So only people who should pay taxes are those poorer than you?
No! I just don't celebrate targeting the rich for punitive taxation.
What is punitive about tax? Punitive demands for money are called fines.
Well to return to the original point, calls to 'tax the rich' as an end in itself, rather than as a regrettable means of achieving another end are in my view punitive in their intent: they are intended to punish the rich for being rich. This was the original point under discussion.
Asked specifically if there will be another windfall tax, she rules it out: "No". (Some Tories feel that with energy companies profits soaring, this will be inevitable).
Ironically, BEIS should be one of the most important portfolio in Cabinet right now.
Even besides the worsening climate crisis, we are seeing the collapse of the post-91 global order in which the USA relied on cheap imports from China and Europe relied on cheap energy from Russia.
China has become too technologically sophisticated and diplomatically menacing to rely upon, Russia has tipped into outright defiance of international law.
The consequence is that the West is in a race against time to renationalise key supply chain dependencies, including computer chips, energy, and commodities.
The UK spends fuck all on R&D and infrastructure, and wonders why it’s GDP has struggled to keep pace with its peers.
The Tory government has put a succession of laissez-faire plodders into BEIS, and Liz Truss threatens to top it with a man so incompetent he is not sure which century it is.
But I don’t think it’s the right editorial decision by the BBC to put it as their main headline story at the top of their front page.
Why not? Police selectively refusing to enforce the law is a big, big problem. And it's a widespread problem. I've been trying to get them to act against violent and dangerous off-road motorbikers in Cannock and they literally don't care. When I finally got hold of somebody she offered to talk to them about the law on motoring if I could tell her who they were. I asked, rather tartly, if she didn't care about the law, which mandates two years' imprisonment for such people. Her response was to say I could complain about her email if I wished, but no reply to my question as to whether she proposed to do her job.
And this is an order of magnitude worse. The bikers are twats who will kill somebody, most probably themselves. These are violent criminals who should be being locked up for assault, not given cautions (which in itself is a highly problematic part of our justice system that urgently needs reforming).
Quite frankly, this is another area that's completely gone. Police don't appear to have a clue what they're doing, and even if they did the courts are in such a mess after Susan Acland-Hood's disastrous tenure there's not a lot will be done.
But at the same time, it's another sign of a system of government that's actually unravelling.
The very basis of the legitimacy of any state is its ability to keep the peace and deliver justice. It's why the very first thing that any wealth-appropriating elite did was to write a law code, to keep the peace between the people under their dominion. Nothing is more important then the criminal justice system delivering justice for victims of violence.
As I have been saying ad nauseam on here for years now.
And yet our criminal justice system is now a failing one. And there seems little chance of that changing.
One does wonder what the state is for, sometimes. In mediaeval times, a king who couldn't maintain the peace ...
Ah, dear not-very-old Henry VI.
I do find it puzzling that a Conservative government should not consider that criminal justice is an important function of government.
Not really. Think of the shit they'd be in if dangerous criminals were prosecuted.
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?
Perhaps America has an (un)natural advantage re: wind, given how in recent years (though it seems longer) the Sage > Security Risk of Mar-a-Lardo has been generating about 50% of USA wind production.
Out of BOTH his blow-holes.
Even with Boris Johnson and rest of Tory cabinet on the job, the UK simply can NOT compete.
Lol. I just love it when you call him that.
My "inspiration" is sixth and final volume of Dumas Malone's magisterial (but imperfect) biography of Thomas Jefferson, "The Sage of Monticello".
Asked specifically if there will be another windfall tax, she rules it out: "No". (Some Tories feel that with energy companies profits soaring, this will be inevitable).
Yes, in France there's talk of energy rationing because Macron chose to freeze energy prices and as a result people aren't cutting their energy usage as much as they are in the UK or Germany or the rest of Europe.
In Germany, which is most exposed to this crisis, the prices have gone up by more and usage has come down significantly.
Now we have some people in this country suggesting "why don't you just freeze prices" while simultaneously thinking that energy rationing is a terrible idea if it happens.
Either prices need to go up and consumption goes down as a result, or we need to have rationing (and probably blackouts). Pick your poison.
Comments
Do you think the likes of Shell and BP are going to be grateful when they've extracted all the gas and oil from the North sea ?
And yet our criminal justice system is now a failing one. And there seems little chance of that changing.
https://dro.dur.ac.uk/9653/
I see half a dozen dirt motorbikes without plates speeding round the streets here every day. Making a right racket at all hours.
Businesses are there to make profit for their shareholders. Not be taxed til the pips squeak by a series of governments.
There is a reason why this country is up to its highest level of taxation as a share of GDP since the war. The county always thinks the government will bail them out....
So only people who should pay taxes are those poorer than you?
That’s how the electric market works. You can find this stuff quite easily yourself, if you make the effort.
If you don’t like the market, and want to redesign it, feel free.
I don't think we established whether you have ever been to Dartmoor?
Crimea is not a problem which began in 2014 by any stretch and a comprehensive solution for its political and economic future has to be part of any longer-term treaty between Russia and the Ukraine.
No more covid related investigations. No more policing of thought or speech that offends people.
Focusing on crime and justice is important. It needs to be higher on the agenda than it is.
Never heard the wifebeater term. Maybe too da yoof for me, judging from this
https://www.dictionary.com/e/take-off-wife-beater-put-tank/
Many millions will struggle this winter and it seems perverse to see some energy companies making what will seem like obscene profits being able for example to pay their senior executives the kind of remuneration well beyond even the most asinine notions of an "aspiration nation".
You may claim it's not a Government's role to tax or to interfere in markets - I'd contend it's not a Government's role to have large numbers of its population struggling to keep warm.
It’s complicated.
Left to the current system, fuel bills will become so colossal that the majority of the entire population will be left facing "heat or eat" dilemmas (if they can afford to do either) and vast numbers of businesses will be bankrupted, resulting in millions of people being thrown on the dole and substantial destruction of what's left of the tax base. This can only be avoided by suppressing the energy bills, and that itself is going to cost enormous sums of money.
The energy producers are making money for old rope, courtesy of Vladimir Putin rather than any kind of entrepreneurial acumen, and concentrating all that wealth into the hands of a minuscule number of shareholders whilst the rest of the nation is at imminent risk of going to Hell in a handcart. Windfall taxation on those profits is an obvious source for some of the revenue required.
But we also vote on what we think will work. And that is where, primarily, this policy falls over, for me.
And we also value on other things like managerialism and who makes our skin crawl.
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/the-remarkable-rocks-blocks-of-ancient-granite-sculpted-news-photo/179794395
But you also get periglacial and, it now seems, some glacial erosion in the colder more recent times. So not hard and fast.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264412032_Earth_Hummocks_in_West_Dartmoor_SW_England_Characteristics_Age_and_Origin
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14702541.2022.2093394
https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2022-08-09/police-boss-says-off-road-bikers-will-be-punished-after-complete-anarchy
There was also the case of the guy in Darlington area who filmed a trials bike pulling wheelies on a road. Posted it to Facebook, complaining about police inaction.
Next thing the caravan on his drive is set on fire which then spreads to his home.
Suffice to say the police were useless in both cases. Doing nothing apart from a few warm words of reassurance while saying they will act tough but never do.
Instead we should be guided by our principles - democracy, self-determination, human rights - and seek to ensure that they are defended, or advanced, as much as circumstances allow. We do not know how the war in Ukraine will develop, so it is impossible for us to come up with a perfect plan of what the best achievable end state to the war would look like. What we can do is to recognise that Ukraine is largely a democracy, and Ukrainians are prepared to fight for their democracy, and so we should seek to provide them with as much support as possible so that democracy wins as much as possible in the present war.
Of course, there may come a point where we have to compromise with reality and accept less then would be ideal, just as the democratic allies in WWII accepted the reality that they could not free Eastern Europe from Soviet domination in the late 1940s, which must have been a bitter realisation for many idealistic Britons at the time, bearing in mind that we'd entered the war in 1939 to defend Poland's independence from Nazi Germany. But that point is not now.
I also think you are too pessimistic about the attractions of Western democracy. The experience of Russian-style gangster dictatorship in the occupied areas of Ukraine since 2014 has turned many ethnic Russian Ukrainians against Russia. Ukraine is likely to face more difficulties with organised criminals having access to large numbers of weapons, than they are to face from an insurgency of those sympathetic to Moscow. It's also worth remembering - again - that in the latest legitimate referendums to be held on the issue, all areas of Ukraine - including Crimea and the Donbas - voted for independence as part of Ukraine, in preference to being part of Russia.
As to the risks posed by a close alliance between Russia and China, it is, unfortunately, largely too late to prevent that, except insofar as Russian nationalists will always chafe at being dominated by China. Perhaps if we had engaged with 90s Russia in a more constructive, rather than triumphalist manner, it might have been possible. It certainly feels like it was a massive missed opportunity, but perhaps the democratic advances that there have been in Eastern Europe were more than might have been achieved if the Western democracies had really messed things up.
Ukraine's ambassador to Japan is really something else
https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1565043923747307523
I believe Lord Frost, IDS, Rees-Mogg have all now had a go and so far we’ve seen very little apart from the imperial measures consultation.
But I’m a patient man.
Just asking hopefully 👍
The police have a thankless task, but they often do themselves no favours.
And thanks for your permission to suggest improvements to what has now proven to be an utterly broken and shit system - much obliged.
Betfair next prime minister
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
18.5 Rishi Sunak 5%
Next Conservative leader
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
19 Rishi Sunak 5%
It appears that the Ukrainian Army received not only classic M1 HE projectiles for their L119, but also more modern American M927 high-explosive rocket.
They are more lethal and have range of 17 km instead of 11.5 km for M1 projectiles.
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1565048354328952836
It's very clear on Dartmoor on a clear day: if you climb a summit the surrounding summits are very obv the same elevation as you are to within a couple of metres, to the extent that until the 1890s
people were wrong about the highest point on the moor
- client likes my article and is singing my praises to various US media outlets
- More importantly, Youngest Son looks as if he has found himself somewhere to live. It was starting to stress him out as there was a dearth of reasonably priced accommodation and a lot of unhelpful agents. (Many thanks also to @kyf_100 for his valuable help.)
- And Eldest Son has passed his probationary period and is now a full time permanent employee of a well known and well regarded employer. Am SOO pleased for him. He has had some really tough times but has worked hard for this and is doing well and has found something he is good at and which will give him the self-confidence to build on what he has achieved.
So I'd quite like it please if the Tories could not fuck up the economy anymore than they have already. People's lives - like my sons' - depend on this.
As the late Seamus Heaney put it (about Ireland but it equally applies to us)
“We are not simply a credit rating or an economy but a history and a culture, a human population rather than a statistical phenomenon.”
Politicians would do well to remember the human population with whose care they are temporarily entrusted.
👀One to bookmark
Nick Ferrari: "You’ll be aware in France they talked about the possibility of energy rationing. Can you rule that out?"
Liz Truss: "I do rule that out. Yes".
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1565057693492068358
Liz Truss is asked whether she can repeat what Boris Johnson said in 2019: "There will be no new taxes, read my lips".
She replies: "Yes. No new taxes".
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1565054559717933058
Asked specifically if there will be another windfall tax, she rules it out: "No". (Some Tories feel that with energy companies profits soaring, this will be inevitable).
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1565058867171676169
This isn't going to end well, is it?
Even besides the worsening climate crisis, we are seeing the collapse of the post-91 global order in which the USA relied on cheap imports from China and Europe relied on cheap energy from Russia.
China has become too technologically sophisticated and diplomatically menacing to rely upon, Russia has tipped into outright defiance of international law.
The consequence is that the West is in a race against time to renationalise key supply chain dependencies, including computer chips, energy, and commodities.
The UK spends fuck all on R&D and infrastructure, and wonders why it’s GDP has struggled to keep pace with its peers.
The Tory government has put a succession of laissez-faire plodders into BEIS, and Liz Truss threatens to top it with a man so incompetent he is not sure which century it is.
Most of them would be in the Scrubs.
https://bestpresidentialbios.com/2013/04/12/review-of-jefferson-and-his-time-the-sage-of-monticello-vol-6-by-dumas-malone/
In Germany, which is most exposed to this crisis, the prices have gone up by more and usage has come down significantly.
Now we have some people in this country suggesting "why don't you just freeze prices" while simultaneously thinking that energy rationing is a terrible idea if it happens.
Either prices need to go up and consumption goes down as a result, or we need to have rationing (and probably blackouts). Pick your poison.