This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
As I just said on the end of the dead thread..
Induction hobs are really efficient; quite high wattage, but they work so quickly
Of course, it's probably more efficient to burn gas directly to warm up your food, rather than burning gas to power a turbine, to generate electricity, to transport it to your house, and then you to use the electricity to generate heat.
With the gas hob, 90% of the heat content of the gas makes it into the food. I doubt it's more than 30-35% with the electric option.
But you can't retrofit carbon capture and storage onto everyone's hobs. So either electric or hydrogen it has to be.
It appears we cannot retrofit CC&S onto massive gas power plants, either.
CC&S was only ever a lazy dream. The proper solution is not to release the carbon in the first place. Money should have been spent on tidal power via lagoons and barrages.
Top tip: use a bitcoin miner as an electric heater for your home.
There was a commercial product to that effect at one point.
Plug this black box into your home and network and we will run stuff on it you can't see to generate heat...
Unfortunately none of the mine-bitcoins-for-heat ideas have worked out. The problem is that the capital cost of the hardware is too high and it depreciates quickly, so you need to be running the thing pretty much 24/7 to be competitive, even if your residential power wasn't too expensive, which it is. People have also tried to find ways to do the thing at scale but that fails because if you're heating stuff at scale you can use a heat pump and get way better efficiency than just turning power directly into heat.
So what is the energy policy going to be? Any good?
Many people who dislike the government will say it's terrible and won't work before it's even announced. Many people who support the government (one man and his dog atm) will say it's genius and much better than Stinky Starmer's messy policy. Journalists will say their opinions on it before they say what it is.
In my inexpert view, whether any policy works depends on how long the crisis is expected to last for. If it is only going to be a short, sharp shock over this winter, then the best policy might be very different than if the crisis is expected to last into 2024 or beyond.
That's the massive question. And I've no idea what the answer is.
But I'll give a prediction; if the government spends masses of money supporting energy prices and consumers at the moment, and then gas prices go down for some reason before / during winter (hence the worst of the crisis is averted), then opponents will conveniently forget what they're saying now, and talk about how they've wasted money...
That's a pointless prediction because I really don't see anyway supply for gas will match European needs until 2025 at the earliest...
You might be correct, but there's certainly a chance that the crisis will not be as deep or as existential as is being made out at the moment. And I hope it isn't.
Let's look at the options
Delivery from elsewhere - requires new ships and the shipyards are at capacity Reduced demand - factored in, only impacts the edges Russia - even if Ukraine win / loses the war what incentive does Russia have to turn the taps fully back on
The longer Russia takes to turn the gas taps back on, the more its role as supplier will be supplanted by others.
If the main effect of the Ukraine war is to spur the development of reserves in Mozambique, Australia, Israel, etc., it can be nothing other than extremely negative for Russia's energy industry.
And bear in mind that Russia doesn't have many industries.
What are Russian exports, other than O&G, vodka and a few Ladas?
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
There is some dispute whether the English translation of “war mongering” is as perjorative a term as the French original:
#France's President Macron says the #EU's policy over #Ukraine must not follow the policy of "the most war-mongering types" (i.e. the Baltics, Poland), since this would "risk extending the conflict and closing off communications [with #Putin] completely". What a disgrace.
It's not perjorative to tories, they take it as a compliment.
The highly inaccurate translation is from Visegrad who are a Hungarian far right psy op.
EM says, roughly, that Europe should not align itself with the warring parties in a way that extends the conflict and that Eastern European states should not act on their own.
As Chirac observed when Poland invaded Iraq in 2003, they are missing a very good opportunity to be quiet.
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
As I just said on the end of the dead thread..
Induction hobs are really efficient; quite high wattage, but they work so quickly
Of course, it's probably more efficient to burn gas directly to warm up your food, rather than burning gas to power a turbine, to generate electricity, to transport it to your house, and then you to use the electricity to generate heat.
With the gas hob, 90% of the heat content of the gas makes it into the food. I doubt it's more than 30-35% with the electric option.
But you can't retrofit carbon capture and storage onto everyone's hobs. So either electric or hydrogen it has to be.
Why would you bother with carbon capture from the tiny amount of energy used by a hob (or even a domestic boiler)... That would be a very high cost minimal benefit project..
It is worth doing when there are millions of hobs, gas boilers and gas fires. But you do it centrally and convert the gas network to hydrogen (if we want to keep using natural gas).
Remember the military 'expert' on here who proclaimed that the UK's military training program for Ukrainian soldiers wouldn't work for 'reasons' ?
Well, it's being extended again. This time, the course is being extended from three to five weeks. Which IMO is a positive sign in many ways: it gets the ukies more training; it indicates we can cope with that many people in the system, and it shows the Ukies don't 'need' them on the frontlines as lesser-trained cannon fodder.
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
As I just said on the end of the dead thread..
Induction hobs are really efficient; quite high wattage, but they work so quickly
Of course, it's probably more efficient to burn gas directly to warm up your food, rather than burning gas to power a turbine, to generate electricity, to transport it to your house, and then you to use the electricity to generate heat.
With the gas hob, 90% of the heat content of the gas makes it into the food. I doubt it's more than 30-35% with the electric option.
But you can't retrofit carbon capture and storage onto everyone's hobs. So either electric or hydrogen it has to be.
It appears we cannot retrofit CC&S onto massive gas power plants, either.
We are going to get new build, looking at the shortlist of projects.
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
At the risk of you murdering me and displaying my flayed corpse i am compelled by my inability to resist a pisstake to enquire as to the mouthfeel of this coup de grace?
“Life in Blackout Britain: Experts warn energy rationing this winter could see people told not to cook until after 8pm, pubs close at 9pm, 'three-day-a-week' school, care homes cancel outings for residents and swimming pools left unheated”
Well, its not for the first time that you seem to need to change your undies about some Daily Mail madeuppery... Just remember that like all writers/journalists, 90% of the time they don´t know what the f&%& they are talking about and are just looking for a story tag.
Talking of which;
A front-page article in the Telegraph earlier this week incorrectly used new analysis to claim that working from home will add more than £2,500 a year to energy bills, and said this meant commuters would be likely to save £1,500 by going out to work instead of staying at home.
The Telegraph appears to have multiplied by 12 the expected energy savings in January 2023, as estimated by the price comparison website Uswitch. This calculation is flawed because energy usage is much higher in January than in an average month.
Uswitch’s estimate may also not be reliable, for instance because it makes assumptions about the way that people use their heating that are different from official data on the subject.
The typical Journalist has the scientific training of @Leon
So, it is all yada, yada, yada, aliens are coming, yada, yada, yada, AI is coming, yada, yada, yada, the End of Times is coming.
Yes he’s so dumb that right now he’s being paid to sit by a pool in Portugal, or so I hear. Just down the coast from me
If only all of us could be so “unscientific”
There is a big difference between being scientifically literate and being able to write well, and keeping this post positive, I think we would all agree that this Sean chap can write very well indeed, and that goes for whether he knows what he is talking about (or not).
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
Raymond Blanc has a 'cheats' risotto recipe that you don't need to stir - takes about 20 minutes. https://www.raymondblanc.com/recipes/spring-pea-risotto/ (there's a lot of cheffy faff around it - but the core risotto bit around step 4/5 is the key bit).
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
At the risk of you murdering me and displaying my flayed corpse i am compelled by my inability to resist a pisstake to enquire as to the mouthfeel of this coup de grace?
Mouthfeel: 9/10, as long as you keep the rice a tiny bit *al dente*
Incidentally, for all PB foodies this is an amazing website
You can search basically all the cuisines in the world, with all the dishes, in various lists, you can even do it by map. And it recommends restaurants. You will get lost down the rabbit-hole
But WTF are Ecclefechan Butter Tart, Pan Haggarty and Rumbledthumps, which are apparently found either side of Hadrian's Wall?
There is some dispute whether the English translation of “war mongering” is as perjorative a term as the French original:
#France's President Macron says the #EU's policy over #Ukraine must not follow the policy of "the most war-mongering types" (i.e. the Baltics, Poland), since this would "risk extending the conflict and closing off communications [with #Putin] completely". What a disgrace.
It's not perjorative to tories, they take it as a compliment.
The highly inaccurate translation is from Visegrad who are a Hungarian far right psy op.
EM says, roughly, that Europe should not align itself with the warring parties in a way that extends the conflict and that Eastern European states should not act on their own.
As Chirac observed when Poland invaded Iraq in 2003, they are missing a very good opportunity to be quiet.
The only people responsible for "extending the conflict" were, are and will be on the Russian side.
So what is the energy policy going to be? Any good?
Many people who dislike the government will say it's terrible and won't work before it's even announced. Many people who support the government (one man and his dog atm) will say it's genius and much better than Stinky Starmer's messy policy. Journalists will say their opinions on it before they say what it is.
In my inexpert view, whether any policy works depends on how long the crisis is expected to last for. If it is only going to be a short, sharp shock over this winter, then the best policy might be very different than if the crisis is expected to last into 2024 or beyond.
That's the massive question. And I've no idea what the answer is.
But I'll give a prediction; if the government spends masses of money supporting energy prices and consumers at the moment, and then gas prices go down for some reason before / during winter (hence the worst of the crisis is averted), then opponents will conveniently forget what they're saying now, and talk about how they've wasted money...
That's a pointless prediction because I really don't see anyway supply for gas will match European needs until 2025 at the earliest...
You might be correct, but there's certainly a chance that the crisis will not be as deep or as existential as is being made out at the moment. And I hope it isn't.
Let's look at the options
Delivery from elsewhere - requires new ships and the shipyards are at capacity Reduced demand - factored in, only impacts the edges Russia - even if Ukraine win / loses the war what incentive does Russia have to turn the taps fully back on
The longer Russia takes to turn the gas taps back on, the more its role as supplier will be supplanted by others.
If the main effect of the Ukraine war is to spur the development of reserves in Mozambique, Australia, Israel, etc., it can be nothing other than extremely negative for Russia's energy industry.
And bear in mind that Russia doesn't have many industries.
What are Russian exports, other than O&G, vodka and a few Ladas?
Generally speaking who wants to buy Russian anything due to concerns about quality. Oil is oil and gas is gas - they can't screw that up. Once the world has moved away from Russian fossil fuels, what is left for them?
Their arms industry is also taking a reputational hammering right now.
“Life in Blackout Britain: Experts warn energy rationing this winter could see people told not to cook until after 8pm, pubs close at 9pm, 'three-day-a-week' school, care homes cancel outings for residents and swimming pools left unheated”
Well, its not for the first time that you seem to need to change your undies about some Daily Mail madeuppery... Just remember that like all writers/journalists, 90% of the time they don´t know what the f&%& they are talking about and are just looking for a story tag.
Talking of which;
A front-page article in the Telegraph earlier this week incorrectly used new analysis to claim that working from home will add more than £2,500 a year to energy bills, and said this meant commuters would be likely to save £1,500 by going out to work instead of staying at home.
The Telegraph appears to have multiplied by 12 the expected energy savings in January 2023, as estimated by the price comparison website Uswitch. This calculation is flawed because energy usage is much higher in January than in an average month.
Uswitch’s estimate may also not be reliable, for instance because it makes assumptions about the way that people use their heating that are different from official data on the subject.
“Life in Blackout Britain: Experts warn energy rationing this winter could see people told not to cook until after 8pm, pubs close at 9pm, 'three-day-a-week' school, care homes cancel outings for residents and swimming pools left unheated”
Well, its not for the first time that you seem to need to change your undies about some Daily Mail madeuppery... Just remember that like all writers/journalists, 90% of the time they don´t know what the f&%& they are talking about and are just looking for a story tag.
Talking of which;
A front-page article in the Telegraph earlier this week incorrectly used new analysis to claim that working from home will add more than £2,500 a year to energy bills, and said this meant commuters would be likely to save £1,500 by going out to work instead of staying at home.
The Telegraph appears to have multiplied by 12 the expected energy savings in January 2023, as estimated by the price comparison website Uswitch. This calculation is flawed because energy usage is much higher in January than in an average month.
Uswitch’s estimate may also not be reliable, for instance because it makes assumptions about the way that people use their heating that are different from official data on the subject.
It looks very likely that Braverman will be next Home Secretary ! So a clueless imbecile in one of the top jobs . I fear this cabinet will make the last one look star studded !
There is some dispute whether the English translation of “war mongering” is as perjorative a term as the French original:
#France's President Macron says the #EU's policy over #Ukraine must not follow the policy of "the most war-mongering types" (i.e. the Baltics, Poland), since this would "risk extending the conflict and closing off communications [with #Putin] completely". What a disgrace.
It's not perjorative to tories, they take it as a compliment.
The highly inaccurate translation is from Visegrad who are a Hungarian far right psy op.
EM says, roughly, that Europe should not align itself with the warring parties in a way that extends the conflict and that Eastern European states should not act on their own.
As Chirac observed when Poland invaded Iraq in 2003, they are missing a very good opportunity to be quiet.
Is Visegrad really a "far right Hungarian psy op"?
That doesn't make sense, because they are REALLY pro-war and anti-Putin, and, as we know from Herr Orban, the Hungarian far right is quite sweet on Putin. But maybe there is a special far far far Hungarian right which switches to the other side? Am happy to be schooled
There is some dispute whether the English translation of “war mongering” is as perjorative a term as the French original:
#France's President Macron says the #EU's policy over #Ukraine must not follow the policy of "the most war-mongering types" (i.e. the Baltics, Poland), since this would "risk extending the conflict and closing off communications [with #Putin] completely". What a disgrace.
On ne doit pas laisser l'Europe se diviser ni s’aligner sur en quelque sorte sur les plus va-t’en-guerre, qui feraient courir le risque d’extension du conflit, de fermeture totale des lignes de communications.
Not an idiom I know, but on the face of it slightly *less* pejorative than "mongering," I would have thought.
So what is the energy policy going to be? Any good?
Many people who dislike the government will say it's terrible and won't work before it's even announced. Many people who support the government (one man and his dog atm) will say it's genius and much better than Stinky Starmer's messy policy. Journalists will say their opinions on it before they say what it is.
In my inexpert view, whether any policy works depends on how long the crisis is expected to last for. If it is only going to be a short, sharp shock over this winter, then the best policy might be very different than if the crisis is expected to last into 2024 or beyond.
That's the massive question. And I've no idea what the answer is.
But I'll give a prediction; if the government spends masses of money supporting energy prices and consumers at the moment, and then gas prices go down for some reason before / during winter (hence the worst of the crisis is averted), then opponents will conveniently forget what they're saying now, and talk about how they've wasted money...
That's a pointless prediction because I really don't see anyway supply for gas will match European needs until 2025 at the earliest...
You might be correct, but there's certainly a chance that the crisis will not be as deep or as existential as is being made out at the moment. And I hope it isn't.
Let's look at the options
Delivery from elsewhere - requires new ships and the shipyards are at capacity Reduced demand - factored in, only impacts the edges Russia - even if Ukraine win / loses the war what incentive does Russia have to turn the taps fully back on
The longer Russia takes to turn the gas taps back on, the more its role as supplier will be supplanted by others.
If the main effect of the Ukraine war is to spur the development of reserves in Mozambique, Australia, Israel, etc., it can be nothing other than extremely negative for Russia's energy industry.
And bear in mind that Russia doesn't have many industries.
What are Russian exports, other than O&G, vodka and a few Ladas?
Generally speaking who wants to buy Russian anything due to concerns about quality. Oil is oil and gas is gas - they can't screw that up. Once the world has moved away from Russian fossil fuels, what is left for them?
Their arms industry is also taking a reputational hammering right now.
Near the start of this mess, there was an interesting thread on twitter stating that the 'simpler' the industry is - the few stages there are in it - the better Russia was at it. And the reason was corruption. Whilst massively complex, the oil and gas industry is fairly simple. Extract the resource, potentially refine it, then sell it.
Whereas making modern tech is immensely complex, with lots of things to be bought and manipulated: and at every stage someone will be wanting a cut of the action. Even making a tractor might require hundreds of components from all over the world, each provided from a Russian shell importing company that inflates prices.
Anyway in a last hurrah before The Arrival of Dystopia, we are off - en famille + Significant Other - to a very nice pub at Strawberry Bank, overlooking Windermere, after a walk up Gummer's How, to celebrate Daughter's birthday.
The weather is warm and clear so a perfect day for it. And best use our pubs before they all close down.
Tomorrow our electricity is being cut off (just for one day) while they make a new connection so I can finally start work on my potager. Plus the ash tree - which sadly has die-back - can be cut down and that will keep us warm for a while.
We have already started cutting back on energy use. The only sensible thing to do, whatever government announces.
Can I ask what you have done to cut back, and why you didn't before?
We've always done as much as we can to keep energy use low - low energy bulbs, lights off unless in a room, minimally filled kettles etc
Oh we have been cutting back for a while. A few years ago I spent a lot of money insulating and putting in energy efficient boilers + solar panels. That has made quite a difference. This last year the heating was switched off in February.
Other stuff: not leaving lights on in the hall or in rooms which are not used. Extra blankets on bed. Blankets over knees when working at a desk. Hot water bottles. Drying clothes outside. Closing curtains early. Thermal vests, fingerless mittens and snoods etc. We use the combi-microwave more often than the oven. And stews can go on the living-room stove.
And so on. A mixture of keeping warm naturally, not wasting energy and minimising draughts. It's something. Fortunately all the children are working in offices and their jobs cannot be done from home so that will help them too.
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
At the risk of you murdering me and displaying my flayed corpse i am compelled by my inability to resist a pisstake to enquire as to the mouthfeel of this coup de grace?
Mouthfeel: 9/10, as long as you keep the rice a tiny bit *al dente*
Incidentally, for all PB foodies this is an amazing website
You can search basically all the cuisines in the world, with all the dishes, in various lists, you can even do it by map. And it recommends restaurants. You will get lost down the rabbit-hole
But WTF are Ecclefechan Butter Tart, Pan Haggarty and Rumbledthumps, which are apparently found either side of Hadrian's Wall?
Keep the rice a bit 'ard he said, Trevor. Cheers Leon, i might actually try that, i'm not a risotto fan generally but maybe ill give it a go. Im cooking a bit of leg of lamb i got in my Xmas box from the butcher this one just gone today, 3 days dinner plus a couple of sandwiches. Thrifty stuff. Went out for dinner with Pa Woolie yesterday, pub was ramjammed. Last day of summer hols sure but as i remarked to the senior Woolie, definite feel of Paris on the Eve of War. (Except it was scumbags in Norwich)
Lot to go into but the initial take out is that the core battle ground in the next election is those who are struggling and (unsurprisingly) they want any tax cuts to benefit them.
Lower Corporation tax and lower NI for middle earners does not help them out.
Even making a tractor might require hundreds of components from all over the world, each provided from a Russian shell importing company that inflates prices.
Presumably why Russian tractors are in fact made in the Czech republic IIRC
“Life in Blackout Britain: Experts warn energy rationing this winter could see people told not to cook until after 8pm, pubs close at 9pm, 'three-day-a-week' school, care homes cancel outings for residents and swimming pools left unheated”
Well, its not for the first time that you seem to need to change your undies about some Daily Mail madeuppery... Just remember that like all writers/journalists, 90% of the time they don´t know what the f&%& they are talking about and are just looking for a story tag.
Talking of which;
A front-page article in the Telegraph earlier this week incorrectly used new analysis to claim that working from home will add more than £2,500 a year to energy bills, and said this meant commuters would be likely to save £1,500 by going out to work instead of staying at home.
The Telegraph appears to have multiplied by 12 the expected energy savings in January 2023, as estimated by the price comparison website Uswitch. This calculation is flawed because energy usage is much higher in January than in an average month.
Uswitch’s estimate may also not be reliable, for instance because it makes assumptions about the way that people use their heating that are different from official data on the subject.
The typical Journalist has the scientific training of @Leon
So, it is all yada, yada, yada, aliens are coming, yada, yada, yada, AI is coming, yada, yada, yada, the End of Times is coming.
Yes he’s so dumb that right now he’s being paid to sit by a pool in Portugal, or so I hear. Just down the coast from me
If only all of us could be so “unscientific”
Issue: Journalists being misleading to the public in areas of science and bluffing. Response: Yes, but it's profitable for the person in question.
That doesn't really make it better.
But it's nonsense. If a journalist consistently writes bollocks they will get found out, and called out, by readers - and then by the editor. Eventually they will get the sack, or, if they are freelance, they won't get any more commissions. It might surprise you how seriously editors approach this issue. Accuracy
Even in my 2nd job writing travel for the Knapper's Gazette, the editors are quite prickly about this. There is no sense of "oh this'll do", you have to get the RIGHT price for the hotel in midsummer, and use the photo of the actual beach you describe, not the one next door, and so on
If you get this wrong readers get (justifiably) irritated, and make their irritation known. Indeed with the internet providing instant and often hostile feedback, as well as plentiful competitors to the newspapers, the pressure to get it right is probably greater than ever
Do journalists make mistakes nonetheless? Of course, they are human and often hard pressed
I would add one caveat, the one place I do see lots of inexplicable errors is British TV news journalism, especially in the BBC. I dunno why. Lack of competition?
So what is the energy policy going to be? Any good?
Many people who dislike the government will say it's terrible and won't work before it's even announced. Many people who support the government (one man and his dog atm) will say it's genius and much better than Stinky Starmer's messy policy. Journalists will say their opinions on it before they say what it is.
In my inexpert view, whether any policy works depends on how long the crisis is expected to last for. If it is only going to be a short, sharp shock over this winter, then the best policy might be very different than if the crisis is expected to last into 2024 or beyond.
That's the massive question. And I've no idea what the answer is.
But I'll give a prediction; if the government spends masses of money supporting energy prices and consumers at the moment, and then gas prices go down for some reason before / during winter (hence the worst of the crisis is averted), then opponents will conveniently forget what they're saying now, and talk about how they've wasted money...
That's a pointless prediction because I really don't see anyway supply for gas will match European needs until 2025 at the earliest...
You might be correct, but there's certainly a chance that the crisis will not be as deep or as existential as is being made out at the moment. And I hope it isn't.
Let's look at the options
Delivery from elsewhere - requires new ships and the shipyards are at capacity Reduced demand - factored in, only impacts the edges Russia - even if Ukraine win / loses the war what incentive does Russia have to turn the taps fully back on
The longer Russia takes to turn the gas taps back on, the more its role as supplier will be supplanted by others.
If the main effect of the Ukraine war is to spur the development of reserves in Mozambique, Australia, Israel, etc., it can be nothing other than extremely negative for Russia's energy industry.
And bear in mind that Russia doesn't have many industries.
What are Russian exports, other than O&G, vodka and a few Ladas?
Generally speaking who wants to buy Russian anything due to concerns about quality. Oil is oil and gas is gas - they can't screw that up. Once the world has moved away from Russian fossil fuels, what is left for them?
Their arms industry is also taking a reputational hammering right now.
As a counterpoint - China, India; Vostok 22 exercises
"The Conservatives would suffer perhaps 224 seat losses, cutting vast swathes of the blue benches. Notable casualties would be George Eustice, Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, Dominic Raab, Robert Halfon, Robert Jenrick, Andrea Leadsom, Johnny Mercer, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert Buckland, Boris Johnson, John Redwood and Ben Wallace."
So Labour lead widens from 10% under Boris to 17% under Truss. Truss may be the first new PM ever to get a negative bounce!
Hopefully from a Tory perspective that proves wrong and as she dominates the news agenda and gets some new policies she at least gets some movement back to the blues, otherwise will show what a disaster removing Boris was for the Tory Party
Just to raise the counterpoint, Truss' expectations are so low that as long as she doesn't gleefully flamethrower a skipful of puppies she should (one hopes) be able to exceed them.
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
At the risk of you murdering me and displaying my flayed corpse i am compelled by my inability to resist a pisstake to enquire as to the mouthfeel of this coup de grace?
Mouthfeel: 9/10, as long as you keep the rice a tiny bit *al dente*
Incidentally, for all PB foodies this is an amazing website
You can search basically all the cuisines in the world, with all the dishes, in various lists, you can even do it by map. And it recommends restaurants. You will get lost down the rabbit-hole
But WTF are Ecclefechan Butter Tart, Pan Haggarty and Rumbledthumps, which are apparently found either side of Hadrian's Wall?
Keep the rice a bit 'ard he said, Trevor. Cheers Leon, i might actually try that, i'm not a risotto fan generally but maybe ill give it a go. Im cooking a bit of leg of lamb i got in my Xmas box from the butcher this one just gone today, 3 days dinner plus a couple of sandwiches. Thrifty stuff. Went out for dinner with Pa Woolie yesterday, pub was ramjammed. Last day of summer hols sure but as i remarked to the senior Woolie, definite feel of Paris on the Eve of War. (Except it was scumbags in Norwich)
I'm not a risotto fan either, but I adore that dish (with the added flavours)
It costs about £15 but that provides a bloody big risotto which will furnish three yummy meals
I can eat it warmed up in the morning as breakfast/brunch, with a hot smoky ketchup on the side. Mmm
“Life in Blackout Britain: Experts warn energy rationing this winter could see people told not to cook until after 8pm, pubs close at 9pm, 'three-day-a-week' school, care homes cancel outings for residents and swimming pools left unheated”
Well, its not for the first time that you seem to need to change your undies about some Daily Mail madeuppery... Just remember that like all writers/journalists, 90% of the time they don´t know what the f&%& they are talking about and are just looking for a story tag.
Talking of which;
A front-page article in the Telegraph earlier this week incorrectly used new analysis to claim that working from home will add more than £2,500 a year to energy bills, and said this meant commuters would be likely to save £1,500 by going out to work instead of staying at home.
The Telegraph appears to have multiplied by 12 the expected energy savings in January 2023, as estimated by the price comparison website Uswitch. This calculation is flawed because energy usage is much higher in January than in an average month.
Uswitch’s estimate may also not be reliable, for instance because it makes assumptions about the way that people use their heating that are different from official data on the subject.
Anyway in a last hurrah before The Arrival of Dystopia, we are off - en famille + Significant Other - to a very nice pub at Strawberry Bank, overlooking Windermere, after a walk up Gummer's How, to celebrate Daughter's birthday.
The weather is warm and clear so a perfect day for it. And best use our pubs before they all close down.
Tomorrow our electricity is being cut off (just for one day) while they make a new connection so I can finally start work on my potager. Plus the ash tree - which sadly has die-back - can be cut down and that will keep us warm for a while.
We have already started cutting back on energy use. The only sensible thing to do, whatever government announces.
Can I ask what you have done to cut back, and why you didn't before?
We've always done as much as we can to keep energy use low - low energy bulbs, lights off unless in a room, minimally filled kettles etc
Oh we have been cutting back for a while. A few years ago I spent a lot of money insulating and putting in energy efficient boilers + solar panels. That has made quite a difference. This last year the heating was switched off in February.
Other stuff: not leaving lights on in the hall or in rooms which are not used. Extra blankets on bed. Blankets over knees when working at a desk. Hot water bottles. Drying clothes outside. Closing curtains early. Thermal vests, fingerless mittens and snoods etc. We use the combi-microwave more often than the oven. And stews can go on the living-room stove.
And so on. A mixture of keeping warm naturally, not wasting energy and minimising draughts. It's something. Fortunately all the children are working in offices and their jobs cannot be done from home so that will help them too.
All sensible stuff (personally I also strongly recommend Being From Yorkshire as way to build your tolerance to discomfort), but demonstrates the Vimes Boots theory in terms of the big difference-makers in that list.
Just to raise the counterpoint, Truss' expectations are so low that as long as she doesn't gleefully flamethrower a skipful of puppies she should (one hopes) be able to exceed them.
....
The danger is that she will do exactly that (metaphorically)
Well that was fun last night landing in fork lightning and the most enormous hail storm and turbulence and flying around in it for ages while the pilot plucked up the courage to land.
And for Leon's benefit we saw a whole fleet of aliens at the same time. Dozens of red dots neatly lined up vertically and horizontally in the sky in the distance. Took awhile to work out what the hell it could be. Decided we could not actually tell where the horizon was in the dark and flying around low it was much higher than we thought and that these were the lights on the top of windmills in the distance out at sea. Really looked odd. They looked quite high up in the sky.
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
"The Conservatives would suffer perhaps 224 seat losses, cutting vast swathes of the blue benches. Notable casualties would be George Eustice, Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, Dominic Raab, Robert Halfon, Robert Jenrick, Andrea Leadsom, Johnny Mercer, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert Buckland, Boris Johnson, John Redwood and Ben Wallace."
How sad!
I'm not sure how the nation would cope without Chris Grayling as an MP.
It looks very likely that Braverman will be next Home Secretary ! So a clueless imbecile in one of the top jobs . I fear this cabinet will make the last one look star studded !
"The Conservatives would suffer perhaps 224 seat losses, cutting vast swathes of the blue benches. Notable casualties would be George Eustice, Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, Dominic Raab, Robert Halfon, Robert Jenrick, Andrea Leadsom, Johnny Mercer, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert Buckland, Boris Johnson, John Redwood and Ben Wallace."
How sad!
Almost certainly Jeremy Hunt would lose his seat too on that swing
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
‘grate some parmesan at the end’
Lol
I was so chastened by the harsh PB critique of my pre-grated Parmesan habit, I went and bought a grater
True story
I actually quite enjoy the grating rigmarole now, and do it with a certain Italian flourish, like I am head waiter at the Gritti Palace
As a man ages, he must take his furtive pleasures where he can
There is some dispute whether the English translation of “war mongering” is as perjorative a term as the French original:
#France's President Macron says the #EU's policy over #Ukraine must not follow the policy of "the most war-mongering types" (i.e. the Baltics, Poland), since this would "risk extending the conflict and closing off communications [with #Putin] completely". What a disgrace.
The highly inaccurate translation is from Visegrad who are a Hungarian far right psy op.
This is how AP translated it:
“We must not let Europe get divided” over the war in Ukraine and its consequences, Macron said, adding that the EU mustn’t align itself with “warmongers” or allow countries from eastern Europe to act alone in support of Kyiv.
Of course the whole speech (at 2 hours) is a lot more supportive of Ukraine than a single snippet - but Visegrad are not the only ones who used “warmongers”
"The Conservatives would suffer perhaps 224 seat losses, cutting vast swathes of the blue benches. Notable casualties would be George Eustice, Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, Dominic Raab, Robert Halfon, Robert Jenrick, Andrea Leadsom, Johnny Mercer, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert Buckland, Boris Johnson, John Redwood and Ben Wallace."
How sad!
I'm not sure how the nation would cope without Chris Grayling as an MP.
The worry has to be that he gets a position where he could cause more damage.
So Labour lead widens from 10% under Boris to 17% under Truss. Truss may be the first new PM ever to get a negative bounce!
Hopefully from a Tory perspective that proves wrong and as she dominates the news agenda and gets some new policies she at least gets some movement back to the blues, otherwise will show what a disaster removing Boris was for the Tory Party
The disaster would be electing Dizzy Lizzy, not getting rid of the lazy liar.
Even making a tractor might require hundreds of components from all over the world, each provided from a Russian shell importing company that inflates prices.
Presumably why Russian tractors are in fact made in the Czech republic IIRC
It was the other way around. The Russian tractor was a great story from the start of the special military operation war. The Russian government provided grants and tax breaks for Russian manufacturing substituting imports, so the Russian company set up a tractor factory, in Russia, to build the Russian tractor.
The problem was, that it wasn’t a Russian tractor factory at all, rather it was an assembly line for a Czech tractor, with every single component first shipped to the factory from Czechia. Then the EU imposed sanctions, and the Russian tractor factory couldn’t make tractors any more!
So Labour lead widens from 10% under Boris to 17% under Truss. Truss may be the first new PM ever to get a negative bounce!
Hopefully from a Tory perspective that proves wrong and as she dominates the news agenda and gets some new policies she at least gets some movement back to the blues, otherwise will show what a disaster removing Boris was for the Tory Party
The disaster would be electing Dizzy Lizzy, not getting rid of the lazy liar.
Apart from maybe Mordaunt or Tugendhat I doubt any of the alternatives would have done better than Boris and indeed most would have gone backwards compared to him
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
‘grate some parmesan at the end’
Lol
I was so chastened by the harsh PB critique of my pre-grated Parmesan habit, I went and bought a grater
True story
I actually quite enjoy the grating rigmarole now, and do it with a certain Italian flourish, like I am head waiter at the Gritti Palace
As a man ages, he must take his furtive pleasures where he can
You can tell a man is single if he can grate a big block of cheese in under 10 seconds.
I reckon you can grate a big block of parmesan under 2 seconds.
Well that was fun last night landing in fork lightning and the most enormous hail storm and turbulence and flying around in it for ages while the pilot plucked up the courage to land.
And for Leon's benefit we saw a whole fleet of aliens at the same time. Dozens of red dots neatly lined up vertically and horizontally in the sky in the distance. Took awhile to work out what the hell it could be. Decided we could not actually tell where the horizon was in the dark and flying around low it was much higher than we thought and that these were the lights on the top of windmills in the distance out at sea. Really looked odd. They looked quite high up in the sky.
Offshore windmills are often visually confounding. They are so ENORMOUS
So what is the energy policy going to be? Any good?
Many people who dislike the government will say it's terrible and won't work before it's even announced. Many people who support the government (one man and his dog atm) will say it's genius and much better than Stinky Starmer's messy policy. Journalists will say their opinions on it before they say what it is.
In my inexpert view, whether any policy works depends on how long the crisis is expected to last for. If it is only going to be a short, sharp shock over this winter, then the best policy might be very different than if the crisis is expected to last into 2024 or beyond.
That's the massive question. And I've no idea what the answer is.
But I'll give a prediction; if the government spends masses of money supporting energy prices and consumers at the moment, and then gas prices go down for some reason before / during winter (hence the worst of the crisis is averted), then opponents will conveniently forget what they're saying now, and talk about how they've wasted money...
That's a pointless prediction because I really don't see anyway supply for gas will match European needs until 2025 at the earliest...
You might be correct, but there's certainly a chance that the crisis will not be as deep or as existential as is being made out at the moment. And I hope it isn't.
Let's look at the options
Delivery from elsewhere - requires new ships and the shipyards are at capacity Reduced demand - factored in, only impacts the edges Russia - even if Ukraine win / loses the war what incentive does Russia have to turn the taps fully back on
The longer Russia takes to turn the gas taps back on, the more its role as supplier will be supplanted by others.
If the main effect of the Ukraine war is to spur the development of reserves in Mozambique, Australia, Israel, etc., it can be nothing other than extremely negative for Russia's energy industry.
And bear in mind that Russia doesn't have many industries.
What are Russian exports, other than O&G, vodka and a few Ladas?
Coal.
And they used to sell some military kit.
Ah yes LOL, they *used* to sell military kit.
They've been exporting a lot of used equipment to Ukrainian farmers lately.
Well that was fun last night landing in fork lightning and the most enormous hail storm and turbulence and flying around in it for ages while the pilot plucked up the courage to land.
And for Leon's benefit we saw a whole fleet of aliens at the same time. Dozens of red dots neatly lined up vertically and horizontally in the sky in the distance. Took awhile to work out what the hell it could be. Decided we could not actually tell where the horizon was in the dark and flying around low it was much higher than we thought and that these were the lights on the top of windmills in the distance out at sea. Really looked odd. They looked quite high up in the sky.
The aliens were probably there to monitor the imminent political announcement.
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
‘grate some parmesan at the end’
Lol
I was so chastened by the harsh PB critique of my pre-grated Parmesan habit, I went and bought a grater
True story
I actually quite enjoy the grating rigmarole now, and do it with a certain Italian flourish, like I am head waiter at the Gritti Palace
As a man ages, he must take his furtive pleasures where he can
Fair enough. Do you also get your huge pepper grinder out? Could be a profitable manufacturing sideline from your main craft.
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
‘grate some parmesan at the end’
Lol
I was so chastened by the harsh PB critique of my pre-grated Parmesan habit, I went and bought a grater
True story
I actually quite enjoy the grating rigmarole now, and do it with a certain Italian flourish, like I am head waiter at the Gritti Palace
As a man ages, he must take his furtive pleasures where he can
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
We had a BoZo poll I think from Survation (?) with a massive bounce for him, I remember it well.
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Well at least John Major would be pleased, if that poll is correct he will no longer have led the Tories to their worst ever defeat since universal suffrage, Truss will beat him on that score without even one election win under her belt like Major in 1992.
Hopefully as I said after this week's coverage Truss will at least get some bounce otherwise the removal of Boris will be shown to have been a clear own goal by Tory MPs
Well that was fun last night landing in fork lightning and the most enormous hail storm and turbulence and flying around in it for ages while the pilot plucked up the courage to land.
And for Leon's benefit we saw a whole fleet of aliens at the same time. Dozens of red dots neatly lined up vertically and horizontally in the sky in the distance. Took awhile to work out what the hell it could be. Decided we could not actually tell where the horizon was in the dark and flying around low it was much higher than we thought and that these were the lights on the top of windmills in the distance out at sea. Really looked odd. They looked quite high up in the sky.
The aliens were probably there to monitor the imminent political announcement.
What, just checking that one of their race has finally won after the failure of their first attempt, John Redwood.
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Coupled with this, it bodes ill...
Liz Truss would be the first Tory leadership candidate in the last two decades to win without also getting the most MP votes
Cameron, May, Johnson all topped MP round before winning with members
Makes it all the more surprising v few Rishi backers are in line for cabinet jobs
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
This is where the Tories have shot themselves in the foot with a long contest. Because it was a foregone conclusion after the first week, the external and internal opposition has all been focused on undermining Truss, but she was still just a candidate without the authority of office.
How long before Jizzy Lizzy is Ukraine for a photo op in body armour? I reckon Friday.
Yet tbc if she’ll be wearing body armour for her imminent trip to fair Caledonia.
She'll need body armour when she visits Alba.
Sales of chainsaws have soared in recent weeks as Scots resort to cutting wood to heat their homes, it has emerged.
The hardware chain Toolstation – which has more than 500 stores across the UK – revealed sales of the petrol-powered devices have soared in recent weeks because of the cost of living crisis.
The firm said it has recorded a near 30 per cent week-on-week rise in sales of chainsaws.
Well that was fun last night landing in fork lightning and the most enormous hail storm and turbulence and flying around in it for ages while the pilot plucked up the courage to land.
And for Leon's benefit we saw a whole fleet of aliens at the same time. Dozens of red dots neatly lined up vertically and horizontally in the sky in the distance. Took awhile to work out what the hell it could be. Decided we could not actually tell where the horizon was in the dark and flying around low it was much higher than we thought and that these were the lights on the top of windmills in the distance out at sea. Really looked odd. They looked quite high up in the sky.
Offshore windmills are often visually confounding. They are so ENORMOUS
Sounds like a good explanation
Must be a right faff shipping all the wheat offshore in order to mill it.
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Well at least John Major would be pleased, if that poll is correct he will no longer have led the Tories to their worst ever defeat since universal suffrage, Truss will beat him on that score without even one election win under her belt like Major in 1992.
Hopefully as I said after this week's coverage Truss will at least get some bounce otherwise the removal of Boris will be shown to have been a clear own goal by Tory MPs
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Coupled with this, it bodes ill...
Liz Truss would be the first Tory leadership candidate in the last two decades to win without also getting the most MP votes
Cameron, May, Johnson all topped MP round before winning with members
Makes it all the more surprising v few Rishi backers are in line for cabinet jobs
Not remotely surprising or ill-boding. You need a Cabinet that will take collective responsibility for your ideas, having a Cabinet full of people who wanted completely different ideas is illogical.
What will be more interesting is how many **Mordaunt** supporters get jobs.
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Well at least John Major would be pleased, if that poll is correct he will no longer have led the Tories to their worst ever defeat since universal suffrage, Truss will beat him on that score without even one election win under her belt like Major in 1992.
Hopefully as I said after this week's coverage Truss will at least get some bounce otherwise the removal of Boris will be shown to have been a clear own goal by Tory MPs
Be still my beating heart.
Her will she/won't she act over the energy crisis support over the last six weeks may turn out to have been fatal.
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Well at least John Major would be pleased, if that poll is correct he will no longer have led the Tories to their worst ever defeat since universal suffrage, Truss will beat him on that score without even one election win under her belt like Major in 1992.
Hopefully as I said after this week's coverage Truss will at least get some bounce otherwise the removal of Boris will be shown to have been a clear own goal by Tory MPs
Thanks, HYUFD. Anyone with even the most basic entry-level sense of sanity or morality can see that he had to go irregardless.
“Life in Blackout Britain: Experts warn energy rationing this winter could see people told not to cook until after 8pm, pubs close at 9pm, 'three-day-a-week' school, care homes cancel outings for residents and swimming pools left unheated”
Well, its not for the first time that you seem to need to change your undies about some Daily Mail madeuppery... Just remember that like all writers/journalists, 90% of the time they don´t know what the f&%& they are talking about and are just looking for a story tag.
Talking of which;
A front-page article in the Telegraph earlier this week incorrectly used new analysis to claim that working from home will add more than £2,500 a year to energy bills, and said this meant commuters would be likely to save £1,500 by going out to work instead of staying at home.
The Telegraph appears to have multiplied by 12 the expected energy savings in January 2023, as estimated by the price comparison website Uswitch. This calculation is flawed because energy usage is much higher in January than in an average month.
Uswitch’s estimate may also not be reliable, for instance because it makes assumptions about the way that people use their heating that are different from official data on the subject.
The typical Journalist has the scientific training of @Leon
So, it is all yada, yada, yada, aliens are coming, yada, yada, yada, AI is coming, yada, yada, yada, the End of Times is coming.
Yes he’s so dumb that right now he’s being paid to sit by a pool in Portugal, or so I hear. Just down the coast from me
If only all of us could be so “unscientific”
Issue: Journalists being misleading to the public in areas of science and bluffing. Response: Yes, but it's profitable for the person in question.
That doesn't really make it better.
But it's nonsense. If a journalist consistently writes bollocks they will get found out, and called out, by readers - and then by the editor. Eventually they will get the sack, or, if they are freelance, they won't get any more commissions. It might surprise you how seriously editors approach this issue. Accuracy
Even in my 2nd job writing travel for the Knapper's Gazette, the editors are quite prickly about this. There is no sense of "oh this'll do", you have to get the RIGHT price for the hotel in midsummer, and use the photo of the actual beach you describe, not the one next door, and so on
If you get this wrong readers get (justifiably) irritated, and make their irritation known. Indeed with the internet providing instant and often hostile feedback, as well as plentiful competitors to the newspapers, the pressure to get it right is probably greater than ever
Do journalists make mistakes nonetheless? Of course, they are human and often hard pressed
I would add one caveat, the one place I do see lots of inexplicable errors is British TV news journalism, especially in the BBC. I dunno why. Lack of competition?
Nope; if journalists write bollocks and their audience enjoys it, why would they stop? Only if it directly affects them - so a travel journalist writing bollocks can, as you say, get found out. Someone writing on economics, or politics, or especially a scientific area - where are they going to get called out by the readership?
The criterion is whether or not it sells, not whether or not it's accurate. Pandering to prejudices gets sales, so if a journalist finds a home where their own prejudices chime with the readership, they're home and hosed. If pandering to prejudices causes obvious issues (travel journalist), then they will have to adjust. If it's an area where they can just keep going, they're just going to keep going. Even if it's harmful misinformation.
Accuracy is out to one side.
The article in question - if people look in and work out whether or not it's accurate, then they might raise issues. How many of the Telegraph's readership are going to do that? The retired ones won't be affected. Those working might simply believe it without checking. Hell, we've seen things circulating online and outright believed where simply clicking through the link disproves it, and the vast majority never even bother with that.
To get sales and readership: Make it simple, put in a bad guy, try to get a three act structure and, for God's sake, say what your readership want to believe.
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Coupled with this, it bodes ill...
Liz Truss would be the first Tory leadership candidate in the last two decades to win without also getting the most MP votes
Cameron, May, Johnson all topped MP round before winning with members
Makes it all the more surprising v few Rishi backers are in line for cabinet jobs
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Well at least John Major would be pleased, if that poll is correct he will no longer have led the Tories to their worst ever defeat since universal suffrage, Truss will beat him on that score without even one election win under her belt like Major in 1992.
Hopefully as I said after this week's coverage Truss will at least get some bounce otherwise the removal of Boris will be shown to have been a clear own goal by Tory MPs
Thanks, HYUFD. Anyone with even the most basic entry-level sense of sanity or morality can see that he had to go irregardless.
We need to talk more about Chris Pincher, so we don't forget why Boris Johnson had to go.
Unsurprising, given Truss's plans in that area. And whilst NI is traditionally a ministerial naughty step, offering it to both Mordaunt and Javid is a bit blatant.
Just to raise the counterpoint, Truss' expectations are so low that as long as she doesn't gleefully flamethrower a skipful of puppies she should (one hopes) be able to exceed them.
....
Good news on that front. We can't afford to run the flamethrower.
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Well at least John Major would be pleased, if that poll is correct he will no longer have led the Tories to their worst ever defeat since universal suffrage, Truss will beat him on that score without even one election win under her belt like Major in 1992.
Hopefully as I said after this week's coverage Truss will at least get some bounce otherwise the removal of Boris will be shown to have been a clear own goal by Tory MPs
Thanks, HYUFD. Anyone with even the most basic entry-level sense of sanity or morality can see that he had to go irregardless.
We need to talk more about Chris Pincher, so we don't forget why Boris Johnson had to go.
I don't think that counts for HYUFD. Indeed if Boris himself had been groping fellas at the Carlton Club he would still be saying yebbut look at the VI...
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
‘grate some parmesan at the end’
Lol
30 minutes preparing a meal? Haven't spent more than 10 for years, except when having guests. As it generally only takes 10 minutes to eat a dish, spending longer than that preparing it just feels like a waste of time when I could be...er...posting on PB.
How long before Jizzy Lizzy is Ukraine for a photo op in body armour? I reckon Friday.
Yet tbc if she’ll be wearing body armour for her imminent trip to fair Caledonia.
She'll need body armour when she visits Alba.
Sales of chainsaws have soared in recent weeks as Scots resort to cutting wood to heat their homes, it has emerged.
The hardware chain Toolstation – which has more than 500 stores across the UK – revealed sales of the petrol-powered devices have soared in recent weeks because of the cost of living crisis.
The firm said it has recorded a near 30 per cent week-on-week rise in sales of chainsaws.
Well that was fun last night landing in fork lightning and the most enormous hail storm and turbulence and flying around in it for ages while the pilot plucked up the courage to land.
And for Leon's benefit we saw a whole fleet of aliens at the same time. Dozens of red dots neatly lined up vertically and horizontally in the sky in the distance. Took awhile to work out what the hell it could be. Decided we could not actually tell where the horizon was in the dark and flying around low it was much higher than we thought and that these were the lights on the top of windmills in the distance out at sea. Really looked odd. They looked quite high up in the sky.
That poll is before the Maggie Clone dishes out the money for the energy bills so I’d be shocked if the Tories don’t get a decent poll bounce after that ,
Boris Johnson’s haters have destroyed British politics In the most shameless way, these people sought to demolish his character for narrow political ends
“Life in Blackout Britain: Experts warn energy rationing this winter could see people told not to cook until after 8pm, pubs close at 9pm, 'three-day-a-week' school, care homes cancel outings for residents and swimming pools left unheated”
Well, its not for the first time that you seem to need to change your undies about some Daily Mail madeuppery... Just remember that like all writers/journalists, 90% of the time they don´t know what the f&%& they are talking about and are just looking for a story tag.
Talking of which;
A front-page article in the Telegraph earlier this week incorrectly used new analysis to claim that working from home will add more than £2,500 a year to energy bills, and said this meant commuters would be likely to save £1,500 by going out to work instead of staying at home.
The Telegraph appears to have multiplied by 12 the expected energy savings in January 2023, as estimated by the price comparison website Uswitch. This calculation is flawed because energy usage is much higher in January than in an average month.
Uswitch’s estimate may also not be reliable, for instance because it makes assumptions about the way that people use their heating that are different from official data on the subject.
The typical Journalist has the scientific training of @Leon
So, it is all yada, yada, yada, aliens are coming, yada, yada, yada, AI is coming, yada, yada, yada, the End of Times is coming.
Yes he’s so dumb that right now he’s being paid to sit by a pool in Portugal, or so I hear. Just down the coast from me
If only all of us could be so “unscientific”
Issue: Journalists being misleading to the public in areas of science and bluffing. Response: Yes, but it's profitable for the person in question.
That doesn't really make it better.
But it's nonsense. If a journalist consistently writes bollocks they will get found out, and called out, by readers - and then by the editor. Eventually they will get the sack, or, if they are freelance, they won't get any more commissions. It might surprise you how seriously editors approach this issue. Accuracy
Even in my 2nd job writing travel for the Knapper's Gazette, the editors are quite prickly about this. There is no sense of "oh this'll do", you have to get the RIGHT price for the hotel in midsummer, and use the photo of the actual beach you describe, not the one next door, and so on
If you get this wrong readers get (justifiably) irritated, and make their irritation known. Indeed with the internet providing instant and often hostile feedback, as well as plentiful competitors to the newspapers, the pressure to get it right is probably greater than ever
Do journalists make mistakes nonetheless? Of course, they are human and often hard pressed
I would add one caveat, the one place I do see lots of inexplicable errors is British TV news journalism, especially in the BBC. I dunno why. Lack of competition?
Nope; if journalists write bollocks and their audience enjoys it, why would they stop? Only if it directly affects them - so a travel journalist writing bollocks can, as you say, get found out. Someone writing on economics, or politics, or especially a scientific area - where are they going to get called out by the readership?
The criterion is whether or not it sells, not whether or not it's accurate. Pandering to prejudices gets sales, so if a journalist finds a home where their own prejudices chime with the readership, they're home and hosed. If pandering to prejudices causes obvious issues (travel journalist), then they will have to adjust. If it's an area where they can just keep going, they're just going to keep going. Even if it's harmful misinformation.
Accuracy is out to one side.
The article in question - if people look in and work out whether or not it's accurate, then they might raise issues. How many of the Telegraph's readership are going to do that? The retired ones won't be affected. Those working might simply believe it without checking. Hell, we've seen things circulating online and outright believed where simply clicking through the link disproves it, and the vast majority never even bother with that.
To get sales and readership: Make it simple, put in a bad guy, try to get a three act structure and, for God's sake, say what your readership want to believe.
I simply don't recognise your description of how (most) British newspaper journalism works, but I don't have time to carefully rebut all of your 19 paragraphs, as I have to do some paid journalism
That poll is before the Maggie Clone dishes out the money for the energy bills so I’d be shocked if the Tories don’t get a decent poll bounce after that ,
Lot of headroom there for a bounce which leaves them still under water.
Given that Truss will at some point need to implement Article 16 to distract from one disaster or other it's hardly surprising any sane is refusing to go near it....
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Well at least John Major would be pleased, if that poll is correct he will no longer have led the Tories to their worst ever defeat since universal suffrage, Truss will beat him on that score without even one election win under her belt like Major in 1992.
Hopefully as I said after this week's coverage Truss will at least get some bounce otherwise the removal of Boris will be shown to have been a clear own goal by Tory MPs
Thanks, HYUFD. Anyone with even the most basic entry-level sense of sanity or morality can see that he had to go irregardless.
We need to talk more about Chris Pincher, so we don't forget why Boris Johnson had to go.
Pincher had the whip removed before Boris went. However at least half those Tory MP assassins would lose their seats if that Truss poll turns out anything like right, all removing Boris will have done is lead to an even worse Tory defeat.
Indeed if Farage returns to lead RefUK he could win over lots of Boris loyalists, while Truss fails to win back any votes lost to Labour or the LDs and the Tories face Canada 1993 style annihilation with Truss a UK Kim Campbell. Hopefully that will not be the case and Truss will steady the ship but that is now a clear worst case scenario
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
This is where the Tories have shot themselves in the foot with a long contest. Because it was a foregone conclusion after the first week, the external and internal opposition has all been focused on undermining Truss, but she was still just a candidate without the authority of office.
I don't know, what happens with polls now isn't too important, the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day.
Truss has been through the full contest and come out the other side.
Both Brown and May managed to curtail the contest so it never went down to the members votes and that wasn't necessarily a positive for them when it came to the election in hindsight.
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
‘grate some parmesan at the end’
Lol
30 minutes preparing a meal? Haven't spent more than 10 for years, except when having guests. As it generally only takes 10 minutes to eat a dish, spending longer than that preparing it just feels like a waste of time when I could be...er...posting on PB.
Very funny ! I’ve often spent hours in the kitchen and the foods gone in 10 minutes . I’m left wondering why I bothered !
I'd be cautious about reading too much into the named leader VI. Asking if you will vote for 'Liz Truss' Conservative party' is a direct anathema to dedicated Rishi backers and Boris die hards, of course it skews the figures. Once the fact of the leadership is settled in an hour this question will not be asked and those of a Conservative persuasion begin to coalesce around the reality of the situation
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
‘grate some parmesan at the end’
Lol
30 minutes preparing a meal? Haven't spent more than 10 for years, except when having guests. As it generally only takes 10 minutes to eat a dish, spending longer than that preparing it just feels like a waste of time when I could be...er...posting on PB.
Wow - I can't imagine living like this! Different strokes eh; I love dithering in the kitchen. I'm (entirely unscientifically) convinced that the longer you take in prep and cooking, the better the dish tastes.
That said, there is an odd dissonance about a meal you've spent three hours preparing being finished in twenty minutes.
If this isn't an outlier then it's a shocking poll for Truss. IIRC every past incoming leader has got a bounce in the polls, however fleeting. I was expecting the Labour lead to shrink materially with Johnson gone. If she's got a negative bounce then the Tories are in big, big trouble.
Well at least John Major would be pleased, if that poll is correct he will no longer have led the Tories to their worst ever defeat since universal suffrage, Truss will beat him on that score without even one election win under her belt like Major in 1992.
Hopefully as I said after this week's coverage Truss will at least get some bounce otherwise the removal of Boris will be shown to have been a clear own goal by Tory MPs
Thanks, HYUFD. Anyone with even the most basic entry-level sense of sanity or morality can see that he had to go irregardless.
The left said Boris had to go, none of you will vote for Truss anyway.
It was always in your interests to get rid of the most charismatic and successful Tory leader since Thatcher, much as it was in Tory interests to get rid of Blair, the most charismatic and electorally successful Labour leader ever (though Labour of course didn't replace him until 2007 despite his lies to take us to war, worse than Boris ever did)
This is a rough(ish) guide to energy costs assuming the October prices take effect
I'm surprised the oven uses less energy per hour than a hob ring. I guess things usually take longer in the oven tho. But if you can fill it with meals you can microwave later that could make savings.
Oven pretty low energy draw once it's up to temperature, I should think (which takes, what, 10 minutes or so?). At that point the thermostat cycles the element on and off as needed, so there are quite some periods when the energy draw is near zero. We've got a new oven in last few weeks as part of kitchen/extension work and it really is almost cool to touch even in use - as with everything else I guess the insulation has got much better. Of course, the thing being cooked is an energy sink too.
Traditional hob is losing energy to the air (or to the pan which loses it to the air) all the time. Induction similar, although without the direct hob to air energy transfer.
You can transfer a lot of stuff done on the hob to a microwave with little effort.
Eg, you can perfectly adequately steam/boil veg/rice with the correct tool. Much more energy efficient.
Risotto in the microwave is dead easy and quick.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Risotto isn't meant to be quick. It's meant to be a labour of love.
Risotto in the microwave has two huge advantages - it's quick so I can cook a healthy and tasty family meal from scratch in 40 minutes after getting home from work. But more importantly, it really triggers precious foodie types.
You don't need a microwave
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
‘grate some parmesan at the end’
Lol
30 minutes preparing a meal? Haven't spent more than 10 for years, except when having guests. As it generally only takes 10 minutes to eat a dish, spending longer than that preparing it just feels like a waste of time when I could be...er...posting on PB.
Your puritan attitude to life is sometimes quite odd
Have you not considered that cooking itself can be a pleasure? Especially if you use your brain all day, even more so if you are sitting at a screen using that brain - suddenly you are using your hands and your senses: sniffing, tasting, weighing. It's sensuous and fulfilling, and it's also fun to experiment with new dishes, ingredients, cuisines
The other day I used whole fennel for the first time, making acqua pazza. The result was pretty crap (maybe I did it wrong) but I still had fun and learned something
Cooking is even more fun if you add gin and tonic, and some music
Recall that you only just discovered you quite like art and theatre. This might be another discovery
That poll is before the Maggie Clone dishes out the money for the energy bills so I’d be shocked if the Tories don’t get a decent poll bounce after that ,
Lot of headroom there for a bounce which leaves them still under water.
Yes, i think a bounce to either side of evens is quite probable. A couple months of swapping leads until a pattern emerges heading into next year
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73hBbONvCN0
This is an absolutely magnificent risotto recipe which takes about 30 minutes
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/smoked-haddock-leek-risotto
But follow the tips in the comments and amp up the flavour: add garlic and cracked black pepper at the start, chuck in a glass of white wine early on, replace spinach with cavolo nero or rocket, grate some parmesan at the end
I also add dashi powder in my fish stock
Honestly, it's fabulous. I did an enormous amount of cooking during lockdown, like so many of us, and this is the single best recipe I discovered, partly because it is so delish, but also coz it's so easy (but you do need to add those flavours)
The highly inaccurate translation is from Visegrad who are a Hungarian far right psy op.
EM says, roughly, that Europe should not align itself with the warring parties in a way that extends the conflict and that Eastern European states should not act on their own.
As Chirac observed when Poland invaded Iraq in 2003, they are missing a very good opportunity to be quiet.
Well, it's being extended again. This time, the course is being extended from three to five weeks. Which IMO is a positive sign in many ways: it gets the ukies more training; it indicates we can cope with that many people in the system, and it shows the Ukies don't 'need' them on the frontlines as lesser-trained cannon fodder.
https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1566657156656545799
Incidentally, for all PB foodies this is an amazing website
https://www.tasteatlas.com/search
You can search basically all the cuisines in the world, with all the dishes, in various lists, you can even do it by map. And it recommends restaurants. You will get lost down the rabbit-hole
But WTF are Ecclefechan Butter Tart, Pan Haggarty and Rumbledthumps, which are apparently found either side of Hadrian's Wall?
Their arms industry is also taking a reputational hammering right now.
Response: Yes, but it's profitable for the person in question.
That doesn't really make it better.
That doesn't make sense, because they are REALLY pro-war and anti-Putin, and, as we know from Herr Orban, the Hungarian far right is quite sweet on Putin. But maybe there is a special far far far Hungarian right which switches to the other side? Am happy to be schooled
On ne doit pas laisser l'Europe se diviser ni s’aligner sur en quelque sorte sur les plus va-t’en-guerre, qui feraient courir le risque d’extension du conflit, de fermeture totale des lignes de communications.
Not an idiom I know, but on the face of it slightly *less* pejorative than "mongering," I would have thought.
Whereas making modern tech is immensely complex, with lots of things to be bought and manipulated: and at every stage someone will be wanting a cut of the action. Even making a tractor might require hundreds of components from all over the world, each provided from a Russian shell importing company that inflates prices.
Other stuff: not leaving lights on in the hall or in rooms which are not used. Extra blankets on bed. Blankets over knees when working at a desk. Hot water bottles. Drying clothes outside. Closing curtains early. Thermal vests, fingerless mittens and snoods etc. We use the combi-microwave more often than the oven. And stews can go on the living-room stove.
And so on. A mixture of keeping warm naturally, not wasting energy and minimising draughts. It's something. Fortunately all the children are working in offices and their jobs cannot be done from home so that will help them too.
Im cooking a bit of leg of lamb i got in my Xmas box from the butcher this one just gone today, 3 days dinner plus a couple of sandwiches. Thrifty stuff.
Went out for dinner with Pa Woolie yesterday, pub was ramjammed. Last day of summer hols sure but as i remarked to the senior Woolie, definite feel of Paris on the Eve of War. (Except it was scumbags in Norwich)
https://twitter.com/rcolvile/status/1566724819860590592
Lot to go into but the initial take out is that the core battle ground in the next election is those who are struggling and (unsurprisingly) they want any tax cuts to benefit them.
Lower Corporation tax and lower NI for middle earners does not help them out.
Even in my 2nd job writing travel for the Knapper's Gazette, the editors are quite prickly about this. There is no sense of "oh this'll do", you have to get the RIGHT price for the hotel in midsummer, and use the photo of the actual beach you describe, not the one next door, and so on
If you get this wrong readers get (justifiably) irritated, and make their irritation known. Indeed with the internet providing instant and often hostile feedback, as well as plentiful competitors to the newspapers, the pressure to get it right is probably greater than ever
Do journalists make mistakes nonetheless? Of course, they are human and often hard pressed
I would add one caveat, the one place I do see lots of inexplicable errors is British TV news journalism, especially in the BBC. I dunno why. Lack of competition?
LAB: 43% (-1)
CON: 33% (+3)
LDEM: 11% (+1)
GRN: 3% (-)
via @Survation, 31 Aug
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2022/06/britainpredicts/
CON 29% (-5) change was -4.5, rounds to 5
LAB 46% (+3)
LD 11% (nc)
SNP 4% (nc)
GRE 3% (nc)
OTH 7% (+2):
See: https://www.survation.com/westminster-voting-intention-update/ https://twitter.com/Survation/status/1566726690050646018/photo/1
China, India;
Vostok 22 exercises
How sad!
Hopefully from a Tory perspective that proves wrong and as she dominates the news agenda and gets some new policies she at least gets some movement back to the blues, otherwise will show what a disaster removing Boris was for the Tory Party
Just to raise the counterpoint, Truss' expectations are so low that as long as she doesn't gleefully flamethrower a skipful of puppies she should (one hopes) be able to exceed them.
....
It costs about £15 but that provides a bloody big risotto which will furnish three yummy meals
I can eat it warmed up in the morning as breakfast/brunch, with a hot smoky ketchup on the side. Mmm
And for Leon's benefit we saw a whole fleet of aliens at the same time. Dozens of red dots neatly lined up vertically and horizontally in the sky in the distance. Took awhile to work out what the hell it could be. Decided we could not actually tell where the horizon was in the dark and flying around low it was much higher than we thought and that these were the lights on the top of windmills in the distance out at sea. Really looked odd. They looked quite high up in the sky.
Lol
True story
I actually quite enjoy the grating rigmarole now, and do it with a certain Italian flourish, like I am head waiter at the Gritti Palace
As a man ages, he must take his furtive pleasures where he can
“We must not let Europe get divided” over the war in Ukraine and its consequences, Macron said, adding that the EU mustn’t align itself with “warmongers” or allow countries from eastern Europe to act alone in support of Kyiv.
Of course the whole speech (at 2 hours) is a lot more supportive of Ukraine than a single snippet - but Visegrad are not the only ones who used “warmongers”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-france-paris-2f5ff0b2d67b5e18b04add0096a8b695
Since the only “war mongers” are in Russia, who could he have meant?
https://twitter.com/suzannelynch1/status/1566709094039203841
The problem was, that it wasn’t a Russian tractor factory at all, rather it was an assembly line for a Czech tractor, with every single component first shipped to the factory from Czechia. Then the EU imposed sanctions, and the Russian tractor factory couldn’t make tractors any more!
Long thread -> https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388
I reckon you can grate a big block of parmesan under 2 seconds.
Sounds like a good explanation
Do you also get your huge pepper grinder out? Could be a profitable manufacturing sideline from your main craft.
Hopefully as I said after this week's coverage Truss will at least get some bounce otherwise the removal of Boris will be shown to have been a clear own goal by Tory MPs
Liz Truss would be the first Tory leadership candidate in the last two decades to win without also getting the most MP votes
Cameron, May, Johnson all topped MP round before winning with members
Makes it all the more surprising v few Rishi backers are in line for cabinet jobs
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1566731516000014337
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2022/09/recent-football-results.html
Sales of chainsaws have soared in recent weeks as Scots resort to cutting wood to heat their homes, it has emerged.
The hardware chain Toolstation – which has more than 500 stores across the UK – revealed sales of the petrol-powered devices have soared in recent weeks because of the cost of living crisis.
The firm said it has recorded a near 30 per cent week-on-week rise in sales of chainsaws.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chainsaws-sales-surge-in-bid-to-heat-homes-cheaply-02vg6hc8q
What will be more interesting is how many **Mordaunt** supporters get jobs.
The criterion is whether or not it sells, not whether or not it's accurate. Pandering to prejudices gets sales, so if a journalist finds a home where their own prejudices chime with the readership, they're home and hosed. If pandering to prejudices causes obvious issues (travel journalist), then they will have to adjust. If it's an area where they can just keep going, they're just going to keep going. Even if it's harmful misinformation.
Accuracy is out to one side.
The article in question - if people look in and work out whether or not it's accurate, then they might raise issues. How many of the Telegraph's readership are going to do that? The retired ones won't be affected. Those working might simply believe it without checking. Hell, we've seen things circulating online and outright believed where simply clicking through the link disproves it, and the vast majority never even bother with that.
To get sales and readership: Make it simple, put in a bad guy, try to get a three act structure and, for God's sake, say what your readership want to believe.
What did you think of the production ?
A&E will be busy!
In the most shameless way, these people sought to demolish his character for narrow political ends
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/05/boris-johnsons-haters-have-destroyed-british-politics/
HYUFD think. Giant brought down by pygmies. LOL.
Lovely Alsatian Muscat for just under a tenner
https://www.thewinesociety.com/product/muscat-reserve-lucien-albrecht-2020
Indeed if Farage returns to lead RefUK he could win over lots of Boris loyalists, while Truss fails to win back any votes lost to Labour or the LDs and the Tories face Canada 1993 style annihilation with Truss a UK Kim Campbell. Hopefully that will not be the case and Truss will steady the ship but that is now a clear worst case scenario
https://paherald.sk.ca/
Truss has been through the full contest and come out the other side.
Both Brown and May managed to curtail the contest so it never went down to the members votes and that wasn't necessarily a positive for them when it came to the election in hindsight.
That said, there is an odd dissonance about a meal you've spent three hours preparing being finished in twenty minutes.
It was always in your interests to get rid of the most charismatic and successful Tory leader since Thatcher, much as it was in Tory interests to get rid of Blair, the most charismatic and electorally successful Labour leader ever (though Labour of course didn't replace him until 2007 despite his lies to take us to war, worse than Boris ever did)
Have you not considered that cooking itself can be a pleasure? Especially if you use your brain all day, even more so if you are sitting at a screen using that brain - suddenly you are using your hands and your senses: sniffing, tasting, weighing. It's sensuous and fulfilling, and it's also fun to experiment with new dishes, ingredients, cuisines
The other day I used whole fennel for the first time, making acqua pazza. The result was pretty crap (maybe I did it wrong) but I still had fun and learned something
Cooking is even more fun if you add gin and tonic, and some music
Recall that you only just discovered you quite like art and theatre. This might be another discovery
Predicting the correct order of PM Truss’ diplomatic travel schedule. Starting from after she gets back from Balmoral.
My guess;
1 NI
2 Scotland
3 Wales
4 Kiev
5 USA
6 Brussels. Or maybe Berlin. No, I’ll stick with Brussels.
Perhaps a trip to Dublin somewhere in amongst those. Maybe a random trip to Helsinki, or Warsaw.
Pft. I’ll stick with those six.
What are your guesses, good denizens of politicalbettingdotcom?