Speaking of renewable energy, I've lived most of my life in a state that gets the majority of its electricity from hydro. "Hydropower is an affordable source of electricity that costs less than most. Since hydropower relies only on the energy from moving water, states that get the majority of their electricity from hydropower, like Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, have lower energy bills than the rest of the country. " source: https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/hydropower-basics#:~:text=Hydropower currently accounts for 31.5,of total U.S. electricity generation.
How much lower? It depends on the local situation. My brother-in-law, who lives on the other side of the Cascades and is in a "Public Untility District" that got in early, pays about 50 dollars a month for his electricity - which includes electrcity for heating and air conditioning. (I don't have nearly that good a deal.)
(In recent decades, there has been an intense discussion over whether we went too far here, and reduced the salmon runs on the rivers too much.)
This is all fanciful. We are not going to rejoin for decades. No PM will give up Sterling
I don't think that "saving the British pound" is quite the killer punch you believe it to be, at least with voters under 60. It didn't do much for William Hague's as I recall and that was 20 years ago.
Watch Labour's polling crash if it ever gets traction that "Starmer would give up our pound".
The problem before wasn't the message, but was the messenger - and a Blair still who walked on water then.
If that were the only obstacle to rejoining in 10 years time I doubt many voters under 60 would die on a hill to keep the pound. It is only an obsession with the sort of people who can't get the hang of litres and kilometres.
Er, sod of it, you condescending pillock. If you can't see how totemic our own currency is, you are doomed to lose the argument. Again.
Plus, given the option of losing the pound, I suspect more Brits would choose the US dollar than the Euro.
Our currency is totemic in a way the franc mark lira drachma punt schilling look up the rest for yourself were not? Why? Is the Battle of Britain part of the reason?
No. Battle of what? It's because of decades of the pushing of the idiotic line in the tabloid newspapers, and by right-wing politicians addressing the moron market, that "the pound" - whether that's the currency's exchange rate or its existence - equals "the pound in your pocket", meaning your income and wealth. Which is of course buttock-clenchingly stupid, but there you go. I blame Gordon Brown. He didn't have the guts to argue against this.
This is all fanciful. We are not going to rejoin for decades. No PM will give up Sterling
I don't think that "saving the British pound" is quite the killer punch you believe it to be, at least with voters under 60. It didn't do much for William Hague's as I recall and that was 20 years ago.
Watch Labour's polling crash if it ever gets traction that "Starmer would give up our pound".
The problem before wasn't the message, but was the messenger - and a Blair still who walked on water then.
If that were the only obstacle to rejoining in 10 years time I doubt many voters under 60 would die on a hill to keep the pound. It is only an obsession with the sort of people who can't get the hang of litres and kilometres.
Er, sod of it, you condescending pillock. If you can't see how totemic our own currency is, you are doomed to lose the argument. Again.
Plus, given the option of losing the pound, I suspect more Brits would choose the US dollar than the Euro.
OTOH, it's only on UKIP bumf that the currency actually is totemic.
Bugger off is it. UKIP is deader than its membership.
But it is a key tenet for many Conservative voters.
Charming.
Who voted for the likes of the last PM but, how many is it now?
Oh, please, less of the "Charming" pearl-clutching. You start making sweeping generalisations of one party being the same as another and you'll get called out.
I'm sure the SNP will get pissed off at being called Alba-lite.
That is a crap analogy because the SNP haven't dramatically and drastically amended their raison d'etre to ape Alba. The Conservatives on the other hand have shifted from "one nation, centrist, feudal Tories" to a party whose agenda appears to be an ideological war with almost all state sector workers, and an unhinged view that all immigration, irrespective of from where, is a threat to both our national security, our culture and our Anglo-Saxon identity, oh and that Meghan Markle (see Bob Seeley and Tim Loughton) is a witch fit, only for the village pond ducking stool. Not even Ukip-lite. 100% Team Farage (even though he claims to hate your party).
The Conservative Party have done literally none of those things.
It's an issue still because of the dumb, damaging, confrontational way in which the Tories have done Brexit. If they had been more sensible there would be far less opposition or concern.
If the losing side had accepted defeat, they wouldn't have had to be so confrontational...
If elected Starmer will have an almost entirely free hand on rebuilding the UK’s relationship with the EU. A rapprochement will not split Labour as it would the Tories and most voters will not care. But it’s getting to that point which is the challenge. Reviving Brexit as an issue makes things tougher, so there’s no sense in doing it.
That said, I think Foxy is right: should Labour take power and nothing much changes the party will bleed votes to those who are bolder. My guess is that Starmer understands this well enough. If he doesn’t, however, his colleagues and members (far less Corbyn-inclined, much more EU-friendly than before) will make it clear.
Opinion is moving more against Brexit as each month passes so I think Starmer will play it like he is for now but will change the tone when the numbers believing Brexit was a mistake gets to a 2-1 majority.
If we could rejoin on the same terms that we left on I believe we would rejoin in about 10 years time. Unfortunately that is unlikely to be the case and why I'm so pissed off with the leavers. They have prevented us ever returning to where we were so even if we do rejoin the Brexiteers have ensured that the country will be worse off than before. Well done.
Will all depend on how much the EU want us back when the time comes.
"Where we were" wasn't a sustainable position, so of course we won't be able to return to it. Failing to acknowledge this was just one of the dishonesties of the useless Remain campaign.
Explain to me exactly how the EU could have made us change our position if we didn't want to, how we could have been forced to join the Euro or Schengen for example.
If you can't I'll assume its the usual Brexiteer evidence-free misinformation.
Well they were forcing us into the single banking rulebook even though it shouldn't have applied to us. Also the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
0/10 Explain the mechanism that would have forced us to join the euro or Schengen.
If elected Starmer will have an almost entirely free hand on rebuilding the UK’s relationship with the EU. A rapprochement will not split Labour as it would the Tories and most voters will not care. But it’s getting to that point which is the challenge. Reviving Brexit as an issue makes things tougher, so there’s no sense in doing it.
That said, I think Foxy is right: should Labour take power and nothing much changes the party will bleed votes to those who are bolder. My guess is that Starmer understands this well enough. If he doesn’t, however, his colleagues and members (far less Corbyn-inclined, much more EU-friendly than before) will make it clear.
Opinion is moving more against Brexit as each month passes so I think Starmer will play it like he is for now but will change the tone when the numbers believing Brexit was a mistake gets to a 2-1 majority.
If we could rejoin on the same terms that we left on I believe we would rejoin in about 10 years time. Unfortunately that is unlikely to be the case and why I'm so pissed off with the leavers. They have prevented us ever returning to where we were so even if we do rejoin the Brexiteers have ensured that the country will be worse off than before. Well done.
Will all depend on how much the EU want us back when the time comes.
"Where we were" wasn't a sustainable position, so of course we won't be able to return to it. Failing to acknowledge this was just one of the dishonesties of the useless Remain campaign.
Explain to me exactly how the EU could have made us change our position if we didn't want to, how we could have been forced to join the Euro or Schengen for example.
To show that we are "good Europeans", in exchange for something else we need, most likely. And following a Remain vote in a referendum, that vote would certainly have been used in the pressure. "You had the chance to leave and you didn't".
This is all fanciful. We are not going to rejoin for decades. No PM will give up Sterling
I don't think that "saving the British pound" is quite the killer punch you believe it to be, at least with voters under 60. It didn't do much for William Hague's as I recall and that was 20 years ago.
Watch Labour's polling crash if it ever gets traction that "Starmer would give up our pound".
The problem before wasn't the message, but was the messenger - and a Blair still who walked on water then.
If that were the only obstacle to rejoining in 10 years time I doubt many voters under 60 would die on a hill to keep the pound. It is only an obsession with the sort of people who can't get the hang of litres and kilometres.
Er, sod of it, you condescending pillock. If you can't see how totemic our own currency is, you are doomed to lose the argument. Again.
Plus, given the option of losing the pound, I suspect more Brits would choose the US dollar than the Euro.
A currency is a means of doing business. Treating it as "totemic" is not rational in my opinion. If the French can move on from the Franc, the Germans move on from the Mark and the Spanish move on from the Peseta what is so special about sterling?
Part of the problem with this country is that we continue to see ourselves as exceptional and superior when there is precious little evidence to support that view.
This is all fanciful. We are not going to rejoin for decades. No PM will give up Sterling
I don't think that "saving the British pound" is quite the killer punch you believe it to be, at least with voters under 60. It didn't do much for William Hague's as I recall and that was 20 years ago.
It did enough to persuade Blair that he couldn't join the euro without a referendum, and to persuade him not to call such a referendum because he would lose it.
Hague's save-the-pound was the most stupid campaign in election history
Nah. The Remain campaign beats it by a country mile.
FFS, it got beaten by the side of a bus.
I agree, assuming that "the side of a bus" is shorthand for lies..
Assuming "a figure that turned out to be too small" counts as a "lie"?
A lie is a lie I'm afraid and it was a lie that the leave campaign continued to promote at the forefront of their campaign even once it was proven to be a lie.
When you are explaining, you are still losing. Six and a half years on.....
It wasn't me that brought up the "side of the bus" and your "win" is rapidly turning into a pyrrhic victory within a couple of years of it happening.. It ain't over yet.
This is all fanciful. We are not going to rejoin for decades. No PM will give up Sterling
I don't think that "saving the British pound" is quite the killer punch you believe it to be, at least with voters under 60. It didn't do much for William Hague's as I recall and that was 20 years ago.
Watch Labour's polling crash if it ever gets traction that "Starmer would give up our pound".
The problem before wasn't the message, but was the messenger - and a Blair still who walked on water then.
If that were the only obstacle to rejoining in 10 years time I doubt many voters under 60 would die on a hill to keep the pound. It is only an obsession with the sort of people who can't get the hang of litres and kilometres.
Er, sod of it, you condescending pillock. If you can't see how totemic our own currency is, you are doomed to lose the argument. Again.
Plus, given the option of losing the pound, I suspect more Brits would choose the US dollar than the Euro.
OTOH, it's only on UKIP bumf that the currency actually is totemic.
Bugger off is it. UKIP is deader than its membership.
But it is a key tenet for many Conservative voters.
Charming.
Who voted for the likes of the last PM but, how many is it now?
Oh, please, less of the "Charming" pearl-clutching. You start making sweeping generalisations of one party being the same as another and you'll get called out.
I'm sure the SNP will get pissed off at being called Alba-lite.
It may have passed your Scotch expertise lite attention, but Alba have schismed off to do their own thing, the Tory party otoh have sooked up Kippers left, right and centre (ok, just right). Whether the parasite has taken over the host is yet to be seen.
Comments
"Hydropower is an affordable source of electricity that costs less than most. Since hydropower relies only on the energy from moving water, states that get the majority of their electricity from hydropower, like Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, have lower energy bills than the rest of the country. "
source: https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/hydropower-basics#:~:text=Hydropower currently accounts for 31.5,of total U.S. electricity generation.
How much lower? It depends on the local situation. My brother-in-law, who lives on the other side of the Cascades and is in a "Public Untility District" that got in early, pays about 50 dollars a month for his electricity - which includes electrcity for heating and air conditioning. (I don't have nearly that good a deal.)
(In recent decades, there has been an intense discussion over whether we went too far here, and reduced the salmon runs on the rivers too much.)
Part of the problem with this country is that we continue to see ourselves as exceptional and superior when there is precious little evidence to support that view.