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The best election bet – LAB NOT to get a majority – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited December 2022 in General
imageThe best election bet – LAB NOT to get a majority – politicalbetting.com

If you look through the latest polls and the reporting of them you would assume that has been a massive switch of Conservative voters to LAB.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • WillG said:
    Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097?s=46&t=-5SWP7Qzm0T5EoFqaiGHOQ
  • -”Labour not to get a majority?”

    One statistic supporting Mike’s tip: despite all the Keir Starmer hype, and the support of the Scottish media, his party is still facing a mountainous 15 point deficit in Scotland.
  • -”Labour not to get a majority?”

    One statistic supporting Mike’s tip: despite all the Keir Starmer hype, and the support of the Scottish media, his party is still facing a mountainous 15 point deficit in Scotland.

    Does that include the don't knows?
  • It is a definite possibility but I'm not over-inclined to tie up money at odds-on for what might be two years.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    edited December 2022
    Sorry but this is another of Mike's several recent betting mistakes.

    Good on LibDems, very poor on Labour. So-so on tories.

    He has got this one wrong.

    It will be a shellacking. You'd better believe or you'll lose money.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096

    WillG said:
    Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097?s=46&t=-5SWP7Qzm0T5EoFqaiGHOQ
    I refuse to indulge the egotistical maniac by voting
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    edited December 2022
    lockhimup said:

    -”Labour not to get a majority?”

    One statistic supporting Mike’s tip: despite all the Keir Starmer hype, and the support of the Scottish media, his party is still facing a mountainous 15 point deficit in Scotland.

    Does that include the don't knows?
    No, that is excluding DKs. However, there are fewer DKs in Scotland than in England, only 13%, and they are more evenly distributed among the different parties:

    SCon voters: 8% DK
    SLD voters: 7% DK
    SLab voters: 6% DK
    SNP voters: 2% DK

    (YG/Times;6-9Dec)

    Interestingly, voter motivation to actually cast a vote is also higher in Scotland, where those replying 10 out of 10 certain to vote is consistently higher than in England.

    Also noteworthy is that Scottish Tories are way more loyal to their party than English ones. A whopping 89% are planning on sticking with their party, way above the equivalent English level. (Other parties: SLab 81%, SLD 90%, SNP 96%)
  • The best Labour can do in my view is a small majority.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    edited December 2022

    The best Labour can do in my view is a small majority.

    Good morning CHB. I don't agree.

    I'm certain they will win a thumping majority.

    Mike is looking at this from completely the wrong perspective. Stop looking at 'what can Labour do?' And begin approaching it from 'how badly might the Conservatives fare?' The reason for saying this is the visceral anger out there, the pent up frustration, the real time catastrophic economic situation, the desire for seismic change.

    It's like 1997 but far, far, worse. And things are not going to get any better.

    The tories will be lucky to get 100 seats. They might scrape to 150 max.

    Take it from there.
  • Heathener said:

    Sorry but this is another of Mike's several recent betting mistakes.

    Good on LibDems, very poor on Labour. So-so on tories.

    He has got this one wrong.

    It will be a shellacking. You'd better believe or you'll lose money.

    Let me ask you again, how much of your own money have you bet on a Labour majority?

    Because if you're going to implore people to believe you, so they don't lose money, you'd better have plenty of your own at stake.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    edited December 2022
    By the way, much as I like Stuart's refreshing approach, he seems to have a blind rage when it comes to Labour in Scotland, extending to Keir Starmer.

    The fact is that Labour are doing increasingly well in Scotland under Anas Sarwar and they are currently polling at, or a little above, 30% https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/polls_scot.html

    Labour could win 6-10 Scottish Westminster seats, perhaps more. Particularly so as there is still a sizeable pro-unionist sentiment north of the border. And I write that as someone who is pro-independence.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    edited December 2022

    Heathener said:

    Sorry but this is another of Mike's several recent betting mistakes.

    Good on LibDems, very poor on Labour. So-so on tories.

    He has got this one wrong.

    It will be a shellacking. You'd better believe or you'll lose money.

    Let me ask you again, how much of your own money have you bet on a Labour majority?

    Because if you're going to implore people to believe you, so they don't lose money, you'd better have plenty of your own at stake.
    And I have and will continue to ignore your willy-waving 'mine is bigger than yours'.

    Yes I have bets on.

    But I will bet you my house that Labour will win an outright majority if you match my stake with your house. You won't dare of course: all mouth and no trousers.

    Meanwhile your prep for today is to go away, read, and inwardly digest Luke Chapter 21 verses 2-4
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    Anyhoooo, with that retort I shall bid y'all a good day. Enjoy the milder weather. A tad blowy where I am but invigorating.

    xx
  • Good morning, everyone.

    Interesting idea. I'm probably not touching the market, though, as I backed and hedged so I'm either flat if they don't or ahead if they do.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,555
    Laying Trump was the better bet, I think.

    Young conservatives send mixed messages on Trump at MAGA gathering
    https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/18/young-conservatives-trump-turning-point-americafest-00074517

    This made me gag slightly, but it makes the point quite nicely that even devoted followers aren't all going to vote for him. That's not something you turn around.
    “I love both of them so much. So I don’t really want to deal with the fact that they might have to run against each other,” said Kevin Flaherty, a 19-year-old conference attendee from Detroit. But Flaherty said he would support DeSantis over Trump, believing the Florida governor would have greater appeal to independent voters....

    And again.
    ....“What I’m hearing from people my age is — everyone who says ‘Let’s go Brandon’ at these football games, you ask them — they’ll say Ron DeSantis is our leader,” Duke continued. “Not Trump. And they all like Trump.”
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    I wonder if a Reform UK / BPE type party might get more 2019 Tory transfers than otherwise supposed.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,555
    Kari in wonderland: "sentence first - verdict afterwards".

    Kari Lake calls for imprisoning Maricopa County election officials
    https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3780237-kari-lake-calls-for-imprisoning-maricopa-county-election-officials/
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,555
    moonshine said:

    I wonder if a Reform UK / BPE type party might get more 2019 Tory transfers than otherwise supposed.

    If there's a perception the Conservatives are going to lose anyway, it might be a tempting protest vote for some.

    Rishi and Co are going to work hard to try to avoid that.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Nigelb said:

    moonshine said:

    I wonder if a Reform UK / BPE type party might get more 2019 Tory transfers than otherwise supposed.

    If there's a perception the Conservatives are going to lose anyway, it might be a tempting protest vote for some.

    Rishi and Co are going to work hard to try to avoid that.
    Makes the Labour seat tally harder to forecast.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    It is a huge ask for Labour to get a majority. *If* Labour had a charismatic leader (like Blair), I'd put it as a near-certainty that they'd get that majority. Starmer might be able to do it - but only because the Conservative governments sway from one self-inflicted disaster to another, shooting itself in the foot with every step.

    Sunak appears to be better then Truss (and that's a very low bar), but the problem is not Sunak. The problem is his party - and that won't change. Therefore I expect more self-inflicted damage over the next two years.

    So I think that Labour will get a majority, and possibly a stonking one. And although I am not a Labour supporter, I think the country needs a Labour government. Heck, the Conservative Party needs a Labour government.

    (I don't expect that Labour government to be very good either).
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    They've just been talking about this on BBC Breakfast:

    "Bus fares in England to be capped at £2 for three months, says DfT"

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/03/bus-fares-in-england-to-be-capped-at-2-for-three-months-says-dft

    It'll be interesting to see how this works out - it seems well targeted if you want to help people with teh cost-of-living crisis.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753
    We got a leaflet from Scottish Labour over the weekend. The main focus of it was "there would be no going back". I think it is the first time ever that I have seen a Labour leaflet that is entirely focused on having a go at the SNP who are, of course, their main rivals. No ink wasted on keeping the Tories out in seats where they are not contenders. Is even SLab finally learning? We can only hope so.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Your post just shows the reasons why Russia needs to be defeated. If they are not defeated, the population will just support the regime in their next evil endeavour, wherever that is. A penny spent today to defeat them saves a pound in five years, when they go against Poland, the Baltic states or somewhere else.

    Putin's regime needs to fall.

    Incidentally, how did you get to Moscow? Was it a roundabout route?
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Assuming US intelligence and weapons support remains, there’s not really any conceivable way Russia are going to hold all of what they’ve gained, yet alone regain Kherson and get to Kiev or Lviv. If Joe Publik hasn’t worked that out yet, what’s going to happen when they do?
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Your post just shows the reasons why Russia needs to be defeated. If they are not defeated, the population will just support the regime in their next evil endeavour, wherever that is. A penny spent today to defeat them saves a pound in five years, when they go against Poland, the Baltic states or somewhere else.

    Putin's regime needs to fall.

    Incidentally, how did you get to Moscow? Was it a roundabout route?
    Pegasus (Turkish EasyJet) via Izmir. Fucking sucked arse. No problems at immigration or customs due to 26 counties passport (soft power).

    I went to see my mate's dad who is dying of Malignant Russian Cancer before he pops off.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,050
    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    This forthcoming book sounds interesting on Russias fascist youth movements:

    https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/z-generation/

    Putins war requires increasingly deranged propaganda to keep it going, but it also requires functioning economy and logistics. It all works up to a point, then it doesn't.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Foxy said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    This forthcoming book sounds interesting on Russias fascist youth movements:

    https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/z-generation/

    Putins war requires increasingly deranged propaganda to keep it going, but it also requires functioning economy and logistics. It all works up to a point, then it doesn't.
    Sounds like the ussr
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,050
    On topic.

    Betfair has Lab majority more or less as evens at 2.02, to lay at 2.12. That doesn't look great value on either side. We pretty much all don't believe that current polling with a 15% lead to be sustained, even if our resident booster bunny is rather over egging how much swingback.

    Value bets are often going against the herd opinion. Either Con most seats or Lab 400 seats perhaps, but the seats markets on Smarkets have poor liquidity at present. Con most seats at 3.7 isn't attractive enough.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    Labour need 124 seats on the current boundaries but that could increase to 135 or maybe even 140 under the new boundaries.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    I will be curious to see what the second hand market is for electric cars. The problem at the moment is that the ones making second hand are the earlier, less efficient models with very limited range. If a proper second hand market is to develop that is going to need to change. And then, of course, there is the batteries. Who is going to pay serious money for a second hand battery, replacement of which may be a significant part of the value of the car?

    It is these resale issues rather than the base cost that has made me hesitate to date. I am reasonably confident that the additional base cost can be saved in fuel costs within a reasonable period but will there be a market for my purchase when I want to sell it?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,729
    DavidL said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    I will be curious to see what the second hand market is for electric cars. The problem at the moment is that the ones making second hand are the earlier, less efficient models with very limited range. If a proper second hand market is to develop that is going to need to change. And then, of course, there is the batteries. Who is going to pay serious money for a second hand battery, replacement of which may be a significant part of the value of the car?

    It is these resale issues rather than the base cost that has made me hesitate to date. I am reasonably confident that the additional base cost can be saved in fuel costs within a reasonable period but will there be a market for my purchase when I want to sell it?
    It is of course possible that people will increasingly replace the battery rather than upgrade the chassis/bodywork.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,779
    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Russian road rage montages on YouTube are a guilty pleasure.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,779
    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    I will be curious to see what the second hand market is for electric cars. The problem at the moment is that the ones making second hand are the earlier, less efficient models with very limited range. If a proper second hand market is to develop that is going to need to change. And then, of course, there is the batteries. Who is going to pay serious money for a second hand battery, replacement of which may be a significant part of the value of the car?

    It is these resale issues rather than the base cost that has made me hesitate to date. I am reasonably confident that the additional base cost can be saved in fuel costs within a reasonable period but will there be a market for my purchase when I want to sell it?
    It is of course possible that people will increasingly replace the battery rather than upgrade the chassis/bodywork.
    That would be excellent for the environment.

    I really want my next car to be electric but between the two of us, think we could only afford about £10k. So not going to happen.

    We might not even get one. As long as trains and buses continue to roll out space for bikes, and the car club scheme gets extended, there isn't much reason to have one in Edinburgh.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,050

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    Yes, but that is fairly top of the Kia range as a model, even the base variants of the EV6 are fully loaded with kit.

    My 2 1/2 year old Kia e-niro has depreciated about 20% over its 25 000 miles were I to trade it in, about £6 000. That is pretty good compared to historical depreciation. If you can charge at home it is less than half the running costs too. Battery capacity hasn't reduced either over those years.

    Mostly though it is much nicer to drive electric. Once used to the smoothness and power, IC powered cars seem very crude.

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,729
    Foxy said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    Yes, but that is fairly top of the Kia range as a model, even the base variants of the EV6 are fully loaded with kit.

    My 2 1/2 year old Kia e-niro has depreciated about 20% over its 25 000 miles were I to trade it in, about £6 000. That is pretty good compared to historical depreciation. If you can charge at home it is less than half the running costs too. Battery capacity hasn't reduced either over those years.

    Mostly though it is much nicer to drive electric. Once used to the smoothness and power, IC powered cars seem very crude.

    That said, my 8 year old ICE Skoda bought two and a half years ago and having done 32,000 miles since I bought it has depreciated by around 5% - or £300.

    Admittedly this is due to the craziness of the second hand car market.
  • Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    Sorry but this is another of Mike's several recent betting mistakes.

    Good on LibDems, very poor on Labour. So-so on tories.

    He has got this one wrong.

    It will be a shellacking. You'd better believe or you'll lose money.

    Let me ask you again, how much of your own money have you bet on a Labour majority?

    Because if you're going to implore people to believe you, so they don't lose money, you'd better have plenty of your own at stake.
    And I have and will continue to ignore your willy-waving 'mine is bigger than yours'.

    Yes I have bets on.

    But I will bet you my house that Labour will win an outright majority if you match my stake with your house. You won't dare of course: all mouth and no trousers.

    Meanwhile your prep for today is to go away, read, and inwardly digest Luke Chapter 21 verses 2-4
    That's just a lot of up the ante bravado in the hope of scaring me off/shutting me up.

    I'd never bet the house on anything. That'd be totally irresponsible.

    I'm happy to offer you 3/2 on the Tories getting 150 seats or less, if you like. Given how confident you are of this result this should be a cracking bet for you.

    If I win, you pay me £100. If you win, I pay you £150.

    Deal?
  • Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Honest. I think we underestimate how much the average Russian is up for this (it's why Putin is in power in the first place) and Western media focuses on the liberal Mets and the 20% or so who vehemently oppose it.

    It's not representative - anymore than it would be to film a people's march for a second referendum - but it's not a truth we are comfortable hearing.
  • I strongly agree with Mike: 124 seats is a mountain to climb; without Scotland it is Everest. There’s a path, but it is an extremely narrow one. If you look at the polling companies that both reallocate DKs - - Techne and Opinium - the Labour lead is around 15 points. Given we’re in mid-term and where Labour is starting from that doesn’t scream overall majority. However, it does strongly suggest plurality. I do think Starmer is likely to be our next PM.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,555

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    That's fairly likely in just a few year's time.
    The limiting factor is batteries, and until the dozens of new plants in construction start manufacturing, most of the supply will go into the highest margin vehicles.

    The new plants and battery formats will bring the cost of production down, but just as importantly, they will make production of lower margin high volume production possible.
  • I strongly agree with Mike: 124 seats is a mountain to climb; without Scotland it is Everest. There’s a path, but it is an extremely narrow one. If you look at the polling companies that both reallocate DKs - - Techne and Opinium - the Labour lead is around 15 points. Given we’re in mid-term and where Labour is starting from that doesn’t scream overall majority. However, it does strongly suggest plurality. I do think Starmer is likely to be our next PM.

    I think Starmer is likely to be PM after the next general election.

    I am not sure he will be our next PM.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,555
    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    I will be curious to see what the second hand market is for electric cars. The problem at the moment is that the ones making second hand are the earlier, less efficient models with very limited range. If a proper second hand market is to develop that is going to need to change. And then, of course, there is the batteries. Who is going to pay serious money for a second hand battery, replacement of which may be a significant part of the value of the car?

    It is these resale issues rather than the base cost that has made me hesitate to date. I am reasonably confident that the additional base cost can be saved in fuel costs within a reasonable period but will there be a market for my purchase when I want to sell it?
    It is of course possible that people will increasingly replace the battery rather than upgrade the chassis/bodywork.
    Not in most of the current and near term designs - it's just too difficult and too expensive.
    And aside from earliest EVs, the batteries are holding up pretty well.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    It looks to me like those once Tory voters who are saying 'don't know' are just waiting to decide which particular box to tick to get rid of them. I'm with Heathener. I've never seen such antipathy towards a once serious political party. There's just no known way back. The brand isn't just shot. It's unrecognisable as a brand.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,729
    I'm trying to sort out the account a deceased person had with Western Union.

    Are they actually as big a bunch of rude, arrogant, lazy, incompetent bellends as they are coming across as, or am I just incredibly unlucky?
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,138
    So essentially for a labour majority government in the UK we need:

    - The tories to be utterly hopeless and at the nadir of popularity
    - Labour to be galvanised, led by a political genius and with strength in depth

    Whereas for a conservative majority we just need them to be mediocre and not completely hated.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    edited December 2022
    Foxy said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    Yes, but that is fairly top of the Kia range as a model, even the base variants of the EV6 are fully loaded with kit.

    My 2 1/2 year old Kia e-niro has depreciated about 20% over its 25 000 miles were I to trade it in, about £6 000. That is pretty good compared to historical depreciation. If you can charge at home it is less than half the running costs too. Battery capacity hasn't reduced either over those years.

    Mostly though it is much nicer to drive electric. Once used to the smoothness and power, IC powered cars seem very crude.

    According to this, the base Kia e-niro price is £36,795 OTR.
    https://www.kia.com/uk/new-cars/niro/pricing/

    A base Hyundai I20 (a really nice car (*)) is about £19,035 OTR.

    EVs are still far too expensive for most people.

    (*) Don't snigger, @Dura_Ace ...
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,138

    Foxy said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    Yes, but that is fairly top of the Kia range as a model, even the base variants of the EV6 are fully loaded with kit.

    My 2 1/2 year old Kia e-niro has depreciated about 20% over its 25 000 miles were I to trade it in, about £6 000. That is pretty good compared to historical depreciation. If you can charge at home it is less than half the running costs too. Battery capacity hasn't reduced either over those years.

    Mostly though it is much nicer to drive electric. Once used to the smoothness and power, IC powered cars seem very crude.

    According to this, the base Kia e-niro price is £36,795 OTR.
    https://www.kia.com/uk/new-cars/niro/pricing/

    A base Hyundai I20 (a really nice car) is about £19,035 OTR.

    EVs are still far too expensive for most people.
    I bought a second hand Renault Zoe for £12k. Seemed reasonable, although that does include the lease of the battery for about 60 a month. Would be closer to 18k otherwise.
  • Foxy said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    Yes, but that is fairly top of the Kia range as a model, even the base variants of the EV6 are fully loaded with kit.

    My 2 1/2 year old Kia e-niro has depreciated about 20% over its 25 000 miles were I to trade it in, about £6 000. That is pretty good compared to historical depreciation. If you can charge at home it is less than half the running costs too. Battery capacity hasn't reduced either over those years.

    Mostly though it is much nicer to drive electric. Once used to the smoothness and power, IC powered cars seem very crude.

    Yes - once you have binned off a gearbox for electric motors its very hard to go back to cogs. The "ooh the battery will need to be replaced" red herring is still about but largely now about as relevant as the "ooh your car will need a new engine if you do 100k miles" nonsense spouted by some.

    For me the real challenge is the public charging network. An absurd myriad of networks, of apps where you need to give them you date of birth and inside leg measurement to do pay as you go, of new chargers either broken or running at half power whilst charging £stupid per kWh, and a stack of legacy charge points seemingly abandoned.

    All this needs sorting for EVs to properly take off. Until then, as my YouTube channel says, Just Get A Tesla.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Nigelb said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    That's fairly likely in just a few year's time.
    The limiting factor is batteries, and until the dozens of new plants in construction start manufacturing, most of the supply will go into the highest margin vehicles.

    The new plants and battery formats will bring the cost of production down, but just as importantly, they will make production of lower margin high volume production possible.
    That depends on what the lower cost limit for battery production is (the limit being things like raw material costs). There will be a minimum cost for making the batteries, and I've no idea what that is. But given the plants are already quite efficient, I'm sceptical about battery prices massively decreasing. But I might be wrong.

    IMV we are really waiting on a new, better battery chemistry (depending on how you define 'better' ...)
  • GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 2,995

    Foxy said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    Yes, but that is fairly top of the Kia range as a model, even the base variants of the EV6 are fully loaded with kit.

    My 2 1/2 year old Kia e-niro has depreciated about 20% over its 25 000 miles were I to trade it in, about £6 000. That is pretty good compared to historical depreciation. If you can charge at home it is less than half the running costs too. Battery capacity hasn't reduced either over those years.

    Mostly though it is much nicer to drive electric. Once used to the smoothness and power, IC powered cars seem very crude.

    According to this, the base Kia e-niro price is £36,795 OTR.
    https://www.kia.com/uk/new-cars/niro/pricing/

    A base Hyundai I20 (a really nice car (*)) is about £19,035 OTR.

    EVs are still far too expensive for most people.

    (*) Don't snigger, @Dura_Ace ...
    We looked at electric when we were downsizing our motor a few years back (basically when child no. 2 was out of the buggy and we needed much less car space). Too expensive indeed; we ended up with a second hand Kia Rio, which has pretty much run like a dream ever since.

    I try to get around on two wheels where I can though; porridge oats are an even more efficient and sustainable fuel.
  • Good morning

    My son in laws father took a turn for the worse in his nursing home yesterday and needs urgent medical care. The home phoned for an ambulances to take him to Glan Clwyd hospital at 3.00pm yesterday afternoon and as I write this, and despite pleas throughout the night ,no ambulance has arrived yet.

    This is Wales NHS under labour in Cardiff and demonstrates just how it is failing across the devolved administration as well as in England

    His son has held his hand all night utterly helpless to see him in so much pain, choking and not eating or drinking and just wanting him to receive the care he so urgently needs
  • On topic, its too early to call the next election. On one hand the deck is vastly stacked against the Tories and increasingly so. There is no way out of the economic Trussterfuck, their dogwhistle culture wars against drowning migrants and starving nurses has repulsed even their own loyal supporters, and the Nigel is making a comeback for the voters who are repulsed that the Tories haven't drowned enough migrants.

    On the other hand, Keith is interesting as linoleum, the lack of a huge swingback in Scotland makes it hard and the boundary review makes it worse. And there is no way out of the economic Trusssterfuck - blaming the Tories will carry them so far, but they need to offer hope to really win big and thats hard to find.

    So too many variables to call it this far out. I think @Heathener is right that the political mood is about as hardened against the Tories and the corrupt incompetence they stand for. But that isn't the same as "therefore Labour win by a Blair". I think the party winning the biggest vote share will be the apathy party. Several million non-voters were persuaded to vote for the first time ever in 2016. And the second time ever in 2019. Most will revert to not voting. Which makes all kinds of seats much harder to read...
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    Good morning

    My son in laws father took a turn for the worse in his nursing home yesterday and needs urgent medical care. The home phoned for an ambulances to take him to Glan Clwyd hospital at 3.00pm yesterday afternoon and as I write this, and despite pleas throughout the night ,no ambulance has arrived yet.

    This is Wales NHS under labour in Cardiff and demonstrates just how it is failing across the devolved administration as well as in England

    His son has held his hand all night utterly helpless to see him in so much pain, choking and not eating or drinking and just wanting him to receive the care he so urgently needs

    Sorry to hear that. The system is collapsing all around.
  • Good morning

    My son in laws father took a turn for the worse in his nursing home yesterday and needs urgent medical care. The home phoned for an ambulances to take him to Glan Clwyd hospital at 3.00pm yesterday afternoon and as I write this, and despite pleas throughout the night ,no ambulance has arrived yet.

    This is Wales NHS under labour in Cardiff and demonstrates just how it is failing across the devolved administration as well as in England

    His son has held his hand all night utterly helpless to see him in so much pain, choking and not eating or drinking and just wanting him to receive the care he so urgently needs

    Unless the WAG have found a bucket of money and the long term demographic challenge doesn't apply across the Dyke, they will face the same strategic problems as the rest of the country. If "its Labour's fault" is your default diagnosis, how would electing a Tory WAG improve things? Specifically.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,729
    Looks like Pakistan already have enough here.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,729
    edited December 2022

    Good morning

    My son in laws father took a turn for the worse in his nursing home yesterday and needs urgent medical care. The home phoned for an ambulances to take him to Glan Clwyd hospital at 3.00pm yesterday afternoon and as I write this, and despite pleas throughout the night ,no ambulance has arrived yet.

    This is Wales NHS under labour in Cardiff and demonstrates just how it is failing across the devolved administration as well as in England

    His son has held his hand all night utterly helpless to see him in so much pain, choking and not eating or drinking and just wanting him to receive the care he so urgently needs

    Sorry to hear this.

    Don't really know what more to say except to hope that the ambulance arrives soon.
  • GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 2,995

    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Honest. I think we underestimate how much the average Russian is up for this (it's why Putin is in power in the first place) and Western media focuses on the liberal Mets and the 20% or so who vehemently oppose it.

    It's not representative - anymore than it would be to film a people's march for a second referendum - but it's not a truth we are comfortable hearing.
    Always too worth remembering the Russia has never really had democracy, and has had its regular populace given more flavours of fucking by its elite than probably any other country in Europe*. I've never been, but did learn some Russian in my twenties and love the mad place and its incredible culture and people, despite all the horrible shit that has gone on there. I'm not a teeny tiny bit surprised that the average Russian is broadly in favour of the SMO.

    I've got a book somewhere in the loft called Russia 2010, written in the mid 90s and posits a few different potential scenarios for the post-communist state - the most pessimistic pretty accurately describes were the country has ended up.

    *yeah.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,555

    Nigelb said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    That's fairly likely in just a few year's time.
    The limiting factor is batteries, and until the dozens of new plants in construction start manufacturing, most of the supply will go into the highest margin vehicles.

    The new plants and battery formats will bring the cost of production down, but just as importantly, they will make production of lower margin high volume production possible.
    That depends on what the lower cost limit for battery production is (the limit being things like raw material costs). There will be a minimum cost for making the batteries, and I've no idea what that is. But given the plants are already quite efficient, I'm sceptical about battery prices massively decreasing. But I might be wrong.

    IMV we are really waiting on a new, better battery chemistry (depending on how you define 'better' ...)
    Battery chemistries are incrementally improving (see for example the increased use of silicon in anodes) every year. Some of that feeds cost reduction (the elimination of chromium, for example); some if it increases energy density. That givers incremental cost reduction.
    The new larger cylindrical battery format will reduced manufacturing costs significantly.

    Without radical chemistries we'll probably see at least a 50% drop in costs this decade.

    Then there's stuff like iron/sulphur chemistries - which would cost a fraction of current materials - and solid state batteries. The latter will take a while (maybe ten years), but will radically improve what's possible.
  • Ghedebrav said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Honest. I think we underestimate how much the average Russian is up for this (it's why Putin is in power in the first place) and Western media focuses on the liberal Mets and the 20% or so who vehemently oppose it.

    It's not representative - anymore than it would be to film a people's march for a second referendum - but it's not a truth we are comfortable hearing.
    Always too worth remembering the Russia has never really had democracy, and has had its regular populace given more flavours of fucking by its elite than probably any other country in Europe*. I've never been, but did learn some Russian in my twenties and love the mad place and its incredible culture and people, despite all the horrible shit that has gone on there. I'm not a teeny tiny bit surprised that the average Russian is broadly in favour of the SMO.

    I've got a book somewhere in the loft called Russia 2010, written in the mid 90s and posits a few different potential scenarios for the post-communist state - the most pessimistic pretty accurately describes were the country has ended up.

    *yeah.
    Russian history seems like a rolling wave of tragedy to me.

    It's remarkable that it just continues and people accept it.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,138

    Nigelb said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    That's fairly likely in just a few year's time.
    The limiting factor is batteries, and until the dozens of new plants in construction start manufacturing, most of the supply will go into the highest margin vehicles.

    The new plants and battery formats will bring the cost of production down, but just as importantly, they will make production of lower margin high volume production possible.
    That depends on what the lower cost limit for battery production is (the limit being things like raw material costs). There will be a minimum cost for making the batteries, and I've no idea what that is. But given the plants are already quite efficient, I'm sceptical about battery prices massively decreasing. But I might be wrong.

    IMV we are really waiting on a new, better battery chemistry (depending on how you define 'better' ...)
    Prices were falling pretty quickly but levelled off in 2021 as metal prices rose:

    https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/7713/electric-car-battery-prices/

    The driver seems mainly to be the price of lithium itself. Massively up in 2021 but that looks like a bubble.

    Who benefits most from the lithium boom? Australia by some margin, the same country that has most to lose from ditching coal, helpfully:

    https://www.statista.com/chart/28038/countries-with-the-biggest-lithium-production-and-reserves/

  • Mr. NorthWales, very sorry to hear that, hope the ambulance turns up soon.
  • On topic, its too early to call the next election. On one hand the deck is vastly stacked against the Tories and increasingly so. There is no way out of the economic Trussterfuck, their dogwhistle culture wars against drowning migrants and starving nurses has repulsed even their own loyal supporters, and the Nigel is making a comeback for the voters who are repulsed that the Tories haven't drowned enough migrants.

    On the other hand, Keith is interesting as linoleum, the lack of a huge swingback in Scotland makes it hard and the boundary review makes it worse. And there is no way out of the economic Trusssterfuck - blaming the Tories will carry them so far, but they need to offer hope to really win big and thats hard to find.

    So too many variables to call it this far out. I think @Heathener is right that the political mood is about as hardened against the Tories and the corrupt incompetence they stand for. But that isn't the same as "therefore Labour win by a Blair". I think the party winning the biggest vote share will be the apathy party. Several million non-voters were persuaded to vote for the first time ever in 2016. And the second time ever in 2019. Most will revert to not voting. Which makes all kinds of seats much harder to read...

    Another reframing of the question.

    One of Dave's problems in 2010 was the size of the Lib Dem block. They took seats away from Labour but didn't help the Conservatives get nearer a majority.

    2024 could well be even harder for Starmer- a moderate Lib Dem revival and bam there are 100 seats out of play for the big two. Getting 326/550 is a tall order. It would mean forcing the Conservatives below about 225 seats, maybe less if the Lib Dems advance a lot. That's not impossible (I think the economy is going to minimise the amount of swingback we get this time, and a lot of the 2019 win was wide but shallow), but it's not easy.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,555

    Good morning

    My son in laws father took a turn for the worse in his nursing home yesterday and needs urgent medical care. The home phoned for an ambulances to take him to Glan Clwyd hospital at 3.00pm yesterday afternoon and as I write this, and despite pleas throughout the night ,no ambulance has arrived yet.

    This is Wales NHS under labour in Cardiff and demonstrates just how it is failing across the devolved administration as well as in England

    His son has held his hand all night utterly helpless to see him in so much pain, choking and not eating or drinking and just wanting him to receive the care he so urgently needs

    I'm really sorry to hear that, BigG.

    But it's not just Wales, and not just now.
    A similar thing happened to my father when he had a fall in his care home nearly a decade ago which burst his eyeball.
  • GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 2,995

    Ghedebrav said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Honest. I think we underestimate how much the average Russian is up for this (it's why Putin is in power in the first place) and Western media focuses on the liberal Mets and the 20% or so who vehemently oppose it.

    It's not representative - anymore than it would be to film a people's march for a second referendum - but it's not a truth we are comfortable hearing.
    Always too worth remembering the Russia has never really had democracy, and has had its regular populace given more flavours of fucking by its elite than probably any other country in Europe*. I've never been, but did learn some Russian in my twenties and love the mad place and its incredible culture and people, despite all the horrible shit that has gone on there. I'm not a teeny tiny bit surprised that the average Russian is broadly in favour of the SMO.

    I've got a book somewhere in the loft called Russia 2010, written in the mid 90s and posits a few different potential scenarios for the post-communist state - the most pessimistic pretty accurately describes were the country has ended up.

    *yeah.
    Russian history seems like a rolling wave of tragedy to me.

    It's remarkable that it just continues and people accept it.
    It's a testament to the enduring power of state violence and propaganda, and enough bandits at the top to keep it going.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891

    Good morning

    My son in laws father took a turn for the worse in his nursing home yesterday and needs urgent medical care. The home phoned for an ambulances to take him to Glan Clwyd hospital at 3.00pm yesterday afternoon and as I write this, and despite pleas throughout the night ,no ambulance has arrived yet.

    This is Wales NHS under labour in Cardiff and demonstrates just how it is failing across the devolved administration as well as in England

    His son has held his hand all night utterly helpless to see him in so much pain, choking and not eating or drinking and just wanting him to receive the care he so urgently needs

    Devolved or not devolved. The same stories are everywhere and there's only one culprit as far as the voter is concerned. One of my closest had a similar tale. The Tories have fu*ked this country up like no government any of us can remember.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,138

    On topic, its too early to call the next election. On one hand the deck is vastly stacked against the Tories and increasingly so. There is no way out of the economic Trussterfuck, their dogwhistle culture wars against drowning migrants and starving nurses has repulsed even their own loyal supporters, and the Nigel is making a comeback for the voters who are repulsed that the Tories haven't drowned enough migrants.

    On the other hand, Keith is interesting as linoleum, the lack of a huge swingback in Scotland makes it hard and the boundary review makes it worse. And there is no way out of the economic Trusssterfuck - blaming the Tories will carry them so far, but they need to offer hope to really win big and thats hard to find.

    So too many variables to call it this far out. I think @Heathener is right that the political mood is about as hardened against the Tories and the corrupt incompetence they stand for. But that isn't the same as "therefore Labour win by a Blair". I think the party winning the biggest vote share will be the apathy party. Several million non-voters were persuaded to vote for the first time ever in 2016. And the second time ever in 2019. Most will revert to not voting. Which makes all kinds of seats much harder to read...

    Another reframing of the question.

    One of Dave's problems in 2010 was the size of the Lib Dem block. They took seats away from Labour but didn't help the Conservatives get nearer a majority.

    2024 could well be even harder for Starmer- a moderate Lib Dem revival and bam there are 100 seats out of play for the big two. Getting 326/550 is a tall order. It would mean forcing the Conservatives below about 225 seats, maybe less if the Lib Dems advance a lot. That's not impossible (I think the economy is going to minimise the amount of swingback we get this time, and a lot of the 2019 win was wide but shallow), but it's not easy.
    Historically a strong Lib Dem showing has been mainly at the expense of the
    conservatives but it’s difficult to untangle cause and effect. The worse the Tories do the higher the LD seat count. Much stronger correlation than with LD vote share.

    Whereas a strong SNP performance is almost entirely to the detriment of Labour.


  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    edited December 2022
    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Is Krasnov's 1927 novel Za chertopolokhom not usually translated to “Behind the Thistle”? Or even “For Thistles”? (Not to be confused with the book on Scottish rugby.)

    Lovely chap by the way. Wikipedia lists his allegiances as:

    Russian Empire (1888–1917)

    Don Republic (White Movement) (1918–1920)

    Nazi Germany (1933–1944)

    Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (1944–1945)
  • KeystoneKeystone Posts: 127
    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    That's fairly likely in just a few year's time.
    The limiting factor is batteries, and until the dozens of new plants in construction start manufacturing, most of the supply will go into the highest margin vehicles.

    The new plants and battery formats will bring the cost of production down, but just as importantly, they will make production of lower margin high volume production possible.
    That depends on what the lower cost limit for battery production is (the limit being things like raw material costs). There will be a minimum cost for making the batteries, and I've no idea what that is. But given the plants are already quite efficient, I'm sceptical about battery prices massively decreasing. But I might be wrong.

    IMV we are really waiting on a new, better battery chemistry (depending on how you define 'better' ...)
    Battery chemistries are incrementally improving (see for example the increased use of silicon in anodes) every year. Some of that feeds cost reduction (the elimination of chromium, for example); some if it increases energy density. That givers incremental cost reduction.
    The new larger cylindrical battery format will reduced manufacturing costs significantly.

    Without radical chemistries we'll probably see at least a 50% drop in costs this decade.

    Then there's stuff like iron/sulphur chemistries - which would cost a fraction of current materials - and solid state batteries. The latter will take a while (maybe ten years), but will radically improve what's possible.
    The recycling / end of life aspect hasn't been properly thought through. It does have the possibility of reducing strategic mineral requirements in the future.

    There is an interesting Vanadium battery concept knocking out around as well.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,138
    Ghedebrav said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Honest. I think we underestimate how much the average Russian is up for this (it's why Putin is in power in the first place) and Western media focuses on the liberal Mets and the 20% or so who vehemently oppose it.

    It's not representative - anymore than it would be to film a people's march for a second referendum - but it's not a truth we are comfortable hearing.
    Always too worth remembering the Russia has never really had democracy, and has had its regular populace given more flavours of fucking by its elite than probably any other country in Europe*. I've never been, but did learn some Russian in my twenties and love the mad place and its incredible culture and people, despite all the horrible shit that has gone on there. I'm not a teeny tiny bit surprised that the average Russian is broadly in favour of the SMO.

    I've got a book somewhere in the loft called Russia 2010, written in the mid 90s and posits a few different potential scenarios for the post-communist state - the most pessimistic pretty accurately describes were the country has ended up.

    *yeah.
    Russian history seems like a rolling wave of tragedy to me.

    It's remarkable that it just continues and people accept it.
    It's a testament to the enduring power of state violence and propaganda, and enough bandits at the top to keep it going.
    At what point in the demographic journey dies that flip, if ever? When the population is down to 120 million? 100 million? 50 million?

    They are compounding an existing fertility
    decline with a loss of potentially several years worth of fighting age (and fathering age) men being lost to death or simple absence from home. The more mobilised, the starker the effect.
  • Nigelb said:

    Laying Trump was the better bet, I think.

    Young conservatives send mixed messages on Trump at MAGA gathering
    https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/18/young-conservatives-trump-turning-point-americafest-00074517

    This made me gag slightly, but it makes the point quite nicely that even devoted followers aren't all going to vote for him. That's not something you turn around.
    “I love both of them so much. So I don’t really want to deal with the fact that they might have to run against each other,” said Kevin Flaherty, a 19-year-old conference attendee from Detroit. But Flaherty said he would support DeSantis over Trump, believing the Florida governor would have greater appeal to independent voters....

    And again.
    ....“What I’m hearing from people my age is — everyone who says ‘Let’s go Brandon’ at these football games, you ask them — they’ll say Ron DeSantis is our leader,” Duke continued. “Not Trump. And they all like Trump.”

    The US right wing wing nuts seem to do better at getting the young on board than their UK equivalents.
    I wonder if Trump will make the smart move and endorse RDS for the good of country & party (& Trump who needs a friendly prez to help with the avalanche of legal shit building up behind the fan). Hope not.
  • KeystoneKeystone Posts: 127

    On topic, its too early to call the next election. On one hand the deck is vastly stacked against the Tories and increasingly so. There is no way out of the economic Trussterfuck, their dogwhistle culture wars against drowning migrants and starving nurses has repulsed even their own loyal supporters, and the Nigel is making a comeback for the voters who are repulsed that the Tories haven't drowned enough migrants.

    On the other hand, Keith is interesting as linoleum, the lack of a huge swingback in Scotland makes it hard and the boundary review makes it worse. And there is no way out of the economic Trusssterfuck - blaming the Tories will carry them so far, but they need to offer hope to really win big and thats hard to find.

    So too many variables to call it this far out. I think @Heathener is right that the political mood is about as hardened against the Tories and the corrupt incompetence they stand for. But that isn't the same as "therefore Labour win by a Blair". I think the party winning the biggest vote share will be the apathy party. Several million non-voters were persuaded to vote for the first time ever in 2016. And the second time ever in 2019. Most will revert to not voting. Which makes all kinds of seats much harder to read...

    Any more NHS/PPE supply scandals and I think that will be it. Even if the alleged people are no longer ministers.
  • TimS said:

    On topic, its too early to call the next election. On one hand the deck is vastly stacked against the Tories and increasingly so. There is no way out of the economic Trussterfuck, their dogwhistle culture wars against drowning migrants and starving nurses has repulsed even their own loyal supporters, and the Nigel is making a comeback for the voters who are repulsed that the Tories haven't drowned enough migrants.

    On the other hand, Keith is interesting as linoleum, the lack of a huge swingback in Scotland makes it hard and the boundary review makes it worse. And there is no way out of the economic Trusssterfuck - blaming the Tories will carry them so far, but they need to offer hope to really win big and thats hard to find.

    So too many variables to call it this far out. I think @Heathener is right that the political mood is about as hardened against the Tories and the corrupt incompetence they stand for. But that isn't the same as "therefore Labour win by a Blair". I think the party winning the biggest vote share will be the apathy party. Several million non-voters were persuaded to vote for the first time ever in 2016. And the second time ever in 2019. Most will revert to not voting. Which makes all kinds of seats much harder to read...

    Another reframing of the question.

    One of Dave's problems in 2010 was the size of the Lib Dem block. They took seats away from Labour but didn't help the Conservatives get nearer a majority.

    2024 could well be even harder for Starmer- a moderate Lib Dem revival and bam there are 100 seats out of play for the big two. Getting 326/550 is a tall order. It would mean forcing the Conservatives below about 225 seats, maybe less if the Lib Dems advance a lot. That's not impossible (I think the economy is going to minimise the amount of swingback we get this time, and a lot of the 2019 win was wide but shallow), but it's not easy.
    Historically a strong Lib Dem showing has been mainly at the expense of the
    conservatives but it’s difficult to untangle cause and effect. The worse the Tories do the higher the LD seat count. Much stronger correlation than with LD vote share.

    Whereas a strong SNP performance is almost entirely to the detriment of Labour.
    Au contraire.

    On current polling (and the new boundaries), it’s looking like the SNP will gain all 6 Scottish Tory seats (or gain 5 at the worst). That is a boon for Labour.

  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262
    Babar and shakers both look set for centuries here.
  • How the biggest broadsheet newspaper in Scotland reported the World Cup story:

  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164

    How the biggest broadsheet newspaper in Scotland reported the World Cup story:

    Surely all Scottish papers are going with the headline "Mac Allister wins the World Cup!"
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    Let's take a look at a few numbers to put this into perspective.

    From the latest YouGov the breakdown of Conservative 2019 voters is (Con - Lab - Don't Know/Won't Vote/Refused - RefUK):
    40 - 9 - 31 - 14

    Let's compare that with a random YouGov chosen from April 2008. Oh. We can't. YouGov don't seem to have the data tables online anywhere, and the links from Wikipedia are dead.

    On the face of it the 31% no longer giving a voting intention is very large, but in the absence of numbers to compare it to from the time of the last change in government it's quite hard to draw a firm conclusion. The 9% switching to Labour might be unusually high.

    We can compare to a YouGov in mid-October, the nadir in Tory polling in YouGov under Truss was 19%, 37 points behind 20-21 October. Then the breakdown in the Tory 2019 vote was:
    34 - 14 - 36 - 9

    Labour have lost about one-third of their switchers. Interestingly the combined don't know and Reform proportion is steady at 45%. That is high.

    I have said a lot recently that I thought the Tories were done and would be buried at the next election, but now I'm not so sure. That's a lot of voters who are open to being won back by an improved Tory performance, or scared off by Labour mistakes.
  • TimS said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Honest. I think we underestimate how much the average Russian is up for this (it's why Putin is in power in the first place) and Western media focuses on the liberal Mets and the 20% or so who vehemently oppose it.

    It's not representative - anymore than it would be to film a people's march for a second referendum - but it's not a truth we are comfortable hearing.
    Always too worth remembering the Russia has never really had democracy, and has had its regular populace given more flavours of fucking by its elite than probably any other country in Europe*. I've never been, but did learn some Russian in my twenties and love the mad place and its incredible culture and people, despite all the horrible shit that has gone on there. I'm not a teeny tiny bit surprised that the average Russian is broadly in favour of the SMO.

    I've got a book somewhere in the loft called Russia 2010, written in the mid 90s and posits a few different potential scenarios for the post-communist state - the most pessimistic pretty accurately describes were the country has ended up.

    *yeah.
    Russian history seems like a rolling wave of tragedy to me.

    It's remarkable that it just continues and people accept it.
    It's a testament to the enduring power of state violence and propaganda, and enough bandits at the top to keep it going.
    At what point in the demographic journey dies that flip, if ever? When the population is down to 120 million? 100 million? 50 million?

    They are compounding an existing fertility
    decline with a loss of potentially several years worth of fighting age (and fathering age) men being lost to death or simple absence from home. The more mobilised, the starker the effect.
    I'm not sure it ever will.

    Russian identity is - to a large extent - bound up in opposition to Western liberal values, which they see as weak/pathetic and not universal. I don't think they have much desire to emulate.

    I'd say the most important things (arguably the only important things) are to maintain a fiction of Mother Russia being strong and feared, and the population fed and watered.

    Anyway who wants more will emigrate.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    How the biggest broadsheet newspaper in Scotland reported the World Cup story:

    As the man says…


  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,112
    edited December 2022
    ydoethur said:

    I'm trying to sort out the account a deceased person had with Western Union.

    Are they actually as big a bunch of rude, arrogant, lazy, incompetent bellends as they are coming across as, or am I just incredibly unlucky?

    Oh, I'm sure the former - from my own experience banks vary massively, and sometimes the same banks do much better or worse a few years apart. This issue, of the way bereaved people and lay executors are treated, was highlighted by the Consumers' Assn/Which a decade or so ago, and evidently not enough banks took note.

    Top tip: double check any life insurance/assurance payouts or indeed anything where the figures don't seem right. I noticed one for my late father seemed lower than the figures in the bumf in the file, and put it down to market variations. But then thought twice and wrote in to query it. Instant 10K cheque and grovelling apologies.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263

    Good morning

    My son in laws father took a turn for the worse in his nursing home yesterday and needs urgent medical care. The home phoned for an ambulances to take him to Glan Clwyd hospital at 3.00pm yesterday afternoon and as I write this, and despite pleas throughout the night ,no ambulance has arrived yet.

    This is Wales NHS under labour in Cardiff and demonstrates just how it is failing across the devolved administration as well as in England

    His son has held his hand all night utterly helpless to see him in so much pain, choking and not eating or drinking and just wanting him to receive the care he so urgently needs

    That sounds dreadful - I do hope he can be helped soon.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392
    Good morning all.

    Today is my last working day before Christmas, and I just got Wordle in 2. Not a bad start.

    And, on topic, I agree with OGH. Because Scotland.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,742
    edited December 2022
    tlg86 said:

    How the biggest broadsheet newspaper in Scotland reported the World Cup story:

    Surely all Scottish papers are going with the headline "Mac Allister wins the World Cup!"
    He does actually look a bit Scottish, some ginger in that beard I think.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,729
    Carnyx said:

    ydoethur said:

    I'm trying to sort out the account a deceased person had with Western Union.

    Are they actually as big a bunch of rude, arrogant, lazy, incompetent bellends as they are coming across as, or am I just incredibly unlucky?

    Oh, I'm sure the former - from my own experience banks vary massively, and sometimes the same banks do much better or worse a few years apart. This issue, of the way bereaved people and lay executors are treated, was highlighted by the Consumers' Assn/Which a decade or so ago, and evidently not enough banks took note.

    Top tip: double check any life insurance/assurance payouts or indeed anything where the figures don't seem right. I noticed one for my late father seemed lower than the figures in the bumf in the file, and put it down to market variations. But then thought twice and wrote in to query it. Instant 10K cheque and grovelling apologies.
    Thank you. I will bear that in mind.

    What's doubly annoying here is that there's no money in this account. It was just used for overseas transfers. So I only let them know their client was dead out of politeness. And now I'm being bombarded with rubbish demanding things I can't give them and which are difficult to reply to because of the crazy nature of their systems.
  • Someone should start a book on when the first Argentinian PL player will play for his club again. I doubt Spurs will see Romero until February at the earliest!
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,112
    edited December 2022

    TimS said:

    On topic, its too early to call the next election. On one hand the deck is vastly stacked against the Tories and increasingly so. There is no way out of the economic Trussterfuck, their dogwhistle culture wars against drowning migrants and starving nurses has repulsed even their own loyal supporters, and the Nigel is making a comeback for the voters who are repulsed that the Tories haven't drowned enough migrants.

    On the other hand, Keith is interesting as linoleum, the lack of a huge swingback in Scotland makes it hard and the boundary review makes it worse. And there is no way out of the economic Trusssterfuck - blaming the Tories will carry them so far, but they need to offer hope to really win big and thats hard to find.

    So too many variables to call it this far out. I think @Heathener is right that the political mood is about as hardened against the Tories and the corrupt incompetence they stand for. But that isn't the same as "therefore Labour win by a Blair". I think the party winning the biggest vote share will be the apathy party. Several million non-voters were persuaded to vote for the first time ever in 2016. And the second time ever in 2019. Most will revert to not voting. Which makes all kinds of seats much harder to read...

    Another reframing of the question.

    One of Dave's problems in 2010 was the size of the Lib Dem block. They took seats away from Labour but didn't help the Conservatives get nearer a majority.

    2024 could well be even harder for Starmer- a moderate Lib Dem revival and bam there are 100 seats out of play for the big two. Getting 326/550 is a tall order. It would mean forcing the Conservatives below about 225 seats, maybe less if the Lib Dems advance a lot. That's not impossible (I think the economy is going to minimise the amount of swingback we get this time, and a lot of the 2019 win was wide but shallow), but it's not easy.
    Historically a strong Lib Dem showing has been mainly at the expense of the
    conservatives but it’s difficult to untangle cause and effect. The worse the Tories do the higher the LD seat count. Much stronger correlation than with LD vote share.

    Whereas a strong SNP performance is almost entirely to the detriment of Labour.
    Au contraire.

    On current polling (and the new boundaries), it’s looking like the SNP will gain all 6 Scottish Tory seats (or gain 5 at the worst). That is a boon for Labour.

    Remember how Slab got all upset at SKS's attack on the Tories when SKS made his first venture north of Lamberton Toll/Marshall Meadows Substation? They thought he was attacking the wrong folk. But as it's impossible to keep everyone happy, it does seem as if SKS is doing the rational thing and focussing on the southern voter. Bit shite for Slab though that they won't be regaining their birthright of a mess of pottage.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    DougSeal said:

    How the biggest broadsheet newspaper in Scotland reported the World Cup story:

    As the man says…


    I saw him play in this match...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0yAGhBOfw
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262

    tlg86 said:

    How the biggest broadsheet newspaper in Scotland reported the World Cup story:

    Surely all Scottish papers are going with the headline "Mac Allister wins the World Cup!"
    He does actually look a bit Scottish, some ginger in that beard I think.
    Irish ancestry according to wiki
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,112
    ydoethur said:

    Carnyx said:

    ydoethur said:

    I'm trying to sort out the account a deceased person had with Western Union.

    Are they actually as big a bunch of rude, arrogant, lazy, incompetent bellends as they are coming across as, or am I just incredibly unlucky?

    Oh, I'm sure the former - from my own experience banks vary massively, and sometimes the same banks do much better or worse a few years apart. This issue, of the way bereaved people and lay executors are treated, was highlighted by the Consumers' Assn/Which a decade or so ago, and evidently not enough banks took note.

    Top tip: double check any life insurance/assurance payouts or indeed anything where the figures don't seem right. I noticed one for my late father seemed lower than the figures in the bumf in the file, and put it down to market variations. But then thought twice and wrote in to query it. Instant 10K cheque and grovelling apologies.
    Thank you. I will bear that in mind.

    What's doubly annoying here is that there's no money in this account. It was just used for overseas transfers. So I only let them know their client was dead out of politeness. And now I'm being bombarded with rubbish demanding things I can't give them and which are difficult to reply to because of the crazy nature of their systems.
    Indeed. I'd alreadt had a payout from the firm in question (who were otherwise pretty efficient, it kmust be said).

    Re closing accounts - oh dear. I'm just grateful my dad didn't have any online accounts, too.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    I see that the Times has picked up what I wrote yesterday about the appalling appointment of Mike Veale - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-chief-is-in-no-position-to-judge-colleagues-p6kgg0fx6.

    "Everything that is wrong with the upper ranks of British policing — in particular a culture of failing ever upwards — is evident in the case of the former chief constable under investigation for alleged serious misconduct who has just been handed a new job upholding police standards. "

    I have been saying this for years.

    What the actual fuck does the Policing Minister do every day?
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    tlg86 said:

    How the biggest broadsheet newspaper in Scotland reported the World Cup story:

    Surely all Scottish papers are going with the headline "Mac Allister wins the World Cup!"
    He does actually look a bit Scottish, some ginger in that beard I think.
    Irish ancestry according to wiki
    They had some of the wider family from both Ireland and Argentina on Irish radio. There had been a few visits to Argentina and contact between the family before the pandemic, but the Argentine side of the family had left it a generation too late to think about claiming Irish citizenship, and it seems all the footballing talent is on the Argentine side - a younger brother was mentioned.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164

    Someone should start a book on when the first Argentinian PL player will play for his club again. I doubt Spurs will see Romero until February at the earliest!

    Mac Allister for Brighton on New Year's Eve. Man of the match, nailed on.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    Dura_Ace said:

    Privet. I am back from 𝘽𝙀𝙃𝙄𝙉𝘿 𝙀𝙉𝙀𝙈𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎. Debrief follows.

    Moscow seemed the same as ever. Decadent, crime-ridden, expensive, filthy, glamorous. It's the Eurasian maximum city. Mumbai in a blizzard. Less Western stuff and more Chinese tat for sale but it's hard to say how much different that was from the situation before sanctions.

    Nobody I met thinks that Russia will lose the SMO for whatever ambiguous definition of 'lose' you care to adopt. It's just question of whether they stop at Kherson, Kiev or Lviv.

    I watched Solovyov's tv show. He reckons the plan is a series of rolling mobilisations until they get to 3 million people in the armed forces. Which was reckoned by the coterie of beardie weirdos (it was like the LibDem conference) on the show to be sufficient to prevail against NATO in the existential conflict.

    Casualities don't hurt VVP politically and you are kidding yourself if you think it does. On some level, they fucking like it.

    There is a modest fraction of the population who are absolutely fanatical about it and are known as the Z-Publik. They have merch and VK/Telegram groups where they breathlessly follow the latest atrocities. The British equivalent would be those fucking arseholes who drive around with Comic Relief noses on R56 Minis 365 days/year.

    Saw a fucking amazing road rage incident on the M7 motorway near Nizhny Novgorod involving an axe, a scaffold pole and a fire extinguisher. Some fat chybak tumbled out of a UK registered Audi A4 and started waving a Browning HP (SMO booty?) around which calmed everybody down.

    Krasnov pretty much predicted all of this in 'Beyond the Thistle' in 1923. I might re-read it to see how it ends.

    Endex.

    Honest. I think we underestimate how much the average Russian is up for this (it's why Putin is in power in the first place) and Western media focuses on the liberal Mets and the 20% or so who vehemently oppose it.

    It's not representative - anymore than it would be to film a people's march for a second referendum - but it's not a truth we are comfortable hearing.
    @Dura_Ace’s vivid account tallies exactly with my experience meeting young rich Russians in Armenia in June

    They hated the war, but ultimately, they said: Russia had to prevail, could not lose, and they would reluctantly take up arms for Putin if needs be

    If that’s how the sophisticated Muscovites feel…
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,555
    Keystone said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    It's not just Tesla; there are an increasing number of very good EVs on the market:

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/an-electric-kia-thats-faster-than-a-lamborghini-the-2023-ev6-gt-driven/

    But at £45,245 OTR for a base model, I won't be getting one soon. :( EV prices need to halve before they become very competitive with the cars we plebs drive.

    That's fairly likely in just a few year's time.
    The limiting factor is batteries, and until the dozens of new plants in construction start manufacturing, most of the supply will go into the highest margin vehicles.

    The new plants and battery formats will bring the cost of production down, but just as importantly, they will make production of lower margin high volume production possible.
    That depends on what the lower cost limit for battery production is (the limit being things like raw material costs). There will be a minimum cost for making the batteries, and I've no idea what that is. But given the plants are already quite efficient, I'm sceptical about battery prices massively decreasing. But I might be wrong.

    IMV we are really waiting on a new, better battery chemistry (depending on how you define 'better' ...)
    Battery chemistries are incrementally improving (see for example the increased use of silicon in anodes) every year. Some of that feeds cost reduction (the elimination of chromium, for example); some if it increases energy density. That givers incremental cost reduction.
    The new larger cylindrical battery format will reduced manufacturing costs significantly.

    Without radical chemistries we'll probably see at least a 50% drop in costs this decade.

    Then there's stuff like iron/sulphur chemistries - which would cost a fraction of current materials - and solid state batteries. The latter will take a while (maybe ten years), but will radically improve what's possible.
    The recycling / end of life aspect hasn't been properly thought through. It does have the possibility of reducing strategic mineral requirements in the future...
    Actually, it is being addressed.
    For now, there simply wasn't enough material to make it worthwhile, but companies are already running pilot plants for recycling, and major players like VW are planning it into their future manufacturing.

    Point is that the entire industry is undergoing a complete re-engineering. That doesn't happen overnight; it will take a decade at least - but all the major manufacturers have committed their futures to it.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,555
    Cyclefree said:

    I see that the Times has picked up what I wrote yesterday about the appalling appointment of Mike Veale - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-chief-is-in-no-position-to-judge-colleagues-p6kgg0fx6.

    "Everything that is wrong with the upper ranks of British policing — in particular a culture of failing ever upwards — is evident in the case of the former chief constable under investigation for alleged serious misconduct who has just been handed a new job upholding police standards. "

    I have been saying this for years.

    What the actual fuck does the Policing Minister do every day?

    The current government (though I'm not automatically assuming the next one will be
    better) is part of the problem, I think.
    It's not that they're somehow just failing to notice.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392

    They've just been talking about this on BBC Breakfast:

    "Bus fares in England to be capped at £2 for three months, says DfT"

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/03/bus-fares-in-england-to-be-capped-at-2-for-three-months-says-dft

    It'll be interesting to see how this works out - it seems well targeted if you want to help people with teh cost-of-living crisis.

    Mayor Brabin brought this in here in West Yorks several months ago. £2 single and a £4:50 daily cap (if you use an M-Card). Cheaper than the train, but it takes a bloody age to get to Leeds or even Bradford by bus.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Doctor Ding is back

    ⚠️THERMONUCLEAR BAD—Hospitals completely overwhelmed in China ever since restrictions dropped. Epidemiologist estimate >60% of 🇨🇳 & 10% of Earth’s population likely infected over next 90 days. Deaths likely in the millions—plural. This is just the start—🧵

    https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1604748747640119296?s=46&t=5voMRJVsBEIKUqEoHjpwbg
This discussion has been closed.