If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
The state of the battery market for TVs is such that, if you build a factory producing good quality cells, someone will buy them. There is massive under capacity worldwide.
EU car companies are importing cells from everywhere on the planet.
This is also why Tesla (and other companies) delayed the roll out of big EV trucks - they need batteries 5-10 times the size of those in an EV car. Which there are queues for. So building one truck means forgoing the profit on selling 5-10 cars.
BritishVolt failed to convince investors they could actually manage to build a good plant. Because they are an unimpressive lot, without relevant expertise.
On the wider implications of this sort of screwup. this is interesting:
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
The state of the battery market for TVs is such that, if you build a factory producing good quality cells, someone will buy them. There is massive under capacity worldwide.
EU car companies are importing cells from everywhere on the planet.
This is also why Tesla (and other companies) delayed the roll out of big EV trucks - they need batteries 5-10 times the size of those in an EV car. Which there are queues for. So building one truck means forgoing the profit on selling 5-10 cars.
BritishVolt failed to convince investors they could actually manage to build a good plant. Because they are an unimpressive lot, without relevant expertise.
I don't think that's entirely true.
A plant of any significance requires investment in the billions, will take a number of years to achieve full production, and will then take years to show a profit on that investment. Meanwhile, there are dozens of plants being built - usually on the basis of contracted orders form major manufacturers located in the same country (or economic area like the EU). (And as an aside, look at how long it took Panasonic, one of the most experienced manufacturers, to start trading profitably on their US plant.) If you had a gigafactory producing now, you could sell everything you manufactured; in five years' time you will have to to compete on price (that is already to some extent true).
But if we want a vehicle industry at all, we have to get on with it.
The rate at which plants are being built is less than the rate of the planned ramp up for EVs.
EV production looks to be constrained by battery availability for the foreseeable future.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
The state of the battery market for TVs is such that, if you build a factory producing good quality cells, someone will buy them. There is massive under capacity worldwide.
EU car companies are importing cells from everywhere on the planet.
This is also why Tesla (and other companies) delayed the roll out of big EV trucks - they need batteries 5-10 times the size of those in an EV car. Which there are queues for. So building one truck means forgoing the profit on selling 5-10 cars.
BritishVolt failed to convince investors they could actually manage to build a good plant. Because they are an unimpressive lot, without relevant expertise.
I don't think that's entirely true.
A plant of any significance requires investment in the billions, will take a number of years to achieve full production, and will then take years to show a profit on that investment. Meanwhile, there are dozens of plants being built - usually on the basis of contracted orders form major manufacturers located in the same country (or economic area like the EU). (And as an aside, look at how long it took Panasonic, one of the most experienced manufacturers, to start trading profitably on their US plant.) If you had a gigafactory producing now, you could sell everything you manufactured; in five years' time you will have to to compete on price (that is already to some extent true).
But if we want a vehicle industry at all, we have to get on with it.
The rate at which plants are being built is less than the rate of the planned ramp up for EVs.
EV production looks to be constrained by battery availability for the foreseeable future.
Irrespective of which of us is closer to the truth, the fact remains they won't get built here without very significant government incentives.
“Following on from polling conducted shortly before Christmas that pointed in the same direction, today’s poll suggests that the spike in support for independence registered after the Supreme Court judgement on indyref2 has proven to be temporary. At 46%, support for Yes in today’s poll is little different from the 47% figure Survation obtained when they previously addressed the issue last August.
“Meanwhile, the poll suggests that, at 43%, support for the SNP would be well below the 50% mark that Nicola Sturgeon would like to surpass at the next general election – though it also suggests that, at present, fewer than half would vote for pro-independence parties in a Holyrood ballot too.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
The state of the battery market for TVs is such that, if you build a factory producing good quality cells, someone will buy them. There is massive under capacity worldwide.
EU car companies are importing cells from everywhere on the planet.
This is also why Tesla (and other companies) delayed the roll out of big EV trucks - they need batteries 5-10 times the size of those in an EV car. Which there are queues for. So building one truck means forgoing the profit on selling 5-10 cars.
BritishVolt failed to convince investors they could actually manage to build a good plant. Because they are an unimpressive lot, without relevant expertise.
The budget was in the billions ! Surely a top team of REAL experts to convince the car industry could and should have been fitted in for the money ?
It is remarkable how often people don't hire experts who are actually expert.
Consider the following CV
A lady started teaching primary after the usual training. She got excellent reports and rose to deputy-head, doing a part time masters in education on the way. She took a break to do a PhD - specialising in looking at primary education systems around the world. Returning to teaching, she got the job of starting a new primary school from scratch. Which was extremely successful.
She was turned down by the DfE for a consulting/policy post, on the grounds of insufficient relevant experience in education.
She went on to be a high flyer in another area of public service.
I would imagine that the DfE doesn’t actually want people with frontline education experience - they might have annoying opinions that challenge the existing power brokers.
Who did they actually appoint out of interest? I would guess one of two options, depending on who was driving the process: either 1) a civil service insider with the “right” policy background or 2) a Gove-sympathetic external appointee with “the right ideas” either from industry or a right wing thinktank.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
The state of the battery market for TVs is such that, if you build a factory producing good quality cells, someone will buy them. There is massive under capacity worldwide.
EU car companies are importing cells from everywhere on the planet.
This is also why Tesla (and other companies) delayed the roll out of big EV trucks - they need batteries 5-10 times the size of those in an EV car. Which there are queues for. So building one truck means forgoing the profit on selling 5-10 cars.
BritishVolt failed to convince investors they could actually manage to build a good plant. Because they are an unimpressive lot, without relevant expertise.
I don't think that's entirely true.
A plant of any significance requires investment in the billions, will take a number of years to achieve full production, and will then take years to show a profit on that investment. Meanwhile, there are dozens of plants being built - usually on the basis of contracted orders form major manufacturers located in the same country (or economic area like the EU). (And as an aside, look at how long it took Panasonic, one of the most experienced manufacturers, to start trading profitably on their US plant.) If you had a gigafactory producing now, you could sell everything you manufactured; in five years' time you will have to to compete on price (that is already to some extent true).
But if we want a vehicle industry at all, we have to get on with it.
The rate at which plants are being built is less than the rate of the planned ramp up for EVs.
EV production looks to be constrained by battery availability for the foreseeable future.
Irrespective of which of us is closer to the truth, the fact remains they won't get built here without very significant government incentives.
They will require government incentives and company that is capable of delivering.
Note that when Biden spent money on chip manufacturing, it went to existing titans in the chip manufacturing plant world.
The equivalent would be subsidising Panasonic to setup a plant in the UK.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Agree. I suspect Labour will do something like this if they get into office - after all they were the ones who came up with regional development agencies in the first place.
A lot of people are projecting what Labour will do in office, yet there's very little they have actually said about it. I don't see them doing this because the bedrock of their support is middle class urbanites who will lose from this policy.
Actually Labour have said a lot about it - it just doesn't get reported because it isn't very newsworthy. It's their second priority in this report - which talks about regional partnerships, investment for regional infrastructure etc. etc.
"We need a locally-owned and fairly-resourced prosperity plan for growth in every part of the country, under which cities, towns and communities will take power from the centre and use it in their communities.
Our recommendations are: 6. Towns and cities across England should be given new powers to drive growth and champion their areas. 7. The UK needs a radically reformed suite of place-based, innovation-led R&D programmes, with Mayors and local leaders in all parts of the UK playing a key role in design and delivery. This should include the replacement for EU regional funding, and future support for the Strength in Places Fund. 8. The UK Infrastructure Bank should be given an explicit mission to address regional economic inequality in the provision of infrastructure. 9. The British Business Bank should be given a new remit to promote regional economic equality in access to investment capital. It should do this by bridging the equity finance gap outside of London and the South East, and should be renamed the British Regional Investment Bank to reflect this change"
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
SAIC and GM aren't in the UK car market. Toyota have just built their own massive battery factory in the US.
JLR were the big (only?) opportunity for BV but their electrification strategy is a bit of a shambles. Their only BEV product (I-Pace) is made in the EU.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
The state of the battery market for TVs is such that, if you build a factory producing good quality cells, someone will buy them. There is massive under capacity worldwide.
EU car companies are importing cells from everywhere on the planet.
This is also why Tesla (and other companies) delayed the roll out of big EV trucks - they need batteries 5-10 times the size of those in an EV car. Which there are queues for. So building one truck means forgoing the profit on selling 5-10 cars.
BritishVolt failed to convince investors they could actually manage to build a good plant. Because they are an unimpressive lot, without relevant expertise.
I don't think that's entirely true.
A plant of any significance requires investment in the billions, will take a number of years to achieve full production, and will then take years to show a profit on that investment. Meanwhile, there are dozens of plants being built - usually on the basis of contracted orders form major manufacturers located in the same country (or economic area like the EU). (And as an aside, look at how long it took Panasonic, one of the most experienced manufacturers, to start trading profitably on their US plant.) If you had a gigafactory producing now, you could sell everything you manufactured; in five years' time you will have to to compete on price (that is already to some extent true).
But if we want a vehicle industry at all, we have to get on with it.
The rate at which plants are being built is less than the rate of the planned ramp up for EVs.
EV production looks to be constrained by battery availability for the foreseeable future.
Irrespective of which of us is closer to the truth, the fact remains they won't get built here without very significant government incentives.
They will require government incentives and company that is capable of delivering.
Note that when Biden spent money on chip manufacturing, it went to existing titans in the chip manufacturing plant world.
The equivalent would be subsidising Panasonic to setup a plant in the UK.
Sure. Or Tesla, on any of the Korean manufacturers. Even the Chinese.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/1616155339535126528 ...Specifically, while investigators "especially scrutinized" any contacts between Politico and the court and looked closely at social media speculation about the source, they "found nothing to substantiate any of the social media allegations regarding the disclosure." In other words, while she still cannot tell us who the leaker was, the Marshal seems to be going out of her way to tell us who the leaker was NOT: a particular law clerk for a liberal justice who was the subject of much speculation on this website and others.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
SAIC and GM aren't in the UK car market. Toyota have just built their own massive battery factory in the US.
JLR were the big (only?) opportunity for BV but their electrification strategy is a bit of a shambles. Their only BEV product (I-Pace) is made in the EU.
Seems to me that batteries are a fairly easily transportable good: Pile them up in containers & you can ship them anywhere in the world for next to nothing. Given the demand for battery production is insatiable right now, the lack of local EV production shouldn’t have been an iinsurmaountable obstacle.
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
SAIC and GM aren't in the UK car market. Toyota have just built their own massive battery factory in the US.
JLR were the big (only?) opportunity for BV but their electrification strategy is a bit of a shambles. Their only BEV product (I-Pace) is made in the EU.
Seems to me that batteries are a fairly easily transportable good: Pile them up in containers & you can ship them anywhere in the world for next to nothing. Given the demand for battery production is insatiable right now, the lack of local EV production shouldn’t have been an iinsurmaountable obstacle.
Am I missing something obvious here?
No - in fact vast quantities of batteries are being moved around the world, right now.
Planned European production won't support electrification of all cars sold in the EU 2035, for example.
I think many individual libertarians come from a start point of their own personal, often sexual, conscience and a desire for freedom and rights for their own life choices.
We have not lacked for discussion on here that could place Liz Truss in this category and I know my university libertarian acquaintance, the one who I'd argue with about the existence of passports not being an intolerable imposition, and who eventually had time as a moderately prominent Tory Spad, came from such a place.
And when one's political convictions are so personal, any political convictions to be fair, that can drive a very one-eyed absolutist philosophy. And libertarianism certainly has its fair share of such blind spots.
I'm not sure if Nicola has fully factored in the implications of treating the GE as a referendum.
As Scotland has not yet rejoined the EU she won't be able to take full advantage of the EU custom of treating referenda as only binding if you get the result they want.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
SAIC and GM aren't in the UK car market. Toyota have just built their own massive battery factory in the US.
JLR were the big (only?) opportunity for BV but their electrification strategy is a bit of a shambles. Their only BEV product (I-Pace) is made in the EU.
Seems to me that batteries are a fairly easily transportable good: Pile them up in containers & you can ship them anywhere in the world for next to nothing. Given the demand for battery production is insatiable right now, the lack of local EV production shouldn’t have been an iinsurmaountable obstacle.
Am I missing something obvious here?
Not 'next to nothing' - and more to the point, trade barriers.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
SAIC and GM aren't in the UK car market. Toyota have just built their own massive battery factory in the US.
JLR were the big (only?) opportunity for BV but their electrification strategy is a bit of a shambles. Their only BEV product (I-Pace) is made in the EU.
Seems to me that batteries are a fairly easily transportable good: Pile them up in containers & you can ship them anywhere in the world for next to nothing. Given the demand for battery production is insatiable right now, the lack of local EV production shouldn’t have been an iinsurmaountable obstacle.
Am I missing something obvious here?
The OEMs prefer not to be on the end of a long and rickety supply chains for the most important component of the vehicle hence the large manufacturers build or tightly control their battery factories.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
The plan will likely be to make it physically difficult to install off-grid charging systems, and to use smart meters to charge more for car electricity, than house electricity. IIRC it’s already mandatory for electricians to report car charger installations to a government agency, for ‘monitoring’ purposes.
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
That has always been the case. If you live in a western developed nation don't move to the USA unless you have a big bank balance or a job paying six figures to go to with private healthcare.
The US has little to no welfare state, very limited public housing and is the only Western nation without universal healthcare
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Agree. I suspect Labour will do something like this if they get into office - after all they were the ones who came up with regional development agencies in the first place.
Most of the jobs created by the old regional development agencies, appeared to be in their own bureaucracy. A great demonstration of how not to do it.
That's interesting, although I don't think I learned anything about my neighbourhood that I didn't know or guess already from living there for over a decade! Less white, more big houses and flats, more social renting, fewer old people, way more professionals, way more graduates, more employed, more atheists, fewer 2 car households, less deprivation, shorter commutes, more WFH.
Interesting indeed. 97% UK born, 99.7% white for my postcode (bit surprised at quite how high both of those are - that's one* non-white person in the postcode, who is of Asian origin). One* person of Jewish faith. Three Muslims. 45% level 4 quals or above. 5 people unemployed.
*working with sensitive data, I'm actually quite surprised they provide that level of detail - likely spot someone is non-white, so no disclosure, but knowing one person was born outside UK could be disclosive, likewise knowing religion - doen't line up in this case, but if there's one non-white person and one muslim for example then you've (likely, not certain, of course) just disclosed someone's religion.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
100% houses/bungalows More over 50s than average 97.7% born in UK 96.2% white Longer than average commute. > average L4, L5 and L6: Lower managerial, administrative and professional occupations
95% houses/bungalows More over 50s than average 81% born in UK 73.5% white 56% Works mainly from home 61% occupation groups 1&2.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
No you use a formula based on deprivation per region to give them an annual budget for the next 5 years and then they spend the money locally on projects that will increase the local growth rate from a list of approved project types. It could range from energy generation and storage to urban redevelopment funding with very tough delivery deadlines and clawback for non-delivery.
Raising the money locally may be part of the solution but ultimately I don't see how cutting up the pie into slightly different sized slices makes any difference, the pie just needs to be bigger in some parts of the country and that will only come with national funding and essentially a fiscal transfer from London and the SE for £15-20bn per year for local infrastructure and growth potential improvement projects.
Raising much more money locally, incentivises local authorities to build more housing!
But this fund shouldn't be used for housing, it should be used to improve the potential growth rate of the region. If you do that then the housing will follow as people move into the area for the jobs and lifestyle. In most of the places with high deprivation housing isn't an issue anyway, two up two down houses can be had for under £100k. Housing is the key issue in London, SE and East because the three regions are highly developed already and it's where the jobs are so people want to move here causing housing shortage. Make other parts of the country just as developed and the nation's 24-35 year olds won't want to move here to start their career.
It happens by market forces from time to time, see Liverpool as an example, loads of tech workers are moving to the cheapest parts of Liverpool because housing is cheap and they can WFH for 3 days and commute to their jobs in Manchester or central Liverpool for 2 days, but ultimately that's a very slow way of levelling up the nation, we need to catch the rest of the country up to the same level as London, SE and East much faster than the market will do it.
Britishvolt would have been ideal for that sort of thing. Beyond belief that those running it didn't make some big and generous offers to one or several of the existing manufacturers (GM, Toyota, SAIC) before going ahead. I expect - and please do not mistake me for a remoaner here but I can potentially see it being an issue NOT being in the EU was a big issue as any plant based here would have had to have clear hurdles that EU based plants would not for integrating cars into the (large) EU market.
SAIC and GM aren't in the UK car market. Toyota have just built their own massive battery factory in the US.
JLR were the big (only?) opportunity for BV but their electrification strategy is a bit of a shambles. Their only BEV product (I-Pace) is made in the EU.
Seems to me that batteries are a fairly easily transportable good: Pile them up in containers & you can ship them anywhere in the world for next to nothing. Given the demand for battery production is insatiable right now, the lack of local EV production shouldn’t have been an iinsurmaountable obstacle.
Am I missing something obvious here?
The OEMs prefer not to be on the end of a long and rickety supply chains for the most important component of the vehicle hence the large manufacturers build or tightly control their battery factories.
They can prefer whatever they like, but if production is battery constrained and a credible supplier rocks up & offers them container-loads of to-spec cells then they’re going to be signing those order books on the spot.
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
That has always been the case. If you live in a western developed nation don't move to the USA unless you have a big bank balance or a job paying six figures to go to with private healthcare.
The US has little to no welfare state, very limited public housing and is the only Western nation without universal healthcare
But in America things have gotten worse. This graph goes up to 2014 and my guess is the disparity would be even greater now
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
The sharp fall in trend productivity growth after the 2008 financial crisis is fairly universal but the UK is I think the worst-hit among major economies. Figuring out what has happened and fixing it should be our #1 goal in terms of economic policy. I lived in the US for five years. There was lots I loved about the place and lots I hated. On balance I prefer it here, hence we came home. Ultimately like the guy on Twitter I just found it too brutal. But there is a vigour and confidence there that is very appealing.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
I know Oz really well. Its racial problems are real, but absolutely trivial compared to the race wars in the USA
And they have a grip on migration of which we can only dream
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
The sharp fall in trend productivity growth after the 2008 financial crisis is fairly universal but the UK is I think the worst-hit among major economies. Figuring out what has happened and fixing it should be our #1 goal in terms of economic policy. I lived in the US for five years. There was lots I loved about the place and lots I hated. On balance I prefer it here, hence we came home. Ultimately like the guy on Twitter I just found it too brutal. But there is a vigour and confidence there that is very appealing.
Yes I agree. The GFC of 2007-8 was when the UK economic model fell apart and no one has a clue how to fix it, except “massive amounts of immigration” - or so it seems to me. And I am far from convinced this is a solution. It probably adds to the problems
In retrospect, the Brexit vote was a cry of anguish in the face of all this
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
I know Oz really well. Its racial problems are real, but absolutely trivial compared to the race wars in the USA
And they have a grip on migration of which we can only dream
They did, we will see if that lasts under the new Labor government in Australia
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Could be worse. The electricity supply is failing in RSA.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Could be worse. The electricity supply is failing in RSA.
Yes, my wife's friend just arrived in the UK last week after months of getting her ancestry visa sorted out, one of the first things she said was that it was nice to have hot showers again.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
The plan will likely be to make it physically difficult to install off-grid charging systems, and to use smart meters to charge more for car electricity, than house electricity. IIRC it’s already mandatory for electricians to report car charger installations to a government agency, for ‘monitoring’ purposes.
This would be quite easy to do as, ideally, you want the car charger on a separate consumer unit as DC leakage from the charger will confuse the AC RCDs in the original consumer unit. I split the meter tails myself and installed my own highly illegal second consumer unit for EV charging because that's just how I roll.
The other alternative would just be to tax BEVs per mile/km driven as they do in Australia.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
The plan will likely be to make it physically difficult to install off-grid charging systems, and to use smart meters to charge more for car electricity, than house electricity. IIRC it’s already mandatory for electricians to report car charger installations to a government agency, for ‘monitoring’ purposes.
This would be quite easy to do as, ideally, you want the car charger on a separate consumer unit as DC leakage from the charger will confuse the AC RCDs in the original consumer unit. I split the meter tails myself and installed my own highly illegal second consumer unit for EV charging because that's just how I roll.
The other alternative would just be to tax BEVs per mile/km driven as they do in Australia.
The polling suggests that attempting mileage/road toll taxes in the UK would be a political death sentence for the political proposing it, IIRC.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
So if I take over your house but set aside the downstairs loo for your use and have a strict rule against hunting you for sport except at the weekend, you are OK with that?
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
"Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day ..."
Australia Day was a thing before 1935? Even after that, it must be a hell of a party if people were immigrating just because of it.
That's interesting, although I don't think I learned anything about my neighbourhood that I didn't know or guess already from living there for over a decade! Less white, more big houses and flats, more social renting, fewer old people, way more professionals, way more graduates, more employed, more atheists, fewer 2 car households, less deprivation, shorter commutes, more WFH.
Interesting indeed. 97% UK born, 99.7% white for my postcode (bit surprised at quite how high both of those are - that's one* non-white person in the postcode, who is of Asian origin). One* person of Jewish faith. Three Muslims. 45% level 4 quals or above. 5 people unemployed.
*working with sensitive data, I'm actually quite surprised they provide that level of detail - likely spot someone is non-white, so no disclosure, but knowing one person was born outside UK could be disclosive, likewise knowing religion - doen't line up in this case, but if there's one non-white person and one muslim for example then you've (likely, not certain, of course) just disclosed someone's religion.
That's very odd. HMG are usually very careful about individually identifiable data in this sort of thing, certainly in the health sphere. That is why, for example, the expanded COVID map only shows a neighborhood as having "fewer than 3" COVID cases, so the sole person with COVID in that neighbourhood isn't visited by pitchfork wielding locals or something.
Only the male to female changes are seen as dangerous - because they threaten women-only spaces. As a male, it's probably none of my business.
One side claim they can be a danger, the other side that they are all lovely people and the danger is non-existent. Hmm, my experience of humanity is that there's always someone who will take advantage, even if the risk is small. Ah, but it's worthwhile say the supporters, therefore no one should be allowed to complain.
A little childish, and none of my business, but I can make a confident prediction. Someone, somewhere will be discovered to be harmed and the sides will argue because they won't believe facts anyway. It's called politics.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
So if I take over your house but set aside the downstairs loo for your use and have a strict rule against hunting you for sport except at the weekend, you are OK with that?
I think it's more like evicting him and making him live in the brownfield where Epping Motors used to be, on a diet of meths and strong cider.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
Aborigines only became Australian citizens in the 1960's.
My own family went out there in the 19th Century gold rush, and even by then there were hardly any aborigines left in Victoria. The history of their conquest is not a pretty one.
There is a great new series on BBC set in the Outback in a part aboriginal community "Mystery Road", well worth catching on iplayer.
My LinkedIn came alive yesterday with gushingly right-on tributes to Saint Jacinda, who has now Ascended.
Those who did it were so predictable I might now have to add her to the Woke pantheon.
Have you read avoid the abuse she’s had? Not good. Makes U.K.politics look civilised.
I have no time for abuse.
Nevertheless, I think she been deified - almost like a political Princess Diana, because she does empathy so well and people see something of their own struggles in her - and that means sometimes people won't brook any criticism of her.
In my view, she's been a pretty poor New Zealand PM but if I'd dared to mention that I'd have been criticised in hysterical and emotional terms, probably accused of misogyny and shot at dawn.
As far as I can see she is the one who has been seriously threatened.
Her global impact as NZ PM has been remarkable. Honestly, I think 6 years is a decent run for PMs and leading politicians I can’t think of any that did their best work after 6 years in a role.
I wonder what next for JA? I doubt she's just going to disappear into domesticity or academia. She must be a decent shout for next UN Sec Gen (who will certainly be a woman).
Sturgeon is desperate for a UN job, be nice if JA beat her to it
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
The sharp fall in trend productivity growth after the 2008 financial crisis is fairly universal but the UK is I think the worst-hit among major economies. Figuring out what has happened and fixing it should be our #1 goal in terms of economic policy. I lived in the US for five years. There was lots I loved about the place and lots I hated. On balance I prefer it here, hence we came home. Ultimately like the guy on Twitter I just found it too brutal. But there is a vigour and confidence there that is very appealing.
The problem is that neither party has any ideas to start tackling this issue. The Tories have resumed the high immigration, "let businesses just throw people at it" method of operation and I doubt Labour will change that either. A few months ago National Grid was paying off shore wind farm companies to not produce power, this is not the first or last time this has or will happen, it's a fairly regular feature of how wind energy works, because it is intermittent. Over the years billions in compensation payments have been made to them, yet the long term solution is to not do that and invest the money into producing power storage facilities.
The current situation is that we pay them not to produce energy when there is too much but when an energy crunch comes along we end up paying 10x the normal rate to import energy from our interconnects. Energy storage is the solution to this as we reduce the need to import and no longer need to pay compensation, but because of short term thinking in National Grid and no penalties for not doing so (the cost of this is simply shuffled onto bills in full) and the desire for management to pay a 6-8% annual yield to shareholders the investment will never happen and we're going to continue paying them to shut off production of energy when there's too much and import energy at 10x the cost when there's too little.
These kinds of situations are endemic in the UK economy and for 30 or so years companies have been incentivised to pay dividends rather than prioritise capital growth. I don't know how to change that culture and it certainly won't happen overnight but at least recognising this would be a first step and neither the Tories nor Labour are talking about it let alone coming up with policies to resolve it.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
Aborigines only became Australian citizens in the 1960's.
My own family went out there in the 19th Century gold rush, and even by then there were hardly any aborigines left in Victoria. The history of their conquest is not a pretty one.
There is a great new series on BBC set in the Outback in a part aboriginal community "Mystery Road", well worth catching on iplayer.
Now now, don't confuse him with history. It spoils the pretty Our Island Story.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Japan and South Korea. Though neither are immigration friendly.
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
The sharp fall in trend productivity growth after the 2008 financial crisis is fairly universal but the UK is I think the worst-hit among major economies. Figuring out what has happened and fixing it should be our #1 goal in terms of economic policy. I lived in the US for five years. There was lots I loved about the place and lots I hated. On balance I prefer it here, hence we came home. Ultimately like the guy on Twitter I just found it too brutal. But there is a vigour and confidence there that is very appealing.
Yes , same here , wonderful place if you have plenty of money but desperate if you are poor.
I'm not sure if Nicola has fully factored in the implications of treating the GE as a referendum.
As Scotland has not yet rejoined the EU she won't be able to take full advantage of the EU custom of treating referenda as only binding if you get the result they want.
Scottish Parliament shut down today for 3rd time thsi year due to Sturgeon being heckled from eth gallery. Her GRC is going down real well.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
So if I take over your house but set aside the downstairs loo for your use and have a strict rule against hunting you for sport except at the weekend, you are OK with that?
We were invaded by the Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans too at various points, all of whom have descendants in the current UK population. You cannot ignore your history.
If not for European settlers Australia as is would not exist, it is now a nation of mainly European heritage with some Aborigines still there. It also still has one of the lowest population densities in the world
My LinkedIn came alive yesterday with gushingly right-on tributes to Saint Jacinda, who has now Ascended.
Those who did it were so predictable I might now have to add her to the Woke pantheon.
Have you read avoid the abuse she’s had? Not good. Makes U.K.politics look civilised.
I have no time for abuse.
Nevertheless, I think she been deified - almost like a political Princess Diana, because she does empathy so well and people see something of their own struggles in her - and that means sometimes people won't brook any criticism of her.
In my view, she's been a pretty poor New Zealand PM but if I'd dared to mention that I'd have been criticised in hysterical and emotional terms, probably accused of misogyny and shot at dawn.
As far as I can see she is the one who has been seriously threatened.
Her global impact as NZ PM has been remarkable. Honestly, I think 6 years is a decent run for PMs and leading politicians I can’t think of any that did their best work after 6 years in a role.
I wonder what next for JA? I doubt she's just going to disappear into domesticity or academia. She must be a decent shout for next UN Sec Gen (who will certainly be a woman).
Sturgeon is desperate for a UN job, be nice if JA beat her to it
SecGen cannot be from a P5 country so NS could only get the job if Scotland became independent first. Guterres's term is up in 2026 so probably not enough time.
That's interesting, although I don't think I learned anything about my neighbourhood that I didn't know or guess already from living there for over a decade! Less white, more big houses and flats, more social renting, fewer old people, way more professionals, way more graduates, more employed, more atheists, fewer 2 car households, less deprivation, shorter commutes, more WFH.
Interesting indeed. 97% UK born, 99.7% white for my postcode (bit surprised at quite how high both of those are - that's one* non-white person in the postcode, who is of Asian origin). One* person of Jewish faith. Three Muslims. 45% level 4 quals or above. 5 people unemployed.
*working with sensitive data, I'm actually quite surprised they provide that level of detail - likely spot someone is non-white, so no disclosure, but knowing one person was born outside UK could be disclosive, likewise knowing religion - doen't line up in this case, but if there's one non-white person and one muslim for example then you've (likely, not certain, of course) just disclosed someone's religion.
That's very odd. HMG are usually very careful about individually identifiable data in this sort of thing, certainly in the health sphere. That is why, for example, the expanded COVID map only shows a neighborhood as having "fewer than 3" COVID cases, so the sole person with COVID in that neighbourhood isn't visited by pitchfork wielding locals or something.
My specialism is health data, where the rules are for obvious reasons very strict, but I thought religion certainly would come under sensitive personal data.
Different organisations have different disclosure rules, down to five people, but we tend to not release anything with fewer than ten people in a group. And nothing below LSOA level for geography (a few thousand people - we don't tend to go even near that level, because we often run into groups under 10 at that geography anyway).
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
The British completely wiped out the indigenous Tasmanians in the Black War. How would you characterise that? A little local difficulty? The nation state constructed by the invading regime definitely should not be celebrating it with a day off.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
So if I take over your house but set aside the downstairs loo for your use and have a strict rule against hunting you for sport except at the weekend, you are OK with that?
We all inhabit land that once belonged to somebody else.
For the vast majority of Australians, their country's existence is a good thing.
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
The sharp fall in trend productivity growth after the 2008 financial crisis is fairly universal but the UK is I think the worst-hit among major economies. Figuring out what has happened and fixing it should be our #1 goal in terms of economic policy. I lived in the US for five years. There was lots I loved about the place and lots I hated. On balance I prefer it here, hence we came home. Ultimately like the guy on Twitter I just found it too brutal. But there is a vigour and confidence there that is very appealing.
The problem is that neither party has any ideas to start tackling this issue. The Tories have resumed the high immigration, "let businesses just throw people at it" method of operation and I doubt Labour will change that either. A few months ago National Grid was paying off shore wind farm companies to not produce power, this is not the first or last time this has or will happen, it's a fairly regular feature of how wind energy works, because it is intermittent. Over the years billions in compensation payments have been made to them, yet the long term solution is to not do that and invest the money into producing power storage facilities.
The current situation is that we pay them not to produce energy when there is too much but when an energy crunch comes along we end up paying 10x the normal rate to import energy from our interconnects. Energy storage is the solution to this as we reduce the need to import and no longer need to pay compensation, but because of short term thinking in National Grid and no penalties for not doing so (the cost of this is simply shuffled onto bills in full) and the desire for management to pay a 6-8% annual yield to shareholders the investment will never happen and we're going to continue paying them to shut off production of energy when there's too much and import energy at 10x the cost when there's too little.
These kinds of situations are endemic in the UK economy and for 30 or so years companies have been incentivised to pay dividends rather than prioritise capital growth. I don't know how to change that culture and it certainly won't happen overnight but at least recognising this would be a first step and neither the Tories nor Labour are talking about it let alone coming up with policies to resolve it.
There is no single solution. Certainly the electricity market can and should be addressed, since it wasn't designed to cope with the massively fluctuating price differentials between different power sources that the Ukraine situation has thrown up. And it's completely within the power (and ability) of government to rewrite the market rules to improve it.
I'm not sure if Nicola has fully factored in the implications of treating the GE as a referendum.
As Scotland has not yet rejoined the EU she won't be able to take full advantage of the EU custom of treating referenda as only binding if you get the result they want.
Scottish Parliament shut down today for 3rd time thsi year due to Sturgeon being heckled from eth gallery. Her GRC is going down real well.
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
The sharp fall in trend productivity growth after the 2008 financial crisis is fairly universal but the UK is I think the worst-hit among major economies. Figuring out what has happened and fixing it should be our #1 goal in terms of economic policy. I lived in the US for five years. There was lots I loved about the place and lots I hated. On balance I prefer it here, hence we came home. Ultimately like the guy on Twitter I just found it too brutal. But there is a vigour and confidence there that is very appealing.
The problem is that neither party has any ideas to start tackling this issue. The Tories have resumed the high immigration, "let businesses just throw people at it" method of operation and I doubt Labour will change that either. A few months ago National Grid was paying off shore wind farm companies to not produce power, this is not the first or last time this has or will happen, it's a fairly regular feature of how wind energy works, because it is intermittent. Over the years billions in compensation payments have been made to them, yet the long term solution is to not do that and invest the money into producing power storage facilities.
The current situation is that we pay them not to produce energy when there is too much but when an energy crunch comes along we end up paying 10x the normal rate to import energy from our interconnects. Energy storage is the solution to this as we reduce the need to import and no longer need to pay compensation, but because of short term thinking in National Grid and no penalties for not doing so (the cost of this is simply shuffled onto bills in full) and the desire for management to pay a 6-8% annual yield to shareholders the investment will never happen and we're going to continue paying them to shut off production of energy when there's too much and import energy at 10x the cost when there's too little.
These kinds of situations are endemic in the UK economy and for 30 or so years companies have been incentivised to pay dividends rather than prioritise capital growth. I don't know how to change that culture and it certainly won't happen overnight but at least recognising this would be a first step and neither the Tories nor Labour are talking about it let alone coming up with policies to resolve it.
There is no single solution. Certainly the electricity market can and should be addressed, since it wasn't designed to cope with the massively fluctuating price differentials between different power sources that the Ukraine situation has thrown up. And it's completely within the power (and ability) of government to rewrite the market rules to improve it.
But realistically the first time National Grid had to pay compensation one day and then import power the next there should have been a meeting to say, "this is idiotic lets just build power storage facilities" but because they just pass the full cost onto bills no one gives a flying fuck and spending money on it would mean lower bonuses for execs and lower dividends for shareholders.
It's not just this scenario though, the UK is becoming a nation of luddites that rejects technological advancement and productivity gains to maintain high employment levels.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Japan and South Korea. Though neither are immigration friendly.
And Japan has a rather unique debt profile.
Japan seems fairly contented, but it is not doing well in purely economic terms. GDP per capita is broadly flat since the mid 1990s, and total GDP flat for even longer. No other developed country has declined for so long not only absolutely but relative to its peers. As of 2021 GDP per capita in PPP was $39k ($44k in 1995!), vs $47k in the UK ($23k in 1995) and $35k in South Korea (a mere $12k in 1995). SK will overtake Japan very soon.
Yet the country is at least publicly happy, peaceful, superficially prosperous and certainly not on the verge of revolution. Perhaps Japan gives us the first and only truly positive role model for managed decline. If you're going to decline, might as well do so in a Japanese way.
Only the male to female changes are seen as dangerous - because they threaten women-only spaces. As a male, it's probably none of my business.
One side claim they can be a danger, the other side that they are all lovely people and the danger is non-existent. Hmm, my experience of humanity is that there's always someone who will take advantage, even if the risk is small. Ah, but it's worthwhile say the supporters, therefore no one should be allowed to complain.
A little childish, and none of my business, but I can make a confident prediction. Someone, somewhere will be discovered to be harmed and the sides will argue because they won't believe facts anyway. It's called politics.
Because men are about twice as strong as women. And about three times more violent.
Only the male to female changes are seen as dangerous - because they threaten women-only spaces. As a male, it's probably none of my business.
One side claim they can be a danger, the other side that they are all lovely people and the danger is non-existent. Hmm, my experience of humanity is that there's always someone who will take advantage, even if the risk is small. Ah, but it's worthwhile say the supporters, therefore no one should be allowed to complain.
A little childish, and none of my business, but I can make a confident prediction. Someone, somewhere will be discovered to be harmed and the sides will argue because they won't believe facts anyway. It's called politics.
There was already the case that a woman was raped in a hospital. And told that since there were no men on the ward, it didn't happen.
Germany's new defence minister Pistorius in his first TV inerview tonight said: "I'm not an expert on military strategy, I'm the defence minister". The entire tragedy of German defence policy in a single sentence on his first day in office. Not bad
Only the male to female changes are seen as dangerous - because they threaten women-only spaces. As a male, it's probably none of my business.
One side claim they can be a danger, the other side that they are all lovely people and the danger is non-existent. Hmm, my experience of humanity is that there's always someone who will take advantage, even if the risk is small. Ah, but it's worthwhile say the supporters, therefore no one should be allowed to complain.
A little childish, and none of my business, but I can make a confident prediction. Someone, somewhere will be discovered to be harmed and the sides will argue because they won't believe facts anyway. It's called politics.
Because men are about twice as strong as women. And about three times more violent.
Also, if there is a sexual assault, and also more generally, they are not generally the ones who get pregnant.
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
The sharp fall in trend productivity growth after the 2008 financial crisis is fairly universal but the UK is I think the worst-hit among major economies. Figuring out what has happened and fixing it should be our #1 goal in terms of economic policy. I lived in the US for five years. There was lots I loved about the place and lots I hated. On balance I prefer it here, hence we came home. Ultimately like the guy on Twitter I just found it too brutal. But there is a vigour and confidence there that is very appealing.
Yes I agree. The GFC of 2007-8 was when the UK economic model fell apart and no one has a clue how to fix it, except “massive amounts of immigration” - or so it seems to me. And I am far from convinced this is a solution. It probably adds to the problems
In retrospect, the Brexit vote was a cry of anguish in the face of all this
The model fell apart long before 2008. It's just the lack of genuine productivity improvement was hidden by increasing levels of debt. After 2008, the debt markets got more risk averse and we couldn't do that any more.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
Why not tax by, say, weight times mileage (as in miles driven by the vehicle)? Easily determinable, difficult to fake, and reasonably fair.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
Why not tax by, say, weight times mileage (as in miles driven by the vehicle)? Easily determinable, difficult to fake, and reasonably fair.
Given climate change is a very big problem, and moving more people to electric cars a good thing, why not just pay for road maintenance by increasing pollution taxes and give non-polluting drivers a break?
Only the male to female changes are seen as dangerous - because they threaten women-only spaces. As a male, it's probably none of my business.
One side claim they can be a danger, the other side that they are all lovely people and the danger is non-existent. Hmm, my experience of humanity is that there's always someone who will take advantage, even if the risk is small. Ah, but it's worthwhile say the supporters, therefore no one should be allowed to complain.
A little childish, and none of my business, but I can make a confident prediction. Someone, somewhere will be discovered to be harmed and the sides will argue because they won't believe facts anyway. It's called politics.
Because men are about twice as strong as women. And about three times more violent.
Comparisons of official MOJ statistics from March / April 2019 (most recent official count of transgender prisoners):
76 sex offenders out of 129 transwomen = 58.9%
125 sex offenders out of 3812 women in prison = 3.3%
13234 sex offenders out of 78781 men in prison = 16.8%
Note, I do not believe that this illustrates that trans women are a greater threat to natal women than men, but clearly men who identify as trans women are. Hence why safeguarding access to GRCs is important - something the Scottish government repeatedly ignored.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
Why not tax by, say, weight times mileage (as in miles driven by the vehicle)? Easily determinable, difficult to fake, and reasonably fair.
The polling suggests that people really, really don't trust the politicians over tax on road vehicles. It was toxic at Community Charge/Poll Tax levels.
IIRC focus groups that dived into this, had a common theme - "They'll use this to raise the tax on cars and try and hide it."
"Because men are about twice as strong as women. And about three times more violent."
Testosterone has a lot to answer for. Pesky facts, which can be believed or not. You're muddying the water with your own biases. Which I share, but I put down to my scientific background.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
Why not tax by, say, weight times mileage (as in miles driven by the vehicle)? Easily determinable, difficult to fake, and reasonably fair.
Given climate change is a very big problem, and moving more people to electric cars a good thing, why not just pay for road maintenance by increasing pollution taxes and give non-polluting drivers a break?
Well, yes, I'd go with that, but eventually you're going to run out of petrol/diesel vehicles to tax, and EVs are a long way from being completely non-polluting.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
Why not tax by, say, weight times mileage (as in miles driven by the vehicle)? Easily determinable, difficult to fake, and reasonably fair.
Given climate change is a very big problem, and moving more people to electric cars a good thing, why not just pay for road maintenance by increasing pollution taxes and give non-polluting drivers a break?
A non-trivial amount of pollution does still come from electric cars directly (e.g. tyres) and indirectly (road construction and maintenance).
Germany's new defence minister Pistorius in his first TV inerview tonight said: "I'm not an expert on military strategy, I'm the defence minister". The entire tragedy of German defence policy in a single sentence on his first day in office. Not bad
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Japan and South Korea. Though neither are immigration friendly.
And Japan has a rather unique debt profile.
Absolutely not. Japan has been sliding down the median income graph for decades, it is a demographic disaster area, and they are all - still - wearing masks
South Korea’s demographic trajectory is even worse - perhaps the worst on earth - and they are quite definitely menaced by war
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
Why not tax by, say, weight times mileage (as in miles driven by the vehicle)? Easily determinable, difficult to fake, and reasonably fair.
The polling suggests that people really, really don't trust the politicians over tax on road vehicles. It was toxic at Community Charge/Poll Tax levels.
IIRC focus groups that dived into this, had a common theme - "They'll use this to raise the tax on cars and try and hide it."
People don't trust politicians over anything, but the politicians still have to make policies! It seems obvious that petrol/diesel taxes will need to be replaced with something else at some point.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
Why not tax by, say, weight times mileage (as in miles driven by the vehicle)? Easily determinable, difficult to fake, and reasonably fair.
Given climate change is a very big problem, and moving more people to electric cars a good thing, why not just pay for road maintenance by increasing pollution taxes and give non-polluting drivers a break?
A non-trivial amount of pollution does still come from electric cars directly (e.g. tyres) and indirectly (road construction and maintenance).
The tires thing actually has a funny coda. Due to the requirement for cooling, electric cars need a lot of air. Which they filter. Tests have shown that at moderate traffic densities and above, the electric cars will be be hoovering up more particles than they produce.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Japan and South Korea. Though neither are immigration friendly.
And Japan has a rather unique debt profile.
Absolutely not. Japan has been sliding down the median income graph for decades, it is a demographic disaster area, and they are all - still - wearing masks
South Korea’s demographic trajectory is even worse - perhaps the worst on earth - and they are quite definitely menaced by war
Most western (and many non-western) countries now have appalling demographics.
Interestingly, the UK’s are not as bad as most, and yet the country is still fucked. This, it seems to me, takes some effort.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
Why not tax by, say, weight times mileage (as in miles driven by the vehicle)? Easily determinable, difficult to fake, and reasonably fair.
Given climate change is a very big problem, and moving more people to electric cars a good thing, why not just pay for road maintenance by increasing pollution taxes and give non-polluting drivers a break?
A non-trivial amount of pollution does still come from electric cars directly (e.g. tyres) and indirectly (road construction and maintenance).
So tax tyres and road construction. And I don't just mean polluting vehicles. I mean polluters more generally.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
The British completely wiped out the indigenous Tasmanians in the Black War. How would you characterise that? A little local difficulty? The nation state constructed by the invading regime definitely should not be celebrating it with a day off.
Australian history is more nuanced than that. The idea the aborigines were “noble savages” living in peace with their neighbours and local ecology is bollocks. Warfare between mobs and tribes was rife. Only Australia’s vastness prevented them wiping each other out
The Australian megafauna were not so lucky. The aborigines killed so many they all went extinct
In Tasmania - which was indeed horrible - nearly all the tragic killing was done by freed convicts. Commonly Irish
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Japan and South Korea. Though neither are immigration friendly.
And Japan has a rather unique debt profile.
Absolutely not. Japan has been sliding down the median income graph for decades, it is a demographic disaster area, and they are all - still - wearing masks
South Korea’s demographic trajectory is even worse - perhaps the worst on earth - and they are quite definitely menaced by war
China's demographics are starting to look pretty sick now, too.
Germany's new defence minister Pistorius in his first TV inerview tonight said: "I'm not an expert on military strategy, I'm the defence minister". The entire tragedy of German defence policy in a single sentence on his first day in office. Not bad
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
Why not tax by, say, weight times mileage (as in miles driven by the vehicle)? Easily determinable, difficult to fake, and reasonably fair.
The polling suggests that people really, really don't trust the politicians over tax on road vehicles. It was toxic at Community Charge/Poll Tax levels.
IIRC focus groups that dived into this, had a common theme - "They'll use this to raise the tax on cars and try and hide it."
People don't trust politicians over anything, but the politicians still have to make policies! It seems obvious that petrol/diesel taxes will need to be replaced with something else at some point.
It can't be replaced by something that involves the politicians committing political suicide. Hence the slowly dying push for hydrogen....
On EV charging - unless the government bans it, charging from an ordinary household socket is possible (though slow) and can't practically be regulated.
If HMG are serious about levelling up (they're not: this is scraps of bread from the dinner table with heavy branding) then they need a Department of the Regions invested with an annual budget of £10-15bn pa to do it, nationwide.
One reason people get pissed off with politicians and foreign aid is that they're happy to defend and virtue-signal about it for a very generous budget (with plenty of sanctimony on top) but plead parsimony when it comes to opening their purse for their own people.
Matching the foreign aid budget (which is around the level you are suggesting, I think?) would be politically smart.
Better still give the regions proper devolved power to raise their own taxes and spend their own money. As happens in many of our OECD partners.
That doesn't make sense because those regions are already in the slow growth lane, allowing local governments to set higher taxes and eat it up in more bureaucracy will just make it worse. It also would have zero redistributive effect which is ultimately what any kind of levelling up fund amounts to. I think a department for regions makes a lot of sense and fund it with £15-20bn per year for smaller infrastructure projects, metro systems, airports, intercity links etc...
Swings and roundabouts, though.
A single England-wide process gives smoother transfer and might be more efficient (though writing bids isn't that efficient). But regions, cities and towns doing it for themselves maximises the "skin in the game" factor.
But the brilliance or not of the process is second to having the necessary amount of cash in the pot. So this plan isn't really going to help, is it;
Govt scrambling to head off a major red well rebellion over levelling up - ministers & officials will speak to councils which missed out to help them finesse applications for the 3rd round which will come before the next election. Story theipaper:
So they're going to put an even heavier thumb on the scales in favour of Tory constituencies ?
The entire program is a travesty. Central government deciding local priorities, in a manner either arbitrary or party political.
You thought that politicians spending money wasn't going to get political?
One of the main objections to this kind of thing, is that the "picking winners" rapidly becomes "picking the politically useful winners"
The first layer of this is simple patronage - every government tries to direct spending to the constituencies of its MPs.
The second layer is picking winners that fit with some bullshit "strategy" invented in Whitehall that doesn't actually meet reality. Hence the decades of obsession with hydrogen powered vehicles - because this would tick certain political boxes.
Hydogen is a boondoggle that the existing industry has latched onto because it protects all of their jobs as far as I can see. Everyone from the gas engineer to the oil company executive has a vested interest in pushing hydrogen, even if only to delay the switch to non-fossil fuel power as long as possible.
A civil servant told me that, at the core, the concern with electric vehicles is that the fuel is not controllable. So for taxation purposes, it is impossible to tax properly. Road tolls are politically impossible.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
Why not tax by, say, weight times mileage (as in miles driven by the vehicle)? Easily determinable, difficult to fake, and reasonably fair.
Given climate change is a very big problem, and moving more people to electric cars a good thing, why not just pay for road maintenance by increasing pollution taxes and give non-polluting drivers a break?
A non-trivial amount of pollution does still come from electric cars directly (e.g. tyres) and indirectly (road construction and maintenance).
So tax tyres and road construction. And I don't just mean polluting vehicles. I mean polluters more generally.
Loading the entire average road tax/fuel duty of ~ 30,000 miles onto tyres could have err... unwanted consequences.
Germany's new defence minister Pistorius in his first TV inerview tonight said: "I'm not an expert on military strategy, I'm the defence minister". The entire tragedy of German defence policy in a single sentence on his first day in office. Not bad
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Japan and South Korea. Though neither are immigration friendly.
And Japan has a rather unique debt profile.
Absolutely not. Japan has been sliding down the median income graph for decades, it is a demographic disaster area, and they are all - still - wearing masks
South Korea’s demographic trajectory is even worse - perhaps the worst on earth - and they are quite definitely menaced by war
China's demographics are starting to look pretty sick now, too.
Yes. On the other hand the impending AI Revolution will mean we need far fewer people. People will be a burden
So east Asia might luck out even as the UK does the stupidest thing possible (on so many levels) - encourage unprecedented levels of immigration
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Japan and South Korea. Though neither are immigration friendly.
And Japan has a rather unique debt profile.
Absolutely not. Japan has been sliding down the median income graph for decades, it is a demographic disaster area, and they are all - still - wearing masks
South Korea’s demographic trajectory is even worse - perhaps the worst on earth - and they are quite definitely menaced by war
'Menaced' ? Only in the sense they have been for seventy years. Actual fear of a major attack from the north is pretty low.
Getting decent grades in school is a far larger source of anxiety.
Only the male to female changes are seen as dangerous - because they threaten women-only spaces. As a male, it's probably none of my business.
One side claim they can be a danger, the other side that they are all lovely people and the danger is non-existent. Hmm, my experience of humanity is that there's always someone who will take advantage, even if the risk is small. Ah, but it's worthwhile say the supporters, therefore no one should be allowed to complain.
A little childish, and none of my business, but I can make a confident prediction. Someone, somewhere will be discovered to be harmed and the sides will argue because they won't believe facts anyway. It's called politics.
Because men are about twice as strong as women. And about three times more violent.
Comparisons of official MOJ statistics from March / April 2019 (most recent official count of transgender prisoners):
76 sex offenders out of 129 transwomen = 58.9%
125 sex offenders out of 3812 women in prison = 3.3%
13234 sex offenders out of 78781 men in prison = 16.8%
Note, I do not believe that this illustrates that trans women are a greater threat to natal women than men, but clearly men who identify as trans women are. Hence why safeguarding access to GRCs is important - something the Scottish government repeatedly ignored.
I’ll have to go dig up the document again, but last time I looked the policy for the prison service was that those with a GRC could go in the women’s estate /unless/ they had a conviction for any kind of sexual crime.
Which seems a sensible place for the policy to be to me? You could push this a little further in either direction, but the fundamental approach seems a sound & proporionate response to me.
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Australia has issues to do with immigration and even Australia Day is divisive now.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
Celebrating invasion day in Australia has always been divisive and it's good to see the opposition to it getting stronger.
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
Most Australians ancestors are in Australia because of Australia Day and the first European settlement there.
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
It’s probably more worthwhile, right now, to ask what major countries are doing “well”?
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia Canada Switzerland (if you see it as major) Er… Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
Japan and South Korea. Though neither are immigration friendly.
And Japan has a rather unique debt profile.
Absolutely not. Japan has been sliding down the median income graph for decades, it is a demographic disaster area, and they are all - still - wearing masks
South Korea’s demographic trajectory is even worse - perhaps the worst on earth - and they are quite definitely menaced by war
Most western (and many non-western) countries now have appalling demographics.
Interestingly, the UK’s are not as bad as most, and yet the country is still fucked. This, it seems to me, takes some effort.
When you say appalling demographics, some might say that the population is contracting back to a more sustainable level.
Comments
Keir Starmer: -8 net favourability
Rish… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1616390827651264515
EV production looks to be constrained by battery availability for the foreseeable future.
Researching George Santos for couple weeks now on and off I think this is every* name I’ve encountered him use:
Anthony Santos
George Santos
Anthony Devolder
George Anthony Devolder
George Devolder
George A.D. Santos
Anthony Zabrovsky
George Anthony Santos-Devolder
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1616080236143058946
* There are quite a few more.
“Following on from polling conducted shortly before Christmas that pointed in the same direction, today’s poll suggests that the spike in support for independence registered after the Supreme Court judgement on indyref2 has proven to be temporary. At 46%, support for Yes in today’s poll is little different from the 47% figure Survation obtained when they previously addressed the issue last August.
“Meanwhile, the poll suggests that, at 43%, support for the SNP would be well below the 50% mark that Nicola Sturgeon would like to surpass at the next general election – though it also suggests that, at present, fewer than half would vote for pro-independence parties in a Holyrood ballot too.
https://truenorth.scot/what-does-scotland-think-our-first-true-north-poll-2023/
Who did they actually appoint out of interest? I would guess one of two options, depending on who was driving the process: either 1) a civil service insider with the “right” policy background or 2) a Gove-sympathetic external appointee with “the right ideas” either from industry or a right wing thinktank.
Note that when Biden spent money on chip manufacturing, it went to existing titans in the chip manufacturing plant world.
The equivalent would be subsidising Panasonic to setup a plant in the UK.
https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Commission-on-the-UKs-Future.pdf
"We need a locally-owned and fairly-resourced prosperity plan for growth in every part of
the country, under which cities, towns and communities will take power from the
centre and use it in their communities.
Our recommendations are:
6. Towns and cities across England should be given new powers to drive growth
and champion their areas.
7. The UK needs a radically reformed suite of place-based, innovation-led R&D
programmes, with Mayors and local leaders in all parts of the UK playing a key
role in design and delivery. This should include the replacement for EU regional
funding, and future support for the Strength in Places Fund.
8. The UK Infrastructure Bank should be given an explicit mission to address
regional economic inequality in the provision of infrastructure.
9. The British Business Bank should be given a new remit to promote regional
economic equality in access to investment capital. It should do this by bridging
the equity finance gap outside of London and the South East, and should be
renamed the British Regional Investment Bank to reflect this change"
There's lots more detail in the report.
JLR were the big (only?) opportunity for BV but their electrification strategy is a bit of a shambles. Their only BEV product (I-Pace) is made in the EU.
Or Tesla, on any of the Korean manufacturers. Even the Chinese.
People charging their cars from a solar roof - as is becoming common in California - are a nightmare to such people.
https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/1616155339535126528
...Specifically, while investigators "especially scrutinized" any contacts between Politico and the court and looked closely at social media speculation about the source, they "found nothing to substantiate any of the social media allegations regarding the disclosure."
In other words, while she still cannot tell us who the leaker was, the Marshal seems to be going out of her way to tell us who the leaker was NOT: a particular law clerk for a liberal justice who was the subject of much speculation on this website and others.
Am I missing something obvious here?
On the other hand, many other countries are also quite fucked. Albeit in different ways
Coincidentally this tweet has gone viral today. A Welshman pays his first visit to the USA. Is not impressed
“My first time in the USA and I must say it is capitalism in its most naked, violent form. I didn't expect to get a culture shock, but the commodification of everything is on a level I never truly thought possible. It is the socialisation of misery and the privatisation of wealth.”
The thread beneath is rewarding
https://twitter.com/long20thcentury/status/1615739847632900096?s=46&t=LLKo_qH5EvIkpr4pMWVD6Q
Planned European production won't support electrification of all cars sold in the EU 2035, for example.
We have not lacked for discussion on here that could place Liz Truss in this category and I know my university libertarian acquaintance, the one who I'd argue with about the existence of passports not being an intolerable imposition, and who eventually had time as a moderately prominent Tory Spad, came from such a place.
And when one's political convictions are so personal, any political convictions to be fair, that can drive a very one-eyed absolutist philosophy. And libertarianism certainly has its fair share of such blind spots.
As Scotland has not yet rejoined the EU she won't be able to take full advantage of the EU custom of treating referenda as only binding if you get the result they want.
The US has little to no welfare state, very limited public housing and is the only Western nation without universal healthcare
https://www.localgov.co.uk/Heseltine-warns-RDA-abolition-was-mistake/34651
*working with sensitive data, I'm actually quite surprised they provide that level of detail - likely spot someone is non-white, so no disclosure, but knowing one person was born outside UK could be disclosive, likewise knowing religion - doen't line up in this case, but if there's one non-white person and one muslim for example then you've (likely, not certain, of course) just disclosed someone's religion.
i.e. peaceful, prosperous, unified, good healthcare, not screwed by Covid, not riven by race/migration problems, not weighed by debt or menaced by war, crime, drugs, civil strife
Australia
Canada
Switzerland (if you see it as major)
Er…
Germany PERHAPS
After that it gets tricky. There are lots of tiny countries doing well - Norway, Iceland, Qatar, UAE, Austria… but they don’t count
Have I missed anywhere?
More over 50s than average
81% born in UK
73.5% white
56% Works mainly from home
61% occupation groups 1&2.
Canada was divided over Trudeau's lockdown and is still divided over his Wokeism
I lived in the US for five years. There was lots I loved about the place and lots I hated. On balance I prefer it here, hence we came home. Ultimately like the guy on Twitter I just found it too brutal. But there is a vigour and confidence there that is very appealing.
And they have a grip on migration of which we can only dream
In retrospect, the Brexit vote was a cry of anguish in the face of all this
No respect should be shown for the commission of crimes against humanity. You can call it whatever "ism" you like, but there should not be statues to those responsible for the Nazi holocaust, or official praise for those who nuked Japan, or towns named after slaveowners, or days celebrating the invasion of Australia that preceded the commission of crimes against humanity against the indigenous population by the invaders.
https://www.ft.com/content/77f1e4fa-5c1d-4c4c-8ade-c1168250a60b
It is far leftist rubbish to compare it to the Holocaust or celebrating slavery. In fact the Victorians ensured specific areas and protections for native Aborigines.
If you refuse to celebrate Australia Day you are basically saying no Australians belong in the country except Aborigines
The other alternative would just be to tax BEVs per mile/km driven as they do in Australia.
Australia Day was a thing before 1935? Even after that, it must be a hell of a party if people were immigrating just because of it.
Only the male to female changes are seen as dangerous - because they threaten women-only spaces. As a male, it's probably none of my business.
One side claim they can be a danger, the other side that they are all lovely people and the danger is non-existent. Hmm, my experience of humanity is that there's always someone who will take advantage, even if the risk is small. Ah, but it's worthwhile say the supporters, therefore no one should be allowed to complain.
A little childish, and none of my business, but I can make a confident prediction. Someone, somewhere will be discovered to be harmed and the sides will argue because they won't believe facts anyway. It's called politics.
My own family went out there in the 19th Century gold rush, and even by then there were hardly any aborigines left in Victoria. The history of their conquest is not a pretty one.
There is a great new series on BBC set in the Outback in a part aboriginal community "Mystery Road", well worth catching on iplayer.
The current situation is that we pay them not to produce energy when there is too much but when an energy crunch comes along we end up paying 10x the normal rate to import energy from our interconnects. Energy storage is the solution to this as we reduce the need to import and no longer need to pay compensation, but because of short term thinking in National Grid and no penalties for not doing so (the cost of this is simply shuffled onto bills in full) and the desire for management to pay a 6-8% annual yield to shareholders the investment will never happen and we're going to continue paying them to shut off production of energy when there's too much and import energy at 10x the cost when there's too little.
These kinds of situations are endemic in the UK economy and for 30 or so years companies have been incentivised to pay dividends rather than prioritise capital growth. I don't know how to change that culture and it certainly won't happen overnight but at least recognising this would be a first step and neither the Tories nor Labour are talking about it let alone coming up with policies to resolve it.
Though neither are immigration friendly.
And Japan has a rather unique debt profile.
If not for European settlers Australia as is would not exist, it is now a nation of mainly European heritage with some Aborigines still there. It also still has one of the lowest population densities in the world
Different organisations have different disclosure rules, down to five people, but we tend to not release anything with fewer than ten people in a group. And nothing below LSOA level for geography (a few thousand people - we don't tend to go even near that level, because we often run into groups under 10 at that geography anyway).
For the vast majority of Australians, their country's existence is a good thing.
Certainly the electricity market can and should be addressed, since it wasn't designed to cope with the massively fluctuating price differentials between different power sources that the Ukraine situation has thrown up.
And it's completely within the power (and ability) of government to rewrite the market
rules to improve it.
https://unherd.com/2023/01/the-labour-party-has-a-woman-problem/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=4771a696ec&mc_eid=c9623a3c2f
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2023.28.3.2300001
It's not just this scenario though, the UK is becoming a nation of luddites that rejects technological advancement and productivity gains to maintain high employment levels.
Japan seems fairly contented, but it is not doing well in purely economic terms. GDP per capita is broadly flat since the mid 1990s, and total GDP flat for even longer. No other developed country has declined for so long not only absolutely but relative to its peers. As of 2021 GDP per capita in PPP was $39k ($44k in 1995!), vs $47k in the UK ($23k in 1995) and $35k in South Korea (a mere $12k in 1995). SK will overtake Japan very soon.
Yet the country is at least publicly happy, peaceful, superficially prosperous and certainly not on the verge of revolution. Perhaps Japan gives us the first and only truly positive role model for managed decline. If you're going to decline, might as well do so in a Japanese way.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/hospital-says-patient-could-not-26506744
https://twitter.com/kongoecho/status/1616175162583568384
I know what he means - and civilian control is important, but it’s unfortunately put!
76 sex offenders out of 129 transwomen = 58.9%
125 sex offenders out of 3812 women in prison = 3.3%
13234 sex offenders out of 78781 men in prison = 16.8%
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/
Note, I do not believe that this illustrates that trans women are a greater threat to natal women than men, but clearly men who identify as trans women are. Hence why safeguarding access to GRCs is important - something the Scottish government repeatedly ignored.
IIRC focus groups that dived into this, had a common theme - "They'll use this to raise the tax on cars and try and hide it."
"Because men are about twice as strong as women. And about three times more violent."
Testosterone has a lot to answer for. Pesky facts, which can be believed or not. You're muddying the water with your own biases. Which I share, but I put down to my scientific background.
The purpose of a civilian Defence Minister is *not* to be playing war-games on a sand table. He has a bunch of generals working for him to do that.
South Korea’s demographic trajectory is even worse - perhaps the worst on earth - and they are quite definitely menaced by war
Which party do voters trust the most on...? (Labour | the Conservatives)
NHS (45% | 18%)
Education (39% | 20%)
Housing (39% | 18%)
The economy (34% | 27%)
Immigration (34% | 24%)
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1616390194881597443
Interestingly, the UK’s are not as bad as most, and yet the country is still fucked. This, it seems to me, takes some effort.
The tories better hope the SMO doesn't come to an end any time soon because that's all they've got.
The Australian megafauna were not so lucky. The aborigines killed so many they all went extinct
In Tasmania - which was indeed horrible - nearly all the tragic killing was done by freed convicts. Commonly Irish
On EV charging - unless the government bans it, charging from an ordinary household socket is possible (though slow) and can't practically be regulated.
He's not the expert on the technicality of war - that's the job of the people who work for him.
So east Asia might luck out even as the UK does the stupidest thing possible (on so many levels) - encourage unprecedented levels of immigration
Only in the sense they have been for seventy years.
Actual fear of a major attack from the north is pretty low.
Getting decent grades in school is a far larger source of anxiety.
Which seems a sensible place for the policy to be to me? You could push this a little further in either direction, but the fundamental approach seems a sound & proporionate response to me.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-of-england-millennium