So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
It may be 'inconvenience' to you; but for some people the rise in the cost of energy is much more serious.
Necessity is the mother of invention though. The Ukraine war has shown this. Ask any energy analyst back in January 2022 whether Germany and the rest of Western Europe could entirely overcome its dependence on Russian oil imports in less than 12 months and they'd have said no. It would cause too much hardship and economic pain. Ask anyone in February 2020 whether an effective vaccine for a novel Coronavirus could be developed, approved and rolled out globally in less than a year and again they would have said no way. So there is a lot to be said for holding the flaming torch at the backside of the global economy and forcing change. The ultimate result would be a much richer, healthier and economically efficient world population even if the whole of climate change was an elaborate hoax.
I've argued for the non-climate change benefits of moving to a 'green' economy many times on here.
But the move away from Russian oil and gas, whilst necessary, *has* caused hardship and economic pain. Lots of it, in fact. I'm pleased that we're doing it, but it was a forced move - and I doubt there will be much CO2 reduction because of the change. Indeed, with Germany moving back to coal, there might be increases.
The lesson I took from the struggles this year was that we’d left ourselves over dependent on gas in the first place - the energy transition in domestic heating we are now talking about (and addressing our woeful insulation) could have been started a decade ago and we’d be in a far better position to combat Russia.
Germany on the other hand shouldn’t have insisted on such a contrary position on nuclear power.
Haven't these schemes been going on for many years already?
In my ideal world, we'd have a wide variety of energy sources: wind, tidal, wave, solar, nuclear and, yes, gas. Preferably with more local generation rather than the one-big-plant idea that took off post-WW2. I'd also make energy storage a priority (though that's a massive issue atm without a good technical solution).
I don't want us to go back to relying on just one form of energy, especially if that comes from abroad.
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Or, CPTTP only reminds everyone of the catastrophic Truss AuzNZ farming deal. The direction of travel is back to reality - accepting that the EEA is our biggest market and despite the damage we have done to trade its primacy isn't under threat.
Catastrophic?
The Truss AusNZ farming deal is absolutely fantastic. Cheaper, high-quality food for the public and more competition for our farmers to lift their socks . . . what's not to like, unless you're a protectionist who thinks looking after producer interests matters more than the public?
You are pretty much the only person of that opinion. Even the ministers responsible accept that it is a disaster for British farming and are saying so.
Then again, as you are on record repeatedly posting that farms should close and the land be used for IIRC "more productive" uses, its no wonder you think it absolutely fantastic.
One former minister as far as I know, appealing to the producer interest lobby, is saying so. He's wrong. And plenty of people agree with me that cheap, high-quality food is good for the consumer, even if producer squealing gets more attention.
If you're such a big fan of protectionism why don't we close the Channel Tunnel, put tariffs on European goods, and eat British-farmed tomatoes instead of Spanish-farmed ones? What's the difference between importing food from Britain and importing food from Australia or New Zealand?
We absolutely should be promoting British produce - as the French and Spanish do. Yet we have seen an accelerating decline in production numbers. We saw a capacity squeeze in the EEA mean that the UK was largely cut-off from imports - hence the lack of availability. Has we even as much domestic production as we had a decade ago we would have ridden the gap without much of an issue.
Sadly we have slashed subsidy for our producers and the EEA haven't. We have made farm labour scarce and expensive and the EU haven't. No wonder that even "let them eat Turnips" sneering was met with "we've stopped growing enough of them" from an industry which is truly fucked off with fuckwittery from DEFRA and their keyboard warrior clueless ideologue fanbois like your good self.
Since you're worried about subsidies and worried about competition from New Zealand I propose a compromise. Lets set subsidies at the same level New Zealand does, so we can compete on a level playing field.
For a true level playing field that would have to be combined with the same average farm size, the same planning regulations and the same population density. We have the challenge here that farming has to coexist with 65 million people, a marginal climate and in many places marginal soils.
The economically efficient answer would possibly be to limit farming to a few areas of East Anglia, Vale of Evesham and the East Midlands and rewild or build housing on the rest, but of course that's a tricky sell.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Or, CPTTP only reminds everyone of the catastrophic Truss AuzNZ farming deal. The direction of travel is back to reality - accepting that the EEA is our biggest market and despite the damage we have done to trade its primacy isn't under threat.
I have no problem with a closer relationship with theEU as is evidenced in many of my posts but joining the largest trading block in the world is the future
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
Isn't Isabel regarded as a bit of a stunner to gentlemen of a certain age? Perhaps Matt is one of those chaps who lets his aesthetic judgement rule his brains.
Didn't he already have his hands full during the pandemic?
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Blimey. Talk about hope over experience Big-G!
Might, might not. The future isn't ours to tell, after all.
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Blimey. Talk about hope over experience Big-G!
Well yes, some will never give up their hope of joining the EU but membership of the CPTTP is not compatible with membership of the EU
Which, one suspects, is the key attraction for some people. After all, the UK has FTAs with most of the big economies of CPTTP, as does the EU.
However, compared with the great national debate over joining the EEC, then over leaving the EU, this one does seem to be rather sneaking under the radar. And whilst everyone would like a break from Eurotalk, I'm not sure we should cut it off as an option for future Britain quite so quickly. Implying that a vote in 2016 must stand forever doesn't seem like a nice thing to do.
In a democracy, shouldn't we, you know, discuss things a bit? And accept that the possibility of changing our mind is a good thing?
A referendum on joining CPTTP would be interesting. It would be funny to see remainers suggesting we keep out of something and leavers suggesting we go into it. Then I suppose you'd get smaller amounts with opposite views on both sides.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
I notice @hyufd didn't take me up on my challenge yesterday namely:
"Let's see if you have the courage of your convictions. Do you think Starmer was incompetent or negligent or worse deliberately avoided prosecuting Saville? Go on do it properly. No skimming around the edges, libel him properly.
Or were you just smearing him by unjustified association?"
To be honest he could do because Starmer isn't going to waste his time suing every tom, dick and harry that libels him.
This business of lying about someone, because someone on the other side lied about someone on your side belongs in the primary school playground. hyufd antics are incredibly childish.
Would HYUFD qualify as a Tom or a Dick or a Harry?
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
I notice @hyufd didn't take me up on my challenge yesterday namely:
"Let's see if you have the courage of your convictions. Do you think Starmer was incompetent or negligent or worse deliberately avoided prosecuting Saville? Go on do it properly. No skimming around the edges, libel him properly.
Or were you just smearing him by unjustified association?"
To be honest he could do because Starmer isn't going to waste his time suing every tom, dick and harry that libels him.
This business of lying about someone, because someone on the other side lied about someone on your side belongs in the primary school playground. hyufd antics are incredibly childish.
Would HYUFD qualify as a Tom or a Dick or a Harry?
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Blimey. Talk about hope over experience Big-G!
Might, might not. The future isn't ours to tell, after all.
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Blimey. Talk about hope over experience Big-G!
Well yes, some will never give up their hope of joining the EU but membership of the CPTTP is not compatible with membership of the EU
Which, one suspects, is the key attraction for some people. After all, the UK has FTAs with most of the big economies of CPTTP, as does the EU.
However, compared with the great national debate over joining the EEC, then over leaving the EU, this one does seem to be rather sneaking under the radar. And whilst everyone would like a break from Eurotalk, I'm not sure we should cut it off as an option for future Britain quite so quickly. Implying that a vote in 2016 must stand forever doesn't seem like a nice thing to do.
In a democracy, shouldn't we, you know, discuss things a bit? And accept that the possibility of changing our mind is a good thing?
A referendum on joining CPTTP would be interesting. It would be funny to see remainers suggesting we keep out of something and leavers suggesting we go into it. Then I suppose you'd get smaller amounts with opposite views on both sides.
But the CPTPP is functionally different to the EU, which is why many Free Trade Leavers support the CPTPP but not the EU.
The CPTPP is what the EU could/should have been in my eyes. Its a free trade agreement but sans politics and it doesn't prevent you from unilaterally signing other free trade agreements too.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
I notice @hyufd didn't take me up on my challenge yesterday namely:
"Let's see if you have the courage of your convictions. Do you think Starmer was incompetent or negligent or worse deliberately avoided prosecuting Saville? Go on do it properly. No skimming around the edges, libel him properly.
Or were you just smearing him by unjustified association?"
To be honest he could do because Starmer isn't going to waste his time suing every tom, dick and harry that libels him.
This business of lying about someone, because someone on the other side lied about someone on your side belongs in the primary school playground. hyufd antics are incredibly childish.
Would HYUFD qualify as a Tom or a Dick or a Harry?
I always saw him as more of a Tarquin myself.
Tarquin Ponsonby-Frithe.
(Not my name for HYU - a character in an old Avengers episode I think)
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
We need to pursue growth via clean technologies. End of story. Any notions of degrowth are ridiculous nonsense, technology is both the cause of and solution to life's problems.
Yep. Improvement in technology is our only way out of this, but it strikes me as extremely unlikely we'll get there in time. And, as you rightly point out, degrowth is completely unpalatable to both western and developing nations. So we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, where there is clearly going to be substantial climate change over the next 50 years or so, which is going to present its own problems in the form of mass migration etc.
There was a recent academic paper published in the UK that suggested the way to fix global warming is rationing. Rationing petrol, limiting long haul flights, even giving people a non-tradeable 'carbon allowance' on a credit-card style carbon card. Do that and there *will* be riots, and I'll be out there with the rioters. It's proper "you will eat ze bugs" stuff. It's utterly dystopian, but this is where the bien pensant intelligentsia is starting to coalesce.
Squint hard enough at the horizon, and you can see where all of this stuff will lead in twenty, thirty years time.
We aren't struck between a rock and a hard place, because degrowth would never do anything anyway.
Driving a low fuel efficiency 5% less doesn't get you to net zero, as you still have 95% of the emissions being released. Flying a bit less doesn't get you there either, as you still have almost all of the emissions there too. Having fewer children won't get you there, since the overwhelming majority who'd be alive in 2050 are already alive today anyway.
This is where "Green" fanatics are completely ungreen and unscientific. They've got the wrong solution to the right problem. Trying to tackle climate change by consuming less is about as successful as trying to tackle obesity by eating one fewer sweet per week.
We need a wholesale transformation to tackle climate change and the only solution to that is science and technology. Not driving less, but driving clean. Not consuming less, but consuming clean. Not flying less, but flying clean. Clean technologies, not fewer people or fewer commodities.
That's pure entitlement. Yes, we'll tackle climate change, but only if I'm not inconvenienced in any way. Otherwise, sorry world.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Thing is the alternative to having noisy and annoying campaigners (on both sides, see the USA) is to silence them, which is not a good idea in a democracy.
Beyond the noise it's a long tradition of western democracies that single issue campaigners make a lot of noise, put plenty of noses out of joint, but tend also to force mainstream politicians to start engaging on issues - take Insulate Britain for example, or the Hillsborough campaign.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
It also shows that both the US and UK are willing to take active steps to interdict Russian supply.
If they were on a sambuk in the Gulf of Oman then they weren't going to Russia unless HYUFD was OC Logisitics. Bound for the Houthis in Yemen.
Presumably anything for Russia is shipped across the Caspian or flown? Can't imagine it goes by land given the countries in the way.
I would ask if we take the same attitude on arms shipments by the Saudis, but I realise it would just be pointless sarcasm.
IRGC has operational control of multiple cargo operators (Fars Air, Saha) that fly to Moscow several times a week. Georgia doesn't even make them go the long way round.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
I notice @hyufd didn't take me up on my challenge yesterday namely:
"Let's see if you have the courage of your convictions. Do you think Starmer was incompetent or negligent or worse deliberately avoided prosecuting Saville? Go on do it properly. No skimming around the edges, libel him properly.
Or were you just smearing him by unjustified association?"
To be honest he could do because Starmer isn't going to waste his time suing every tom, dick and harry that libels him.
This business of lying about someone, because someone on the other side lied about someone on your side belongs in the primary school playground. hyufd antics are incredibly childish.
Would HYUFD qualify as a Tom or a Dick or a Harry?
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Aren't the insulating chemicals in offshore wind very polluting as well though?
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
Isn't Isabel regarded as a bit of a stunner to gentlemen of a certain age? Perhaps Matt is one of those chaps who lets his aesthetic judgement rule his brains.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
We need to pursue growth via clean technologies. End of story. Any notions of degrowth are ridiculous nonsense, technology is both the cause of and solution to life's problems.
Yep. Improvement in technology is our only way out of this, but it strikes me as extremely unlikely we'll get there in time. And, as you rightly point out, degrowth is completely unpalatable to both western and developing nations. So we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, where there is clearly going to be substantial climate change over the next 50 years or so, which is going to present its own problems in the form of mass migration etc.
There was a recent academic paper published in the UK that suggested the way to fix global warming is rationing. Rationing petrol, limiting long haul flights, even giving people a non-tradeable 'carbon allowance' on a credit-card style carbon card. Do that and there *will* be riots, and I'll be out there with the rioters. It's proper "you will eat ze bugs" stuff. It's utterly dystopian, but this is where the bien pensant intelligentsia is starting to coalesce.
Squint hard enough at the horizon, and you can see where all of this stuff will lead in twenty, thirty years time.
We aren't struck between a rock and a hard place, because degrowth would never do anything anyway.
Driving a low fuel efficiency 5% less doesn't get you to net zero, as you still have 95% of the emissions being released. Flying a bit less doesn't get you there either, as you still have almost all of the emissions there too. Having fewer children won't get you there, since the overwhelming majority who'd be alive in 2050 are already alive today anyway.
This is where "Green" fanatics are completely ungreen and unscientific. They've got the wrong solution to the right problem. Trying to tackle climate change by consuming less is about as successful as trying to tackle obesity by eating one fewer sweet per week.
We need a wholesale transformation to tackle climate change and the only solution to that is science and technology. Not driving less, but driving clean. Not consuming less, but consuming clean. Not flying less, but flying clean. Clean technologies, not fewer people or fewer commodities.
That's pure entitlement. Yes, we'll tackle climate change, but only if I'm not inconvenienced in any way. Otherwise, sorry world.
No, its not, its reality.
Driving less doesn't tackle climate change. The only thing that would tackle climate change is either driving clean (what I propose) or never driving (nobody sane is proposing that).
Flying less doesn't tackle climate change. The only thing that would tackle climate change is either flying clean (what I propose) or never flying (nobody sane is proposing that).
Having fewer babies doesn't tackle climate change, since the people alive today will remain alive and the fewer children born will also be alive. Only mass murder of billions of people would affect climate change and nobody sane is proposing that.
Pissing about at the edges consuming slightly less may make you feel all warm and fuzzy but it does Jack Shit for the environment. Its like reducing your calorie consumption from 4500 to 4450 per day and thinking you'll no longer be obese.
Only wholesale transformational change will tackle climate change, not small and meaningless gestures. And that wholesale transformational change can only come - and is coming - from science and technology.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
We need to pursue growth via clean technologies. End of story. Any notions of degrowth are ridiculous nonsense, technology is both the cause of and solution to life's problems.
Yep. Improvement in technology is our only way out of this, but it strikes me as extremely unlikely we'll get there in time. And, as you rightly point out, degrowth is completely unpalatable to both western and developing nations. So we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, where there is clearly going to be substantial climate change over the next 50 years or so, which is going to present its own problems in the form of mass migration etc.
There was a recent academic paper published in the UK that suggested the way to fix global warming is rationing. Rationing petrol, limiting long haul flights, even giving people a non-tradeable 'carbon allowance' on a credit-card style carbon card. Do that and there *will* be riots, and I'll be out there with the rioters. It's proper "you will eat ze bugs" stuff. It's utterly dystopian, but this is where the bien pensant intelligentsia is starting to coalesce.
Squint hard enough at the horizon, and you can see where all of this stuff will lead in twenty, thirty years time.
We aren't struck between a rock and a hard place, because degrowth would never do anything anyway.
Driving a low fuel efficiency 5% less doesn't get you to net zero, as you still have 95% of the emissions being released. Flying a bit less doesn't get you there either, as you still have almost all of the emissions there too. Having fewer children won't get you there, since the overwhelming majority who'd be alive in 2050 are already alive today anyway.
This is where "Green" fanatics are completely ungreen and unscientific. They've got the wrong solution to the right problem. Trying to tackle climate change by consuming less is about as successful as trying to tackle obesity by eating one fewer sweet per week.
We need a wholesale transformation to tackle climate change and the only solution to that is science and technology. Not driving less, but driving clean. Not consuming less, but consuming clean. Not flying less, but flying clean. Clean technologies, not fewer people or fewer commodities.
That's pure entitlement. Yes, we'll tackle climate change, but only if I'm not inconvenienced in any way. Otherwise, sorry world.
There are some Greens who are rather upset at the technological solutions to climate change. As one put it to me - "Net zero means unconstrained future growth."
It is perfectly possible to get to Net Zero, without dismantling human society.
In a statement issued this morning, Hancock said: “I am hugely disappointed and sad at the massive betrayal and breach of trust by Isabel Oakeshott. I am also sorry for the impact on the very many people — political colleagues, civil servants and friends — who worked hard with me to get through the pandemic and save lives.
“There is absolutely no public interest case for this huge breach. All the materials for the book have already been made available to the inquiry, which is the right and only place for everything to be considered properly and the right lessons to be learnt. As we have seen, releasing them in this way gives a partial, biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda.
“Isabel and I had worked closely together for more than a year on my book, based on legal confidentiality and a process approved by the Cabinet Office. Isabel repeatedly reiterated the importance of trust throughout, and then broke that trust.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Aren't the insulating chemicals in offshore wind very polluting as well though?
All form of wind power are catastrophic to flying creatures, not through direct hits but because of the far greater extent of pressure waves created by the blades. They might save the planet - but at the cost of bats and birds.
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Or, CPTTP only reminds everyone of the catastrophic Truss AuzNZ farming deal. The direction of travel is back to reality - accepting that the EEA is our biggest market and despite the damage we have done to trade its primacy isn't under threat.
I have no problem with a closer relationship with theEU as is evidenced in many of my posts but joining the largest trading block in the world is the future
Or it could be like me joining Pebble Beach Golf Club, which is arguably one of the best playing courses in the world, when I live near Cowbridge.
What has happened to the US (and UK) recession? Basically, the jobs market proved much more resilient than anticipated, just as we have seen in the UK. The tech redundancy wave in the US was more of an outlier and less indicative of a falling demand for labour. Here too, we have seen unemployment remaining stubbornly low. There has been a reduction in vacancies but they remain very high.
I remember Ronald Reagan's old aphorism. A recession is when your neighbour loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And a recovery, he said pointing at Jimmy Carter, is when you lose yours.
If we get through a bumpy year with no real uptick in unemployment that might do the Tories more good than anything else.
I remember all the predictions in Autumn last year by all and sundry on here of an economic armageddon in 2023. I wonder when thats going to happen.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
I notice @hyufd didn't take me up on my challenge yesterday namely:
"Let's see if you have the courage of your convictions. Do you think Starmer was incompetent or negligent or worse deliberately avoided prosecuting Saville? Go on do it properly. No skimming around the edges, libel him properly.
Or were you just smearing him by unjustified association?"
To be honest he could do because Starmer isn't going to waste his time suing every tom, dick and harry that libels him.
This business of lying about someone, because someone on the other side lied about someone on your side belongs in the primary school playground. hyufd antics are incredibly childish.
Would HYUFD qualify as a Tom or a Dick or a Harry?
I always saw him as more of a Tarquin myself.
Tarquin Ponsonby-Frithe.
(Not my name for HYU - a character in an old Avengers episode I think)
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Aren't the insulating chemicals in offshore wind very polluting as well though?
All form of wind power are catastrophic to flying creatures, not through direct hits but because of the far greater extent of pressure waves created by the blades. They might save the planet - but at the cost of bats and birds.
As someone who isn't a vegan, I'm quite prepared to put human concerns ahead of animal concerns. If the bats and birds get affected, they'll have to adapt.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
We need to pursue growth via clean technologies. End of story. Any notions of degrowth are ridiculous nonsense, technology is both the cause of and solution to life's problems.
Yep. Improvement in technology is our only way out of this, but it strikes me as extremely unlikely we'll get there in time. And, as you rightly point out, degrowth is completely unpalatable to both western and developing nations. So we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, where there is clearly going to be substantial climate change over the next 50 years or so, which is going to present its own problems in the form of mass migration etc.
There was a recent academic paper published in the UK that suggested the way to fix global warming is rationing. Rationing petrol, limiting long haul flights, even giving people a non-tradeable 'carbon allowance' on a credit-card style carbon card. Do that and there *will* be riots, and I'll be out there with the rioters. It's proper "you will eat ze bugs" stuff. It's utterly dystopian, but this is where the bien pensant intelligentsia is starting to coalesce.
Squint hard enough at the horizon, and you can see where all of this stuff will lead in twenty, thirty years time.
We aren't struck between a rock and a hard place, because degrowth would never do anything anyway.
Driving a low fuel efficiency 5% less doesn't get you to net zero, as you still have 95% of the emissions being released. Flying a bit less doesn't get you there either, as you still have almost all of the emissions there too. Having fewer children won't get you there, since the overwhelming majority who'd be alive in 2050 are already alive today anyway.
This is where "Green" fanatics are completely ungreen and unscientific. They've got the wrong solution to the right problem. Trying to tackle climate change by consuming less is about as successful as trying to tackle obesity by eating one fewer sweet per week.
We need a wholesale transformation to tackle climate change and the only solution to that is science and technology. Not driving less, but driving clean. Not consuming less, but consuming clean. Not flying less, but flying clean. Clean technologies, not fewer people or fewer commodities.
That's pure entitlement. Yes, we'll tackle climate change, but only if I'm not inconvenienced in any way. Otherwise, sorry world.
There are some Greens who are rather upset at the technological solutions to climate change. As one put it to me - "Net zero means unconstrained future growth."
It is perfectly possible to get to Net Zero, without dismantling human society.
We can do 45% of Britain's entire commitment by spreading basalt on fields apparently.
Oakshott has admitted she breached a NDA. Presumably she will rely on a public interest defence, but as there is a public inquiry and Hancock says these Whatsapps have been disclosed to the inquiry (do we believe him?) that will be a lame defence.
Is it a defence?
Presumably the Telegraph will pay her costs and damages.
Can damages be punitive in such a case to prevent people who know they are protected by an employer be applied?
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
On almost all political topics countrywide the dominant factor seems to be age. More than geography, more than income levels or education.
And among the political tics of the old one thing stands out above all others. Having just come off a binge watch of series 2 of Clarkson's Farm I have concluded the biggest menace stalking this island is reflexive NIMBYism.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
Isn't Isabel regarded as a bit of a stunner to gentlemen of a certain age? Perhaps Matt is one of those chaps who lets his aesthetic judgement rule his brains.
Didn't he already have his hands full during the pandemic?
Luckily he was able to call on assistance with his brief[s]
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Aren't the insulating chemicals in offshore wind very polluting as well though?
All form of wind power are catastrophic to flying creatures, not through direct hits but because of the far greater extent of pressure waves created by the blades. They might save the planet - but at the cost of bats and birds.
Larger turbines (offshore) can turn slower. Also, the sea is not uniformly full of wildlife. Nor is the land, for that matter. Placing the turbines so they are where there are few birds is perfectly possible.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
On almost all political topics countrywide the dominant factor seems to be age. More than geography, more than income levels or education.
And among the political tics of the old one thing stands out above all others. Having just come off a binge watch of series 2 of Clarkson's Farm I have concluded the biggest menace stalking this island is reflexive NIMBYism.
Not on Brexit, that was education level. Over 65s with degrees mostly voted Remain, under 35s who left school with few or no qualifications mostly voted Leave
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
What has happened to the US (and UK) recession? Basically, the jobs market proved much more resilient than anticipated, just as we have seen in the UK. The tech redundancy wave in the US was more of an outlier and less indicative of a falling demand for labour. Here too, we have seen unemployment remaining stubbornly low. There has been a reduction in vacancies but they remain very high.
I remember Ronald Reagan's old aphorism. A recession is when your neighbour loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And a recovery, he said pointing at Jimmy Carter, is when you lose yours.
If we get through a bumpy year with no real uptick in unemployment that might do the Tories more good than anything else.
I remember all the predictions in Autumn last year by all and sundry on here of an economic armageddon in 2023. I wonder when thats going to happen.
You were posting a few weeks ago about how your pub was doing a roaring trade. Mine has gone into administration, which to put it mildly is bloody annoying.
What has happened to the US (and UK) recession? Basically, the jobs market proved much more resilient than anticipated, just as we have seen in the UK. The tech redundancy wave in the US was more of an outlier and less indicative of a falling demand for labour. Here too, we have seen unemployment remaining stubbornly low. There has been a reduction in vacancies but they remain very high.
I remember Ronald Reagan's old aphorism. A recession is when your neighbour loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And a recovery, he said pointing at Jimmy Carter, is when you lose yours.
If we get through a bumpy year with no real uptick in unemployment that might do the Tories more good than anything else.
I remember all the predictions in Autumn last year by all and sundry on here of an economic armageddon in 2023. I wonder when thats going to happen.
Not by me. I forecast that the year would be flat with a very modest recovery at the back end. Although I acknowledged and still acknowledge that a technical recession is possible I thought and think it unlikely. At the moment I am looking a shade pessimistic. It will be interesting to see what revisals there are in the OBR forecast in the budget and what room for manoeuvre that gives the Chancellor.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
In the novels of Jasper Fforde the country is run by the Common Sense party resulting in the build up of a dangerous stupidity surplus.
The opposition Prevailing Wind party come up with several grand and ludicrous schemes to use up the excess stupidity.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
Like sex on Pornhub though, its all relative.
Housing is more affordable up here than in Southern England, which is a relatively good thing, but its less affordable than it used to be up here, which is a bad thing.
We need more houses up here and to tackle the affordability issues here, not just rest on relative laurels.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
From what we've seen of their Twitter ops, I think Ukraine has excellent supplies of locally-sourced sarcasm.
Yesterday I said nobody would touch Oakshott with a barge pole again, to which several of you replied 'they said that the last time'. Yep I have looked those up and I have liked each and every one of those posts that I noticed who put me right.
It is difficult to believe people can be so stupid to confide in her.
There is a public interest case sometime and possibly this time, but she is clearly very untrustworthy and a nasty piece of work.
The Chris Huhne/Vicky Price cases is interesting. It is difficult to understand how people get themselves into these positions. I can only assume they think it is a little white lie and its not important and the issue spirals out of their control. Jeffery Archer similarly. I have sympathy in both cases, but if you are going to commit perjury you have to take the consequences. I'm sure both thought at each stage they had to go on with the deception, but if they had their time again would never have started it. In the case of Chris Huhne why the hell didn't he just take the driving ban. He had a bucket load of points already. It was just a matter of time and why did it matter so much. Bonkers.
It seems to have started a chain reaction at Sky with Burley and others asking those interviewed if they would like their What's App messages displayed in public, and each and everyone unanimously said no
The problem with this is that, apart from a terrible betrayal of trust and by her own admission a beach of the non disclosure notice, each and everyone of us and every political party would not like their private What's app messages put in the public domain
We have to remember that Oakeshott is the partner of Tice of Reform which has an anti lockdown agenda and she thinks this will help their cause, when as serious politicians are saying the public enquiry is the correct place for this to be revealed
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
We need to pursue growth via clean technologies. End of story. Any notions of degrowth are ridiculous nonsense, technology is both the cause of and solution to life's problems.
Yep. Improvement in technology is our only way out of this, but it strikes me as extremely unlikely we'll get there in time. And, as you rightly point out, degrowth is completely unpalatable to both western and developing nations. So we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, where there is clearly going to be substantial climate change over the next 50 years or so, which is going to present its own problems in the form of mass migration etc.
There was a recent academic paper published in the UK that suggested the way to fix global warming is rationing. Rationing petrol, limiting long haul flights, even giving people a non-tradeable 'carbon allowance' on a credit-card style carbon card. Do that and there *will* be riots, and I'll be out there with the rioters. It's proper "you will eat ze bugs" stuff. It's utterly dystopian, but this is where the bien pensant intelligentsia is starting to coalesce.
Squint hard enough at the horizon, and you can see where all of this stuff will lead in twenty, thirty years time.
We aren't struck between a rock and a hard place, because degrowth would never do anything anyway.
Driving a low fuel efficiency 5% less doesn't get you to net zero, as you still have 95% of the emissions being released. Flying a bit less doesn't get you there either, as you still have almost all of the emissions there too. Having fewer children won't get you there, since the overwhelming majority who'd be alive in 2050 are already alive today anyway.
This is where "Green" fanatics are completely ungreen and unscientific. They've got the wrong solution to the right problem. Trying to tackle climate change by consuming less is about as successful as trying to tackle obesity by eating one fewer sweet per week.
We need a wholesale transformation to tackle climate change and the only solution to that is science and technology. Not driving less, but driving clean. Not consuming less, but consuming clean. Not flying less, but flying clean. Clean technologies, not fewer people or fewer commodities.
That's pure entitlement. Yes, we'll tackle climate change, but only if I'm not inconvenienced in any way. Otherwise, sorry world.
No, its not, its reality.
Driving less doesn't tackle climate change. The only thing that would tackle climate change is either driving clean (what I propose) or never driving (nobody sane is proposing that).
Flying less doesn't tackle climate change. The only thing that would tackle climate change is either flying clean (what I propose) or never flying (nobody sane is proposing that).
Having fewer babies doesn't tackle climate change, since the people alive today will remain alive and the fewer children born will also be alive. Only mass murder of billions of people would affect climate change and nobody sane is proposing that.
Pissing about at the edges consuming slightly less may make you feel all warm and fuzzy but it does Jack Shit for the environment. Its like reducing your calorie consumption from 4500 to 4450 per day and thinking you'll no longer be obese.
Only wholesale transformational change will tackle climate change, not small and meaningless gestures. And that wholesale transformational change can only come - and is coming - from science and technology.
That's a false dichotomy. Yes, of course we should promote technological solutions as far as possible. Ideally we would indeed be able to save the world and continue to improve our standard of living. That would be great. But it may be that it is impossible to achieve the necessary changes by purely technological means, and then lifestyle changes will indeed be needed. It's likely to be both, not one or the other.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Aren't the insulating chemicals in offshore wind very polluting as well though?
All form of wind power are catastrophic to flying creatures, not through direct hits but because of the far greater extent of pressure waves created by the blades. They might save the planet - but at the cost of bats and birds.
Larger turbines (offshore) can turn slower. Also, the sea is not uniformly full of wildlife. Nor is the land, for that matter. Placing the turbines so they are where there are few birds is perfectly possible.
Is interesting, since the source is an organisation uniformly hostile to things that have negative impacts on birds
Audubon, huh? I remember being on a pelagic trip out of southern California. The Audubon guide spent fifteen minutes explaining to us why we wouldn't see any albatrosses at that time of year, because of the circular nature of the migration route they took.
Timing being all in comedy, he had just finished as the cry went up "Albatross!". We spent the next hour virtually hand-feeding popcorn to a Laysan Albatross.
BTW, a Layson Albatross is the oldest known ringed bird, still breeding at 70 years old....
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Or, CPTTP only reminds everyone of the catastrophic Truss AuzNZ farming deal. The direction of travel is back to reality - accepting that the EEA is our biggest market and despite the damage we have done to trade its primacy isn't under threat.
. . what's not to like, unless you're a protectionist who thinks looking after producer interests matters more than the public?
So you’d be happy for a French plumber to move to Warrington and set up business offering cheaper boiler installations than ‘local’ plumbers”
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Have you seen the paperwork involved in importing Sarcasm?
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
We can always mine for more. I hear Scotland has extensive reserves....
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
Like sex on Pornhub though, its all relative.
Housing is more affordable up here than in Southern England, which is a relatively good thing, but its less affordable than it used to be up here, which is a bad thing.
We need more houses up here and to tackle the affordability issues here, not just rest on relative laurels.
Unfortunately, today's Times has this:
Persimmon told investors that, based on current sales rates, it would probably build somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 houses in 2023, down from almost 15,000 last year.
Looks like there's a messy conflict of interest here, but I'm not sure exactly where or how to unpick it.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Aren't the insulating chemicals in offshore wind very polluting as well though?
All form of wind power are catastrophic to flying creatures, not through direct hits but because of the far greater extent of pressure waves created by the blades. They might save the planet - but at the cost of bats and birds.
We could offset the effect of wind turbines on flying creatures by reducing the domestic cat population by a few percent.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
From what we've seen of their Twitter ops, I think Ukraine has excellent supplies of locally-sourced sarcasm.
Well done them.
The rate they use it, they need all the supply they can get. The MOD has been supplying Ukraine with all our used old sarcasm, in the hopes that Hunt will put his hand in his pocket and invest in some new sarcasm, but signs out of the Treasury aren't good.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
We need to pursue growth via clean technologies. End of story. Any notions of degrowth are ridiculous nonsense, technology is both the cause of and solution to life's problems.
Yep. Improvement in technology is our only way out of this, but it strikes me as extremely unlikely we'll get there in time. And, as you rightly point out, degrowth is completely unpalatable to both western and developing nations. So we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, where there is clearly going to be substantial climate change over the next 50 years or so, which is going to present its own problems in the form of mass migration etc.
There was a recent academic paper published in the UK that suggested the way to fix global warming is rationing. Rationing petrol, limiting long haul flights, even giving people a non-tradeable 'carbon allowance' on a credit-card style carbon card. Do that and there *will* be riots, and I'll be out there with the rioters. It's proper "you will eat ze bugs" stuff. It's utterly dystopian, but this is where the bien pensant intelligentsia is starting to coalesce.
Squint hard enough at the horizon, and you can see where all of this stuff will lead in twenty, thirty years time.
We aren't struck between a rock and a hard place, because degrowth would never do anything anyway.
Driving a low fuel efficiency 5% less doesn't get you to net zero, as you still have 95% of the emissions being released. Flying a bit less doesn't get you there either, as you still have almost all of the emissions there too. Having fewer children won't get you there, since the overwhelming majority who'd be alive in 2050 are already alive today anyway.
This is where "Green" fanatics are completely ungreen and unscientific. They've got the wrong solution to the right problem. Trying to tackle climate change by consuming less is about as successful as trying to tackle obesity by eating one fewer sweet per week.
We need a wholesale transformation to tackle climate change and the only solution to that is science and technology. Not driving less, but driving clean. Not consuming less, but consuming clean. Not flying less, but flying clean. Clean technologies, not fewer people or fewer commodities.
That's pure entitlement. Yes, we'll tackle climate change, but only if I'm not inconvenienced in any way. Otherwise, sorry world.
No, its not, its reality.
Driving less doesn't tackle climate change. The only thing that would tackle climate change is either driving clean (what I propose) or never driving (nobody sane is proposing that).
Flying less doesn't tackle climate change. The only thing that would tackle climate change is either flying clean (what I propose) or never flying (nobody sane is proposing that).
Having fewer babies doesn't tackle climate change, since the people alive today will remain alive and the fewer children born will also be alive. Only mass murder of billions of people would affect climate change and nobody sane is proposing that.
Pissing about at the edges consuming slightly less may make you feel all warm and fuzzy but it does Jack Shit for the environment. Its like reducing your calorie consumption from 4500 to 4450 per day and thinking you'll no longer be obese.
Only wholesale transformational change will tackle climate change, not small and meaningless gestures. And that wholesale transformational change can only come - and is coming - from science and technology.
That's a false dichotomy. Yes, of course we should promote technological solutions as far as possible. Ideally we would indeed be able to save the world and continue to improve our standard of living. That would be great. But it may be that it is impossible to achieve the necessary changes by purely technological means, and then lifestyle changes will indeed be needed. It's likely to be both, not one or the other.
What evidence do you have that lifestyle changes are needed? If they are, then what percentage of emissions and how far to Net Zero will those changes take us?
As I say, if you want to solve obesity then getting from 4500 to 4450 daily calories doesn't do that. Climate change is such a serious problem it needs serious solutions, which are science and technology, not flippant ones like "consume a tad less".
Yesterday I said nobody would touch Oakshott with a barge pole again, to which several of you replied 'they said that the last time'. Yep I have looked those up and I have liked each and every one of those posts that I noticed who put me right.
It is difficult to believe people can be so stupid to confide in her.
There is a public interest case sometime and possibly this time, but she is clearly very untrustworthy and a nasty piece of work.
The Chris Huhne/Vicky Price cases is interesting. It is difficult to understand how people get themselves into these positions. I can only assume they think it is a little white lie and its not important and the issue spirals out of their control. Jeffery Archer similarly. I have sympathy in both cases, but if you are going to commit perjury you have to take the consequences. I'm sure both thought at each stage they had to go on with the deception, but if they had their time again would never have started it. In the case of Chris Huhne why the hell didn't he just take the driving ban. He had a bucket load of points already. It was just a matter of time and why did it matter so much. Bonkers.
It seems to have started a chain reaction at Sky with Burley and others asking those interviewed if they would like their What's App messages displayed in public, and each and everyone unanimously said no
The problem with this is that, apart from a terrible betrayal of trust and by her own admission a beach of the non disclosure notice, each and everyone of us and every political party would not like their private What's app messages put in the public domain
We have to remember that Oakeshott is the partner of Tice of Reform which has an anti lockdown agenda and she thinks this will help their cause, when as serious politicians are saying the public enquiry is the correct place for this to be revealed
If only there were any confidence that the public enquiry will question the concept of lockdown.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
Like sex on Pornhub though, its all relative.
Housing is more affordable up here than in Southern England, which is a relatively good thing, but its less affordable than it used to be up here, which is a bad thing.
We need more houses up here and to tackle the affordability issues here, not just rest on relative laurels.
Indeed.
Though, at least along the M18/A1M corridors, they seem to be building more housing now than they have for decades.
What the situation is like in other places I can't say though I suspect that the more expensive an area is the harder it is to build new houses as the local people, the home owners that is, have proportionally more to gain from ever higher house prices.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
We can always mine for more. I hear Scotland has extensive reserves....
But we have an SNP leadership competition which requires full commitment of all available resources, if only to protect the nation's sanity.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
Like sex on Pornhub though, its all relative.
Housing is more affordable up here than in Southern England, which is a relatively good thing, but its less affordable than it used to be up here, which is a bad thing.
We need more houses up here and to tackle the affordability issues here, not just rest on relative laurels.
Unfortunately, today's Times has this:
Persimmon told investors that, based on current sales rates, it would probably build somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 houses in 2023, down from almost 15,000 last year.
Looks like there's a messy conflict of interest here, but I'm not sure exactly where or how to unpick it.
Fewer Persimmon houses is probably not a bad thing, they're always the worst on any new estate.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Aren't the insulating chemicals in offshore wind very polluting as well though?
All form of wind power are catastrophic to flying creatures, not through direct hits but because of the far greater extent of pressure waves created by the blades. They might save the planet - but at the cost of bats and birds.
Larger turbines (offshore) can turn slower. Also, the sea is not uniformly full of wildlife. Nor is the land, for that matter. Placing the turbines so they are where there are few birds is perfectly possible.
Is interesting, since the source is an organisation uniformly hostile to things that have negative impacts on birds
Audubon, huh? I remember being on a pelagic trip out of southern California. The Audubon guide spent fifteen minutes explaining to us why we wouldn't see any albatrosses at that time of year, because of the circular nature of the migration route they took.
Timing being all in comedy, he had just finished as the cry went up "Albatross!". We spent the next hour virtually hand-feeding popcorn to a Laysan Albatross.
BTW, a Layson Albatross is the oldest known ringed bird, still breeding at 70 years old....
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
Like sex on Pornhub though, its all relative.
Housing is more affordable up here than in Southern England, which is a relatively good thing, but its less affordable than it used to be up here, which is a bad thing.
We need more houses up here and to tackle the affordability issues here, not just rest on relative laurels.
Unfortunately, today's Times has this:
Persimmon told investors that, based on current sales rates, it would probably build somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 houses in 2023, down from almost 15,000 last year.
Looks like there's a messy conflict of interest here, but I'm not sure exactly where or how to unpick it.
The best way to unpick it would be to transform our currently messed up planning system that means that large home builders with an army of lawyers and patience to wait years can get planning where they want it, but small independent builders can not.
If planning was either automatically granted or could be easily obtained by anyone who sought it, in a matter of days not months or years, then the likes of Persimmon wouldn't be able to control the market anymore.
In a statement issued this morning, Hancock said: “I am hugely disappointed and sad at the massive betrayal and breach of trust by Isabel Oakeshott. I am also sorry for the impact on the very many people — political colleagues, civil servants and friends — who worked hard with me to get through the pandemic and save lives.
“There is absolutely no public interest case for this huge breach. All the materials for the book have already been made available to the inquiry, which is the right and only place for everything to be considered properly and the right lessons to be learnt. As we have seen, releasing them in this way gives a partial, biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda.
“Isabel and I had worked closely together for more than a year on my book, based on legal confidentiality and a process approved by the Cabinet Office. Isabel repeatedly reiterated the importance of trust throughout, and then broke that trust.
The Scorpion and the Frog really is a fable for the ages.
Russia is accusing Ukrainian 'saboteurs' of crossing the border into Bryansk and taking hostages. There are reports that Putin will hold an emergency security council meeting.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
Like sex on Pornhub though, its all relative.
Housing is more affordable up here than in Southern England, which is a relatively good thing, but its less affordable than it used to be up here, which is a bad thing.
We need more houses up here and to tackle the affordability issues here, not just rest on relative laurels.
Indeed.
Though, at least along the M18/A1M corridors, they seem to be building more housing now than they have for decades.
What the situation is like in other places I can't say though I suspect that the more expensive an area is the harder it is to build new houses as the local people, the home owners that is, have proportionally more to gain from ever higher house prices.
otoh, the more expensive an area, the higher the profits for developers.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
We can always mine for more. I hear Scotland has extensive reserves....
Quite so. That inside info on the Hezza & Megz show was pure gold.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Aren't the insulating chemicals in offshore wind very polluting as well though?
All form of wind power are catastrophic to flying creatures, not through direct hits but because of the far greater extent of pressure waves created by the blades. They might save the planet - but at the cost of bats and birds.
Yesterday I said nobody would touch Oakshott with a barge pole again, to which several of you replied 'they said that the last time'. Yep I have looked those up and I have liked each and every one of those posts that I noticed who put me right.
It is difficult to believe people can be so stupid to confide in her.
There is a public interest case sometime and possibly this time, but she is clearly very untrustworthy and a nasty piece of work.
The Chris Huhne/Vicky Price cases is interesting. It is difficult to understand how people get themselves into these positions. I can only assume they think it is a little white lie and its not important and the issue spirals out of their control. Jeffery Archer similarly. I have sympathy in both cases, but if you are going to commit perjury you have to take the consequences. I'm sure both thought at each stage they had to go on with the deception, but if they had their time again would never have started it. In the case of Chris Huhne why the hell didn't he just take the driving ban. He had a bucket load of points already. It was just a matter of time and why did it matter so much. Bonkers.
It seems to have started a chain reaction at Sky with Burley and others asking those interviewed if they would like their What's App messages displayed in public, and each and everyone unanimously said no
The problem with this is that, apart from a terrible betrayal of trust and by her own admission a beach of the non disclosure notice, each and everyone of us and every political party would not like their private What's app messages put in the public domain
We have to remember that Oakeshott is the partner of Tice of Reform which has an anti lockdown agenda and she thinks this will help their cause, when as serious politicians are saying the public enquiry is the correct place for this to be revealed
If you don't want it leaked, don't write it on a computer.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
Like sex on Pornhub though, its all relative.
Housing is more affordable up here than in Southern England, which is a relatively good thing, but its less affordable than it used to be up here, which is a bad thing.
We need more houses up here and to tackle the affordability issues here, not just rest on relative laurels.
Indeed.
Though, at least along the M18/A1M corridors, they seem to be building more housing now than they have for decades.
What the situation is like in other places I can't say though I suspect that the more expensive an area is the harder it is to build new houses as the local people, the home owners that is, have proportionally more to gain from ever higher house prices.
Same where I have just moved to which is a suburb that is essentially a new town (but isn't getting called that). The majority of homes in this area didn't exist a decade ago, it was farmland, but the whole area is being transformed with a new motorway junction being built, thousands of new homes, new business parks, shops etc
Combining two conversations, its why new roads as well as new homes are such a good idea. Constructing a new motorway junction is releasing the capacity for a massive increase in development here, without adding to the pressure elsewhere, indeed when its done it should relieve the pressure that had existed elsewhere already.
We need to do much more of this. Most of our motorway network was built fifty plus years ago now it seems, we need heavy investment in new roads which can allow new homes, businesses and more to be developed too.
Off topic, but probably with appeal to the nerds on here. I was in Dublin yesterday and visited the National Archaeology Museum.
Fascinating, a small-ish collection but all killer, no filler - as you'd hope for a country with as rich an archaeological heritage as Ireland. Traditional curation with a very high competence, and in particular the bog bodies exhibition was superb and quite moving - it's not often you get to literally look ancient people in the face. Archaeology at its best humanises the past so wonderfully. That's why I'd happily trade a thousand Elgin Marbles for a single Lindow Man or Matri-Patri ring from Vindolanda.
Yesterday I said nobody would touch Oakshott with a barge pole again, to which several of you replied 'they said that the last time'. Yep I have looked those up and I have liked each and every one of those posts that I noticed who put me right.
It is difficult to believe people can be so stupid to confide in her.
There is a public interest case sometime and possibly this time, but she is clearly very untrustworthy and a nasty piece of work.
The Chris Huhne/Vicky Price cases is interesting. It is difficult to understand how people get themselves into these positions. I can only assume they think it is a little white lie and its not important and the issue spirals out of their control. Jeffery Archer similarly. I have sympathy in both cases, but if you are going to commit perjury you have to take the consequences. I'm sure both thought at each stage they had to go on with the deception, but if they had their time again would never have started it. In the case of Chris Huhne why the hell didn't he just take the driving ban. He had a bucket load of points already. It was just a matter of time and why did it matter so much. Bonkers.
It seems to have started a chain reaction at Sky with Burley and others asking those interviewed if they would like their What's App messages displayed in public, and each and everyone unanimously said no
The problem with this is that, apart from a terrible betrayal of trust and by her own admission a beach of the non disclosure notice, each and everyone of us and every political party would not like their private What's app messages put in the public domain
We have to remember that Oakeshott is the partner of Tice of Reform which has an anti lockdown agenda and she thinks this will help their cause, when as serious politicians are saying the public enquiry is the correct place for this to be revealed
If you don't want your private opinions exposed to the public then don't give them to a journalist.
Sadly, yesterday my longest running contract came to an end. Having worked there on and off for 13 years but always been kept on their email system during times I wasn't working I have several tens of thousands of emails relating to operational decisions all carefully filed and organised. When previous contractors or staff have left we have had a lot of issues accessing their emails which often contain the background to important decisions because of GDPR rules. Anticipating this I have made a point of making sure the company knows they can and should give full access to the Ops team going forward and that I have nothing of a private nature on the email system. This is simple and obvious professionalism. In any walk of life, anything related to your professional work for a client, undertaken on their behalf and using their comms systems should be considered their property. So keep your private stuff off there.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
Like sex on Pornhub though, its all relative.
Housing is more affordable up here than in Southern England, which is a relatively good thing, but its less affordable than it used to be up here, which is a bad thing.
We need more houses up here and to tackle the affordability issues here, not just rest on relative laurels.
Indeed.
Though, at least along the M18/A1M corridors, they seem to be building more housing now than they have for decades.
What the situation is like in other places I can't say though I suspect that the more expensive an area is the harder it is to build new houses as the local people, the home owners that is, have proportionally more to gain from ever higher house prices.
otoh, the more expensive an area, the higher the profits for developers.
True but also more objections from the local property owners.
Leading to ever fiercer battles between the two groups in the expensive areas.
In a statement issued this morning, Hancock said: “I am hugely disappointed and sad at the massive betrayal and breach of trust by Isabel Oakeshott. I am also sorry for the impact on the very many people — political colleagues, civil servants and friends — who worked hard with me to get through the pandemic and save lives.
“There is absolutely no public interest case for this huge breach. All the materials for the book have already been made available to the inquiry, which is the right and only place for everything to be considered properly and the right lessons to be learnt. As we have seen, releasing them in this way gives a partial, biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda.
“Isabel and I had worked closely together for more than a year on my book, based on legal confidentiality and a process approved by the Cabinet Office. Isabel repeatedly reiterated the importance of trust throughout, and then broke that trust.
You have to feel sorry for Matt Hancock. There's fewer wiser figures in any era of government past or present. How could he have known the nation's most trusted secret keeper Isabel Oakeshott would stab him in the back so cruelly whilst they both worked on a project that was solely for the benefit of the nation.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
Question - if everyone has a job, why is unemployment, under-employment, NEA and a very clear lack of opportunities all over places like South Yorkshire?
Restaurants can't find staff with the wages on offer and can't afford to pay more. The people who need a job can't work the hours being offered (childcare / lack of public transport) and not for the wages on offer even if they don't have childcare or transport issues.
We could get the companies to pay more. But if they do they are at risk of closing. Or we could attack the cost of living crisis side of the equation. But we have Lee Anderson Tories instead. So...
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially..
That assumes that all growth necessarily means more pressure on natural resources. It's a hard act to pull off, but there is a huge amount of technological headroom for growth without such effects.
The sad truth is that the vast majority of mainland Brits don't give tuppence about NI and I remain of the view Sunak's success there will have little impact.
I was about to say the same thing.
I can see this affecting the polls in one of two ways, though. First, it could give Sunak the air of competence and order - two qualities notably missing from Johnson and Truss. If the Conservatives are to have any hope of regaining their position, they need to be thought of as competent once again.
Second, it’s equally possible this may reawaken the headbangers. If it leads to yet another bout of Tory backbenchers “banging on about Europe” (tm), the Tory vote share could drop still further.
Third - lets play the scenario where grudgingly the ERG and DUP accept it. It becomes very quickly clear through this year that being both able to trade within the UK and in the EEA is hugely beneficial. "The Prime Minister's brilliant deal has secured a world-beating deal for Northern Ireland" say ministers.
Great - so why can't GB have this deal? When pressed the same ministers flip over and start saying how the world beating deal would be a terrible deal for GB. When pressed why they start obsfucating, then objecting to the question.
Meanwhile, Brexit-voting first time Tories see NI thriving and Fuck All happening in their shitbox red wall town and "I didn't vote Brexit to get poorer" really starts to resonate. Some posters on here over the last few days have almost sneeringly tried to dismiss the idea of GB having the same deal as being impossible. But voters don't know and don't care what you think is possible. Or about how it works. Or detail. They were promised better times ahead, those are now going only to NI and not them.
In that scenario, the Tories are absolutely screwed.
Brexit voting Conservatives in the redwall in 2019 voted Conservative for the first time in their lives then to end free movement and regain Sovereignty. Both have been delivered for them.
They certainly have little reason to vote Tory otherwise, they don't want tighter controls on spending or tax cuts for the rich as well as them.
What do you know of red wall first time Tory voters? They can't eat sovereignty. They didn't want to stop migration because they are EDF. Both were because they wanted to be Better Off. Better jobs, with better pay and conditions. Better schools and hospitals. Investment into their rundown shitbox town.
Brexit was meaningful for them. Good times ahead. And now you are saying good times only in Norniron, and actually the good times would be bad for you actually.
I know Leave voting red wall first time Tories voted Labour at every general election pre 2019 as they are economically pro big government and increased spending and oppose tax cuts for the rich.
Without the end to free movement and regained Sovereignty (including not the ECJ jurisdiction Northern Ireland still has) they have no reason to stay voting Tory at all (except maybe restoring the death penalty for serial killers which most of them also support)
So yesterday you resurrected Savile, and now you are going for hanging to bolster your brand. You are turning into rather an adept populist.
He even misses the point about hanging. It isn't popular in high crime areas because people want to see public hangings in the village green for a day out. Its because its a high crime area and they want a Big Deterrent to stop the scummers who destroy their communities and their lives.
The solution is to flood police and justice and probation services with resources. Nick the criminals, lock up the criminals, rehabilitate the criminals. Then flood the communities with investment in jobs and services and education. Stop the next generation becoming scummers.
Instead, local Tories are doing the opposite - fewer police on the ground, courts unable to prosecute, a slashed probation service letting lags out, schools and hospitals overwhelmed and crumbling.
Red wall voters can't feed their kids on sovereignty. Can't secure their homes with a bring back hanging poster. They wanted the action they were promised. Yet HY and his party just sneer at them and call them thick.
The only reason Redwall voters would vote Conservative again is to keep free movement ended, stop ECJ jurisdiction in the UK again and maybe bring back hanging for serial killers and to stop gender neutral bathrooms and changing sex without medical approval for under 18s.
If they want higher spending, higher tax for the rich and more regulation they will obviously vote Labour again as they did at most general elections pre 2019
Or you tell them that the government has brought them:
1) Full employment - not experienced in those areas since the 1960s 2) Affordable housing - unlike southern England
But I get the impression that for many Conservatives neither full employment nor affordable housing are deemed to be good things and so are not to be praised to those who are benefiting from them.
I grew up in a classic 'red wall' seat, and I think we all get a bit too simplistic about them. First off, a lot of supposed red wall - thinking of seats in places like Bury - have always been swingable seats from Lab, and some which were pinched of the Lib Dems like Marple, but get lumped in because they're in the north of England or the midlands.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
I'd also dispute that red wall has "Full Employment" and "Affordable Housing". The former claim doesn't stand up to basic inspection, and on the latter having housing cheaper than dahn sarf doesn't make in affordable on the wages on offer to local people doing crappy jobs.
Try recruiting in South Yorkshire and you'll see that employment has been fuller than anyone has experienced.
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
Question - if everyone has a job, why is unemployment, under-employment, NEA and a very clear lack of opportunities all over places like South Yorkshire?
Restaurants can't find staff with the wages on offer and can't afford to pay more. The people who need a job can't work the hours being offered (childcare / lack of public transport) and not for the wages on offer even if they don't have childcare or transport issues.
We could get the companies to pay more. But if they do they are at risk of closing. Or we could attack the cost of living crisis side of the equation. But we have Lee Anderson Tories instead. So...
The wages aren't the only issue, though they can be an issue. The fact that people who rely upon childcare etc can often be on marginal tax rates of 70% or more is also a massive issue.
Making work pay means more people want to do more of it, but if the overwhelming majority of your wages go on taxation and what doesn't gets gobbled up by childcare or other costs, then a lot of people will think "why bother"?
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Except her brand is fanaticism. She's excoriated anyone seeking exceptions to doing everything everywhere all at once. So it does invalidate her position.
It's a classic would X criticise Y if Y used the same argument situation. She and her core supporters absolutely would see any such talk as seeking to get around the need to act.
You and I and most people accept other considerations matter. She has blasted anyone trying to do so. Blah blah blah remember?
And we know that an immediate deflection will be people saying those commenting are weirdly obsessed with her or to stop attacking her, but thats nonsense. She's a global celebrity and a major figure, commenting on her pronouncements is ok.
Live by the fanatics creed, you get cut by it too.
The question is really about balancing side effects. Everything has side effects.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote - approaching the same cost (maybe less even) - more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow) - maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation - seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies). - long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built. - maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
Aren't the insulating chemicals in offshore wind very polluting as well though?
All form of wind power are catastrophic to flying creatures, not through direct hits but because of the far greater extent of pressure waves created by the blades. They might save the planet - but at the cost of bats and birds.
We could offset the effect of wind turbines on flying creatures by reducing the domestic cat population by a few percent.
After this morning's cat cull revelations from 2020 just imagine the avian paradise we could have brought about. (So long as they didn't include my two cats).
Russia is accusing Ukrainian 'saboteurs' of crossing the border into Bryansk and taking hostages. There are reports that Putin will hold an emergency security council meeting.
Looking at the map, that looks like about two hours from the border, which is a bit further away than you'd expect covert hostage takers to go, isn't it?
Yesterday I said nobody would touch Oakshott with a barge pole again, to which several of you replied 'they said that the last time'. Yep I have looked those up and I have liked each and every one of those posts that I noticed who put me right.
It is difficult to believe people can be so stupid to confide in her.
There is a public interest case sometime and possibly this time, but she is clearly very untrustworthy and a nasty piece of work.
The Chris Huhne/Vicky Price cases is interesting. It is difficult to understand how people get themselves into these positions. I can only assume they think it is a little white lie and its not important and the issue spirals out of their control. Jeffery Archer similarly. I have sympathy in both cases, but if you are going to commit perjury you have to take the consequences. I'm sure both thought at each stage they had to go on with the deception, but if they had their time again would never have started it. In the case of Chris Huhne why the hell didn't he just take the driving ban. He had a bucket load of points already. It was just a matter of time and why did it matter so much. Bonkers.
It seems to have started a chain reaction at Sky with Burley and others asking those interviewed if they would like their What's App messages displayed in public, and each and everyone unanimously said no
The problem with this is that, apart from a terrible betrayal of trust and by her own admission a beach of the non disclosure notice, each and everyone of us and every political party would not like their private What's app messages put in the public domain
We have to remember that Oakeshott is the partner of Tice of Reform which has an anti lockdown agenda and she thinks this will help their cause, when as serious politicians are saying the public enquiry is the correct place for this to be revealed
Two realities here: 1. Don't write it down. Don't get recorded. Because any encryption or NDA or being friends agreement you like can be got around if someone actually has a copy of it 2. Don't be two-faced. The issue isn't what Mancock said. Its that he has already lied about it to pretend that he said / did something else. I have a lot more respect for the mad but straight MPs who endlessly say the same thing than devious shits like Cock.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true.
It may be that new technologies developed in the next couple of decades we suddenly can't live without will actually make things worse. Imagine if for some reason the Internet was entirely and non-interchangeably reliant on coal power, would we stop using it and go back to the 90s, or would we shovel ever increasingly large amounts of coal into furnaces to feed our twitter habits? My guess is the latter. TL;DR, there are green technologies, but not all new technologies are green.
One area I think that will change things a lot is quantum computing, rather than AI. It'll enable us to crunch complex equations that are beyond the realm of possibility at the moment, and that will be able to improve the efficiency of existing industrial processes substantially, thus reducing waste and impact.
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Or, CPTTP only reminds everyone of the catastrophic Truss AuzNZ farming deal. The direction of travel is back to reality - accepting that the EEA is our biggest market and despite the damage we have done to trade its primacy isn't under threat.
. . what's not to like, unless you're a protectionist who thinks looking after producer interests matters more than the public?
So you’d be happy for a French plumber to move to Warrington and set up business offering cheaper boiler installations than ‘local’ plumbers”
Absolutely, I have no objection to that, and since I'm not a racist I think that should happen on a level playing field for the French plumber getting a visa as it does for Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian or Philippine plumbers or plumbers from anywhere else in the world.
On the Hancock leaks, I think it's a bit of a non-story. What I've read so far is not particularly interesting, surprising or revelatory. Given the nature of the Covid crisis, it's hardly news that there were disagreements between those involved - that would have been the case whoever was in power.
I'd be much more interested if somebody could leak all the messages and emails relating to Covid contracts - PPE, test and trace, and others. I reckon that's where the real scandal would be, as the rich managed to line their pockets.
I note that James Bethell (HoL Minister with responsibility for test and trace, and with links to the Paterson/Randox affair), admitted on R4 yesterday that he has been unable to pass all his messages on to the Covid Inquiry as he 'accidentally' lost them when he got a new phone. Yeh, right.
Yesterday I said nobody would touch Oakshott with a barge pole again, to which several of you replied 'they said that the last time'. Yep I have looked those up and I have liked each and every one of those posts that I noticed who put me right.
It is difficult to believe people can be so stupid to confide in her.
There is a public interest case sometime and possibly this time, but she is clearly very untrustworthy and a nasty piece of work.
The Chris Huhne/Vicky Price cases is interesting. It is difficult to understand how people get themselves into these positions. I can only assume they think it is a little white lie and its not important and the issue spirals out of their control. Jeffery Archer similarly. I have sympathy in both cases, but if you are going to commit perjury you have to take the consequences. I'm sure both thought at each stage they had to go on with the deception, but if they had their time again would never have started it. In the case of Chris Huhne why the hell didn't he just take the driving ban. He had a bucket load of points already. It was just a matter of time and why did it matter so much. Bonkers.
It seems to have started a chain reaction at Sky with Burley and others asking those interviewed if they would like their What's App messages displayed in public, and each and everyone unanimously said no
The problem with this is that, apart from a terrible betrayal of trust and by her own admission a beach of the non disclosure notice, each and everyone of us and every political party would not like their private What's app messages put in the public domain
We have to remember that Oakeshott is the partner of Tice of Reform which has an anti lockdown agenda and she thinks this will help their cause, when as serious politicians are saying the public enquiry is the correct place for this to be revealed
If you don't want your private opinions exposed to the public then don't give them to a journalist.
Sadly, yesterday my longest running contract came to an end. Having worked there on and off for 13 years but always been kept on their email system during times I wasn't working I have several tens of thousands of emails relating to operational decisions all carefully filed and organised. When previous contractors or staff have left we have had a lot of issues accessing their emails which often contain the background to important decisions because of GDPR rules. Anticipating this I have made a point of making sure the company knows they can and should give full access to the Ops team going forward and that I have nothing of a private nature on the email system. This is simple and obvious professionalism. In any walk of life, anything related to your professional work for a client, undertaken on their behalf and using their comms systems should be considered their property. So keep your private stuff off there.
Surprising that company access to all company email accounts is not written into contracts (if it is not - I'd have to check mine, but assumed it would be). I wouldn't have thought GDPR would be an automatic block to this, although an over-cautious information officer might take it to be.
(My organisational emails are subject to FoI requests anyway, so I don't put anything personal on there).
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true.
It may be that new technologies developed in the next couple of decades we suddenly can't live without will actually make things worse. Imagine if for some reason the Internet was entirely and non-interchangeably reliant on coal power, would we stop using it and go back to the 90s, or would we shovel ever increasingly large amounts of coal into furnaces to feed our twitter habits? My guess is the latter. TL;DR, there are green technologies, but not all new technologies are green.
One area I think that will change things a lot is quantum computing, rather than AI. It'll enable us to crunch complex equations that are beyond the realm of possibility at the moment, and that will be able to improve the efficiency of existing industrial processes substantially, thus reducing waste and impact.
I assume Leon's point is that our new AI ovelords will very quickly decide to dispense with the need for humans and so the problem will simply go away
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Or, CPTTP only reminds everyone of the catastrophic Truss AuzNZ farming deal. The direction of travel is back to reality - accepting that the EEA is our biggest market and despite the damage we have done to trade its primacy isn't under threat.
. . what's not to like, unless you're a protectionist who thinks looking after producer interests matters more than the public?
So you’d be happy for a French plumber to move to Warrington and set up business offering cheaper boiler installations than ‘local’ plumbers”
Absolutely, I have no objection to that, and since I'm not a racist I think that should happen on a level playing field for the French plumber getting a visa getting than with Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian or Philippine plumbers or plumbers from anywhere else in the world.
Tell you what though: I'm in the middle of a barn renovation in France at the moment and if I brought in a Polish (or worse, English) plumber to do part of the work I'd be immediately outcast from polite society. Indeed if I used a plumber from Paris or even Lyon rather than the surrounding 20 km or so I would be equally outcast. I had enough trouble convincing them we should buy some sanitary ware from the internet instead of the apparent monopoly supplier "Espace Aubade" on the basis it was an identical brand and model but half the price (because "assurance" or more likely it broke some long established unspoken social convention).
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
On the Hancock leaks, I think it's a bit of a non-story. What I've read so far is not particularly interesting, surprising or revelatory. Given the nature of the Covid crisis, it's hardly news that there were disagreements between those involved - that would have been the case whoever was in power.
I'd be much more interested if somebody could leak all the messages and emails relating to Covid contracts - PPE, test and trace, and others. I reckon that's where the real scandal would be, as the rich managed to line their pockets.
I note that James Bethell (HoL Minister with responsibility for test and trace, and with links to the Paterson/Randox affair), admitted on R4 yesterday that he has been unable to pass all his messages on to the Covid Inquiry as he 'accidentally' lost them when he got a new phone. Yeh, right.
I thought the same. It all seems rather like ancient history. All those arguments and controversies were rehearsed to death back in 2020 and 2021.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
We can always mine for more. I hear Scotland has extensive reserves....
Quite so. That inside info on the Hezza & Megz show was pure gold.
That it isn't yet in the public domain doesn't mean it isn't right.
Off topic, but probably with appeal to the nerds on here. I was in Dublin yesterday and visited the National Archaeology Museum.
Fascinating, a small-ish collection but all killer, no filler - as you'd hope for a country with as rich an archaeological heritage as Ireland. Traditional curation with a very high competence, and in particular the bog bodies exhibition was superb and quite moving - it's not often you get to literally look ancient people in the face. Archaeology at its best humanises the past so wonderfully. That's why I'd happily trade a thousand Elgin Marbles for a single Lindow Man or Matri-Patri ring from Vindolanda.
It is a truly wonderful smallish museum -- and the bog people are both moving and upsetting.
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Or, CPTTP only reminds everyone of the catastrophic Truss AuzNZ farming deal. The direction of travel is back to reality - accepting that the EEA is our biggest market and despite the damage we have done to trade its primacy isn't under threat.
. . what's not to like, unless you're a protectionist who thinks looking after producer interests matters more than the public?
So you’d be happy for a French plumber to move to Warrington and set up business offering cheaper boiler installations than ‘local’ plumbers”
Absolutely, I have no objection to that, and since I'm not a racist I think that should happen on a level playing field for the French plumber getting a visa getting than with Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian or Philippine plumbers or plumbers from anywhere else in the world.
Tell you what though: I'm in the middle of a barn renovation in France at the moment and if I brought in a Polish (or worse, English) plumber to do part of the work I'd be immediately outcast from polite society. Indeed if I used a plumber from Paris or even Lyon rather than the surrounding 20 km or so I would be equally outcast. I had enough trouble convincing them we should buy some sanitary ware from the internet instead of the apparent monopoly supplier "Espace Aubade" on the basis it was an identical brand and model but half the price (because "assurance" or more likely it broke some long established unspoken social convention).
I'm surprised that hasn't happened already, if you use 'outcast' as a verb
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
We can always mine for more. I hear Scotland has extensive reserves....
No but, they do produce lots of Rays of Sunshine, though.
Yesterday I said nobody would touch Oakshott with a barge pole again, to which several of you replied 'they said that the last time'. Yep I have looked those up and I have liked each and every one of those posts that I noticed who put me right.
It is difficult to believe people can be so stupid to confide in her.
There is a public interest case sometime and possibly this time, but she is clearly very untrustworthy and a nasty piece of work.
The Chris Huhne/Vicky Price cases is interesting. It is difficult to understand how people get themselves into these positions. I can only assume they think it is a little white lie and its not important and the issue spirals out of their control. Jeffery Archer similarly. I have sympathy in both cases, but if you are going to commit perjury you have to take the consequences. I'm sure both thought at each stage they had to go on with the deception, but if they had their time again would never have started it. In the case of Chris Huhne why the hell didn't he just take the driving ban. He had a bucket load of points already. It was just a matter of time and why did it matter so much. Bonkers.
It seems to have started a chain reaction at Sky with Burley and others asking those interviewed if they would like their What's App messages displayed in public, and each and everyone unanimously said no
The problem with this is that, apart from a terrible betrayal of trust and by her own admission a beach of the non disclosure notice, each and everyone of us and every political party would not like their private What's app messages put in the public domain
We have to remember that Oakeshott is the partner of Tice of Reform which has an anti lockdown agenda and she thinks this will help their cause, when as serious politicians are saying the public enquiry is the correct place for this to be revealed
If you don't want your private opinions exposed to the public then don't give them to a journalist.
Sadly, yesterday my longest running contract came to an end. Having worked there on and off for 13 years but always been kept on their email system during times I wasn't working I have several tens of thousands of emails relating to operational decisions all carefully filed and organised. When previous contractors or staff have left we have had a lot of issues accessing their emails which often contain the background to important decisions because of GDPR rules. Anticipating this I have made a point of making sure the company knows they can and should give full access to the Ops team going forward and that I have nothing of a private nature on the email system. This is simple and obvious professionalism. In any walk of life, anything related to your professional work for a client, undertaken on their behalf and using their comms systems should be considered their property. So keep your private stuff off there.
A couple of weeks ago I had to gather email addresses from my relatives so that we could sort out a family issue, and I was disconcerted to say the least when a couple of them, in managerial positions in large companies, gave their company email addresses. It just seems so incredibly unprofessional. Like you, I use my company email address strictly for work matters and have a personal email address for other stuff. I'm amazed that so many people don't do this.
What has happened to the US (and UK) recession? Basically, the jobs market proved much more resilient than anticipated, just as we have seen in the UK. The tech redundancy wave in the US was more of an outlier and less indicative of a falling demand for labour. Here too, we have seen unemployment remaining stubbornly low. There has been a reduction in vacancies but they remain very high.
I remember Ronald Reagan's old aphorism. A recession is when your neighbour loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And a recovery, he said pointing at Jimmy Carter, is when you lose yours.
If we get through a bumpy year with no real uptick in unemployment that might do the Tories more good than anything else.
I remember all the predictions in Autumn last year by all and sundry on here of an economic armageddon in 2023. I wonder when thats going to happen.
The same time as the post-Brexit armageddon of 2016....
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true.
It may be that new technologies developed in the next couple of decades we suddenly can't live without will actually make things worse. Imagine if for some reason the Internet was entirely and non-interchangeably reliant on coal power, would we stop using it and go back to the 90s, or would we shovel ever increasingly large amounts of coal into furnaces to feed our twitter habits? My guess is the latter. TL;DR, there are green technologies, but not all new technologies are green.
One area I think that will change things a lot is quantum computing, rather than AI. It'll enable us to crunch complex equations that are beyond the realm of possibility at the moment, and that will be able to improve the efficiency of existing industrial processes substantially, thus reducing waste and impact.
You are assuming that higher living standards requires more physical stuff. How many tons of pig iron do you need?
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Or, CPTTP only reminds everyone of the catastrophic Truss AuzNZ farming deal. The direction of travel is back to reality - accepting that the EEA is our biggest market and despite the damage we have done to trade its primacy isn't under threat.
. . what's not to like, unless you're a protectionist who thinks looking after producer interests matters more than the public?
So you’d be happy for a French plumber to move to Warrington and set up business offering cheaper boiler installations than ‘local’ plumbers”
Absolutely, I have no objection to that, and since I'm not a racist I think that should happen on a level playing field for the French plumber getting a visa getting than with Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian or Philippine plumbers or plumbers from anywhere else in the world.
Tell you what though: I'm in the middle of a barn renovation in France at the moment and if I brought in a Polish (or worse, English) plumber to do part of the work I'd be immediately outcast from polite society. Indeed if I used a plumber from Paris or even Lyon rather than the surrounding 20 km or so I would be equally outcast. I had enough trouble convincing them we should buy some sanitary ware from the internet instead of the apparent monopoly supplier "Espace Aubade" on the basis it was an identical brand and model but half the price (because "assurance" or more likely it broke some long established unspoken social convention).
I'm surprised that hasn't happened already, if you use 'outcast' as a verb
Adjective surely? TimS is the noun, and outcast is his state of being.
In a statement issued this morning, Hancock said: “I am hugely disappointed and sad at the massive betrayal and breach of trust by Isabel Oakeshott. I am also sorry for the impact on the very many people — political colleagues, civil servants and friends — who worked hard with me to get through the pandemic and save lives.
“There is absolutely no public interest case for this huge breach. All the materials for the book have already been made available to the inquiry, which is the right and only place for everything to be considered properly and the right lessons to be learnt. As we have seen, releasing them in this way gives a partial, biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda.
“Isabel and I had worked closely together for more than a year on my book, based on legal confidentiality and a process approved by the Cabinet Office. Isabel repeatedly reiterated the importance of trust throughout, and then broke that trust.
You have to feel sorry for Matt Hancock. There's fewer wiser figures in any era of government past or present. How could he have known the nation's most trusted secret keeper Isabel Oakeshott would stab him in the back so cruelly whilst they both worked on a project that was solely for the benefit of the nation.
He probably hopes that the Great Release of the Messages, framed in the context of a fight against those who are pushing an "anti-lockdown agenda" (whatever on earth that may mean in March 2023), and spotted with nuggets such as that he called the teaching unions a bunch of arses (did anyone think they weren't?), will swamp the much more specific, pointy, and serious questions about care homes and health contracts.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
We can always mine for more. I hear Scotland has extensive reserves....
Quite so. That inside info on the Hezza & Megz show was pure gold.
That it isn't yet in the public domain doesn't mean it isn't right.
I will expect a grovelling apology in due course.
Yeah, right.....
Well, if true, I would expect the Mail to be sniffing -- instead we had lots of happy pix of Beaming Prince Harry and Meghan enjoy a date night at exclusive $4,200-A-YEAR private members' club in LA
Long term, I expect you are gonna be right ... but not at the moment.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true.
It may be that new technologies developed in the next couple of decades we suddenly can't live without will actually make things worse. Imagine if for some reason the Internet was entirely and non-interchangeably reliant on coal power, would we stop using it and go back to the 90s, or would we shovel ever increasingly large amounts of coal into furnaces to feed our twitter habits? My guess is the latter. TL;DR, there are green technologies, but not all new technologies are green.
One area I think that will change things a lot is quantum computing, rather than AI. It'll enable us to crunch complex equations that are beyond the realm of possibility at the moment, and that will be able to improve the efficiency of existing industrial processes substantially, thus reducing waste and impact.
You are assuming that higher living standards requires more physical stuff. How many tons of pig iron do you need?
A very western centric attitude. Much of the world is still living in mud huts and cinderblock houses.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true.
It may be that new technologies developed in the next couple of decades we suddenly can't live without will actually make things worse. Imagine if for some reason the Internet was entirely and non-interchangeably reliant on coal power, would we stop using it and go back to the 90s, or would we shovel ever increasingly large amounts of coal into furnaces to feed our twitter habits? My guess is the latter. TL;DR, there are green technologies, but not all new technologies are green.
One area I think that will change things a lot is quantum computing, rather than AI. It'll enable us to crunch complex equations that are beyond the realm of possibility at the moment, and that will be able to improve the efficiency of existing industrial processes substantially, thus reducing waste and impact.
I assume Leon's point is that our new AI ovelords will very quickly decide to dispense with the need for humans and so the problem will simply go away
While not inevitable, that's actually a very real concern. It's fun to decry the obvious limitations of the current state of the art, but that's really missing the point.
I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Or, CPTTP only reminds everyone of the catastrophic Truss AuzNZ farming deal. The direction of travel is back to reality - accepting that the EEA is our biggest market and despite the damage we have done to trade its primacy isn't under threat.
. . what's not to like, unless you're a protectionist who thinks looking after producer interests matters more than the public?
So you’d be happy for a French plumber to move to Warrington and set up business offering cheaper boiler installations than ‘local’ plumbers”
Absolutely, I have no objection to that, and since I'm not a racist I think that should happen on a level playing field for the French plumber getting a visa getting than with Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian or Philippine plumbers or plumbers from anywhere else in the world.
Tell you what though: I'm in the middle of a barn renovation in France at the moment and if I brought in a Polish (or worse, English) plumber to do part of the work I'd be immediately outcast from polite society. Indeed if I used a plumber from Paris or even Lyon rather than the surrounding 20 km or so I would be equally outcast. I had enough trouble convincing them we should buy some sanitary ware from the internet instead of the apparent monopoly supplier "Espace Aubade" on the basis it was an identical brand and model but half the price (because "assurance" or more likely it broke some long established unspoken social convention).
I'm surprised that hasn't happened already, if you use 'outcast' as a verb
I'm not sure that linguistic abomination translates ?
Comments
In my ideal world, we'd have a wide variety of energy sources: wind, tidal, wave, solar, nuclear and, yes, gas. Preferably with more local generation rather than the one-big-plant idea that took off post-WW2. I'd also make energy storage a priority (though that's a massive issue atm without a good technical solution).
I don't want us to go back to relying on just one form of energy, especially if that comes from abroad.
The economically efficient answer would possibly be to limit farming to a few areas of East Anglia, Vale of Evesham and the East Midlands and rewild or build housing on the rest, but of course that's a tricky sell.
For example, offshore vs onshore wind. Offshore wind is
- politically much easier. Fish don't vote
- approaching the same cost (maybe less even)
- more efficient (bigger turbines, smoother airflow)
- maybe takes a bit longer to get into operation
- seabed disturbance
On shore wind
- politically more difficult. A small number of people can't stand the noise (sensitive to certain frequencies).
- long lasting disturbance to build the roads to get the turbines built.
- maybe a bit quicker to install
So, you evaluate. Simply shouting "Do! everything! now!" doesn't make things happen faster, either.
The CPTPP is what the EU could/should have been in my eyes. Its a free trade agreement but sans politics and it doesn't prevent you from unilaterally signing other free trade agreements too.
Also, seats like Don Valley and other former mining seats, have *always had* a sizable Conservative vote. There are chunks of rural wealth and farming villages and market towns. Not enough to, historically, make them unsafe Labour seats, but not so low that it was a zero base for a Tory candidate in the right (i.e. 2019) conditions.
Also, many folk simply lent their vote to Boris, after feeling years of being somewhat taken for granted, and then the NUS-agitant takeover of the Labour Party under Corbyn which was moved from 'taken for granted' to a genuine cultural shift away - Emily Thornbery's deeply regrettable England Flag tweet put it in a nutshell.
I dispute the notion that the 'red wall' is particularly culturally conservative. On some issues, maybe - but on the whole these are intelligent salt of earth people who understand, accept and take care of each other. FWIW I think the genuine red wall will swing back modestly to Labour; Starmer (apart from his weird hair) seems like a fairly normal and reasonable bloke who will do his best for people - and the Tories have been exposed as corrupt, mendacious and incompetent.
(Not my name for HYU - a character in an old Avengers episode I think)
Beyond the noise it's a long tradition of western democracies that single issue campaigners make a lot of noise, put plenty of noses out of joint, but tend also to force mainstream politicians to start engaging on issues - take Insulate Britain for example, or the Hillsborough campaign.
Driving less doesn't tackle climate change. The only thing that would tackle climate change is either driving clean (what I propose) or never driving (nobody sane is proposing that).
Flying less doesn't tackle climate change. The only thing that would tackle climate change is either flying clean (what I propose) or never flying (nobody sane is proposing that).
Having fewer babies doesn't tackle climate change, since the people alive today will remain alive and the fewer children born will also be alive. Only mass murder of billions of people would affect climate change and nobody sane is proposing that.
Pissing about at the edges consuming slightly less may make you feel all warm and fuzzy but it does Jack Shit for the environment. Its like reducing your calorie consumption from 4500 to 4450 per day and thinking you'll no longer be obese.
Only wholesale transformational change will tackle climate change, not small and meaningless gestures. And that wholesale transformational change can only come - and is coming - from science and technology.
It is perfectly possible to get to Net Zero, without dismantling human society.
“There is absolutely no public interest case for this huge breach. All the materials for the book have already been made available to the inquiry, which is the right and only place for everything to be considered properly and the right lessons to be learnt. As we have seen, releasing them in this way gives a partial, biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda.
“Isabel and I had worked closely together for more than a year on my book, based on legal confidentiality and a process approved by the Cabinet Office. Isabel repeatedly reiterated the importance of trust throughout, and then broke that trust.
I visited the shop in Fowey. It was as if a major comedian had been given an unlimited budget to define Tarquinism.
LOL.
Oakshott has admitted she breached a NDA. Presumably she will rely on a public interest defence, but as there is a public inquiry and Hancock says these Whatsapps have been disclosed to the inquiry (do we believe him?) that will be a lame defence.
Is it a defence?
Presumably the Telegraph will pay her costs and damages.
Can damages be punitive in such a case to prevent people who know they are protected by an employer be applied?
And among the political tics of the old one thing stands out above all others. Having just come off a binge watch of series 2 of Clarkson's Farm I have concluded the biggest menace stalking this island is reflexive NIMBYism.
https://www.audubon.org/news/worlds-biggest-offshore-wind-farm-could-shape-seabird-behavior
Is interesting, since the source is an organisation uniformly hostile to things that have negative impacts on birds
Over 65s with degrees mostly voted Remain, under 35s who left school with few or no qualifications mostly voted Leave
Or have a basic inspection of all the restaurants with 'staff wanted' signs on their windows.
Now people doing crappy jobs will always struggle to afford housing wherever they live.
But that doesn't apply to all the people who have better jobs.
And for them housing is far more affordable than for their equivalents in southern England.
The opposition Prevailing Wind party come up with several grand and ludicrous schemes to use up the excess stupidity.
None of them comes close to Brexit...
Housing is more affordable up here than in Southern England, which is a relatively good thing, but its less affordable than it used to be up here, which is a bad thing.
We need more houses up here and to tackle the affordability issues here, not just rest on relative laurels.
Well done them.
The problem with this is that, apart from a terrible betrayal of trust and by her own admission a beach of the non disclosure notice, each and everyone of us and every political party would not like their private What's app messages put in the public domain
We have to remember that Oakeshott is the partner of Tice of Reform which has an anti lockdown agenda and she thinks this will help their cause, when as serious politicians are saying the public enquiry is the correct place for this to be revealed
Timing being all in comedy, he had just finished as the cry went up "Albatross!". We spent the next hour virtually hand-feeding popcorn to a Laysan Albatross.
BTW, a Layson Albatross is the oldest known ringed bird, still breeding at 70 years old....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhaVN2N88DY&ab_channel=FriendsofMidwayAtollNWR
Persimmon told investors that, based on current sales rates, it would probably build somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 houses in 2023, down from almost 15,000 last year.
Looks like there's a messy conflict of interest here, but I'm not sure exactly where or how to unpick it.
As I say, if you want to solve obesity then getting from 4500 to 4450 daily calories doesn't do that. Climate change is such a serious problem it needs serious solutions, which are science and technology, not flippant ones like "consume a tad less".
Though, at least along the M18/A1M corridors, they seem to be building more housing now than they have for decades.
What the situation is like in other places I can't say though I suspect that the more expensive an area is the harder it is to build new houses as the local people, the home owners that is, have proportionally more to gain from ever higher house prices.
If planning was either automatically granted or could be easily obtained by anyone who sought it, in a matter of days not months or years, then the likes of Persimmon wouldn't be able to control the market anymore.
https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1631224121173458944
That inside info on the Hezza & Megz show was pure gold.
And yet people still do.
Combining two conversations, its why new roads as well as new homes are such a good idea. Constructing a new motorway junction is releasing the capacity for a massive increase in development here, without adding to the pressure elsewhere, indeed when its done it should relieve the pressure that had existed elsewhere already.
We need to do much more of this. Most of our motorway network was built fifty plus years ago now it seems, we need heavy investment in new roads which can allow new homes, businesses and more to be developed too.
Fascinating, a small-ish collection but all killer, no filler - as you'd hope for a country with as rich an archaeological heritage as Ireland. Traditional curation with a very high competence, and in particular the bog bodies exhibition was superb and quite moving - it's not often you get to literally look ancient people in the face. Archaeology at its best humanises the past so wonderfully. That's why I'd happily trade a thousand Elgin Marbles for a single Lindow Man or Matri-Patri ring from Vindolanda.
Sadly, yesterday my longest running contract came to an end. Having worked there on and off for 13 years but always been kept on their email system during times I wasn't working I have several tens of thousands of emails relating to operational decisions all carefully filed and organised. When previous contractors or staff have left we have had a lot of issues accessing their emails which often contain the background to important decisions because of GDPR rules. Anticipating this I have made a point of making sure the company knows they can and should give full access to the Ops team going forward and that I have nothing of a private nature on the email system. This is simple and obvious professionalism. In any walk of life, anything related to your professional work for a client, undertaken on their behalf and using their comms systems should be considered their property. So keep your private stuff off there.
Leading to ever fiercer battles between the two groups in the expensive areas.
Restaurants can't find staff with the wages on offer and can't afford to pay more. The people who need a job can't work the hours being offered (childcare / lack of public transport) and not for the wages on offer even if they don't have childcare or transport issues.
We could get the companies to pay more. But if they do they are at risk of closing. Or we could attack the cost of living crisis side of the equation. But we have Lee Anderson Tories instead. So...
It's a hard act to pull off, but there is a huge amount of technological headroom for growth without such effects.
Making work pay means more people want to do more of it, but if the overwhelming majority of your wages go on taxation and what doesn't gets gobbled up by childcare or other costs, then a lot of people will think "why bother"?
(So long as they didn't include my two cats).
1. Don't write it down. Don't get recorded. Because any encryption or NDA or being friends agreement you like can be got around if someone actually has a copy of it
2. Don't be two-faced. The issue isn't what Mancock said. Its that he has already lied about it to pretend that he said / did something else. I have a lot more respect for the mad but straight MPs who endlessly say the same thing than devious shits like Cock.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true.
It may be that new technologies developed in the next couple of decades we suddenly can't live without will actually make things worse. Imagine if for some reason the Internet was entirely and non-interchangeably reliant on coal power, would we stop using it and go back to the 90s, or would we shovel ever increasingly large amounts of coal into furnaces to feed our twitter habits? My guess is the latter. TL;DR, there are green technologies, but not all new technologies are green.
One area I think that will change things a lot is quantum computing, rather than AI. It'll enable us to crunch complex equations that are beyond the realm of possibility at the moment, and that will be able to improve the efficiency of existing industrial processes substantially, thus reducing waste and impact.
I'd be much more interested if somebody could leak all the messages and emails relating to Covid contracts - PPE, test and trace, and others. I reckon that's where the real scandal would be, as the rich managed to line their pockets.
I note that James Bethell (HoL Minister with responsibility for test and trace, and with links to the Paterson/Randox affair), admitted on R4 yesterday that he has been unable to pass all his messages on to the Covid Inquiry as he 'accidentally' lost them when he got a new phone. Yeh, right.
(My organisational emails are subject to FoI requests anyway, so I don't put anything personal on there).
How to navigate the AI apocalypse as a sane person
A compendium of AI-safety talking points
https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/how-to-navigate-the-ai-apocalypse
I will expect a grovelling apology in due course.
Yeah, right.....
Long term, I expect you are gonna be right ... but not at the moment.
It's fun to decry the obvious limitations of the current state of the art, but that's really missing the point.
but they were talking about Frogmore.