The Scottish results will be fascinating. I expect movement against both parties of government, made more entertaining that the SNP will blame the Tories and vice versa. So it should be a good election for Labour and the LibDems, but the problem comes in seats like my own where the local Tory is an arse but his only viable opponent is the SNP.
Do you vote SNP in protest at the disastrous policies of the Tory government impacting on local farming, fishing and energy interests? Or vote Tory in protest at the disastrous policies of the SNP government impacting local energy interests and services?
Or will the Boundary Review actually go through - in which case I will be in Aberdeenshire Central which is mostly the old Gordon seat. This was held by Malcolm Bruce of my own party until 2015, though LD votes have dissipated a lot since then.
So, much to play for and the new constituencies could shake a load of things up...
I hadn't realised that the new boundaries were still not in force. This is beyond ridiculous. Atm I am in Dundee West and would probably vote Labour in the vain hope they can recover the seat. If they go through I will be in the new Tayside North where the Tories will clearly be the strongest challenger.
Final recommendations are due by 1st July and will presumably be approved by Parliament in the autumn. I don't think there's a real rush because Sunak ain't calling an election before then.
IIRC the new boundaries don’t now need a vote in Parliament, with the legislation already passed. This was to stop the MPs voting them down again, after the debacle last time. The old boundaries have been in place since 2010, based on population numbers from 2005 or 2006.
No, the new boundaries are not based on population numbers. As part of the Cameron/Osborne gerrymandering programme (that cost them the EU referendum and both their careers), seats are based on the numbers of registered voters.
Well as you can't vote without being on the register that is hardly surprising
MPs do not just represent the people who voted for them, or even just the people registered to vote, but in any case the reason it is not surprising in this instance is that it was part of the Cameron/Osborne gerrymandering strategy (since copied in the US, iirc).
No, they don't, put the whole point of equalising constituency size is to equalise registered voters, not the entire population.
It's a sop to the "my vote is less equal" crowd. You don't get around that by including children in the calculation.
And, as I said, the number of registered voters is a known figure at all times. The population isn't.
No, the point is that by purging the rolls, introducing individual registration, and only then redrawing boundaries, Cameron/Osborne ensured more Tory seats would be created and Labour ones removed.
Ironically, this meant losing the European referendum and chucking Cameron and Osborne out of Downing Street. Karma's a bitch.
If parliament had let the last boundary review pass then individual registration would have come in after it.
But IER isn't why Cameron lost the EU referendum. The Remain campaign being utterly shit did that.
The Remain campaign was a shambles, true, but registration, and in particular disenfranchising a lot of remain-leaning young and urban voters was another significant factor. You may recall this was realised at the time so HMG ran a registration drive, and even an extended deadline, over protests from the Leave side.
Thanks for reminding us of another way in which the Government tried to stack the vote for Remain....
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
I have no difficulty in thinking that EVs will take off. But I don't want to go through the teething pains so will wait until some of the well publicised issues have been dealt with.
Like Teslas having the turning circle of a double decker bus, and fouling up the dashcam channels with their appalling low-res video quality.
"Government 'could abandon plans to ban new petrol and diesel car sales by 2030' after EU waters down its own restrictions to appease German manufacturers"
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening.
I do also wonder if there is a future in which the most common model is owning small EVs for the 90% of our journeys which are local and renting large ICEs or other type for longer journeys. My understanding is that EVs are much more cost effective as small, relatively low range vehicles, and I wonder whether by trying to make EVs do what ICEs do we are solving the wrong problem.
As a personal example, in my family we have two cars: a 14 year old Ford Focus and a rather newer MPV. We initially bought an MPV because we had three children under 5, and needed something which could fit three car seats in - but we're through that stage now. Now the reason for having an MPV is that a few times a year, all five of us plus luggage will go on a journey of more than 200 miles. I think many people are the same - we have the car we need for the extreme example of the journeys we make, rather than the typical example. 90% of the time, though, there is at least one car parked outside our house. And weeks, months can go by without ever going much more than 50 miles from home. It feels like a much more resource-efficient solution would be to own a small EV, and on the rare occasion we needed two cars at once, or that we needed a bigger car, rent one.
An EV works well as a second car, for most people who have a private driveway and a regular job. It does the daily commute, runs errands around town, and goes on charge every night. That covers 90% of journeys.
I can definitely see the last of the MPV and SUV petrol cars being snapped up by rental companies, they’re going to hold up in value and everyone’s going to want one at Christmas.
The worry for those buying an EV today, is that the technology moves so quickly that a five-year-old car is as popular as a five-year-old phone. When the new one does 500 miles and charges in 5 minutes, who will want an old one? What if the charging standard changes to enable faster speeds, and you’re stuck with the old one? I’d always lease an EV rather than buy it, which gives some random bank the risk of prices imploding. There are EV taxis that have done huge mileages (500,000+), but the concern is that the battery has a life measured mostly in time rather than usage.
There’s also concerns around the connectivity of EVs in particular, especially with Tesla who own the chargers. There’s stories from the US, of cars repaired outside the dealer network being banned from the charging network for “safety” reasons. Even if you own the car, do you really actually *own* the car?
Man living in petrostate not a fan of EVs.
Just playing the devil’s advocate. There’s actually a few EVs out here, but electricity is expensive and petrol is cheap.
At least there’s the infrastructure though, which isn’t the case in large parts of the world outside the West. There’s not going to be a huge rise in EV use in large parts of Asia or Africa any time soon.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
In 3 years of EV ownership, I have only had to use a public charger twice, and neither time did I have to wait. It is not often that I drive more than 280 miles in a day, and charging overnight on cheap electricity is better.
Indeed, because you have a driveway and a regular job, it’s a good fit. The concerns are around the edge cases, especially poorer people living in apartment blocks, who will have to pay a lot more to charge their car on the public network, then you would on cheap overnight home power.
60% of motorists have access to a driveway, so that will be the norm for most people.
There clearly needs to be investment in the charging network for everyone else. Cheap solar panels will be the answer for Asia and Africa. There are big solar developments in lots of countries there.
60% does seem rather high
Worth remembering that about one-third of households don't have a car at all. So that's 60% of two-thirds, or about 40% of all households.
It seems to me a problem that will go away as infrastructure develops, driven mileage continues to fall, and electric cars become taxed to the necessary extent which may help limit the numbers.
I think that, as ever, this is the London tail wagging the national dog.
IMO the challenge is to improve public transport and facilitate practical alternatives.
One small loophole may be 40+ year old cars not subject to the ULEZ charge.
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Which is why they are having to rob their museums and tank graveyards.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
Just as most people don't have filling stations at their home.
I am not sure I agree with "What is very clear is that any hopes labour have of returning to power rely on a very strong performance in Scotland".
Unless the Tories + DUP have majority after the next GE Labour will return to power imo. Clearly, success for Labour in Scotland makes that easier but it's not a prerequisite.
I do think that a dozen or so Scottish seats could easily be the difference between largest party and overall majority as the polls tighten a bit.
As the election draws closer, if we are to see massive swingback to the Conservatives as highlighted and expected on these very pages, I don't see why that wouldn't also be the case for the incumbent SNP.
As it stands Labour are 10 to 15 points ahead of the Conservatives nationally (and we are expecting that to mostly drift back by election day). In Scotland Labour are 10 to 15 points adrift of the SNP (why are we not expecting that to return to its usual 20 to 25 point margin?).
Labour are doomed, doomed I say!
Swingback, if it helps Yousless at all, would come in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, not the General.
You’ve all set the bar so low for him that he’s going to clear it and look like a success.
Not a chance. He will fail in ways we can't even imagine yet. Starting with the appointment of Shona Robinson, Nicola's best mate, as deputy. I searched for her achievements on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_Robison Unfortunately, achievements was a missing word!
Surely then the time is ripe for the high achievers of your party of choice to sweep to power?
Not for three years, though ...
If the predictions of Humza’s tenure not outlasting a Trussian lettuce don’t come to pass, that’s just three more years for Ross & co to put their obvious qualities on display.
That reminds me - is Mr Ross leaving Holyrood at the next election, or is my memory failing me? I am sure I recall some announcement, but can't confirm it. So I may be quite wrong, in which case apols.
He announced he was leaving Westminster at the next GE.
Thanks - that's it.
That means a new candidate for Moray presumably? Luckily a large pool of achievers to choose from.
Hmm, fisherfolk and farmers not too happy with Brexit either. But the latter not exactly SKS voters, and it was the previous leader of the LDs who liked to be filmed in front of farm animals. Not sure that Mr C-H has quite the same knack.
"Fisherfolk"? This conjures an image of olde worlde types for whom the 19th century is dangerously modern. Nice alliteration though.
Non-gendered*. Also means the family members, comer to think of it, so works well in political terms.
Edit: like e.g. convenor instead of chairperson.
Also: avoids confusion with the people with rod and line.
Do you get many (any?) women on trawlers? Your points about family and anglers are good though (though again in my mind conjures up images of 18th century communities). I don't have a better word, mind.
EDIT: I rather like 'convenor', though. 'Chairperson' always sounded horribly clunky. (And irritation with Chairman/Chair/Chairperson goes back at least to the 70s. I can remember my grandfather, somewhat implausibly, claiming that the 'man' in chairman referred not to a male human but was short for 'manifesto'. I was sceptical then and remain so now.)
It's not just trawlers (on which a lot of thew workforce is non-UK). Inshore fishijng is a very important industry. No idea of the gender balance though.
Plenty of small towns used to have a "fishertown" wit distinct architecture and location - Berwick, Nairn, Cromarty spring to mind (and Wick, but that was specially developed - a fine sight to visit).
Good morning
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Which is why they are having to rob their museums and tank graveyards.
Russia could not field tanks in the far east if China saw the moment to invade.
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Imagine how fucked the Russians will be when 150% of their tanks have been destroyed.
I am not sure I agree with "What is very clear is that any hopes labour have of returning to power rely on a very strong performance in Scotland".
Unless the Tories + DUP have majority after the next GE Labour will return to power imo. Clearly, success for Labour in Scotland makes that easier but it's not a prerequisite.
I do think that a dozen or so Scottish seats could easily be the difference between largest party and overall majority as the polls tighten a bit.
As the election draws closer, if we are to see massive swingback to the Conservatives as highlighted and expected on these very pages, I don't see why that wouldn't also be the case for the incumbent SNP.
As it stands Labour are 10 to 15 points ahead of the Conservatives nationally (and we are expecting that to mostly drift back by election day). In Scotland Labour are 10 to 15 points adrift of the SNP (why are we not expecting that to return to its usual 20 to 25 point margin?).
Labour are doomed, doomed I say!
Swingback, if it helps Yousless at all, would come in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, not the General.
You’ve all set the bar so low for him that he’s going to clear it and look like a success.
Not a chance. He will fail in ways we can't even imagine yet. Starting with the appointment of Shona Robinson, Nicola's best mate, as deputy. I searched for her achievements on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_Robison Unfortunately, achievements was a missing word!
Surely then the time is ripe for the high achievers of your party of choice to sweep to power?
Not for three years, though ...
If the predictions of Humza’s tenure not outlasting a Trussian lettuce don’t come to pass, that’s just three more years for Ross & co to put their obvious qualities on display.
That reminds me - is Mr Ross leaving Holyrood at the next election, or is my memory failing me? I am sure I recall some announcement, but can't confirm it. So I may be quite wrong, in which case apols.
He announced he was leaving Westminster at the next GE.
Thanks - that's it.
That means a new candidate for Moray presumably? Luckily a large pool of achievers to choose from.
Hmm, fisherfolk and farmers not too happy with Brexit either. But the latter not exactly SKS voters, and it was the previous leader of the LDs who liked to be filmed in front of farm animals. Not sure that Mr C-H has quite the same knack.
"Fisherfolk"? This conjures an image of olde worlde types for whom the 19th century is dangerously modern. Nice alliteration though.
Non-gendered*. Also means the family members, comer to think of it, so works well in political terms.
Edit: like e.g. convenor instead of chairperson.
Also: avoids confusion with the people with rod and line.
Do you get many (any?) women on trawlers? Your points about family and anglers are good though (though again in my mind conjures up images of 18th century communities). I don't have a better word, mind.
EDIT: I rather like 'convenor', though. 'Chairperson' always sounded horribly clunky. (And irritation with Chairman/Chair/Chairperson goes back at least to the 70s. I can remember my grandfather, somewhat implausibly, claiming that the 'man' in chairman referred not to a male human but was short for 'manifesto'. I was sceptical then and remain so now.)
It's not just trawlers (on which a lot of thew workforce is non-UK). Inshore fishijng is a very important industry. No idea of the gender balance though.
Plenty of small towns used to have a "fishertown" wit distinct architecture and location - Berwick, Nairn, Cromarty spring to mind (and Wick, but that was specially developed - a fine sight to visit).
Good morning
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
I don’t believe it will work. Whoever gets the best AGI first will become enormously powerful and enormously rich. When have humans ever resisted that?
Plus, the Chinese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Japanese, Russians etc will be working on their own versions, they won’t stop because the military capabilities of AGI will be monumental, and if you’re enemy has them and you don’t you’re screwed
I don't know about the Chinese. Authoritarian control freaks tend to be more cautious about competition form such systems.
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Imagine how fucked the Russians will be when 150% of their tanks have been destroyed.
IIRC some German units made it to more than 600% loses by the end of WW2 - destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed….
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening.
I do also wonder if there is a future in which the most common model is owning small EVs for the 90% of our journeys which are local and renting large ICEs or other type for longer journeys. My understanding is that EVs are much more cost effective as small, relatively low range vehicles, and I wonder whether by trying to make EVs do what ICEs do we are solving the wrong problem.
As a personal example, in my family we have two cars: a 14 year old Ford Focus and a rather newer MPV. We initially bought an MPV because we had three children under 5, and needed something which could fit three car seats in - but we're through that stage now. Now the reason for having an MPV is that a few times a year, all five of us plus luggage will go on a journey of more than 200 miles. I think many people are the same - we have the car we need for the extreme example of the journeys we make, rather than the typical example. 90% of the time, though, there is at least one car parked outside our house. And weeks, months can go by without ever going much more than 50 miles from home. It feels like a much more resource-efficient solution would be to own a small EV, and on the rare occasion we needed two cars at once, or that we needed a bigger car, rent one.
An EV works well as a second car, for most people who have a private driveway and a regular job. It does the daily commute, runs errands around town, and goes on charge every night. That covers 90% of journeys.
I can definitely see the last of the MPV and SUV petrol cars being snapped up by rental companies, they’re going to hold up in value and everyone’s going to want one at Christmas.
The worry for those buying an EV today, is that the technology moves so quickly that a five-year-old car is as popular as a five-year-old phone. When the new one does 500 miles and charges in 5 minutes, who will want an old one? What if the charging standard changes to enable faster speeds, and you’re stuck with the old one? I’d always lease an EV rather than buy it, which gives some random bank the risk of prices imploding. There are EV taxis that have done huge mileages (500,000+), but the concern is that the battery has a life measured mostly in time rather than usage.
There’s also concerns around the connectivity of EVs in particular, especially with Tesla who own the chargers. There’s stories from the US, of cars repaired outside the dealer network being banned from the charging network for “safety” reasons. Even if you own the car, do you really actually *own* the car?
Man living in petrostate not a fan of EVs.
Just playing the devil’s advocate. There’s actually a few EVs out here, but electricity is expensive and petrol is cheap.
At least there’s the infrastructure though, which isn’t the case in large parts of the world outside the West. There’s not going to be a huge rise in EV use in large parts of Asia or Africa any time soon.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
In 3 years of EV ownership, I have only had to use a public charger twice, and neither time did I have to wait. It is not often that I drive more than 280 miles in a day, and charging overnight on cheap electricity is better.
Indeed, because you have a driveway and a regular job, it’s a good fit. The concerns are around the edge cases, especially poorer people living in apartment blocks, who will have to pay a lot more to charge their car on the public network, then you would on cheap overnight home power.
Not just tower blocks. Any home without off-street parking is screwed as you cannot safely run power cables across the pavement.
I've always wondered whether the way electric vehicles are charged is suboptimal. I wonder whether there is a solution whereby you could charge a battery in your house and then take it out and put it into your car and charge battery to battery? This might also make for a better model for roadside charging - drop off a low charge battery and swap it for a high charge battery. I'm aware this is a half-thought through solution with lots of impracticalities (like batteries with sufficient charge being bloody heavy) - but I'd argue that we've arrived at the current solution for EV charging a little arbitrarily. It feels like a better solution ought to exist.
The battery in a Tesla model Y apparently weighs 2 tonnes!
Another big problem for battery-swapping is that you'd hardly want to swap out your new battery for a battery that's been through 1,000 charge and discharge cycles.
I am not sure I agree with "What is very clear is that any hopes labour have of returning to power rely on a very strong performance in Scotland".
Unless the Tories + DUP have majority after the next GE Labour will return to power imo. Clearly, success for Labour in Scotland makes that easier but it's not a prerequisite.
I do think that a dozen or so Scottish seats could easily be the difference between largest party and overall majority as the polls tighten a bit.
As the election draws closer, if we are to see massive swingback to the Conservatives as highlighted and expected on these very pages, I don't see why that wouldn't also be the case for the incumbent SNP.
As it stands Labour are 10 to 15 points ahead of the Conservatives nationally (and we are expecting that to mostly drift back by election day). In Scotland Labour are 10 to 15 points adrift of the SNP (why are we not expecting that to return to its usual 20 to 25 point margin?).
Labour are doomed, doomed I say!
Swingback, if it helps Yousless at all, would come in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, not the General.
You’ve all set the bar so low for him that he’s going to clear it and look like a success.
Not a chance. He will fail in ways we can't even imagine yet. Starting with the appointment of Shona Robinson, Nicola's best mate, as deputy. I searched for her achievements on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_Robison Unfortunately, achievements was a missing word!
Surely then the time is ripe for the high achievers of your party of choice to sweep to power?
Not for three years, though ...
If the predictions of Humza’s tenure not outlasting a Trussian lettuce don’t come to pass, that’s just three more years for Ross & co to put their obvious qualities on display.
That reminds me - is Mr Ross leaving Holyrood at the next election, or is my memory failing me? I am sure I recall some announcement, but can't confirm it. So I may be quite wrong, in which case apols.
He announced he was leaving Westminster at the next GE.
Thanks - that's it.
That means a new candidate for Moray presumably? Luckily a large pool of achievers to choose from.
Hmm, fisherfolk and farmers not too happy with Brexit either. But the latter not exactly SKS voters, and it was the previous leader of the LDs who liked to be filmed in front of farm animals. Not sure that Mr C-H has quite the same knack.
"Fisherfolk"? This conjures an image of olde worlde types for whom the 19th century is dangerously modern. Nice alliteration though.
Non-gendered*. Also means the family members, comer to think of it, so works well in political terms.
Edit: like e.g. convenor instead of chairperson.
Also: avoids confusion with the people with rod and line.
Do you get many (any?) women on trawlers? Your points about family and anglers are good though (though again in my mind conjures up images of 18th century communities). I don't have a better word, mind.
EDIT: I rather like 'convenor', though. 'Chairperson' always sounded horribly clunky. (And irritation with Chairman/Chair/Chairperson goes back at least to the 70s. I can remember my grandfather, somewhat implausibly, claiming that the 'man' in chairman referred not to a male human but was short for 'manifesto'. I was sceptical then and remain so now.)
It's not just trawlers (on which a lot of thew workforce is non-UK). Inshore fishijng is a very important industry. No idea of the gender balance though.
Plenty of small towns used to have a "fishertown" wit distinct architecture and location - Berwick, Nairn, Cromarty spring to mind (and Wick, but that was specially developed - a fine sight to visit).
Good morning
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
For a while the horse drawn carriage was probably still better but eventually became obsolete.
The government of the time didn't put an arbitrary deadline on it though.
When the car was better and cheaper, people started using them.
When electric is better and cheaper (it is already better for some uses, although not cheaper) then everyone will be keen to swap.
I'm not convinced that will be by 2030 though.
The change has to be forced by government because the benefits of EVs are primarily collective - they are far less environmentally damaging - rather than individual.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening.
I do also wonder if there is a future in which the most common model is owning small EVs for the 90% of our journeys which are local and renting large ICEs or other type for longer journeys. My understanding is that EVs are much more cost effective as small, relatively low range vehicles, and I wonder whether by trying to make EVs do what ICEs do we are solving the wrong problem.
As a personal example, in my family we have two cars: a 14 year old Ford Focus and a rather newer MPV. We initially bought an MPV because we had three children under 5, and needed something which could fit three car seats in - but we're through that stage now. Now the reason for having an MPV is that a few times a year, all five of us plus luggage will go on a journey of more than 200 miles. I think many people are the same - we have the car we need for the extreme example of the journeys we make, rather than the typical example. 90% of the time, though, there is at least one car parked outside our house. And weeks, months can go by without ever going much more than 50 miles from home. It feels like a much more resource-efficient solution would be to own a small EV, and on the rare occasion we needed two cars at once, or that we needed a bigger car, rent one.
An EV works well as a second car, for most people who have a private driveway and a regular job. It does the daily commute, runs errands around town, and goes on charge every night. That covers 90% of journeys.
I can definitely see the last of the MPV and SUV petrol cars being snapped up by rental companies, they’re going to hold up in value and everyone’s going to want one at Christmas.
The worry for those buying an EV today, is that the technology moves so quickly that a five-year-old car is as popular as a five-year-old phone. When the new one does 500 miles and charges in 5 minutes, who will want an old one? What if the charging standard changes to enable faster speeds, and you’re stuck with the old one? I’d always lease an EV rather than buy it, which gives some random bank the risk of prices imploding. There are EV taxis that have done huge mileages (500,000+), but the concern is that the battery has a life measured mostly in time rather than usage.
There’s also concerns around the connectivity of EVs in particular, especially with Tesla who own the chargers. There’s stories from the US, of cars repaired outside the dealer network being banned from the charging network for “safety” reasons. Even if you own the car, do you really actually *own* the car?
Man living in petrostate not a fan of EVs.
Just playing the devil’s advocate. There’s actually a few EVs out here, but electricity is expensive and petrol is cheap.
At least there’s the infrastructure though, which isn’t the case in large parts of the world outside the West. There’s not going to be a huge rise in EV use in large parts of Asia or Africa any time soon.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
In 3 years of EV ownership, I have only had to use a public charger twice, and neither time did I have to wait. It is not often that I drive more than 280 miles in a day, and charging overnight on cheap electricity is better.
Indeed, because you have a driveway and a regular job, it’s a good fit. The concerns are around the edge cases, especially poorer people living in apartment blocks, who will have to pay a lot more to charge their car on the public network, then you would on cheap overnight home power.
Not just tower blocks. Any home without off-street parking is screwed as you cannot safely run power cables across the pavement.
I've always wondered whether the way electric vehicles are charged is suboptimal. I wonder whether there is a solution whereby you could charge a battery in your house and then take it out and put it into your car and charge battery to battery? This might also make for a better model for roadside charging - drop off a low charge battery and swap it for a high charge battery. I'm aware this is a half-thought through solution with lots of impracticalities (like batteries with sufficient charge being bloody heavy) - but I'd argue that we've arrived at the current solution for EV charging a little arbitrarily. It feels like a better solution ought to exist.
Essentially, no - they weigh too much. Though swappable systems have a market in China, for some reason. And are practical for scooters, obviously.
I love the dashboard of my 2009 Ford Focus. It is just about perfection.
Reading these two sentences gave my eyes AIDS and caused me to have a mini-stroke. Thanks.
I thought you were a driver, Dura_Ace, not some pampered fop who needs to be able to specify the temperature of his seat and that his air temperature needs to be two degrees lower than that of his passenger and who needs a computer to tell him the way home.
And another thing: complicated climate control doesn't work. Or it doesn't work particularly effectively. Certainly less effectively than 'I am a bit cold - I will turn the dial a bit from blue to red - ah, that's better'.
I'm not saying that a 2009 Ford Focus is the best driving experience ever. It's perfectly adequate - you can keep up with the traffic, it doesn't veer off to the left. I daresay if you were racing you would want something a bit more exciting. But my point is that nothing which has happened since then - new buttons, flashing lights, push button ignition, electric handbrakes - makes life any better at all.
Electric handbrakes are shit and mean you can't use the handbrake to control the car on a steep hill. All they do is stop the car rolling away when you park. A brick in front of a tyre, or behind it, would achieve the same thing.
Climate control is rubbish and is far inferior to the old Ford model of one dial for heat and another for whoosh.
GPS is for girly men who can't read maps and who like being told "turn left", "turn right", etc. - ideal for the Covid generation. Lock yourself up. You came within 3 metres of someone who missed his vaccine appointment. Do not pass Go. Do not enjoy solving problems. That's your tool's job.
Automatic transmission is also shit and for drivers who don't enjoy being in control of a car or the feeling of brrrm, brrrrrrrrrm.
Teslas are like pornosex for those with microscopic testicles who can't even manage a proper J Arthur.
Spot on.
I got a lift from someone in a Tesla recently. It was clearly a very good car. He was very pleased in demonstrating how well it accelerated. It wasn't a particularly pleasant journey however as there were lots of sudden small changes of speed. I don't know whether to blame the driver or the car for this (I suspect the former). He also INSISTED on following his satnav rather than my directions, making the journey much longer. He couldn't conceive that the satnav wouldn't be the perfect answer. He was also baffled when I tried to direct him to a location close to a station - a reasonably well-known location on a main road less than a mile from where he had lived for over five years - because being totally reliant on satnavs he was as ignorant as a baby about his local geography.
Some people have a very odd pogoing driving style. Mate of mine gave me lifts in his MINI and was constantly accelerating and decelerating in a cycle. As he was driving a 3-pot diesel it meant that although there was a forward / back sensation it wasn't that pronounced. But in a Tesla with an ocean of instant torque doing the same? Enough to make someone sick...
I am not sure I agree with "What is very clear is that any hopes labour have of returning to power rely on a very strong performance in Scotland".
Unless the Tories + DUP have majority after the next GE Labour will return to power imo. Clearly, success for Labour in Scotland makes that easier but it's not a prerequisite.
I do think that a dozen or so Scottish seats could easily be the difference between largest party and overall majority as the polls tighten a bit.
As the election draws closer, if we are to see massive swingback to the Conservatives as highlighted and expected on these very pages, I don't see why that wouldn't also be the case for the incumbent SNP.
As it stands Labour are 10 to 15 points ahead of the Conservatives nationally (and we are expecting that to mostly drift back by election day). In Scotland Labour are 10 to 15 points adrift of the SNP (why are we not expecting that to return to its usual 20 to 25 point margin?).
Labour are doomed, doomed I say!
Swingback, if it helps Yousless at all, would come in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, not the General.
You’ve all set the bar so low for him that he’s going to clear it and look like a success.
Not a chance. He will fail in ways we can't even imagine yet. Starting with the appointment of Shona Robinson, Nicola's best mate, as deputy. I searched for her achievements on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_Robison Unfortunately, achievements was a missing word!
Surely then the time is ripe for the high achievers of your party of choice to sweep to power?
Not for three years, though ...
If the predictions of Humza’s tenure not outlasting a Trussian lettuce don’t come to pass, that’s just three more years for Ross & co to put their obvious qualities on display.
That reminds me - is Mr Ross leaving Holyrood at the next election, or is my memory failing me? I am sure I recall some announcement, but can't confirm it. So I may be quite wrong, in which case apols.
He announced he was leaving Westminster at the next GE.
Thanks - that's it.
That means a new candidate for Moray presumably? Luckily a large pool of achievers to choose from.
Hmm, fisherfolk and farmers not too happy with Brexit either. But the latter not exactly SKS voters, and it was the previous leader of the LDs who liked to be filmed in front of farm animals. Not sure that Mr C-H has quite the same knack.
"Fisherfolk"? This conjures an image of olde worlde types for whom the 19th century is dangerously modern. Nice alliteration though.
Non-gendered*. Also means the family members, comer to think of it, so works well in political terms.
Edit: like e.g. convenor instead of chairperson.
Also: avoids confusion with the people with rod and line.
Do you get many (any?) women on trawlers? Your points about family and anglers are good though (though again in my mind conjures up images of 18th century communities). I don't have a better word, mind.
EDIT: I rather like 'convenor', though. 'Chairperson' always sounded horribly clunky. (And irritation with Chairman/Chair/Chairperson goes back at least to the 70s. I can remember my grandfather, somewhat implausibly, claiming that the 'man' in chairman referred not to a male human but was short for 'manifesto'. I was sceptical then and remain so now.)
It's not just trawlers (on which a lot of thew workforce is non-UK). Inshore fishijng is a very important industry. No idea of the gender balance though.
Plenty of small towns used to have a "fishertown" wit distinct architecture and location - Berwick, Nairn, Cromarty spring to mind (and Wick, but that was specially developed - a fine sight to visit).
Good morning
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
Also - strong women (or small men!) they bred in those days! I can't imagine we'd have much success if my wife had to carry me to the car to keep my feet dry.
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Which is why they are having to rob their museums and tank graveyards.
Russia could not field tanks in the far east if China saw the moment to invade.
Bollocks.
A simple Google shows at least 5 1940s vintage T-34s on display in Vladivostok museums.
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Imagine how fucked the Russians will be when 150% of their tanks have been destroyed.
IIRC some German units made it to more than 600% loses by the end of WW2 - destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed….
I'd imagine British and US the same - one of the great advantages the allies had in Normandy was the ability to repair and replace knocked-out armour.
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Imagine how fucked the Russians will be when 150% of their tanks have been destroyed.
Pretty fucked up. In reality, they've probably got enough kit for 2023, and not for 2024.
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Which is why they are having to rob their museums and tank graveyards.
Russia could not field tanks in the far east if China saw the moment to invade.
Bollocks.
A simple Google shows at least 5 1940s vintage T-34s on display in Vladivostok museums.
I stand by my prediction that they’ll be robbing T-34s from WWII war memorials by the summer!
(For those who don’t know, pretty much every large town in the old Soviet Union, has a WWII memorial featuring a tank. They presumably had thousands of surplus ones when the war ended. Here’s the one in my wife’s home town in Ukraine. https://www.kathmanduandbeyond.com/victory-memorial-zhytomyr-ukraine/ )
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Which is why they are having to rob their museums and tank graveyards.
Russia could not field tanks in the far east if China saw the moment to invade.
Bollocks.
A simple Google shows at least 5 1940s vintage T-34s on display in Vladivostok museums.
As a symbolic gesture, Germany could send back the Soviet tanks on display in Berlin.
I don’t believe it will work. Whoever gets the best AGI first will become enormously powerful and enormously rich. When have humans ever resisted that?
Plus, the Chinese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Japanese, Russians etc will be working on their own versions, they won’t stop because the military capabilities of AGI will be monumental, and if you’re enemy has them and you don’t you’re screwed
I don't know about the Chinese. Authoritarian control freaks tend to be more cautious about competition form such systems.
For now at least, it's the US.
Wrong. The Chinese - quite sensibly - see the potential here. And they are racing to catch up with the USA. They are a year or two behind
“Chinese researchers unveil AI language model that beats GPT-3 Minds behind WuDao 2.0 develop AI model to run on a single V100 server”
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Imagine how fucked the Russians will be when 150% of their tanks have been destroyed.
IIRC some German units made it to more than 600% loses by the end of WW2 - destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed….
I'd imagine British and US the same - one of the great advantages the allies had in Normandy was the ability to repair and replace knocked-out armour.
It was quite common for tank led offensives to stop because they had run out of running tanks.
Not necessarily knocked out - even just flooded engines from a bad start.
The engineers would go out, and recover tanks, fix tracks etc and the units would be back to half strength overnight.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
I regularly drive 185 miles to the Isle of Wight in mine. I suppose it depends what you mean by local.
The UK government has delivered on its promises in remarkably quick time. Described by the Ukrainians as a "true friend of Ukraine".
I know it’s been said numerous times, but this looks again like a turning point in the war. The enemy has thrown so much, in terms of men and materiel, at the conflict, yet has failed to gain any significant territory over the winter.
The juxtaposition of numerous Western tanks arriving in Ukraine, as the Russians are pulling 60-year-old T-55 tanks out of museums for recommissioning, is very stark.
A T-55 vs a Challenger 2, is the enemy bringing a knife to a gun fight.
200 T-55 vs 14 Challenger 2s… I wouldn’t bet against the T-55s
I refer you to the Battle of Norfolk.
Not quite the same tank versions but earlier iterations.
From wiki. Quite something.
"A British Challenger 1 tank during the 1st Gulf War. The British Challenger tank was the most efficient tank of the Gulf war suffering no losses while destroying approximately 300 Iraqi tanks during combat operations."
The Challengers will have four major advantages over the older Russian tanks
i) Longer firing range
ii) Much better armour
iii) GPS
iv) Night vision
In the original Gulf War a single battalion of Abrams, which are comparable to Challengers, destroyed an entire Iraqi division.
Also, like then, the Ukranians will have much better live time intelligence info.
It doesn't really make any sense to do a direct comparison as there has been very little hardcore tank-on-tank action in the SMO; that is not how it's being fought.
Also, you'll be very lucky to see a Russian tank as the 100% truth telling Ukrainians now claim to have destroyed every tank in the Russian army.
Like the seventy odd HIMARs systems Russia claims to have taken out ? (Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair. Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
As Dura Ace must know, the numbers quoted refer to the number of tanks initially committed to the "SMO"/invasion of Ukraine, as supplemented after it went so swimmingly to start with.
Imagine how fucked the Russians will be when 150% of their tanks have been destroyed.
Governance by artificial intelligence: the ultimate unaccountable tyranny
It’s no secret that globalist institutions are obsessed with Artificial Intelligence as some kind of technological prophecy. They treat it as if it is almost supernatural in its potential and often argue that every meaningful industrial and social innovation in the near future will owe its existence to AI. The World Economic Forum cites AI as the singular key to the rise of what they call the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” In their view, there can be no human progress without the influence of AI algorithms, making human input almost obsolete.
This delusion is often promoted by globalist propagandists. For example, take a look at the summarized vision of WEF member Yuval Harari, who actually believes that AI has creative ability that will replace human imagination and innovation. Not only that, but Harari has consistently argued in the past that AI will run the world much better than human beings ever could.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
For on Street Chargers we need to avoid this type of thing (London), which is diabolical. They need to be in the road between the parking spaces.
Good luck getting past that in a wheelchair, and not tripping if blind or even at night.
ETA no pavement on the other side of the road.
Who on Earth signed off that terrible design? How much more difficult would it have been, to stagger the two units by a few feet, and move the consumer end right to the edge of the pavement?
There is a big difference between cognitive automation and cognitive autonomy. AI is purely automation; it will play the games it is programmed to play and will learn to play them well, but it will never have an epiphany one day and create a new and unique game from scratch unless it is coded to do so. AI will never have fun playing this new game it made, or feel the joy of sharing that game with others, so why would it bother? It will never seek to contribute to the world any more than it is pre-programmed to do.
I don’t believe it will work. Whoever gets the best AGI first will become enormously powerful and enormously rich. When have humans ever resisted that?
Plus, the Chinese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Japanese, Russians etc will be working on their own versions, they won’t stop because the military capabilities of AGI will be monumental, and if you’re enemy has them and you don’t you’re screwed
I don't know about the Chinese. Authoritarian control freaks tend to be more cautious about competition form such systems.
For now at least, it's the US.
Wrong. The Chinese - quite sensibly - see the potential here. And they are racing to catch up with the USA. They are a year or two behind
“Chinese researchers unveil AI language model that beats GPT-3 Minds behind WuDao 2.0 develop AI model to run on a single V100 server”
AI is the main reason Biden slapped those severe bans on the export of chip tech (and other stuff) to Beijing
On reflection, you're probably right (for now). I note Xi has referred to AI as a "lead goose" in relation to economic development.
Though it remains the case that China has the capacity to mandate an effective moratorium if its rules get cold feet - which really isn't the case in the US.
It might interest you to know that one of their two leading research centres in the field is ... the Wuhan University School of Information Management.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
I am not sure I agree with "What is very clear is that any hopes labour have of returning to power rely on a very strong performance in Scotland".
Unless the Tories + DUP have majority after the next GE Labour will return to power imo. Clearly, success for Labour in Scotland makes that easier but it's not a prerequisite.
I do think that a dozen or so Scottish seats could easily be the difference between largest party and overall majority as the polls tighten a bit.
As the election draws closer, if we are to see massive swingback to the Conservatives as highlighted and expected on these very pages, I don't see why that wouldn't also be the case for the incumbent SNP.
As it stands Labour are 10 to 15 points ahead of the Conservatives nationally (and we are expecting that to mostly drift back by election day). In Scotland Labour are 10 to 15 points adrift of the SNP (why are we not expecting that to return to its usual 20 to 25 point margin?).
Labour are doomed, doomed I say!
Swingback, if it helps Yousless at all, would come in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, not the General.
You’ve all set the bar so low for him that he’s going to clear it and look like a success.
Not a chance. He will fail in ways we can't even imagine yet. Starting with the appointment of Shona Robinson, Nicola's best mate, as deputy. I searched for her achievements on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_Robison Unfortunately, achievements was a missing word!
Surely then the time is ripe for the high achievers of your party of choice to sweep to power?
Not for three years, though ...
If the predictions of Humza’s tenure not outlasting a Trussian lettuce don’t come to pass, that’s just three more years for Ross & co to put their obvious qualities on display.
That reminds me - is Mr Ross leaving Holyrood at the next election, or is my memory failing me? I am sure I recall some announcement, but can't confirm it. So I may be quite wrong, in which case apols.
He announced he was leaving Westminster at the next GE.
Thanks - that's it.
That means a new candidate for Moray presumably? Luckily a large pool of achievers to choose from.
Hmm, fisherfolk and farmers not too happy with Brexit either. But the latter not exactly SKS voters, and it was the previous leader of the LDs who liked to be filmed in front of farm animals. Not sure that Mr C-H has quite the same knack.
"Fisherfolk"? This conjures an image of olde worlde types for whom the 19th century is dangerously modern. Nice alliteration though.
Non-gendered*. Also means the family members, comer to think of it, so works well in political terms.
Edit: like e.g. convenor instead of chairperson.
Also: avoids confusion with the people with rod and line.
Do you get many (any?) women on trawlers? Your points about family and anglers are good though (though again in my mind conjures up images of 18th century communities). I don't have a better word, mind.
EDIT: I rather like 'convenor', though. 'Chairperson' always sounded horribly clunky. (And irritation with Chairman/Chair/Chairperson goes back at least to the 70s. I can remember my grandfather, somewhat implausibly, claiming that the 'man' in chairman referred not to a male human but was short for 'manifesto'. I was sceptical then and remain so now.)
It's not just trawlers (on which a lot of thew workforce is non-UK). Inshore fishijng is a very important industry. No idea of the gender balance though.
Plenty of small towns used to have a "fishertown" wit distinct architecture and location - Berwick, Nairn, Cromarty spring to mind (and Wick, but that was specially developed - a fine sight to visit).
Good morning
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
And would they have used the word 'fisherfolk'? I'm not trying to be combative here, I'm genuinely interested.
They certainly did in Arbroath where my wife's family was from. The fisherfolk lived in the fit o' the toon, basically near the harbour. It was a very closely related community. A fisherman's wife not only had to carry their men to the boats but did most of the gutting of the fish as well. It was a bloody hard life for someone who had not been brought up on it which led the men to choose women from inside the community.
Quite weirdly in Arbroath the fit o' the toon always voted conservative until my late father in law stood for Labour. All voters that day were greeted by name by his gran who sat in front of the polling booth with her knitting and asked, "you'll be voting for my grandson?"
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
There is a big difference between cognitive automation and cognitive autonomy. AI is purely automation; it will play the games it is programmed to play and will learn to play them well, but it will never have an epiphany one day and create a new and unique game from scratch unless it is coded to do so. AI will never have fun playing this new game it made, or feel the joy of sharing that game with others, so why would it bother? It will never seek to contribute to the world any more than it is pre-programmed to do.
On the other hand they don't get distracted by the likes of PB when their work is on the boring side!
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
I regularly drive 185 miles to the Isle of Wight in mine. I suppose it depends what you mean by local.
There is a big difference between cognitive automation and cognitive autonomy. AI is purely automation; it will play the games it is programmed to play and will learn to play them well, but it will never have an epiphany one day and create a new and unique game from scratch unless it is coded to do so. AI will never have fun playing this new game it made, or feel the joy of sharing that game with others, so why would it bother? It will never seek to contribute to the world any more than it is pre-programmed to do.
On the other hand they don't get distracted by the likes of PB when their work is on the boring side!
If it wasn’t for PB, it would definitely be something else! My work this week is a file server upgrade, and I can say definitively that watching terabytes of data copy from the old one to the new one, is like watching paint dry.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
The only example I can think of in the past decade was when I last went up Scafell Pike. Wasdale Head is [checks] 129 miles away. So that would have been on the cusp of trying to build in a stop on the way back.
I see your point, but for me personally, it's very rare that I go somewhere and back in a day which is more than 100 miles away.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
I am not sure I agree with "What is very clear is that any hopes labour have of returning to power rely on a very strong performance in Scotland".
Unless the Tories + DUP have majority after the next GE Labour will return to power imo. Clearly, success for Labour in Scotland makes that easier but it's not a prerequisite.
I do think that a dozen or so Scottish seats could easily be the difference between largest party and overall majority as the polls tighten a bit.
As the election draws closer, if we are to see massive swingback to the Conservatives as highlighted and expected on these very pages, I don't see why that wouldn't also be the case for the incumbent SNP.
As it stands Labour are 10 to 15 points ahead of the Conservatives nationally (and we are expecting that to mostly drift back by election day). In Scotland Labour are 10 to 15 points adrift of the SNP (why are we not expecting that to return to its usual 20 to 25 point margin?).
Labour are doomed, doomed I say!
Swingback, if it helps Yousless at all, would come in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, not the General.
You’ve all set the bar so low for him that he’s going to clear it and look like a success.
Not a chance. He will fail in ways we can't even imagine yet. Starting with the appointment of Shona Robinson, Nicola's best mate, as deputy. I searched for her achievements on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_Robison Unfortunately, achievements was a missing word!
Surely then the time is ripe for the high achievers of your party of choice to sweep to power?
Not for three years, though ...
If the predictions of Humza’s tenure not outlasting a Trussian lettuce don’t come to pass, that’s just three more years for Ross & co to put their obvious qualities on display.
That reminds me - is Mr Ross leaving Holyrood at the next election, or is my memory failing me? I am sure I recall some announcement, but can't confirm it. So I may be quite wrong, in which case apols.
He announced he was leaving Westminster at the next GE.
Thanks - that's it.
That means a new candidate for Moray presumably? Luckily a large pool of achievers to choose from.
Hmm, fisherfolk and farmers not too happy with Brexit either. But the latter not exactly SKS voters, and it was the previous leader of the LDs who liked to be filmed in front of farm animals. Not sure that Mr C-H has quite the same knack.
"Fisherfolk"? This conjures an image of olde worlde types for whom the 19th century is dangerously modern. Nice alliteration though.
Non-gendered*. Also means the family members, comer to think of it, so works well in political terms.
Edit: like e.g. convenor instead of chairperson.
Also: avoids confusion with the people with rod and line.
Do you get many (any?) women on trawlers? Your points about family and anglers are good though (though again in my mind conjures up images of 18th century communities). I don't have a better word, mind.
EDIT: I rather like 'convenor', though. 'Chairperson' always sounded horribly clunky. (And irritation with Chairman/Chair/Chairperson goes back at least to the 70s. I can remember my grandfather, somewhat implausibly, claiming that the 'man' in chairman referred not to a male human but was short for 'manifesto'. I was sceptical then and remain so now.)
It's not just trawlers (on which a lot of thew workforce is non-UK). Inshore fishijng is a very important industry. No idea of the gender balance though.
Plenty of small towns used to have a "fishertown" wit distinct architecture and location - Berwick, Nairn, Cromarty spring to mind (and Wick, but that was specially developed - a fine sight to visit).
Good morning
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
And would they have used the word 'fisherfolk'? I'm not trying to be combative here, I'm genuinely interested.
They certainly did in Arbroath where my wife's family was from. The fisherfolk lived in the fit o' the toon, basically near the harbour. It was a very closely related community. A fisherman's wife not only had to carry their men to the boats but did most of the gutting of the fish as well. It was a bloody hard life for someone who had not been brought up on it which led the men to choose women from inside the community.
Quite weirdly in Arbroath the fit o' the toon always voted conservative until my late father in law stood for Labour. All voters that day were greeted by name by his gran who sat in front of the polling booth with her knitting and asked, "you'll be voting for my grandson?"
Would there be much call for carrying the men to the boats in ports (like Arbroath) with harbours?
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
Not very often, once you have an EV !
What about servicing an EV? Do you still have an annual service and if so is the cost comparable?
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
Not very often, once you have an EV !
What about servicing an EV? Do you still have an annual service and if so is the cost comparable?
Full EV are mechanically simpler and avoid burning stuff in an engine, so servicing is simpler.
Rather more importantly, there seems to be a German commitment to increasing support over the next year. I think they've realised that there's an existential element to n=ending the invasion.
It's often said that the convenience of home charging an EV rather than the tediousness of petrol/diesel garage fill-ups is a big plus but is it really?
With a trad car I just pull in my drive and walk away - not sure I'd like faffing with a lead and plug every time I get home, especially if it's cold or rainy. Multiply that every day and maybe it's worse than a weekly trudge to a garage?
I am not sure I agree with "What is very clear is that any hopes labour have of returning to power rely on a very strong performance in Scotland".
Unless the Tories + DUP have majority after the next GE Labour will return to power imo. Clearly, success for Labour in Scotland makes that easier but it's not a prerequisite.
I do think that a dozen or so Scottish seats could easily be the difference between largest party and overall majority as the polls tighten a bit.
As the election draws closer, if we are to see massive swingback to the Conservatives as highlighted and expected on these very pages, I don't see why that wouldn't also be the case for the incumbent SNP.
As it stands Labour are 10 to 15 points ahead of the Conservatives nationally (and we are expecting that to mostly drift back by election day). In Scotland Labour are 10 to 15 points adrift of the SNP (why are we not expecting that to return to its usual 20 to 25 point margin?).
Labour are doomed, doomed I say!
Swingback, if it helps Yousless at all, would come in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, not the General.
You’ve all set the bar so low for him that he’s going to clear it and look like a success.
Not a chance. He will fail in ways we can't even imagine yet. Starting with the appointment of Shona Robinson, Nicola's best mate, as deputy. I searched for her achievements on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_Robison Unfortunately, achievements was a missing word!
Surely then the time is ripe for the high achievers of your party of choice to sweep to power?
Not for three years, though ...
If the predictions of Humza’s tenure not outlasting a Trussian lettuce don’t come to pass, that’s just three more years for Ross & co to put their obvious qualities on display.
That reminds me - is Mr Ross leaving Holyrood at the next election, or is my memory failing me? I am sure I recall some announcement, but can't confirm it. So I may be quite wrong, in which case apols.
He announced he was leaving Westminster at the next GE.
Thanks - that's it.
That means a new candidate for Moray presumably? Luckily a large pool of achievers to choose from.
Hmm, fisherfolk and farmers not too happy with Brexit either. But the latter not exactly SKS voters, and it was the previous leader of the LDs who liked to be filmed in front of farm animals. Not sure that Mr C-H has quite the same knack.
"Fisherfolk"? This conjures an image of olde worlde types for whom the 19th century is dangerously modern. Nice alliteration though.
Non-gendered*. Also means the family members, comer to think of it, so works well in political terms.
Edit: like e.g. convenor instead of chairperson.
Also: avoids confusion with the people with rod and line.
Do you get many (any?) women on trawlers? Your points about family and anglers are good though (though again in my mind conjures up images of 18th century communities). I don't have a better word, mind.
EDIT: I rather like 'convenor', though. 'Chairperson' always sounded horribly clunky. (And irritation with Chairman/Chair/Chairperson goes back at least to the 70s. I can remember my grandfather, somewhat implausibly, claiming that the 'man' in chairman referred not to a male human but was short for 'manifesto'. I was sceptical then and remain so now.)
It's not just trawlers (on which a lot of thew workforce is non-UK). Inshore fishijng is a very important industry. No idea of the gender balance though.
Plenty of small towns used to have a "fishertown" wit distinct architecture and location - Berwick, Nairn, Cromarty spring to mind (and Wick, but that was specially developed - a fine sight to visit).
Good morning
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
And would they have used the word 'fisherfolk'? I'm not trying to be combative here, I'm genuinely interested.
They certainly did in Arbroath where my wife's family was from. The fisherfolk lived in the fit o' the toon, basically near the harbour. It was a very closely related community. A fisherman's wife not only had to carry their men to the boats but did most of the gutting of the fish as well. It was a bloody hard life for someone who had not been brought up on it which led the men to choose women from inside the community.
Quite weirdly in Arbroath the fit o' the toon always voted conservative until my late father in law stood for Labour. All voters that day were greeted by name by his gran who sat in front of the polling booth with her knitting and asked, "you'll be voting for my grandson?"
Would there be much call for carrying the men to the boats in ports (like Arbroath) with harbours?
I think the small boats were mainly launched from Auchmithy, which is a couple of miles to the north of Arbroath and has a beach. I suspect harbour dues had something to do with this....
In contrast, in Anstruther, our office had a brilliant picture of the harbour from the 1930s where there were well over 100 small boats in the harbour so you could easily have walked from one side of the harbour to the other without getting your feet wet.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
I regularly drive 185 miles to the Isle of Wight in mine. I suppose it depends what you mean by local.
Not all have that range though.
My Kia eniro cost £32 000 3 years ago and does 280 miles on a full charge in the summer, 240 miles in the winter with lights and heater on. Very smooth and powerful to drive too.
I am not sure I agree with "What is very clear is that any hopes labour have of returning to power rely on a very strong performance in Scotland".
Unless the Tories + DUP have majority after the next GE Labour will return to power imo. Clearly, success for Labour in Scotland makes that easier but it's not a prerequisite.
I do think that a dozen or so Scottish seats could easily be the difference between largest party and overall majority as the polls tighten a bit.
As the election draws closer, if we are to see massive swingback to the Conservatives as highlighted and expected on these very pages, I don't see why that wouldn't also be the case for the incumbent SNP.
As it stands Labour are 10 to 15 points ahead of the Conservatives nationally (and we are expecting that to mostly drift back by election day). In Scotland Labour are 10 to 15 points adrift of the SNP (why are we not expecting that to return to its usual 20 to 25 point margin?).
Labour are doomed, doomed I say!
Swingback, if it helps Yousless at all, would come in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, not the General.
You’ve all set the bar so low for him that he’s going to clear it and look like a success.
Not a chance. He will fail in ways we can't even imagine yet. Starting with the appointment of Shona Robinson, Nicola's best mate, as deputy. I searched for her achievements on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_Robison Unfortunately, achievements was a missing word!
Surely then the time is ripe for the high achievers of your party of choice to sweep to power?
Not for three years, though ...
If the predictions of Humza’s tenure not outlasting a Trussian lettuce don’t come to pass, that’s just three more years for Ross & co to put their obvious qualities on display.
That reminds me - is Mr Ross leaving Holyrood at the next election, or is my memory failing me? I am sure I recall some announcement, but can't confirm it. So I may be quite wrong, in which case apols.
He announced he was leaving Westminster at the next GE.
Thanks - that's it.
That means a new candidate for Moray presumably? Luckily a large pool of achievers to choose from.
Hmm, fisherfolk and farmers not too happy with Brexit either. But the latter not exactly SKS voters, and it was the previous leader of the LDs who liked to be filmed in front of farm animals. Not sure that Mr C-H has quite the same knack.
"Fisherfolk"? This conjures an image of olde worlde types for whom the 19th century is dangerously modern. Nice alliteration though.
Non-gendered*. Also means the family members, comer to think of it, so works well in political terms.
Edit: like e.g. convenor instead of chairperson.
Also: avoids confusion with the people with rod and line.
Do you get many (any?) women on trawlers? Your points about family and anglers are good though (though again in my mind conjures up images of 18th century communities). I don't have a better word, mind.
EDIT: I rather like 'convenor', though. 'Chairperson' always sounded horribly clunky. (And irritation with Chairman/Chair/Chairperson goes back at least to the 70s. I can remember my grandfather, somewhat implausibly, claiming that the 'man' in chairman referred not to a male human but was short for 'manifesto'. I was sceptical then and remain so now.)
It's not just trawlers (on which a lot of thew workforce is non-UK). Inshore fishijng is a very important industry. No idea of the gender balance though.
Plenty of small towns used to have a "fishertown" wit distinct architecture and location - Berwick, Nairn, Cromarty spring to mind (and Wick, but that was specially developed - a fine sight to visit).
Good morning
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
And would they have used the word 'fisherfolk'? I'm not trying to be combative here, I'm genuinely interested.
They certainly did in Arbroath where my wife's family was from. The fisherfolk lived in the fit o' the toon, basically near the harbour. It was a very closely related community. A fisherman's wife not only had to carry their men to the boats but did most of the gutting of the fish as well. It was a bloody hard life for someone who had not been brought up on it which led the men to choose women from inside the community.
Quite weirdly in Arbroath the fit o' the toon always voted conservative until my late father in law stood for Labour. All voters that day were greeted by name by his gran who sat in front of the polling booth with her knitting and asked, "you'll be voting for my grandson?"
Would there be much call for carrying the men to the boats in ports (like Arbroath) with harbours?
If I lived in a community where the women traditionally carried the men to the boats, I would be insisting on it whether it was strictly necessary or not. Might be the last physical contact with a female body for a while!
I am not sure I agree with "What is very clear is that any hopes labour have of returning to power rely on a very strong performance in Scotland".
Unless the Tories + DUP have majority after the next GE Labour will return to power imo. Clearly, success for Labour in Scotland makes that easier but it's not a prerequisite.
I do think that a dozen or so Scottish seats could easily be the difference between largest party and overall majority as the polls tighten a bit.
As the election draws closer, if we are to see massive swingback to the Conservatives as highlighted and expected on these very pages, I don't see why that wouldn't also be the case for the incumbent SNP.
As it stands Labour are 10 to 15 points ahead of the Conservatives nationally (and we are expecting that to mostly drift back by election day). In Scotland Labour are 10 to 15 points adrift of the SNP (why are we not expecting that to return to its usual 20 to 25 point margin?).
Labour are doomed, doomed I say!
Swingback, if it helps Yousless at all, would come in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, not the General.
You’ve all set the bar so low for him that he’s going to clear it and look like a success.
Not a chance. He will fail in ways we can't even imagine yet. Starting with the appointment of Shona Robinson, Nicola's best mate, as deputy. I searched for her achievements on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_Robison Unfortunately, achievements was a missing word!
Surely then the time is ripe for the high achievers of your party of choice to sweep to power?
Not for three years, though ...
If the predictions of Humza’s tenure not outlasting a Trussian lettuce don’t come to pass, that’s just three more years for Ross & co to put their obvious qualities on display.
That reminds me - is Mr Ross leaving Holyrood at the next election, or is my memory failing me? I am sure I recall some announcement, but can't confirm it. So I may be quite wrong, in which case apols.
He announced he was leaving Westminster at the next GE.
Thanks - that's it.
That means a new candidate for Moray presumably? Luckily a large pool of achievers to choose from.
Hmm, fisherfolk and farmers not too happy with Brexit either. But the latter not exactly SKS voters, and it was the previous leader of the LDs who liked to be filmed in front of farm animals. Not sure that Mr C-H has quite the same knack.
"Fisherfolk"? This conjures an image of olde worlde types for whom the 19th century is dangerously modern. Nice alliteration though.
Non-gendered*. Also means the family members, comer to think of it, so works well in political terms.
Edit: like e.g. convenor instead of chairperson.
Also: avoids confusion with the people with rod and line.
Do you get many (any?) women on trawlers? Your points about family and anglers are good though (though again in my mind conjures up images of 18th century communities). I don't have a better word, mind.
EDIT: I rather like 'convenor', though. 'Chairperson' always sounded horribly clunky. (And irritation with Chairman/Chair/Chairperson goes back at least to the 70s. I can remember my grandfather, somewhat implausibly, claiming that the 'man' in chairman referred not to a male human but was short for 'manifesto'. I was sceptical then and remain so now.)
It's not just trawlers (on which a lot of thew workforce is non-UK). Inshore fishijng is a very important industry. No idea of the gender balance though.
Plenty of small towns used to have a "fishertown" wit distinct architecture and location - Berwick, Nairn, Cromarty spring to mind (and Wick, but that was specially developed - a fine sight to visit).
Good morning
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
And would they have used the word 'fisherfolk'? I'm not trying to be combative here, I'm genuinely interested.
They certainly did in Arbroath where my wife's family was from. The fisherfolk lived in the fit o' the toon, basically near the harbour. It was a very closely related community. A fisherman's wife not only had to carry their men to the boats but did most of the gutting of the fish as well. It was a bloody hard life for someone who had not been brought up on it which led the men to choose women from inside the community.
Quite weirdly in Arbroath the fit o' the toon always voted conservative until my late father in law stood for Labour. All voters that day were greeted by name by his gran who sat in front of the polling booth with her knitting and asked, "you'll be voting for my grandson?"
Would there be much call for carrying the men to the boats in ports (like Arbroath) with harbours?
I think the small boats were mainly launched from Auchmithy, which is a couple of miles to the north of Arbroath and has a beach. I suspect harbour dues had something to do with this....
In contrast, in Anstruther, our office had a brilliant picture of the harbour from the 1930s where there were well over 100 small boats in the harbour so you could easily have walked from one side of the harbour to the other without getting your feet wet.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
Not very often, once you have an EV !
What about servicing an EV? Do you still have an annual service and if so is the cost comparable?
Full EV are mechanically simpler and avoid burning stuff in an engine, so servicing is simpler.
What are they servicing then? Is it still annual or when you get to a certain mileage, whichever comes soonest?
People charging EVs in their drives has made my job more dangerous
In the dark, with a big bundle of mail and a parcel, it can be tricky to see the charging cables - which are often between the pavement and the front door
It's often said that the convenience of home charging an EV rather than the tediousness of petrol/diesel garage fill-ups is a big plus but is it really?
With a trad car I just pull in my drive and walk away - not sure I'd like faffing with a lead and plug every time I get home, especially if it's cold or rainy. Multiply that every day and maybe it's worse than a weekly trudge to a garage?
I charge mine overnight once a fortnight or so, and keep the lead in the boot. It really is no hassle at all.
That would normally be taken as a sign of an imminent recession but M2 is largely cash and I suspect that it is being distorted by the ever increasing prevalence of people tapping debit cards.
It's often said that the convenience of home charging an EV rather than the tediousness of petrol/diesel garage fill-ups is a big plus but is it really?
With a trad car I just pull in my drive and walk away - not sure I'd like faffing with a lead and plug every time I get home, especially if it's cold or rainy. Multiply that every day and maybe it's worse than a weekly trudge to a garage?
I charge mine overnight once a fortnight or so, and keep the lead in the boot. It really is no hassle at all.
Surely carrying lead around with you is a waste of energy
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
Not very often, once you have an EV !
It’s an issue for a lot of people who have taken an EV as a company car. My sister-in-law for example. She lives near Newcastle and often visits a site just south of Leeds. It’s right on the limit for range, and while it just about worked in the summer, it couldn’t quite make it in the winter and she needed to find somewhere to stop for a few minutes. She’s about £10k a year better off in BIK though, compared to the diesel she was running before.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
Not very often, once you have an EV !
What about servicing an EV? Do you still have an annual service and if so is the cost comparable?
Full EV are mechanically simpler and avoid burning stuff in an engine, so servicing is simpler.
What are they servicing then? Is it still annual or when you get to a certain mileage, whichever comes soonest?
Brakes, batteries, bearings etc. I think it is likely still annual (but every user will be different).
The range of my Toyota hybrid is 570 miles - a bit less in the winter. I'd argue that it has less impact on the environment than any EV
Its a tricky one. You have to factor in the manufacturing costs etc. Certainly hybrids (fair disclosure, I also drive a Toyota hybrid) are very efficient, but ultimately they are still petrol or diesel cars.
It's often said that the convenience of home charging an EV rather than the tediousness of petrol/diesel garage fill-ups is a big plus but is it really?
With a trad car I just pull in my drive and walk away - not sure I'd like faffing with a lead and plug every time I get home, especially if it's cold or rainy. Multiply that every day and maybe it's worse than a weekly trudge to a garage?
I charge mine overnight once a fortnight or so, and keep the lead in the boot. It really is no hassle at all.
Oh I see. Thanks. I assumed it got plugged in every time you got home. An advantage there then.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
What would have been the cheapest 500km range BEV car in 2018? By 2028 I'd expect the price to be below £30k.
Good question. Likely the Tesla Model S, which would have been about £80k I think. Yes, the price of a good range should come down over time - which feeds into the earlier discussion about used EVs.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
Not very often, once you have an EV !
It’s an issue for a lot of people who have taken an EV as a company car. My sister-in-law for example. She lives near Newcastle and often visits a site just south of Leeds. It’s right on the limit for range, and while it just about worked in the summer, it couldn’t quite make it in the winter and she needed to find somewhere to stop for a few minutes. She’s about £10k a year better off in BIK though, compared to the diesel she was running before.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
Not very often, once you have an EV !
It’s an issue for a lot of people who have taken an EV as a company car. My sister-in-law for example. She lives near Newcastle and often visits a site just south of Leeds. It’s right on the limit for range, and while it just about worked in the summer, it couldn’t quite make it in the winter and she needed to find somewhere to stop for a few minutes. She’s about £10k a year better off in BIK though, compared to the diesel she was running before.
That's about how much we'd expect to emit to drive another 150,000km in our 2008 VW. The car manufacture will probably involve a lot less fossil fuel use by then too.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
Not very often, once you have an EV !
It’s an issue for a lot of people who have taken an EV as a company car. My sister-in-law for example. She lives near Newcastle and often visits a site just south of Leeds. It’s right on the limit for range, and while it just about worked in the summer, it couldn’t quite make it in the winter and she needed to find somewhere to stop for a few minutes. She’s about £10k a year better off in BIK though, compared to the diesel she was running before.
The range of my Toyota hybrid is 570 miles - a bit less in the winter. I'd argue that it has less impact on the environment than any EV
Why would you argue that?
With current technology, it's possibly true (depending on usage), as the net CO2 generated includes cost of production, which is higher for the EVs on average than for PHEVs. (That's unlikely to be the case by the end of the decade, though.)
For high mileage drivers, the PHEV will end up a lot worse in environmental impact terms.
I am not sure I agree with "What is very clear is that any hopes labour have of returning to power rely on a very strong performance in Scotland".
Unless the Tories + DUP have majority after the next GE Labour will return to power imo. Clearly, success for Labour in Scotland makes that easier but it's not a prerequisite.
I do think that a dozen or so Scottish seats could easily be the difference between largest party and overall majority as the polls tighten a bit.
As the election draws closer, if we are to see massive swingback to the Conservatives as highlighted and expected on these very pages, I don't see why that wouldn't also be the case for the incumbent SNP.
As it stands Labour are 10 to 15 points ahead of the Conservatives nationally (and we are expecting that to mostly drift back by election day). In Scotland Labour are 10 to 15 points adrift of the SNP (why are we not expecting that to return to its usual 20 to 25 point margin?).
Labour are doomed, doomed I say!
Swingback, if it helps Yousless at all, would come in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, not the General.
You’ve all set the bar so low for him that he’s going to clear it and look like a success.
Not a chance. He will fail in ways we can't even imagine yet. Starting with the appointment of Shona Robinson, Nicola's best mate, as deputy. I searched for her achievements on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_Robison Unfortunately, achievements was a missing word!
Surely then the time is ripe for the high achievers of your party of choice to sweep to power?
Not for three years, though ...
If the predictions of Humza’s tenure not outlasting a Trussian lettuce don’t come to pass, that’s just three more years for Ross & co to put their obvious qualities on display.
That reminds me - is Mr Ross leaving Holyrood at the next election, or is my memory failing me? I am sure I recall some announcement, but can't confirm it. So I may be quite wrong, in which case apols.
He announced he was leaving Westminster at the next GE.
Thanks - that's it.
That means a new candidate for Moray presumably? Luckily a large pool of achievers to choose from.
Hmm, fisherfolk and farmers not too happy with Brexit either. But the latter not exactly SKS voters, and it was the previous leader of the LDs who liked to be filmed in front of farm animals. Not sure that Mr C-H has quite the same knack.
"Fisherfolk"? This conjures an image of olde worlde types for whom the 19th century is dangerously modern. Nice alliteration though.
Non-gendered*. Also means the family members, comer to think of it, so works well in political terms.
Edit: like e.g. convenor instead of chairperson.
Also: avoids confusion with the people with rod and line.
Do you get many (any?) women on trawlers? Your points about family and anglers are good though (though again in my mind conjures up images of 18th century communities). I don't have a better word, mind.
EDIT: I rather like 'convenor', though. 'Chairperson' always sounded horribly clunky. (And irritation with Chairman/Chair/Chairperson goes back at least to the 70s. I can remember my grandfather, somewhat implausibly, claiming that the 'man' in chairman referred not to a male human but was short for 'manifesto'. I was sceptical then and remain so now.)
It's not just trawlers (on which a lot of thew workforce is non-UK). Inshore fishijng is a very important industry. No idea of the gender balance though.
Plenty of small towns used to have a "fishertown" wit distinct architecture and location - Berwick, Nairn, Cromarty spring to mind (and Wick, but that was specially developed - a fine sight to visit).
Good morning
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
And would they have used the word 'fisherfolk'? I'm not trying to be combative here, I'm genuinely interested.
They certainly did in Arbroath where my wife's family was from. The fisherfolk lived in the fit o' the toon, basically near the harbour. It was a very closely related community. A fisherman's wife not only had to carry their men to the boats but did most of the gutting of the fish as well. It was a bloody hard life for someone who had not been brought up on it which led the men to choose women from inside the community.
Quite weirdly in Arbroath the fit o' the toon always voted conservative until my late father in law stood for Labour. All voters that day were greeted by name by his gran who sat in front of the polling booth with her knitting and asked, "you'll be voting for my grandson?"
Would there be much call for carrying the men to the boats in ports (like Arbroath) with harbours?
In Lossiemouth this was at a time before harbours and the boats were launched from the beach
It's often said that the convenience of home charging an EV rather than the tediousness of petrol/diesel garage fill-ups is a big plus but is it really?
With a trad car I just pull in my drive and walk away - not sure I'd like faffing with a lead and plug every time I get home, especially if it's cold or rainy. Multiply that every day and maybe it's worse than a weekly trudge to a garage?
I charge mine overnight once a fortnight or so, and keep the lead in the boot. It really is no hassle at all.
Oh I see. Thanks. I assumed it got plugged in every time you got home. An advantage there then.
It is best to run the battery down to 10-15% before recharging rather than top up a nearly full battery. After all few ICEV drivers top up their tank every day, and a 280 mile range is like a full tank.
Range anxiety pretty much disappears after owning an EV for a few months.
Buying ICE vehicles now is like buying analog film cameras 20 years ago. Soon the ICE for personal transport will be as obsolete as cassette tapes or CDs.
Analog (sic) film cameras are trendy right now, and CDs are still viable.
Cassette tapes are more niche
Not the mass market by a long way, despite the hipster interest in vinyl.
Sure, ICE vehicles have some advantages still, particularly for rural areas. We have an ICE hybrid as well as an EV. Increasingly though EVs have the advantage. I think it will be my last ever ICE vehicle.
Currently EVs are 3% of the UK car fleet, but by Dec 22 had 30% of new sales. This is being driven by demand, and is only heading one way. The manufacturers see this too, which is why so much of the new design and engineering is centered on them, with ICE vehicle increasingly neglected.
There is an issue with any technological change of when to jump to the new tech, but as EV prices drop, practicality increases, and psychological barriers drop, it is only going one way.
I largely agree. My reservation is how much the prices of EVs will drop. It's one of those things I've been waiting for for some time and doesn't appear to be happening...
Largely because demand greatly exceeds supply, so manufacturers have no incentive to make cheaper models. That will change in the next 3-5 years, looking at the number of factories being built now and in planning.
And both batteries and motors are steadily getting cheaper to make, alongside the increase in capacity.
I will never have an electric car until they solve the charging issue ie having to wait to get to a charging point and. Then 40 mins for a half charge....I suspect I will have met my maker by then.
You can do 10-80% in about 25 min on the latest chargers. To get to half should be a fraction of that - the charging is faster on an empty battery.
Not what my pal tells me. They have had nightmares queuing and it's 40.mins min to charge his ev f pace
Tbf that's about the same time I spend queuing at my local Costco yesterday for diesel.
There's no way any EV charging station will be able to match the sheer throughput of energy that a 12 pump Costco can get into vehicles in a day though.
No, which is why the model for EV charging will be a charger at every parking place, so that you can charge when you park to go shopping, or the cinema, or whatever, rather than a dedicated charging station.
All those fuel stations will disappear.
Exactly; it takes time for a paradigm shift to bed in. Until then, people can't help but imagine new things as newfangled versions of old things. I'm sure people had the same difficulties as cars replaced horse-drawn carriages.
Nope because the car revolutionised travel. Electric cars don't. They only really work for local runs .
There is an issue with our perception of what our car is for. For most, it does a small distance daily (work commutes, plus local shopping, school etc). And then once in a while you need to do a long trip and the electric car range of say 150 miles becomes a huge issue (unless you can charge it in around 20 minutes while having coffee, and that depends on charging locations being free and working etc).
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Many people already choose to buy small city runabout cars, but I think that the battery technology is developing fast enough that most people won't be forced by range considerations to make such a tradeoff.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
Yes, I think I can count on the fingers of one finger the occasions on which I have driven more than 250 miles without stopping for a meal break. I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
How often might you drive 150 miles, and not be able to charge your car at the other end?
Not very often, once you have an EV !
It’s an issue for a lot of people who have taken an EV as a company car. My sister-in-law for example. She lives near Newcastle and often visits a site just south of Leeds. It’s right on the limit for range, and while it just about worked in the summer, it couldn’t quite make it in the winter and she needed to find somewhere to stop for a few minutes. She’s about £10k a year better off in BIK though, compared to the diesel she was running before.
People with company cars though, are likely to drive a lot more than the average, and to regularly travel on business by car.
Won't company cars get charged at work?
Some offices will have some chargers, but often slow chargers and not enough for everyone. I have heard stories of people arriving at the office very early to try and ‘bag’ a charger for the day.
That's about how much we'd expect to emit to drive another 150,000km in our 2008 VW. The car manufacture will probably involve a lot less fossil fuel use by then too.
That's an argument for changing cars less often, not choice of next car. The differential in production impacts between EVs and ICE cars is far less than the above figure (around a tenth).
Also, remember that these calculations are based on existing production and existing electricity generation. Both are going to improve considerably in environmental terms during this decade.
I know they're allies of Armenia, but given Israel and Turkey seem on Azerbaijan side and Russia (also an Armenian ally) has other things on their plate, surely it'd just be a repeat of last time when Azerbaijan beat Armenia?
Comments
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11914723/Government-abandon-plans-ban-new-petrol-diesel-car-sales-2030.html
(Actual score, zero.)
One reason for the older tanks might be that some of them are just in a better state fo repair.
Captured Russian T-62 with the name Leopard 2 in service with Ukraine. P.S: The tank is almost new, the mileage is only 440 km.
https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1640744321103060998
The T80s and newer T72s are reported to be pretty high mileage in general.
eg https://www.transportxtra.com/publications/parking-review/news/66621/a-third-of-uk-homeowners-don-t-have-a-driveway-or-garage-to-install-a-home-chargepoint/
It seems to me a problem that will go away as infrastructure develops, driven mileage continues to fall, and electric cars become taxed to the necessary extent which may help limit the numbers.
I think that, as ever, this is the London tail wagging the national dog.
IMO the challenge is to improve public transport and facilitate practical alternatives.
One small loophole may be 40+ year old cars not subject to the ULEZ charge.
Which is why they are having to rob their museums and tank graveyards.
My Scottish family are all 'fisherfolk' or related to 'fisherfolk' and if you go back far enough the wives used to carry their menfolk onto their boats to keep their feet dry
Also in Lossiemouth there was the terrible Stotfield disaster when the wives watched the menfolk sail from the beach then a dramatic turn for the worst in the weather with the ferocity of the storm overwhelming the three boats with all 21 men and youths drowned, leaving only women, young children and the elderly in Stotfield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotfield_fishing_disaster#
Imagine how fucked the Russians will be when 150% of their tanks have been destroyed.
I'm not trying to be combative here, I'm genuinely interested.
Authoritarian control freaks tend to be more cautious about competition form such systems.
For now at least, it's the US.
Genuinly it might be best to consider a more limited electric car for most of your use, and then hire a better range for the holiday, or the long distance trip.
Its not what we are used to, but in the 70's we didn't recycle anything. now we recycle most of our waste.
Though swappable systems have a market in China, for some reason.
And are practical for scooters, obviously.
A simple Google shows at least 5 1940s vintage T-34s on display in Vladivostok museums.
In reality, they've probably got enough kit for 2023, and not for 2024.
(For those who don’t know, pretty much every large town in the old Soviet Union, has a WWII memorial featuring a tank. They presumably had thousands of surplus ones when the war ended. Here’s the one in my wife’s home town in Ukraine.
https://www.kathmanduandbeyond.com/victory-memorial-zhytomyr-ukraine/ )
“Chinese researchers unveil AI language model that beats GPT-3
Minds behind WuDao 2.0 develop AI model to run on a single V100 server”
https://aibusiness.com/nlp/chinese-researchers-unveil-ai-language-model-that-beats-gpt-3
AI is the main reason Biden slapped those severe bans on the export of chip tech (and other stuff) to Beijing
Not necessarily knocked out - even just flooded engines from a bad start.
The engineers would go out, and recover tanks, fix tracks etc and the units would be back to half strength overnight.
ETA no pavement on the other side of the road.
Governance by artificial intelligence: the ultimate unaccountable tyranny
It’s no secret that globalist institutions are obsessed with Artificial Intelligence as some kind of technological prophecy. They treat it as if it is almost supernatural in its potential and often argue that every meaningful industrial and social innovation in the near future will owe its existence to AI. The World Economic Forum cites AI as the singular key to the rise of what they call the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” In their view, there can be no human progress without the influence of AI algorithms, making human input almost obsolete.
This delusion is often promoted by globalist propagandists. For example, take a look at the summarized vision of WEF member Yuval Harari, who actually believes that AI has creative ability that will replace human imagination and innovation. Not only that, but Harari has consistently argued in the past that AI will run the world much better than human beings ever could.
We drove back from Rosslare recently, which is 270km over nearly four hours. We had one brief stop. Most EVs can do that journey with no issues already, and the technology is only getting better. Any longer a journey and you'd want to stay taking a longer break, perhaps for a meal, so you have time for charging as well.
Lots of cars advertised with ranges >500km, even though the range at speeds of 100kph will be less, I'm just not seeing range as that much of an issue.
There is a big difference between cognitive automation and cognitive autonomy. AI is purely automation; it will play the games it is programmed to play and will learn to play them well, but it will never have an epiphany one day and create a new and unique game from scratch unless it is coded to do so. AI will never have fun playing this new game it made, or feel the joy of sharing that game with others, so why would it bother? It will never seek to contribute to the world any more than it is pre-programmed to do.
Though it remains the case that China has the capacity to mandate an effective moratorium if its rules get cold feet - which really isn't the case in the US.
It might interest you to know that one of their two leading research centres in the field is ... the Wuhan University School of Information Management.
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/best/longest-range-electric-vehicles/
Quite weirdly in Arbroath the fit o' the toon always voted conservative until my late father in law stood for Labour. All voters that day were greeted by name by his gran who sat in front of the polling booth with her knitting and asked, "you'll be voting for my grandson?"
I'd prefer my car to have the ability to do so, obviously. But the need to take a half hour break every 250 miles isn't going to impact me enough to change my choice.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_RPpicb6ArY
While I know many are loath to speak ill of the dead it’s striking how many from so many walks of life want to speak well of Paul.
I see your point, but for me personally, it's very rare that I go somewhere and back in a day which is more than 100 miles away.
Kyiv🇺🇦 received 18 Leopard 2 A6 tanks, FOUR MORE THAN PREVIOUSLY PROMISED BY GERMANY🇩🇪.
The equipment arrived along with ammunition and spare parts.
Berlin has gone from foot dragging to running to the front to lead. Amazing! "
https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1640674794109562880
Good on the Germans.
I think they've realised that there's an existential element to n=ending the invasion.
The US Money Supply has fallen 2.4% over the last 12 months, the largest year-over-year decline on record (note: M2 data goes back to 1959).
https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1640765152818593827
With a trad car I just pull in my drive and walk away - not sure I'd like faffing with a lead and plug every time I get home, especially if it's cold or rainy. Multiply that every day and maybe it's worse than a weekly trudge to a garage?
In contrast, in Anstruther, our office had a brilliant picture of the harbour from the 1930s where there were well over 100 small boats in the harbour so you could easily have walked from one side of the harbour to the other without getting your feet wet.
In the dark, with a big bundle of mail and a parcel, it can be tricky to see the charging cables - which are often between the pavement and the front door
Is the best thing of all the keep your existing car for longer, whatever type it is?
Yes, the price of a good range should come down over time - which feeds into the earlier discussion about used EVs.
The UK daily average is around 20 miles travelled, and falling.
https://www.bymiles.co.uk/insure/magazine/mot-data-research-and-analysis/
https://www.polestar.com/ie/polestar-2/
That's about how much we'd expect to emit to drive another 150,000km in our 2008 VW. The car manufacture will probably involve a lot less fossil fuel use by then too.
For high mileage drivers, the PHEV will end up a lot worse in environmental impact terms.
Fabio Paratici: Fifa places worldwide ban on Tottenham managing director
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65112730
Corrupt Chelsea
Roman Abramovich secretly bankrolled Dutch football club, leaked documents suggest
Exclusive: Files reveal €117m in loans for Vitesse Arnhem originated with then owner of Chelsea, despite repeated denials
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/29/roman-abramovich-secretly-bankrolled-dutch-football-club-leaked-documents-suggest
Range anxiety pretty much disappears after owning an EV for a few months.
The differential in production impacts between EVs and ICE cars is far less than the above figure (around a tenth).
Also, remember that these calculations are based on existing production and existing electricity generation. Both are going to improve considerably in environmental terms during this decade.
Not good, lots of recent military posturing between Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia and others.
I know they're allies of Armenia, but given Israel and Turkey seem on Azerbaijan side and Russia (also an Armenian ally) has other things on their plate, surely it'd just be a repeat of last time when Azerbaijan beat Armenia?
Olaf Scholz is likely to miss the state banquet even though his public diary is clear
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/king-charles-germany-first-state-visit-queen-camilla-qqr8hht0k