One thing I'd do is introduce summary execution for people who chuck wet wipes down the loo. I've never done it myself and I don't know anyone who does (Or perhaps I do !) but there must be a cohort of thick as mince or completely ignorant wallies that do. Who are these people ??? They should probably all be shot for the best.
They see "flushable" on the packet and believe it.
Downing Street has acknowledged that new post-Brexit “processes” contributed to issues at the Port of Dover over the weekend.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said he was aware that French border officials were “inspecting and stamping every single passport”, as is the case at all European borders for arrivals from outside the bloc.
I must confess I find Simon Calder’s analysis on this rather more compelling than Suella Braverman. Did we really insist on every passport being checked and stamped ?
Every passport being checked and stamped is a natural consequence of the end of FoM. "We insisted" is partisan gloss.
Simon Calder is merely using the FBPEr's "we shot ourselves in the foot" insinuation as he always does.
If he were more honest, he would point out that passports take longer to check now, but that busy weekends at Dover have often involved delays. For example, this from 2012:
FoM has nothing to do with the physical border, yet people keep trying to conflate the two. There have always been passport checks between the CTA and Shengen, and always been delays when the French decide to be French.
Movement of goods is different now that the UK is no longer in the EU Customs Union, but tourist traffic is pretty much the same.
I think they're related because whether you have FoM or not affects what the passport checks need to do. If a British person wants to enter Schengen and they're part of the same FoM zone as you then you (mostly) just need to check that they have a British passport. If they're not doing FoM then you also need to manage how long they'll be allowed to stay and whether they've already stayed too long, which involves more steps.
No, FoM related to the entitlement to a National Insurance number, and the right to work. Nothing to do with border checks.
It does appear that the French want to stamp passports to check for overstays, but that takes only a couple of seconds per passport.
I really don't know why you post this kind of nonsense. It patently takes longer than only a couple of seconds. Open passport. Check last entry, check last exit, check cumulative days stayed in the last 180. And then if all ok find the next page and stamp.
The physical stamping takes only a few seconds. The rest takes a minute. And this is why the queues are here. I assume that had we not left we would have been given a bypass for this new Schengen rule. Or at the very least reduced it. We could have I asked for that.
Instead we said "we want to be a third country". And this is the process. Think how much fun we will all be having next year when we need to be fingerprinted and have our visa checked.
If people voted for Brexit because they wanted to keep foreigners out of Britain, they have a cheek to complain that other countries may want to keep us out of theirs.
One thing I'd do is introduce summary execution for people who chuck wet wipes down the loo. I've never done it myself and I don't know anyone who does (Or perhaps I do !) but there must be a cohort of thick as mince or completely ignorant wallies that do. Who are these people ??? They should probably all be shot for the best.
Some of the carers who sort me out would put wet wipes down the loo if I didn’t stop them!
And a good morning to one and all. Lovely bright April morning here!
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
His views on climate change haven't aged well.
Bringing the Western economies to their knees on the strength of totally unremarkable changes in climate is going to age a lot worse.
You either don't have a clue, or you have some sort of dishonest agenda.
I thought Lawson’s view was:
- Climate change is happening - He wasn’t convinced it was entire anthropomorphic - Given 2 he felt mitigation was a better use of limited resources than carbon reduction
It may be wrong but it’s not some kind of heinous position
For a very intelligent guy, he had some terrible judgment.
To be honest, given absolute Net Zero in carbon *emissions* is almost certainly impossible given political, social and economic constraints I suspect the way we'll actually achieve it is by decarbonising 70-80% of emissions and then littering the planet with direct air capture plants in the middle-latter half of this century to suck out the rest.
So, we'll get to Net Zero (or maybe even slightly negative) but by a different and more practical route based on engineering.
That doesn't sound like a practical route to me. Just like with carbon capture and storage I don't see why people would ever spend billions, indefinitely, as an add-on.
If you invest in new zero carbon technology then it's only a temporary extra cost until the technology develops and you have a new way of doing something that's cheaper than the old way, and then zero carbon becomes an economic inevitability.
You could say the same about sewage treatment plants.
If the cost is low/reasonable enough and the requirements legislated for then it will happen. And it incentivises other solutions in the long-term, as you say.
The difference with sewage treatment plants is the long term vs short term thing, which is quite important when it comes to human incentives.
Sewage treatment plants get you an immediate benefit in not having stinking shit in your rivers and on your beaches. Carbon capture doesn't have such immediate and obvious benefits.
The UK can spend tens of billions on carbon capture - but that has no net effect for the planet if Vietnam then builds another eleven coal-fired power stations.
Carbon capture as apparently envisaged by this government is a lamentable waste of money. They're going to spend £20bn making burning fossil fuels more expensive. Just daft.
I suspect there is a big donor with his finger in those pies though.
No doubt, but it's a shocking waste of money in our current economic situation.
This government seems addicted to the most stupid and most expensive energy policies. We'll still be paying for these mistakes for decades to come.
If they don’t have proper social care reform, very soon we’re going to have far worse and more expensive problems. Arguably they’re already here.
Which will be more damaging to the national economy and the PSBR by far than spending enough to start with.
I thought we were increasing social care spending. Didn’t we increase NI to do so or was that reversed after the Kamikwase budget? It is certainly needed. One of the main reasons the NHS can’t cope is the consequences of inadequate social care being dumped upon it.
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
Which is fine for him, provided he has a big enough Commons majority to force it through. If he tries something like that with a bare majority or a minority without it having been acknowledged well in advance of the election, he's sunk.
If there is a sizable LibDem bloc in parliament, he shouldn’t have a problem on that one!
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
Which is fine for him, provided he has a big enough Commons majority to force it through. If he tries something like that with a bare majority or a minority without it having been acknowledged well in advance of the election, he's sunk.
It seems crazy, yet true, that a politician could say "We will solve the queues at Dover" and win votes, as long as they don't say "queues at Dover caused by Brexit" in case they lose votes.
But then again, everything about Brexit has always been crazy
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
Labour needs Brexit to be a non-issue. As long as that holds they have no interest in defending it. Almost all its supporters think Brexit a mistake. "Making Brexit work" actually means limit the damage but they can't admit it.
Incidentally Labour in Scotland also need independence to be a non-issue.
"Make Brexit Work" is a very clever piece of politics. Stealing the Tories punchy 3 word sloganising, making it sound positive about Brexit, and directly pointing out that Brexit doesn't work in its current form.
We are where we are the genie isn't going back into the bottle. So anything we now do will be the action of making Brexit work. What the Labour team will have to do is work hard at contextualising what this means as the hard right will be shrieking about how this is really a threat to all they have won such as school trips being cancelled in Dover passport queues.
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
They could have a dozen Rolls Royce SMR reactors up and running by now, and exporting them overseas. Instead, the Americans have got first mover advantage on the deployment of the technology, so guess where the export orders will be going.
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
Which is fine for him, provided he has a big enough Commons majority to force it through. If he tries something like that with a bare majority or a minority without it having been acknowledged well in advance of the election, he's sunk.
A lot of it won’t need Commons votes. The rest will be supported by MPs, except for Tory ones.
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
Hmm. The government has done very well on wind and pretty well on solar. Terribly on nuclear but some very belated progress there. Could have been more open to things like tidal. But definitely an improvement on the paralysis that Ed Miliband brought to the sector. I want more renewables and self sufficiency, not necessarily in that order. We cannot afford to keep importing so much of our energy.
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
The clue to the problem is in the words "much closer alignment". This is SKS unicorn language. The SM and CU is something you are either in or out of.
Downing Street has acknowledged that new post-Brexit “processes” contributed to issues at the Port of Dover over the weekend.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said he was aware that French border officials were “inspecting and stamping every single passport”, as is the case at all European borders for arrivals from outside the bloc.
I must confess I find Simon Calder’s analysis on this rather more compelling than Suella Braverman. Did we really insist on every passport being checked and stamped ?
Every passport being checked and stamped is a natural consequence of the end of FoM. "We insisted" is partisan gloss.
Simon Calder is merely using the FBPEr's "we shot ourselves in the foot" insinuation as he always does.
If he were more honest, he would point out that passports take longer to check now, but that busy weekends at Dover have often involved delays. For example, this from 2012:
FoM has nothing to do with the physical border, yet people keep trying to conflate the two. There have always been passport checks between the CTA and Shengen, and always been delays when the French decide to be French.
Movement of goods is different now that the UK is no longer in the EU Customs Union, but tourist traffic is pretty much the same.
I think they're related because whether you have FoM or not affects what the passport checks need to do. If a British person wants to enter Schengen and they're part of the same FoM zone as you then you (mostly) just need to check that they have a British passport. If they're not doing FoM then you also need to manage how long they'll be allowed to stay and whether they've already stayed too long, which involves more steps.
No, FoM related to the entitlement to a National Insurance number, and the right to work. Nothing to do with border checks.
It does appear that the French want to stamp passports to check for overstays, but that takes only a couple of seconds per passport.
I really don't know why you post this kind of nonsense. It patently takes longer than only a couple of seconds. Open passport. Check last entry, check last exit, check cumulative days stayed in the last 180. And then if all ok find the next page and stamp.
The physical stamping takes only a few seconds. The rest takes a minute. And this is why the queues are here. I assume that had we not left we would have been given a bypass for this new Schengen rule. Or at the very least reduced it. We could have I asked for that.
Instead we said "we want to be a third country". And this is the process. Think how much fun we will all be having next year when we need to be fingerprinted and have our visa checked.
If people voted for Brexit because they wanted to keep foreigners out of Britain, they have a cheek to complain that other countries may want to keep us out of theirs.
Indeed. The lack of self awareness is stunning sometimes. See also people who complain about immigration while detailing their own plans to move abroad.
On the upside the tide to Wokeness, which threatens to destroy America, the West, and the Enlightenment, stands some chance of being reversed under a confident if insane Republican like Trump,
I don't understand this. Isn't the great tide of terrifying wokeness that's going to destroy America all about liberal professors in universities and out-of-control HR departments in Woke Corporations and drag queens in liberal states and things like that? How does changing the president stop it?
Because you have to start somewhere. At the top is a good place
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
The clue to the problem is in the words "much closer alignment". This is SKS unicorn language. The SM and CU is something you are either in or out of.
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
To be fair to SKS he has an election to avoid losing; to do that almost everyone will admit that he has to avoid splitting his voters on post-Brexit issues. If he does he hands seats to Tories, SNP and even LDs. Only unicorn policies or no explicit policies at all can reliably prevent a split.
This is because a huge swathe of middling opinion only wants unicorn policies on Brexit. While a huge group of Labour supporters, mostly middle class, want SM, CU, FoM, EEA, EFTA or EU, another huge group either want none of them or only unicorn edited highlights.
I think nearer the time he will pledge a post-election 'full review of options'. But even that has dangers.
As to what SKS would actually do in government about all this, he and we have no idea.
I have no idea what SKS is planning but I am in little doubt that whatever he chooses it will be an improvement on the crummy set-up the current cabal of liars, idiots and shills for the billionaire donor class have cobbled together.
Is the new First Minister going to review the justice reforms, that lead to rape of a 13-year-old girl no longer being an imprisonable office in Scotland?
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
They could have a dozen Rolls Royce SMR reactors up and running by now, and exporting them overseas. Instead, the Americans have got first mover advantage on the deployment of the technology, so guess where the export orders will be going.
Downing Street has acknowledged that new post-Brexit “processes” contributed to issues at the Port of Dover over the weekend.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said he was aware that French border officials were “inspecting and stamping every single passport”, as is the case at all European borders for arrivals from outside the bloc.
I must confess I find Simon Calder’s analysis on this rather more compelling than Suella Braverman. Did we really insist on every passport being checked and stamped ?
Every passport being checked and stamped is a natural consequence of the end of FoM. "We insisted" is partisan gloss.
Simon Calder is merely using the FBPEr's "we shot ourselves in the foot" insinuation as he always does.
If he were more honest, he would point out that passports take longer to check now, but that busy weekends at Dover have often involved delays. For example, this from 2012:
FoM has nothing to do with the physical border, yet people keep trying to conflate the two. There have always been passport checks between the CTA and Shengen, and always been delays when the French decide to be French.
Movement of goods is different now that the UK is no longer in the EU Customs Union, but tourist traffic is pretty much the same.
I think they're related because whether you have FoM or not affects what the passport checks need to do. If a British person wants to enter Schengen and they're part of the same FoM zone as you then you (mostly) just need to check that they have a British passport. If they're not doing FoM then you also need to manage how long they'll be allowed to stay and whether they've already stayed too long, which involves more steps.
No, FoM related to the entitlement to a National Insurance number, and the right to work. Nothing to do with border checks.
It does appear that the French want to stamp passports to check for overstays, but that takes only a couple of seconds per passport.
I really don't know why you post this kind of nonsense. It patently takes longer than only a couple of seconds. Open passport. Check last entry, check last exit, check cumulative days stayed in the last 180. And then if all ok find the next page and stamp.
The physical stamping takes only a few seconds. The rest takes a minute. And this is why the queues are here. I assume that had we not left we would have been given a bypass for this new Schengen rule. Or at the very least reduced it. We could have I asked for that.
Instead we said "we want to be a third country". And this is the process. Think how much fun we will all be having next year when we need to be fingerprinted and have our visa checked.
If people voted for Brexit because they wanted to keep foreigners out of Britain, they have a cheek to complain that other countries may want to keep us out of theirs.
Indeed. The lack of self awareness is stunning sometimes. See also people who complain about immigration while detailing their own plans to move abroad.
I must admit @leon's posts yesterday caused me to have steam coming out of my ears. A combination of the desire to move abroad and the tax benefits of doing so having banged on about Brexit so much and going on and on about Gary Lineker being a tax dodger (against the available evidence) was just galling.
And to top it all stating the migration problem isn't what was promised by Brexit. I mean if only people had bothered to tell him it wouldn't work then it wouldn't have come as such a huge surprise to him. Honestly.
If the plan is to have more people holidaying in the UK the government needs to stop the water companies pouring raw sewage into our seas. No-one wants their kids paddling among turds!
So two strands needed to achieve this:
1) Sort out the sewage system;
This is a strange one. Like discharges into rivers, discharges onto beaches are a pan-European problem. The scales just pre-Brexit:
Downing Street has acknowledged that new post-Brexit “processes” contributed to issues at the Port of Dover over the weekend.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said he was aware that French border officials were “inspecting and stamping every single passport”, as is the case at all European borders for arrivals from outside the bloc.
I must confess I find Simon Calder’s analysis on this rather more compelling than Suella Braverman. Did we really insist on every passport being checked and stamped ?
Every passport being checked and stamped is a natural consequence of the end of FoM. "We insisted" is partisan gloss.
Simon Calder is merely using the FBPEr's "we shot ourselves in the foot" insinuation as he always does.
If he were more honest, he would point out that passports take longer to check now, but that busy weekends at Dover have often involved delays. For example, this from 2012:
FoM has nothing to do with the physical border, yet people keep trying to conflate the two. There have always been passport checks between the CTA and Shengen, and always been delays when the French decide to be French.
Movement of goods is different now that the UK is no longer in the EU Customs Union, but tourist traffic is pretty much the same.
I think they're related because whether you have FoM or not affects what the passport checks need to do. If a British person wants to enter Schengen and they're part of the same FoM zone as you then you (mostly) just need to check that they have a British passport. If they're not doing FoM then you also need to manage how long they'll be allowed to stay and whether they've already stayed too long, which involves more steps.
No, FoM related to the entitlement to a National Insurance number, and the right to work. Nothing to do with border checks.
It does appear that the French want to stamp passports to check for overstays, but that takes only a couple of seconds per passport.
I really don't know why you post this kind of nonsense. It patently takes longer than only a couple of seconds. Open passport. Check last entry, check last exit, check cumulative days stayed in the last 180. And then if all ok find the next page and stamp.
The physical stamping takes only a few seconds. The rest takes a minute. And this is why the queues are here. I assume that had we not left we would have been given a bypass for this new Schengen rule. Or at the very least reduced it. We could have I asked for that.
Instead we said "we want to be a third country". And this is the process. Think how much fun we will all be having next year when we need to be fingerprinted and have our visa checked.
If people voted for Brexit because they wanted to keep foreigners out of Britain, they have a cheek to complain that other countries may want to keep us out of theirs.
Indeed. The lack of self awareness is stunning sometimes. See also people who complain about immigration while detailing their own plans to move abroad.
I must admit @leon's posts yesterday caused me to have steam coming out of my ears. A combination of the desire to move abroad and the tax benefits of doing so having banged on about Brexit so much and going on and on about Gary Lineker being a tax dodger (against the available evidence) was just galling.
And to top it all stating the migration problem isn't what was promised by Brexit. I mean if only people had bothered to tell him it wouldn't work then it wouldn't have come as such a huge surprise to him. Honestly.
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
To be fair to SKS he has an election to avoid losing; to do that almost everyone will admit that he has to avoid splitting his voters on post-Brexit issues. If he does he hands seats to Tories, SNP and even LDs. Only unicorn policies or no explicit policies at all can reliably prevent a split.
This is because a huge swathe of middling opinion only wants unicorn policies on Brexit. While a huge group of Labour supporters, mostly middle class, want SM, CU, FoM, EEA, EFTA or EU, another huge group either want none of them or only unicorn edited highlights.
I think nearer the time he will pledge a post-election 'full review of options'. But even that has dangers.
As to what SKS would actually do in government about all this, he and we have no idea.
I have no idea what SKS is planning but I am in little doubt that whatever he chooses it will be an improvement on the crummy set-up the current cabal of liars, idiots and shills for the billionaire donor class have cobbled together.
"billionaire donor class"
Love it.
It's this type of analysis which might enable the Cons to squeak it or close to it come the next GE.
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
To be fair to SKS he has an election to avoid losing; to do that almost everyone will admit that he has to avoid splitting his voters on post-Brexit issues. If he does he hands seats to Tories, SNP and even LDs. Only unicorn policies or no explicit policies at all can reliably prevent a split.
This is because a huge swathe of middling opinion only wants unicorn policies on Brexit. While a huge group of Labour supporters, mostly middle class, want SM, CU, FoM, EEA, EFTA or EU, another huge group either want none of them or only unicorn edited highlights.
I think nearer the time he will pledge a post-election 'full review of options'. But even that has dangers.
As to what SKS would actually do in government about all this, he and we have no idea.
I have no idea what SKS is planning but I am in little doubt that whatever he chooses it will be an improvement on the crummy set-up the current cabal of liars, idiots and shills for the billionaire donor class have cobbled together.
Yes. I think that can be taken as more or less certain.
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
His views on climate change haven't aged well.
Bringing the Western economies to their knees on the strength of totally unremarkable changes in climate is going to age a lot worse.
You either don't have a clue, or you have some sort of dishonest agenda.
I thought Lawson’s view was:
- Climate change is happening - He wasn’t convinced it was entire anthropomorphic - Given 2 he felt mitigation was a better use of limited resources than carbon reduction
It may be wrong but it’s not some kind of heinous position
For a very intelligent guy, he had some terrible judgment.
To be honest, given absolute Net Zero in carbon *emissions* is almost certainly impossible given political, social and economic constraints I suspect the way we'll actually achieve it is by decarbonising 70-80% of emissions and then littering the planet with direct air capture plants in the middle-latter half of this century to suck out the rest.
So, we'll get to Net Zero (or maybe even slightly negative) but by a different and more practical route based on engineering.
A bit of a non sequitur to my comment, but it's far from impossible. As you realise, the clue is in the word 'net'.
Lawton's flawed judgment was clear long before his slide into climate denial.
As Chancellor, he was brilliant in recognising and addressing the problems of the old economic settlement - tax reform; the abolition of exchange controls; deregulation ... and to an extent, privatisation.
But he established in its place an economic orthodoxy with its own set of flaws. 'Rolling back the frontiers of the state' became a religion, rather than a policy. And its malign effects last to this day in all kind of ways.
Lawson was an ideologue - more so than Thatcher. I recall reading that she wanted to reduce the top rate of tax to 50% - he persuaded her to go for 40%. For me he embodied everything that was wrong with the greed is good philosophy of late Thatcherism, which I think has basically ruined this country. He was also a malign influence in the climate debate. Still, any man who gave us the lovely Nigella can't be all bad. RIP.
Is the new First Minister going to review the justice reforms, that lead to rape of a 13-year-old girl no longer being an imprisonable office in Scotland?
It's a bloody difficult one. Where the theory of rehabilitative justice bumps up against the penal instinct.
Would, for example, the girl's parents be happier if he did 3-5yrs in jail, came out and did it again to someone else, or was genuinely rehabilitated. Whatever that means, well for a start it would mean no re-offending.
We jail too many people. I have a lot of sympathy for the view that those in jail should be eg rapists rather than license fee dodgers but I can see the approach in this instance.
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
They could have a dozen Rolls Royce SMR reactors up and running by now, and exporting them overseas. Instead, the Americans have got first mover advantage on the deployment of the technology, so guess where the export orders will be going.
If the plan is to have more people holidaying in the UK the government needs to stop the water companies pouring raw sewage into our seas. No-one wants their kids paddling among turds!
So two strands needed to achieve this:
1) Sort out the sewage system;
This is a strange one. Like discharges into rivers, discharges onto beaches are a pan-European problem. The scales just pre-Brexi0, 2016t:
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
The clue to the problem is in the words "much closer alignment". This is SKS unicorn language. The SM and CU is something you are either in or out of.
Starmer won't "solve" Brexit, not will he try, I believe. He will aim to fix some of the irritants.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
His views on climate change haven't aged well.
Bringing the Western economies to their knees on the strength of totally unremarkable changes in climate is going to age a lot worse.
You either don't have a clue, or you have some sort of dishonest agenda.
I thought Lawson’s view was:
- Climate change is happening - He wasn’t convinced it was entire anthropomorphic - Given 2 he felt mitigation was a better use of limited resources than carbon reduction
It may be wrong but it’s not some kind of heinous position
For a very intelligent guy, he had some terrible judgment.
To be honest, given absolute Net Zero in carbon *emissions* is almost certainly impossible given political, social and economic constraints I suspect the way we'll actually achieve it is by decarbonising 70-80% of emissions and then littering the planet with direct air capture plants in the middle-latter half of this century to suck out the rest.
So, we'll get to Net Zero (or maybe even slightly negative) but by a different and more practical route based on engineering.
A bit of a non sequitur to my comment, but it's far from impossible. As you realise, the clue is in the word 'net'.
Lawton's flawed judgment was clear long before his slide into climate denial.
As Chancellor, he was brilliant in recognising and addressing the problems of the old economic settlement - tax reform; the abolition of exchange controls; deregulation ... and to an extent, privatisation.
But he established in its place an economic orthodoxy with its own set of flaws. 'Rolling back the frontiers of the state' became a religion, rather than a policy. And its malign effects last to this day in all kind of ways.
Lawson was an ideologue - more so than Thatcher. I recall reading that she wanted to reduce the top rate of tax to 50% - he persuaded her to go for 40%. For me he embodied everything that was wrong with the greed is good philosophy of late Thatcherism, which I think has basically ruined this country. He was also a malign influence in the climate debate. Still, any man who gave us the lovely Nigella can't be all bad. RIP.
AAUI you have done super well for yourself. Well done you. How do you distinguish your journey up the greasy pole from that of a horrible, nasty, Thatcherite capitalist?
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
His views on climate change haven't aged well.
Bringing the Western economies to their knees on the strength of totally unremarkable changes in climate is going to age a lot worse.
You either don't have a clue, or you have some sort of dishonest agenda.
I thought Lawson’s view was:
- Climate change is happening - He wasn’t convinced it was entire anthropomorphic - Given 2 he felt mitigation was a better use of limited resources than carbon reduction
It may be wrong but it’s not some kind of heinous position
For a very intelligent guy, he had some terrible judgment.
To be honest, given absolute Net Zero in carbon *emissions* is almost certainly impossible given political, social and economic constraints I suspect the way we'll actually achieve it is by decarbonising 70-80% of emissions and then littering the planet with direct air capture plants in the middle-latter half of this century to suck out the rest.
So, we'll get to Net Zero (or maybe even slightly negative) but by a different and more practical route based on engineering.
That doesn't sound like a practical route to me. Just like with carbon capture and storage I don't see why people would ever spend billions, indefinitely, as an add-on.
If you invest in new zero carbon technology then it's only a temporary extra cost until the technology develops and you have a new way of doing something that's cheaper than the old way, and then zero carbon becomes an economic inevitability.
You could say the same about sewage treatment plants.
If the cost is low/reasonable enough and the requirements legislated for then it will happen. And it incentivises other solutions in the long-term, as you say.
The difference with sewage treatment plants is the long term vs short term thing, which is quite important when it comes to human incentives.
Sewage treatment plants get you an immediate benefit in not having stinking shit in your rivers and on your beaches. Carbon capture doesn't have such immediate and obvious benefits.
The UK can spend tens of billions on carbon capture - but that has no net effect for the planet if Vietnam then builds another eleven coal-fired power stations.
Carbon capture as apparently envisaged by this government is a lamentable waste of money. They're going to spend £20bn making burning fossil fuels more expensive. Just daft.
I suspect there is a big donor with his finger in those pies though.
No doubt, but it's a shocking waste of money in our current economic situation.
There is an interesting effect - when Western standards rise, the previous generation of machinery often gets exported to poor countries. Or they buy the older designs.
But as we upgrade, even the older designs are better than the previous ones, just somewhat behind the latest standards. So they get a forced upgrade in solution and other standards.
When the big car manufacturers stop making ICE cars, this means the clock is running out in the rest of the world for ICE, for example.
Is the new First Minister going to review the justice reforms, that lead to rape of a 13-year-old girl no longer being an imprisonable office in Scotland?
It's a bloody difficult one. Where the theory of rehabilitative justice bumps up against the penal instinct.
Would, for example, the girl's parents be happier if he did 3-5yrs in jail, came out and did it again to someone else, or was genuinely rehabilitated. Whatever that means, well for a start it would mean no re-offending.
We jail too many people. I have a lot of sympathy for the view that those in jail should be eg rapists rather than license fee dodgers but I can see the approach in this instance.
I agree that too many people are jailed, especially for non-violent offences, but also think that a violent sexual offence against a child is just below murder on the scale of seriousness.
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
To be fair to SKS he has an election to avoid losing; to do that almost everyone will admit that he has to avoid splitting his voters on post-Brexit issues. If he does he hands seats to Tories, SNP and even LDs. Only unicorn policies or no explicit policies at all can reliably prevent a split.
This is because a huge swathe of middling opinion only wants unicorn policies on Brexit. While a huge group of Labour supporters, mostly middle class, want SM, CU, FoM, EEA, EFTA or EU, another huge group either want none of them or only unicorn edited highlights.
I think nearer the time he will pledge a post-election 'full review of options'. But even that has dangers.
As to what SKS would actually do in government about all this, he and we have no idea.
I have no idea what SKS is planning but I am in little doubt that whatever he chooses it will be an improvement on the crummy set-up the current cabal of liars, idiots and shills for the billionaire donor class have cobbled together.
"billionaire donor class"
Love it.
It's this type of analysis which might enable the Cons to squeak it or close to it come the next GE.
I inhabit their world and I see the relationships up close. It is extremely obvious whose side the Tories are on - the people who finance them.
Is the new First Minister going to review the justice reforms, that lead to rape of a 13-year-old girl no longer being an imprisonable office in Scotland?
If the plan is to have more people holidaying in the UK the government needs to stop the water companies pouring raw sewage into our seas. No-one wants their kids paddling among turds!
So two strands needed to achieve this:
1) Sort out the sewage system;
This is a strange one. Like discharges into rivers, discharges onto beaches are a pan-European problem. The scales just pre-Brexi0, 2016t:
If the plan is to have more people holidaying in the UK the government needs to stop the water companies pouring raw sewage into our seas. No-one wants their kids paddling among turds!
So two strands needed to achieve this:
1) Sort out the sewage system;
This is a strange one. Like discharges into rivers, discharges onto beaches are a pan-European problem. The scales just pre-Brexi0, 2016t:
Suggestions that the judge in the Trump case is saying no mugshot or ‘perp walk’, and no cameras in court. Presumably to stop him trying to profit from the case against him.
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
To be fair to SKS he has an election to avoid losing; to do that almost everyone will admit that he has to avoid splitting his voters on post-Brexit issues. If he does he hands seats to Tories, SNP and even LDs. Only unicorn policies or no explicit policies at all can reliably prevent a split.
This is because a huge swathe of middling opinion only wants unicorn policies on Brexit. While a huge group of Labour supporters, mostly middle class, want SM, CU, FoM, EEA, EFTA or EU, another huge group either want none of them or only unicorn edited highlights.
I think nearer the time he will pledge a post-election 'full review of options'. But even that has dangers.
As to what SKS would actually do in government about all this, he and we have no idea.
I have no idea what SKS is planning but I am in little doubt that whatever he chooses it will be an improvement on the crummy set-up the current cabal of liars, idiots and shills for the billionaire donor class have cobbled together.
"billionaire donor class"
Love it.
It's this type of analysis which might enable the Cons to squeak it or close to it come the next GE.
I inhabit their world and I see the relationships up close. It is extremely obvious whose side the Tories are on - the people who finance them.
Oh for goodness sake. I know you rub shoulders with them but how big do you think the "billionaire donor class" is? Take out Rishi that's one fewer.
Any government is elected on a set of promises which we then vote for. Do you suppose that Labour will be elected and then bring back foxhunting because they are governing for the many, not the few?
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
His views on climate change haven't aged well.
Bringing the Western economies to their knees on the strength of totally unremarkable changes in climate is going to age a lot worse.
You either don't have a clue, or you have some sort of dishonest agenda.
I thought Lawson’s view was:
- Climate change is happening - He wasn’t convinced it was entire anthropomorphic - Given 2 he felt mitigation was a better use of limited resources than carbon reduction
It may be wrong but it’s not some kind of heinous position
For a very intelligent guy, he had some terrible judgment.
To be honest, given absolute Net Zero in carbon *emissions* is almost certainly impossible given political, social and economic constraints I suspect the way we'll actually achieve it is by decarbonising 70-80% of emissions and then littering the planet with direct air capture plants in the middle-latter half of this century to suck out the rest.
So, we'll get to Net Zero (or maybe even slightly negative) but by a different and more practical route based on engineering.
A bit of a non sequitur to my comment, but it's far from impossible. As you realise, the clue is in the word 'net'.
Lawton's flawed judgment was clear long before his slide into climate denial.
As Chancellor, he was brilliant in recognising and addressing the problems of the old economic settlement - tax reform; the abolition of exchange controls; deregulation ... and to an extent, privatisation.
But he established in its place an economic orthodoxy with its own set of flaws. 'Rolling back the frontiers of the state' became a religion, rather than a policy. And its malign effects last to this day in all kind of ways.
Lawson was an ideologue - more so than Thatcher. I recall reading that she wanted to reduce the top rate of tax to 50% - he persuaded her to go for 40%. For me he embodied everything that was wrong with the greed is good philosophy of late Thatcherism, which I think has basically ruined this country. He was also a malign influence in the climate debate. Still, any man who gave us the lovely Nigella can't be all bad. RIP.
AAUI you have done super well for yourself. Well done you. How do you distinguish your journey up the greasy pole from that of a horrible, nasty, Thatcherite capitalist?
I love capitalism. I also love progressive taxation. Do well for yourself, but pay your taxes and don't think you're too good to use the same public services as anyone else. I don't think there is a contradiction - in fact quite the opposite. Capitalism without a powerful welfare state to balance it will descend into a dark place, as we are seeing in the US and starting to see here.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
Invasive species cause all sorts of damage to ecosystems that have developed without them. Overall they lead to a net loss of biodiversity, species extinction and damage to habitats.
Downing Street has acknowledged that new post-Brexit “processes” contributed to issues at the Port of Dover over the weekend.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said he was aware that French border officials were “inspecting and stamping every single passport”, as is the case at all European borders for arrivals from outside the bloc.
I must confess I find Simon Calder’s analysis on this rather more compelling than Suella Braverman. Did we really insist on every passport being checked and stamped ?
Every passport being checked and stamped is a natural consequence of the end of FoM. "We insisted" is partisan gloss.
Simon Calder is merely using the FBPEr's "we shot ourselves in the foot" insinuation as he always does.
If he were more honest, he would point out that passports take longer to check now, but that busy weekends at Dover have often involved delays. For example, this from 2012:
FoM has nothing to do with the physical border, yet people keep trying to conflate the two. There have always been passport checks between the CTA and Shengen, and always been delays when the French decide to be French.
Movement of goods is different now that the UK is no longer in the EU Customs Union, but tourist traffic is pretty much the same.
I think they're related because whether you have FoM or not affects what the passport checks need to do. If a British person wants to enter Schengen and they're part of the same FoM zone as you then you (mostly) just need to check that they have a British passport. If they're not doing FoM then you also need to manage how long they'll be allowed to stay and whether they've already stayed too long, which involves more steps.
No, FoM related to the entitlement to a National Insurance number, and the right to work. Nothing to do with border checks.
It does appear that the French want to stamp passports to check for overstays, but that takes only a couple of seconds per passport.
I really don't know why you post this kind of nonsense. It patently takes longer than only a couple of seconds. Open passport. Check last entry, check last exit, check cumulative days stayed in the last 180. And then if all ok find the next page and stamp.
The physical stamping takes only a few seconds. The rest takes a minute. And this is why the queues are here. I assume that had we not left we would have been given a bypass for this new Schengen rule. Or at the very least reduced it. We could have I asked for that.
Instead we said "we want to be a third country". And this is the process. Think how much fun we will all be having next year when we need to be fingerprinted and have our visa checked.
If people voted for Brexit because they wanted to keep foreigners out of Britain, they have a cheek to complain that other countries may want to keep us out of theirs.
Indeed. The lack of self awareness is stunning sometimes. See also people who complain about immigration while detailing their own plans to move abroad.
I must admit @leon's posts yesterday caused me to have steam coming out of my ears. A combination of the desire to move abroad and the tax benefits of doing so having banged on about Brexit so much and going on and on about Gary Lineker being a tax dodger (against the available evidence) was just galling.
And to top it all stating the migration problem isn't what was promised by Brexit. I mean if only people had bothered to tell him it wouldn't work then it wouldn't have come as such a huge surprise to him. Honestly.
Well it worked then didn't it🤣🤣😪. Never take anything @Leon too seriously. He is as likely as not to argue the complete opposite tomorrow.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
I have an enormous walnut tree (far too huge to cover as it is taller than my house). It produces thousands of walnuts every year. I get precisely zero walnuts, the squirrels thousands and the mess from thousands of shredded husks is a nightmare to clear up and they eat my strawberries as well. Bastards.
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
To be fair to SKS he has an election to avoid losing; to do that almost everyone will admit that he has to avoid splitting his voters on post-Brexit issues. If he does he hands seats to Tories, SNP and even LDs. Only unicorn policies or no explicit policies at all can reliably prevent a split.
This is because a huge swathe of middling opinion only wants unicorn policies on Brexit. While a huge group of Labour supporters, mostly middle class, want SM, CU, FoM, EEA, EFTA or EU, another huge group either want none of them or only unicorn edited highlights.
I think nearer the time he will pledge a post-election 'full review of options'. But even that has dangers.
As to what SKS would actually do in government about all this, he and we have no idea.
I have no idea what SKS is planning but I am in little doubt that whatever he chooses it will be an improvement on the crummy set-up the current cabal of liars, idiots and shills for the billionaire donor class have cobbled together.
"billionaire donor class"
Love it.
It's this type of analysis which might enable the Cons to squeak it or close to it come the next GE.
I inhabit their world and I see the relationships up close. It is extremely obvious whose side the Tories are on - the people who finance them.
Oh for goodness sake. I know you rub shoulders with them but how big do you think the "billionaire donor class" is? Take out Rishi that's one fewer.
Any government is elected on a set of promises which we then vote for. Do you suppose that Labour will be elected and then bring back foxhunting because they are governing for the many, not the few?
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
They could have a dozen Rolls Royce SMR reactors up and running by now, and exporting them overseas. Instead, the Americans have got first mover advantage on the deployment of the technology, so guess where the export orders will be going.
Do these actually exist outside PowerPoint? (I don't know.)
Everything nuclear seems to take forever and cost a fortune.
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
His views on climate change haven't aged well.
Bringing the Western economies to their knees on the strength of totally unremarkable changes in climate is going to age a lot worse.
You either don't have a clue, or you have some sort of dishonest agenda.
I thought Lawson’s view was:
- Climate change is happening - He wasn’t convinced it was entire anthropomorphic - Given 2 he felt mitigation was a better use of limited resources than carbon reduction
It may be wrong but it’s not some kind of heinous position
For a very intelligent guy, he had some terrible judgment.
To be honest, given absolute Net Zero in carbon *emissions* is almost certainly impossible given political, social and economic constraints I suspect the way we'll actually achieve it is by decarbonising 70-80% of emissions and then littering the planet with direct air capture plants in the middle-latter half of this century to suck out the rest.
So, we'll get to Net Zero (or maybe even slightly negative) but by a different and more practical route based on engineering.
A bit of a non sequitur to my comment, but it's far from impossible. As you realise, the clue is in the word 'net'.
Lawton's flawed judgment was clear long before his slide into climate denial.
As Chancellor, he was brilliant in recognising and addressing the problems of the old economic settlement - tax reform; the abolition of exchange controls; deregulation ... and to an extent, privatisation.
But he established in its place an economic orthodoxy with its own set of flaws. 'Rolling back the frontiers of the state' became a religion, rather than a policy. And its malign effects last to this day in all kind of ways.
Lawson was an ideologue - more so than Thatcher. I recall reading that she wanted to reduce the top rate of tax to 50% - he persuaded her to go for 40%. For me he embodied everything that was wrong with the greed is good philosophy of late Thatcherism, which I think has basically ruined this country. He was also a malign influence in the climate debate. Still, any man who gave us the lovely Nigella can't be all bad. RIP.
AAUI you have done super well for yourself. Well done you. How do you distinguish your journey up the greasy pole from that of a horrible, nasty, Thatcherite capitalist?
Oh no (!) it's yet another outbreak of the "material success in life means you can't hold left wing political views" virus.
Is the new First Minister going to review the justice reforms, that lead to rape of a 13-year-old girl no longer being an imprisonable office in Scotland?
It's a bloody difficult one. Where the theory of rehabilitative justice bumps up against the penal instinct.
Would, for example, the girl's parents be happier if he did 3-5yrs in jail, came out and did it again to someone else, or was genuinely rehabilitated. Whatever that means, well for a start it would mean no re-offending.
We jail too many people. I have a lot of sympathy for the view that those in jail should be eg rapists rather than license fee dodgers but I can see the approach in this instance.
I agree that too many people are jailed, especially for non-violent offences, but also think that a violent sexual offence against a child is just below murder on the scale of seriousness.
Don't disagree - I haven't read the details of the case and on the face of it it does seem extraordinary. Violent rape (so the report indicates) rather than a youngster boyfriend/girlfriend just underage thing.
I suppose a new policy is a new policy. Interesting to see the legal and political fallout.
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
His views on climate change haven't aged well.
Bringing the Western economies to their knees on the strength of totally unremarkable changes in climate is going to age a lot worse.
You either don't have a clue, or you have some sort of dishonest agenda.
I thought Lawson’s view was:
- Climate change is happening - He wasn’t convinced it was entire anthropomorphic - Given 2 he felt mitigation was a better use of limited resources than carbon reduction
It may be wrong but it’s not some kind of heinous position
For a very intelligent guy, he had some terrible judgment.
To be honest, given absolute Net Zero in carbon *emissions* is almost certainly impossible given political, social and economic constraints I suspect the way we'll actually achieve it is by decarbonising 70-80% of emissions and then littering the planet with direct air capture plants in the middle-latter half of this century to suck out the rest.
So, we'll get to Net Zero (or maybe even slightly negative) but by a different and more practical route based on engineering.
A bit of a non sequitur to my comment, but it's far from impossible. As you realise, the clue is in the word 'net'.
Lawton's flawed judgment was clear long before his slide into climate denial.
As Chancellor, he was brilliant in recognising and addressing the problems of the old economic settlement - tax reform; the abolition of exchange controls; deregulation ... and to an extent, privatisation.
But he established in its place an economic orthodoxy with its own set of flaws. 'Rolling back the frontiers of the state' became a religion, rather than a policy. And its malign effects last to this day in all kind of ways.
Lawson was an ideologue - more so than Thatcher. I recall reading that she wanted to reduce the top rate of tax to 50% - he persuaded her to go for 40%. For me he embodied everything that was wrong with the greed is good philosophy of late Thatcherism, which I think has basically ruined this country. He was also a malign influence in the climate debate. Still, any man who gave us the lovely Nigella can't be all bad. RIP.
AAUI you have done super well for yourself. Well done you. How do you distinguish your journey up the greasy pole from that of a horrible, nasty, Thatcherite capitalist?
Oh no (!) it's yet another outbreak of the "material success in life means you can't hold left wing political views" virus.
Is there no vaccine for this?
I know. It makes you uncomfortable. But one option is to continue to dismiss it as relevant. Make a joke out of it perhaps.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
Grey squirrels cause massive losses to nesting birds. Come and have a look at how they chew around the entrance hole to bird boxes, then eat the young....
Downing Street has acknowledged that new post-Brexit “processes” contributed to issues at the Port of Dover over the weekend.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said he was aware that French border officials were “inspecting and stamping every single passport”, as is the case at all European borders for arrivals from outside the bloc.
I must confess I find Simon Calder’s analysis on this rather more compelling than Suella Braverman. Did we really insist on every passport being checked and stamped ?
Every passport being checked and stamped is a natural consequence of the end of FoM. "We insisted" is partisan gloss.
Simon Calder is merely using the FBPEr's "we shot ourselves in the foot" insinuation as he always does.
If he were more honest, he would point out that passports take longer to check now, but that busy weekends at Dover have often involved delays. For example, this from 2012:
FoM has nothing to do with the physical border, yet people keep trying to conflate the two. There have always been passport checks between the CTA and Shengen, and always been delays when the French decide to be French.
Movement of goods is different now that the UK is no longer in the EU Customs Union, but tourist traffic is pretty much the same.
I think they're related because whether you have FoM or not affects what the passport checks need to do. If a British person wants to enter Schengen and they're part of the same FoM zone as you then you (mostly) just need to check that they have a British passport. If they're not doing FoM then you also need to manage how long they'll be allowed to stay and whether they've already stayed too long, which involves more steps.
No, FoM related to the entitlement to a National Insurance number, and the right to work. Nothing to do with border checks.
It does appear that the French want to stamp passports to check for overstays, but that takes only a couple of seconds per passport.
I really don't know why you post this kind of nonsense. It patently takes longer than only a couple of seconds. Open passport. Check last entry, check last exit, check cumulative days stayed in the last 180. And then if all ok find the next page and stamp.
The physical stamping takes only a few seconds. The rest takes a minute. And this is why the queues are here. I assume that had we not left we would have been given a bypass for this new Schengen rule. Or at the very least reduced it. We could have I asked for that.
Instead we said "we want to be a third country". And this is the process. Think how much fun we will all be having next year when we need to be fingerprinted and have our visa checked.
If people voted for Brexit because they wanted to keep foreigners out of Britain, they have a cheek to complain that other countries may want to keep us out of theirs.
Indeed. The lack of self awareness is stunning sometimes. See also people who complain about immigration while detailing their own plans to move abroad.
I must admit @leon's posts yesterday caused me to have steam coming out of my ears. A combination of the desire to move abroad and the tax benefits of doing so having banged on about Brexit so much and going on and on about Gary Lineker being a tax dodger (against the available evidence) was just galling.
And to top it all stating the migration problem isn't what was promised by Brexit. I mean if only people had bothered to tell him it wouldn't work then it wouldn't have come as such a huge surprise to him. Honestly.
Well it worked then didn't it🤣🤣😪. Never take anything @Leon too seriously. He is as likely as not to argue the complete opposite tomorrow.
I stopped getting irritated by Leon once I realised he was a comic character dreamt up by a left wing satirist.
Downing Street has acknowledged that new post-Brexit “processes” contributed to issues at the Port of Dover over the weekend.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said he was aware that French border officials were “inspecting and stamping every single passport”, as is the case at all European borders for arrivals from outside the bloc.
I must confess I find Simon Calder’s analysis on this rather more compelling than Suella Braverman. Did we really insist on every passport being checked and stamped ?
Every passport being checked and stamped is a natural consequence of the end of FoM. "We insisted" is partisan gloss.
Simon Calder is merely using the FBPEr's "we shot ourselves in the foot" insinuation as he always does.
If he were more honest, he would point out that passports take longer to check now, but that busy weekends at Dover have often involved delays. For example, this from 2012:
FoM has nothing to do with the physical border, yet people keep trying to conflate the two. There have always been passport checks between the CTA and Shengen, and always been delays when the French decide to be French.
Movement of goods is different now that the UK is no longer in the EU Customs Union, but tourist traffic is pretty much the same.
I think they're related because whether you have FoM or not affects what the passport checks need to do. If a British person wants to enter Schengen and they're part of the same FoM zone as you then you (mostly) just need to check that they have a British passport. If they're not doing FoM then you also need to manage how long they'll be allowed to stay and whether they've already stayed too long, which involves more steps.
No, FoM related to the entitlement to a National Insurance number, and the right to work. Nothing to do with border checks.
It does appear that the French want to stamp passports to check for overstays, but that takes only a couple of seconds per passport.
I really don't know why you post this kind of nonsense. It patently takes longer than only a couple of seconds. Open passport. Check last entry, check last exit, check cumulative days stayed in the last 180. And then if all ok find the next page and stamp.
The physical stamping takes only a few seconds. The rest takes a minute. And this is why the queues are here. I assume that had we not left we would have been given a bypass for this new Schengen rule. Or at the very least reduced it. We could have I asked for that.
Instead we said "we want to be a third country". And this is the process. Think how much fun we will all be having next year when we need to be fingerprinted and have our visa checked.
If people voted for Brexit because they wanted to keep foreigners out of Britain, they have a cheek to complain that other countries may want to keep us out of theirs.
Indeed. The lack of self awareness is stunning sometimes. See also people who complain about immigration while detailing their own plans to move abroad.
I must admit @leon's posts yesterday caused me to have steam coming out of my ears. A combination of the desire to move abroad and the tax benefits of doing so having banged on about Brexit so much and going on and on about Gary Lineker being a tax dodger (against the available evidence) was just galling.
And to top it all stating the migration problem isn't what was promised by Brexit. I mean if only people had bothered to tell him it wouldn't work then it wouldn't have come as such a huge surprise to him. Honestly.
Well it worked then didn't it🤣🤣😪. Never take anything @Leon too seriously. He is as likely as not to argue the complete opposite tomorrow.
Are we talking about Leon posting as Leon, or Leon posting as Horse?
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
His views on climate change haven't aged well.
Bringing the Western economies to their knees on the strength of totally unremarkable changes in climate is going to age a lot worse.
You either don't have a clue, or you have some sort of dishonest agenda.
I thought Lawson’s view was:
- Climate change is happening - He wasn’t convinced it was entire anthropomorphic - Given 2 he felt mitigation was a better use of limited resources than carbon reduction
It may be wrong but it’s not some kind of heinous position
For a very intelligent guy, he had some terrible judgment.
To be honest, given absolute Net Zero in carbon *emissions* is almost certainly impossible given political, social and economic constraints I suspect the way we'll actually achieve it is by decarbonising 70-80% of emissions and then littering the planet with direct air capture plants in the middle-latter half of this century to suck out the rest.
So, we'll get to Net Zero (or maybe even slightly negative) but by a different and more practical route based on engineering.
A bit of a non sequitur to my comment, but it's far from impossible. As you realise, the clue is in the word 'net'.
Lawton's flawed judgment was clear long before his slide into climate denial.
As Chancellor, he was brilliant in recognising and addressing the problems of the old economic settlement - tax reform; the abolition of exchange controls; deregulation ... and to an extent, privatisation.
But he established in its place an economic orthodoxy with its own set of flaws. 'Rolling back the frontiers of the state' became a religion, rather than a policy. And its malign effects last to this day in all kind of ways.
Lawson was an ideologue - more so than Thatcher. I recall reading that she wanted to reduce the top rate of tax to 50% - he persuaded her to go for 40%. For me he embodied everything that was wrong with the greed is good philosophy of late Thatcherism, which I think has basically ruined this country. He was also a malign influence in the climate debate. Still, any man who gave us the lovely Nigella can't be all bad. RIP.
AAUI you have done super well for yourself. Well done you. How do you distinguish your journey up the greasy pole from that of a horrible, nasty, Thatcherite capitalist?
I love capitalism. I also love progressive taxation. Do well for yourself, but pay your taxes and don't think you're too good to use the same public services as anyone else. I don't think there is a contradiction - in fact quite the opposite. Capitalism without a powerful welfare state to balance it will descend into a dark place, as we are seeing in the US and starting to see here.
And yet we have the "billionaire donor class".
Do you really think that Jim Ratcliffe and Crispin Odey set government policy? And even if they did, you and I would have to vote on them.
And also enough of the rhetoric about the demise of the welfare state or I will have to roll out the spending figures which I suspect you know only too well.
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
They could have a dozen Rolls Royce SMR reactors up and running by now, and exporting them overseas. Instead, the Americans have got first mover advantage on the deployment of the technology, so guess where the export orders will be going.
Do these actually exist outside PowerPoint? (I don't know.)
Everything nuclear seems to take forever and cost a fortune.
The base design is similar to a naval reactor, which RR already produces. They have a small-scale prototype, but need orders to complete the development process.
I assume the "it only takes two seconds" lie is aimed at the angry people who don't travel abroad but want to stop the rest of us doing so.
Anyone with eyes and a brain knows it takes more than 2 seconds, as it too more than 2 seconds when you hit their border. Yet the right keep saying this guff.
They won't persuade people who are alive. So it must be reassurance lies for the elderly and angry ro protect their prescious Brexit from reality.
67 million people travelled to EU countries from the UK in 2021
If even a tenth of them were as pissed off as those trying to get into Nice in March when there was one person doing UK passports then come the next election Sunak and his bunch of 300 shits will be out on their ears.
I can only hope Starmer's silence is based on the George Carmen technique of lulling them into a false sense of well being before blasting them with all you've got.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
Good question. But look at many of the rewilding projects. In fact, as many farmers will agree, relatively few are "just leave it as it is", and a large number (perhaps the majority) is designed to preserve and perhaps reintroduce native flora and fauna species. I know there is the perennial discussion about wolves, etc.
The grey squirrel is invasive (same with American/Signal crayfish, which displaced the indigenous species).
I think it's ridiculous, as you seem to - it's just one person's idea of what should be preserved over anyone else's (I had this discussion with the cousin who is giving over a few hundred acres to "rewilding"). He didn't disagree.
The theory is that you preserve flora and fauna that would otherwise be in danger of becoming extinct. But there is man at the top of it all making the decisions. According to @OnlyLivingBoy perhaps it is even The Man doing this.
Is the new First Minister going to review the justice reforms, that lead to rape of a 13-year-old girl no longer being an imprisonable office in Scotland?
Progressive Scotland 2023, where a man gets no jail time for raping a 13-year-old girl in a park. Young Scottish men are effectively being told ‘first time’s free.’
Keir Starmer's motion to Labour's NEC to expel Jeremy Corbyn said that the former leader would "significantly diminish" Labour's chances of winning if he stood
Most Britons see Corbyn as an electoral liability (56%) for Labour
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
They could have a dozen Rolls Royce SMR reactors up and running by now, and exporting them overseas. Instead, the Americans have got first mover advantage on the deployment of the technology, so guess where the export orders will be going.
Do these actually exist outside PowerPoint? (I don't know.)
Everything nuclear seems to take forever and cost a fortune.
The base design is similar to a naval reactor, which RR already produces. They have a small-scale prototype, but need orders to complete the development process.
Here's a prediction. To ever get into production, they will need massive state aid. (No nuclear power plant has been built without massive state aid, anywhere on the planet.) They will not get the orders expected (because no-one wants a nuclear sub parked in their town). Consequently, they will be rows of them built together on the site of existing nuclear power stations being dismantled. They will take far longer to enter production than the glossy sales pitch promises. And they will have a shorter productive life than promised. And they will have far more downtime than predicted. The cost of production of electricity will consequenly be massively more expensive than other sources of energy. And they will prove far more costly to dismantle than current estimates.
You hardly need to seek out a crystal ball to make this prediction. Just look at the past history of nuclear plants.
Downing Street has acknowledged that new post-Brexit “processes” contributed to issues at the Port of Dover over the weekend.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said he was aware that French border officials were “inspecting and stamping every single passport”, as is the case at all European borders for arrivals from outside the bloc.
I must confess I find Simon Calder’s analysis on this rather more compelling than Suella Braverman. Did we really insist on every passport being checked and stamped ?
Every passport being checked and stamped is a natural consequence of the end of FoM. "We insisted" is partisan gloss.
Simon Calder is merely using the FBPEr's "we shot ourselves in the foot" insinuation as he always does.
If he were more honest, he would point out that passports take longer to check now, but that busy weekends at Dover have often involved delays. For example, this from 2012:
FoM has nothing to do with the physical border, yet people keep trying to conflate the two. There have always been passport checks between the CTA and Shengen, and always been delays when the French decide to be French.
Movement of goods is different now that the UK is no longer in the EU Customs Union, but tourist traffic is pretty much the same.
I think they're related because whether you have FoM or not affects what the passport checks need to do. If a British person wants to enter Schengen and they're part of the same FoM zone as you then you (mostly) just need to check that they have a British passport. If they're not doing FoM then you also need to manage how long they'll be allowed to stay and whether they've already stayed too long, which involves more steps.
No, FoM related to the entitlement to a National Insurance number, and the right to work. Nothing to do with border checks.
It does appear that the French want to stamp passports to check for overstays, but that takes only a couple of seconds per passport.
I really don't know why you post this kind of nonsense. It patently takes longer than only a couple of seconds. Open passport. Check last entry, check last exit, check cumulative days stayed in the last 180. And then if all ok find the next page and stamp.
The physical stamping takes only a few seconds. The rest takes a minute. And this is why the queues are here. I assume that had we not left we would have been given a bypass for this new Schengen rule. Or at the very least reduced it. We could have I asked for that.
Instead we said "we want to be a third country". And this is the process. Think how much fun we will all be having next year when we need to be fingerprinted and have our visa checked.
If people voted for Brexit because they wanted to keep foreigners out of Britain, they have a cheek to complain that other countries may want to keep us out of theirs.
Indeed. The lack of self awareness is stunning sometimes. See also people who complain about immigration while detailing their own plans to move abroad.
I must admit @leon's posts yesterday caused me to have steam coming out of my ears. A combination of the desire to move abroad and the tax benefits of doing so having banged on about Brexit so much and going on and on about Gary Lineker being a tax dodger (against the available evidence) was just galling.
And to top it all stating the migration problem isn't what was promised by Brexit. I mean if only people had bothered to tell him it wouldn't work then it wouldn't have come as such a huge surprise to him. Honestly.
Well it worked then didn't it🤣🤣😪. Never take anything @Leon too seriously. He is as likely as not to argue the complete opposite tomorrow.
I stopped getting irritated by Leon once I realised he was a comic character dreamt up by a left wing satirist.
If the plan is to have more people holidaying in the UK the government needs to stop the water companies pouring raw sewage into our seas. No-one wants their kids paddling among turds!
So two strands needed to achieve this:
1) Sort out the sewage system;
This is a strange one. Like discharges into rivers, discharges onto beaches are a pan-European problem. The scales just pre-Brexi0, 2016t:
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
His views on climate change haven't aged well.
Bringing the Western economies to their knees on the strength of totally unremarkable changes in climate is going to age a lot worse.
You either don't have a clue, or you have some sort of dishonest agenda.
I thought Lawson’s view was:
- Climate change is happening - He wasn’t convinced it was entire anthropomorphic - Given 2 he felt mitigation was a better use of limited resources than carbon reduction
It may be wrong but it’s not some kind of heinous position
For a very intelligent guy, he had some terrible judgment.
To be honest, given absolute Net Zero in carbon *emissions* is almost certainly impossible given political, social and economic constraints I suspect the way we'll actually achieve it is by decarbonising 70-80% of emissions and then littering the planet with direct air capture plants in the middle-latter half of this century to suck out the rest.
So, we'll get to Net Zero (or maybe even slightly negative) but by a different and more practical route based on engineering.
A bit of a non sequitur to my comment, but it's far from impossible. As you realise, the clue is in the word 'net'.
Lawton's flawed judgment was clear long before his slide into climate denial.
As Chancellor, he was brilliant in recognising and addressing the problems of the old economic settlement - tax reform; the abolition of exchange controls; deregulation ... and to an extent, privatisation.
But he established in its place an economic orthodoxy with its own set of flaws. 'Rolling back the frontiers of the state' became a religion, rather than a policy. And its malign effects last to this day in all kind of ways.
Lawson was an ideologue - more so than Thatcher. I recall reading that she wanted to reduce the top rate of tax to 50% - he persuaded her to go for 40%. For me he embodied everything that was wrong with the greed is good philosophy of late Thatcherism, which I think has basically ruined this country. He was also a malign influence in the climate debate. Still, any man who gave us the lovely Nigella can't be all bad. RIP.
AAUI you have done super well for yourself. Well done you. How do you distinguish your journey up the greasy pole from that of a horrible, nasty, Thatcherite capitalist?
Oh no (!) it's yet another outbreak of the "material success in life means you can't hold left wing political views" virus.
Is there no vaccine for this?
If you're poor and criticise Tory policies it's the "politics of envy" and if you're rich you're a hypocrite. There must be some level of household income where you're allowed to have an opinion but I haven't found out what it is yet.
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
They could have a dozen Rolls Royce SMR reactors up and running by now, and exporting them overseas. Instead, the Americans have got first mover advantage on the deployment of the technology, so guess where the export orders will be going.
Do these actually exist outside PowerPoint? (I don't know.)
Everything nuclear seems to take forever and cost a fortune.
The base design is similar to a naval reactor, which RR already produces. They have a small-scale prototype, but need orders to complete the development process.
Here's a prediction. To ever get into production, they will need massive state aid. (No nuclear power plant has been built without massive state aid, anywhere on the planet.) They will not get the orders expected (because no-one wants a nuclear sub parked in their town). Consequently, they will be rows of them built together on the site of existing nuclear power stations being dismantled. They will take far longer to enter production than the glossy sales pitch promises. And they will have a shorter productive life than promised. And they will have far more downtime than predicted. The cost of production of electricity will consequenly be massively more expensive than other sources of energy. And they will prove far more costly to dismantle than current estimates.
You hardly need to seek out a crystal ball to make this prediction. Just look at the past history of nuclear plants.
You also need to miss out a lot of advantages - because the whole point of RR approach is to create a production line where the plants are built repeatedly (at scale) unlike a nuclear power station where every one is unique..
The reality is we had a 3-4 year window in which RR could get ahead of the competition and most of the lead time has been lost.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
Wonderful animals. So bright and every one with their own personality. I feed them daily when I'm here. They are quite the most interesting and ingenious animals I've ever interacted with. I find them much more interesting than the Reds. My cousin in a nature writer and she lathes the idea of 'native species' which is a big thing in Scotland. She thinks it's typical of the Nationalist mentality!
The entry exit thing was always going to become a huge issue because it is a very palpable and fully demonstrable consequence of the Brexit the government chose. You experience the queuing and know it was not as bad previously. It’s inarguable. So, there will be some kind of deal done and it will involve the UK giving up some level of control. Outside of the depleted, impotent confines of the ERG, no-one will care - they’ll welcome the return of sanity and convenience.
Hugo Rifkind's column in The Times today makes the case that we have had enough of 'big ideas', and the most successful pitch for the next election would we "We won't break anything else"
It's an interesting idea, but neglects the fact that we do need a government that will in fact "fix some of the shit we just broke"
Absolutely. This government can’t do it. A Labour-led one will have huge leeway because it has no Brexit loon wing to appease. I agree with Casino Royale on this - Starmer is basically telling porkies about what a government he leads will do to mitigate Brexit. If he’s PM, we’ll see much closer alignment than is being acknowledged.
To be fair to SKS he has an election to avoid losing; to do that almost everyone will admit that he has to avoid splitting his voters on post-Brexit issues. If he does he hands seats to Tories, SNP and even LDs. Only unicorn policies or no explicit policies at all can reliably prevent a split.
This is because a huge swathe of middling opinion only wants unicorn policies on Brexit. While a huge group of Labour supporters, mostly middle class, want SM, CU, FoM, EEA, EFTA or EU, another huge group either want none of them or only unicorn edited highlights.
I think nearer the time he will pledge a post-election 'full review of options'. But even that has dangers.
As to what SKS would actually do in government about all this, he and we have no idea.
I have no idea what SKS is planning but I am in little doubt that whatever he chooses it will be an improvement on the crummy set-up the current cabal of liars, idiots and shills for the billionaire donor class have cobbled together.
"billionaire donor class"
Love it.
It's this type of analysis which might enable the Cons to squeak it or close to it come the next GE.
I inhabit their world and I see the relationships up close. It is extremely obvious whose side the Tories are on - the people who finance them.
Oh for goodness sake. I know you rub shoulders with them but how big do you think the "billionaire donor class" is? Take out Rishi that's one fewer...
Downing Street has acknowledged that new post-Brexit “processes” contributed to issues at the Port of Dover over the weekend.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said he was aware that French border officials were “inspecting and stamping every single passport”, as is the case at all European borders for arrivals from outside the bloc.
I must confess I find Simon Calder’s analysis on this rather more compelling than Suella Braverman. Did we really insist on every passport being checked and stamped ?
Every passport being checked and stamped is a natural consequence of the end of FoM. "We insisted" is partisan gloss.
Simon Calder is merely using the FBPEr's "we shot ourselves in the foot" insinuation as he always does.
If he were more honest, he would point out that passports take longer to check now, but that busy weekends at Dover have often involved delays. For example, this from 2012:
FoM has nothing to do with the physical border, yet people keep trying to conflate the two. There have always been passport checks between the CTA and Shengen, and always been delays when the French decide to be French.
Movement of goods is different now that the UK is no longer in the EU Customs Union, but tourist traffic is pretty much the same.
I think they're related because whether you have FoM or not affects what the passport checks need to do. If a British person wants to enter Schengen and they're part of the same FoM zone as you then you (mostly) just need to check that they have a British passport. If they're not doing FoM then you also need to manage how long they'll be allowed to stay and whether they've already stayed too long, which involves more steps.
No, FoM related to the entitlement to a National Insurance number, and the right to work. Nothing to do with border checks.
It does appear that the French want to stamp passports to check for overstays, but that takes only a couple of seconds per passport.
I really don't know why you post this kind of nonsense. It patently takes longer than only a couple of seconds. Open passport. Check last entry, check last exit, check cumulative days stayed in the last 180. And then if all ok find the next page and stamp.
The physical stamping takes only a few seconds. The rest takes a minute. And this is why the queues are here. I assume that had we not left we would have been given a bypass for this new Schengen rule. Or at the very least reduced it. We could have I asked for that.
Instead we said "we want to be a third country". And this is the process. Think how much fun we will all be having next year when we need to be fingerprinted and have our visa checked.
If people voted for Brexit because they wanted to keep foreigners out of Britain, they have a cheek to complain that other countries may want to keep us out of theirs.
Indeed. The lack of self awareness is stunning sometimes. See also people who complain about immigration while detailing their own plans to move abroad.
I must admit @leon's posts yesterday caused me to have steam coming out of my ears. A combination of the desire to move abroad and the tax benefits of doing so having banged on about Brexit so much and going on and on about Gary Lineker being a tax dodger (against the available evidence) was just galling.
And to top it all stating the migration problem isn't what was promised by Brexit. I mean if only people had bothered to tell him it wouldn't work then it wouldn't have come as such a huge surprise to him. Honestly.
Well it worked then didn't it🤣🤣😪. Never take anything @Leon too seriously. He is as likely as not to argue the complete opposite tomorrow.
I stopped getting irritated by Leon once I realised he was a comic character dreamt up by a left wing satirist.
Like Nigel Farage.
The more obvious example of a satirical character on that side of politics is Boris Johnson.
Unfortunately, like Alf Garnett and Loadsamoney, the people Alex de Pfeffel was sending up took the Boris character to their hearts and the performer is terminally typecast.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
Good question. But look at many of the rewilding projects. In fact, as many farmers will agree, relatively few are "just leave it as it is", and a large number (perhaps the majority) is designed to preserve and perhaps reintroduce native flora and fauna species. I know there is the perennial discussion about wolves, etc.
The grey squirrel is invasive (same with American/Signal crayfish, which displaced the indigenous species).
Easy to catch and eat, but probably harder to eradicate than grey squirrels.
Invasive species cause all sorts of damage to ecosystems that have developed without them. Overall they lead to a net loss of biodiversity, species extinction and damage to habitats.
But isn't that how nature works, with species rising and falling over time due to complex interactions. Is it desirable or even feasible to try to freeze evolution at whatever particular moment in time we decide to do it?
As for grey squirrels eating birds' nests or walnuts (cited in other posts), don't red squirrels do that too? Those objections seem to be more about disliking squirrels per se.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
Wonderful animals. So bright and every one with their own personality. I feed them daily when I'm here. They are quite the most interesting and ingenious animals I've ever interacted with. I find them much more interesting than the Reds. My cousin in a nature writer and she lathes the idea of 'native species' which is a big thing in Scotland. She thinks it's typical of the Nationalist mentality!
Sorry but these comments are just stupid and ignorant and I would certainly have expected better from Nick even if not from you. Your cousin sounds like a moron.
The reason that most sensible naturalists and wildlife experts have a problem with some non native species is because they drive native species to extinction. Ecosystems build up over millennia to a point of natural balance. When you then suddenly introduce a non native species it disrupts that balance and can often lead similar native species being pushed into danger. There are hundreds of examples of this since man started transporting animals around the world - cats in Australia being an obvious example.
You might as well claim that there is nothing wrong with white Europeans wiping out the indigenous peoples of North America 'because we were more interesting'. Nationalism has feck all to do with it. Horse Chestnuts and rabbits are both non native species to the British Isles but they do not damage the native populations of other animals and plants so there is no problem with them. If a species of plant or animal is harmless then it is not an issue. But diversity of species is what is matters. Grey squirrels have driven reds to extinction in many parts of the British Isles. Hence the reason they need to be controlled.
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
They could have a dozen Rolls Royce SMR reactors up and running by now, and exporting them overseas. Instead, the Americans have got first mover advantage on the deployment of the technology, so guess where the export orders will be going.
Do these actually exist outside PowerPoint? (I don't know.)
Everything nuclear seems to take forever and cost a fortune.
The idea behind these, which isn't entirely daft, is to take a proven design and make it on a production line. Looking at the Nuscale prices, they seem to be looking at power below the cost of that from large plants, which implies considerable savings on construction costs, as smaller plants are less efficient.
Obviously the economies only materialise if they sell scores of the things. Because of that, I'm not sure there's room for more than one player in the market.
As you say, it will take years to produce the first one, but the marginal costs of producing additional units ought to drop quickly - which would make ordering them an easier decision for governments.
Can’t think why they’re protected. They’re an invasive species and there are far too bloody many of them.
Red squirrels are protected
So are greys. You can’t trap them or kill them except when they are actually inside the property. Which is demented.
I’ve no objection to protecting red squirrels but arguably the best way to do that is to start killing off the grey interlopers.
Why? Because they inconvenience you?Any other species you'd like to eliminate to make things more comfortable for you and your dog?
Grey squirrels are an invasive species, steadily eradicating the red squirrels.
There are plenty of examples, around the world, and carried out by environmental protection organisations, of eliminating invasive species to protect the original flora and fauna.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
Wonderful animals. So bright and every one with their own personality. I feed them daily when I'm here. They are quite the most interesting and ingenious animals I've ever interacted with. I find them much more interesting than the Reds. My cousin in a nature writer and she lathes the idea of 'native species' which is a big thing in Scotland. She thinks it's typical of the Nationalist mentality!
Sorry but these comments are just stupid and ignorant and I would certainly have expected better from Nick even if not from you. Your cousin sounds like a moron.
The reason that most sensible naturalists and wildlife experts have a problem with some non native species is because they drive native species to extinction. Ecosystems build up over millennia to a point of natural balance. When you then suddenly introduce a non native species it disrupts that balance and can often lead similar native species being pushed into danger. There are hundreds of examples of this since man started transporting animals around the world - cats in Australia being an obvious example.
You might as well claim that there is nothing wrong with white Europeans wiping out the indigenous peoples of North America 'because we were more interesting'. Nationalism has feck all to do with it. Horse Chestnuts and rabbits are both non native species to the British Isles but they do not damage the native populations of other animals and plants so there is no problem with them. If a species of plant or animal is harmless then it is not an issue. But diversity of species is what is matters. Grey squirrels have driven reds to extinction in many parts of the British Isles. Hence the reason they need to be controlled.
So that nature conforms with your idea of what is right.
Thank goodness you're only an internet numpty rather than a billionaire donor who could influence government policy.
Invasive species cause all sorts of damage to ecosystems that have developed without them. Overall they lead to a net loss of biodiversity, species extinction and damage to habitats.
But isn't that how nature works, with species rising and falling over time due to complex interactions. Is it desirable or even feasible to try to freeze evolution at whatever particular moment in time we decide to do it?
Well, it is with the climate apparently, so why not with evolution?
Invasive species cause all sorts of damage to ecosystems that have developed without them. Overall they lead to a net loss of biodiversity, species extinction and damage to habitats.
But isn't that how nature works, with species rising and falling over time due to complex interactions. Is it desirable or even feasible to try to freeze evolution at whatever particular moment in time we decide to do it?
As for grey squirrels eating birds' nests or walnuts (cited in other posts), don't red squirrels do that too? Those objections seem to be more about disliking squirrels per se.
Nope, red squirrels are almost entirely vegetarian. Greys are omnivorous and eat eggs and young birds. It is one of the reasons they are more successful.
And it is not a case of freezing evolution. It is a case of not having man made disruption to evolution which tips the balance in favour of one or two species at the cost of many others.
“The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,” said Turnbull.
He couldn't have said that surely? Bit like the American state senate that tried to legislate that pi was exactly 3. Was he floating off into space as he declared the law of gravity didn't exist.
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
They could have a dozen Rolls Royce SMR reactors up and running by now, and exporting them overseas. Instead, the Americans have got first mover advantage on the deployment of the technology, so guess where the export orders will be going.
Do these actually exist outside PowerPoint? (I don't know.)
Everything nuclear seems to take forever and cost a fortune.
The idea behind these, which isn't entirely daft, is to take a proven design and make it on a production line. Looking at the Nuscale prices, they seem to be looking at power below the cost of that from large plants, which implies considerable savings on construction costs, as smaller plants are less efficient.
Obviously the economies only materialise if they sell scores of the things. Because of that, I'm not sure there's room for more than one player in the market.
As you say, it will take years to produce the first one, but the marginal costs of producing additional units ought to drop quickly - which would make ordering them an easier decision for governments.
Absolutely, although there’s probably room for two players.
It’s the difference between building 787s, and building Space Shuttles. See how SpaceX have revolutionised the cost of space flight, by production-lining rockets. See also how, having let them get a decade ahead on the technology, they now pretty much have a monopoly for commercial launches.
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
They could have a dozen Rolls Royce SMR reactors up and running by now, and exporting them overseas. Instead, the Americans have got first mover advantage on the deployment of the technology, so guess where the export orders will be going.
Do these actually exist outside PowerPoint? (I don't know.)
Everything nuclear seems to take forever and cost a fortune.
The base design is similar to a naval reactor, which RR already produces. They have a small-scale prototype, but need orders to complete the development process.
Here's a prediction. To ever get into production, they will need massive state aid. (No nuclear power plant has been built without massive state aid, anywhere on the planet.) They will not get the orders expected (because no-one wants a nuclear sub parked in their town). Consequently, they will be rows of them built together on the site of existing nuclear power stations being dismantled. They will take far longer to enter production than the glossy sales pitch promises. And they will have a shorter productive life than promised. And they will have far more downtime than predicted. The cost of production of electricity will consequenly be massively more expensive than other sources of energy. And they will prove far more costly to dismantle than current estimates.
You hardly need to seek out a crystal ball to make this prediction. Just look at the past history of nuclear plants.
I disagree. If they do get a production line going for them, there will be a market. It's not as though there aren't plenty of port cities around the world where nuclear subs do dock, without much objection.
As a short to medium term stopgap for big energy importers (Korea, Japan etc), they might make a great deal of sense. Certainly a much easier decision than building a Hinckley sized reactor.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
Wonderful animals. So bright and every one with their own personality. I feed them daily when I'm here. They are quite the most interesting and ingenious animals I've ever interacted with. I find them much more interesting than the Reds. My cousin in a nature writer and she lathes the idea of 'native species' which is a big thing in Scotland. She thinks it's typical of the Nationalist mentality!
Sorry but these comments are just stupid and ignorant and I would certainly have expected better from Nick even if not from you. Your cousin sounds like a moron.
The reason that most sensible naturalists and wildlife experts have a problem with some non native species is because they drive native species to extinction. Ecosystems build up over millennia to a point of natural balance. When you then suddenly introduce a non native species it disrupts that balance and can often lead similar native species being pushed into danger. There are hundreds of examples of this since man started transporting animals around the world - cats in Australia being an obvious example.
You might as well claim that there is nothing wrong with white Europeans wiping out the indigenous peoples of North America 'because we were more interesting'. Nationalism has feck all to do with it. Horse Chestnuts and rabbits are both non native species to the British Isles but they do not damage the native populations of other animals and plants so there is no problem with them. If a species of plant or animal is harmless then it is not an issue. But diversity of species is what is matters. Grey squirrels have driven reds to extinction in many parts of the British Isles. Hence the reason they need to be controlled.
It happened long before man turned up on the scene, as well.
IIRC T Rex (and relatives) are believed to have expanded their domain by land bridges and gradually pushed out a whole range of other predators, in North America.
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
Wonderful animals. So bright and every one with their own personality. I feed them daily when I'm here. They are quite the most interesting and ingenious animals I've ever interacted with. I find them much more interesting than the Reds. My cousin in a nature writer and she lathes the idea of 'native species' which is a big thing in Scotland. She thinks it's typical of the Nationalist mentality!
It isn't always clear which species are native (Brown hares? Beech trees?) but Grey squirrels are a pest.
There's a number of definitely non-native species that are a problem for biodiversity and Grey squirrels are definitely on that list.
Same goes for Himalayan balsam, New Zealand pigmyweed, Floating pennywort, American crayfish, Rhododendron ponticum, etc etc etc.
There's no control because their normal predators aren't here.
Of course, some of our native species are invasive elsewhere - eg Gorse in the US.
Comments
And a good morning to one and all. Lovely bright April morning here!
Mr. Mark, practically every government in my lifetime has been atrocious on energy.
It is certainly needed. One of the main reasons the NHS can’t cope is the consequences of inadequate social care being dumped upon it.
Thanks for the explainer.
Or at least, learn to properly consider all the available options.
But then again, everything about Brexit has always been crazy
We are where we are the genie isn't going back into the bottle. So anything we now do will be the action of making Brexit work. What the Labour team will have to do is work hard at contextualising what this means as the hard right will be shrieking about how this is really a threat to all they have won such as school trips being cancelled in Dover passport queues.
I want more renewables and self sufficiency, not necessarily in that order. We cannot afford to keep importing so much of our energy.
Trump stayed in bed like a student, IIRC
https://mobile.twitter.com/howtofixauboat/status/1642944517497143319
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65172594
Syracuse certainly benefited from Hiero's benevolent dictatorship.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/03/rape-scotland-community-service-sentence-snp/
https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/news/press-releases/2022/nuscale-and-kghm-sign-task-order-to-initiate-the-deployment-of-first-smr-in-poland
And to top it all stating the migration problem isn't what was promised by Brexit. I mean if only people had bothered to tell him it wouldn't work then it wouldn't have come as such a huge surprise to him. Honestly.
https://www.waternewseurope.com/tourists-in-europe-are-swimming-in-raw-sewage-despite-blue-flags/
Love it.
It's this type of analysis which might enable the Cons to squeak it or close to it come the next GE.
Would, for example, the girl's parents be happier if he did 3-5yrs in jail, came out and did it again to someone else, or was genuinely rehabilitated. Whatever that means, well for a start it would mean no re-offending.
We jail too many people. I have a lot of sympathy for the view that those in jail should be eg rapists rather than license fee dodgers but I can see the approach in this instance.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuscale-power-small-modular-reactor-smr-ieefa-uamps/645554/
Which appears somewhat cheaper than the large reactors we're currently building ?
Does anyone have more recent data?
But as we upgrade, even the older designs are better than the previous ones, just somewhat behind the latest standards. So they get a forced upgrade in solution and other standards.
When the big car manufacturers stop making ICE cars, this means the clock is running out in the rest of the world for ICE, for example.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/bathing-water-quality-in-2021/european-bathing-water-quality-in-2021
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/99-of-english-bathing-sites-meet-required-water-quality-standards
He’s already raised $5m in the past week.
Branson managed to get himself seniority in debt by investing tiny extra sums. So Bransons money is safe....
They were spending billions to build a launch system that was more expensive than SpaceX - after development costs were written off!
Which is the space launch market question today - if you can't beat them on cost, what are you offering?
Any government is elected on a set of promises which we then vote for. Do you suppose that Labour will be elected and then bring back foxhunting because they are governing for the many, not the few?
Everything nuclear seems to take forever and cost a fortune.
Is there no vaccine for this?
I suppose a new policy is a new policy. Interesting to see the legal and political fallout.
Were their legislators never teenagers themselves?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/04/labor-to-consider-age-verification-roadmap-for-restricting-online-pornography-access
Do you really think that Jim Ratcliffe and Crispin Odey set government policy? And even if they did, you and I would have to vote on them.
And also enough of the rhetoric about the demise of the welfare state or I will have to roll out the spending figures which I suspect you know only too well.
If even a tenth of them were as pissed off as those trying to get into Nice in March when there was one person doing UK passports then come the next election Sunak and his bunch of 300 shits will be out on their ears.
I can only hope Starmer's silence is based on the George Carmen technique of lulling them into a false sense of well being before blasting them with all you've got.
He’s the sort of chap who could insult the judge/dox the jury and end up with a contempt charge.
I think American judiciary have quite strong powers in this regard.
The grey squirrel is invasive (same with American/Signal crayfish, which displaced the indigenous species).
I think it's ridiculous, as you seem to - it's just one person's idea of what should be preserved over anyone else's (I had this discussion with the cousin who is giving over a few hundred acres to "rewilding"). He didn't disagree.
The theory is that you preserve flora and fauna that would otherwise be in danger of becoming extinct. But there is man at the top of it all making the decisions. According to @OnlyLivingBoy perhaps it is even The Man doing this.
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1643168702181801984
Most Britons see Corbyn as an electoral liability (56%) for Labour
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/04/04/three-years-what-do-britons-make-keir-starmers-tim
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1643176329058086913?s=20
You hardly need to seek out a crystal ball to make this prediction. Just look at the past history of nuclear plants.
IIRC value has been written down from 3 billion to 65 million.
The reality is we had a 3-4 year window in which RR could get ahead of the competition and most of the lead time has been lost.
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/06/09/who-are-the-23-big-donors-that-tried-to-influence-the-no-confidence-vote/
Unfortunately, like Alf Garnett and Loadsamoney, the people Alex de Pfeffel was sending up took the Boris character to their hearts and the performer is terminally typecast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1s-oMKbxJc
As for grey squirrels eating birds' nests or walnuts (cited in other posts), don't red squirrels do that too? Those objections seem to be more about disliking squirrels per se.
The reason that most sensible naturalists and wildlife experts have a problem with some non native species is because they drive native species to extinction. Ecosystems build up over millennia to a point of natural balance. When you then suddenly introduce a non native species it disrupts that balance and can often lead similar native species being pushed into danger. There are hundreds of examples of this since man started transporting animals around the world - cats in Australia being an obvious example.
You might as well claim that there is nothing wrong with white Europeans wiping out the indigenous peoples of North America 'because we were more interesting'. Nationalism has feck all to do with it. Horse Chestnuts and rabbits are both non native species to the British Isles but they do not damage the native populations of other animals and plants so there is no problem with them. If a species of plant or animal is harmless then it is not an issue. But diversity of species is what is matters. Grey squirrels have driven reds to extinction in many parts of the British Isles. Hence the reason they need to be controlled.
Looking at the Nuscale prices, they seem to be looking at power below the cost of that from large plants, which implies considerable savings on construction costs, as smaller plants are less efficient.
Obviously the economies only materialise if they sell scores of the things. Because of that, I'm not sure there's room for more than one player in the market.
As you say, it will take years to produce the first one, but the marginal costs of producing additional units ought to drop quickly - which would make ordering them an easier decision for governments.
There are plenty of examples, around the world, and carried out by environmental protection organisations, of eliminating invasive species to protect the original flora and fauna.
Thank goodness you're only an internet numpty rather than a billionaire donor who could influence government policy.
And it is not a case of freezing evolution. It is a case of not having man made disruption to evolution which tips the balance in favour of one or two species at the cost of many others.
It’s the difference between building 787s, and building Space Shuttles. See how SpaceX have revolutionised the cost of space flight, by production-lining rockets. See also how, having let them get a decade ahead on the technology, they now pretty much have a monopoly for commercial launches.
If they do get a production line going for them, there will be a market.
It's not as though there aren't plenty of port cities around the world where nuclear subs do dock, without much objection.
As a short to medium term stopgap for big energy importers (Korea, Japan etc), they might make a great deal of sense. Certainly a much easier decision than building a Hinckley sized reactor.
IIRC T Rex (and relatives) are believed to have expanded their domain by land bridges and gradually pushed out a whole range of other predators, in North America.
There's a number of definitely non-native species that are a problem for biodiversity and Grey squirrels are definitely on that list.
Same goes for Himalayan balsam, New Zealand pigmyweed, Floating pennywort, American crayfish, Rhododendron ponticum, etc etc etc.
There's no control because their normal predators aren't here.
Of course, some of our native species are invasive elsewhere - eg Gorse in the US.