The housing "problem" isn't just about housing - it cuts to the very heart of how we want to live, where we want to live and the kind of living experience we all want.
How we use land, how much we use, how much we plan - all of that is part of the housing question.
In Newham, it's brownfield or brownfield - redundant retail units are bulldozed and replaced by tower blocks of flats - how does bringing in more people work with an infrastructure which is already creaking under the numbers?
It's East London - shouldn't it be more about renting? What's wrong with a strong, active, well-regulated rental sector apart from the fact renters don't vote Conservative?
Should housing and land availability be controlled by land banking property developers who hoard land and release it in drips and drops to keep supply low and prices high?
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
Is not what I said. I said stop catastrophising. Talk of climate change-driven "famines and wars" while still a common trope is not going to help the person in the street (being held up by Just Stop Oil protestors) come on board.
And sadly they have removed the (in)famous Independent article which did indeed forecast no more snow.
And genuine question because apart from seeing them hold their parliament in scuba kit I haven't been following, when is the Maldives expected to sink below the surface.
There seems to be little correlation between the strength of your opinion on something and how much you know or understand it. I think that's fair comment.
Sozza. Not taking any lectures from old, white, privileged men.
So Starmer is wanting to concrete over the Green Belt or something? He's becoming dangerously electable for me.
I expect to decide my vote on Ukraine/Defence, but I was genuinely quite excited for a moment when I heard the news. It doesn't appear as radical a proposal as I hoped, and I expect Starmer to row back to a position of little merit.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Flippantly: imagine if you'd been Black on top of all that.
Sensibly: privilege means having a right, advantage, or benefit that isn't available to others. It doesn't mean you're better off than most people, because the same person can have both privilege and disadvantage. White people are privileged because there is more racism against non-Whites. Men are privileged because there is more sexism against women.
In some circumstances, you can find female privilege. In others, male privilege. Circumstances matter too.
So that's the concept.
You're right to feel angry at the idea that you are "privileged" because you can list a whole swathe of disadvantages. But you shouldn't feel angry at the concept of privilege because it is real and it applies in complex ways. Most people benefit from a privilege and suffer disadvantage at the same time. And too often privilege as a concept is used to minimise or ignore disadvantage. People should stop doing that, but the concept has its uses when not abused in that way.
Problem: people interpret privilege as something special that you don't deserve. After generations of politics about wealth giving unearned privilege, people now hear "racial privilege" and interpret it as "life should be worse for 80%+ of voters". This doesn't work, obviously!
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Of course there are many many white male units of humanity who don't have things at all easy. I didn’t fwiw. I'm from a working class background and at age 22 I was penniless and living in a shed.
The housing "problem" isn't just about housing - it cuts to the very heart of how we want to live, where we want to live and the kind of living experience we all want.
How we use land, how much we use, how much we plan - all of that is part of the housing question.
In Newham, it's brownfield or brownfield - redundant retail units are bulldozed and replaced by tower blocks of flats - how does bringing in more people work with an infrastructure which is already creaking under the numbers?
It's East London - shouldn't it be more about renting? What's wrong with a strong, active, well-regulated rental sector apart from the fact renters don't vote Conservative?
Should housing and land availability be controlled by land banking property developers who hoard land and release it in drips and drops to keep supply low and prices high?
Nothing wrong with build to rent where pension funds use corporations to rent to suitable people.
The problem is amateur landlords who don't have the cash to keep their property in a decent state of repair.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Of course there are many many white male units of humanity who don't have things at all easy. I didn’t fwiw. I'm from a working class background and at age 22 I was penniless and living in a shed.
Is there a chart somewhere where we can see which white men are and aren't privileged.
Poor old Starmer just can't win, can he? As soon as he emerges from a policy vacuum, the people cry "not those policies!". So: "We need more houses to be built! No, not like that!".
For what it's worth, his comments on the Green Belt not being totally sacrosanct seem eminently sensible. His modest proposals, if people care to read them, are a far cry from concreting over this green and pleasant land. They could prove to be popular, regardless of a YouGov poll (which didn't encapsulate the nuance).
The housing "problem" isn't just about housing - it cuts to the very heart of how we want to live, where we want to live and the kind of living experience we all want.
How we use land, how much we use, how much we plan - all of that is part of the housing question.
In Newham, it's brownfield or brownfield - redundant retail units are bulldozed and replaced by tower blocks of flats - how does bringing in more people work with an infrastructure which is already creaking under the numbers?
It's East London - shouldn't it be more about renting? What's wrong with a strong, active, well-regulated rental sector apart from the fact renters don't vote Conservative?
Should housing and land availability be controlled by land banking property developers who hoard land and release it in drips and drops to keep supply low and prices high?
Nothing wrong with build to rent where pension funds use corporations to rent to suitable people.
The problem is amateur landlords who don't have the cash to keep their property in a decent state of repair.
Hence my preference for a properly-regulated rental sector where landlords are in no doubt as to what is expected in terms of property maintenance and what will happen to them if they don't.
I'm afraid in my part of the world there are many examples of shocking neglect by landlords who, I would argue, have plenty of money but just don't want to spend it on their properties. I'm afraid it's also migrants who have been the biggest sufferers of this exploitation.
It seems the split between conservatives and national conservatives is intensifying and the Conservative Party will likely schism by the end of the week (probably an exaggeration).
The Chancellor suggests we need migrants to boost the economy and deal with labour shortages - the Home Secretary seems to think there is a vast pool of untapped labour in the country which can be trained to pick fruit.
Presumably she thinks, as did the Khmer Rouge, the population of London can be forcibly marched into the countryside to pick fruit and perform other agricultural labour and from that will gain an enhanced sense of national identity and civic pride.
The housing "problem" isn't just about housing - it cuts to the very heart of how we want to live, where we want to live and the kind of living experience we all want.
How we use land, how much we use, how much we plan - all of that is part of the housing question.
In Newham, it's brownfield or brownfield - redundant retail units are bulldozed and replaced by tower blocks of flats - how does bringing in more people work with an infrastructure which is already creaking under the numbers?
It's East London - shouldn't it be more about renting? What's wrong with a strong, active, well-regulated rental sector apart from the fact renters don't vote Conservative?
Should housing and land availability be controlled by land banking property developers who hoard land and release it in drips and drops to keep supply low and prices high?
Nothing wrong with build to rent where pension funds use corporations to rent to suitable people.
The problem is amateur landlords who don't have the cash to keep their property in a decent state of repair.
This could be true, but politically, it seems the amateurs are often likely to offer lower-priced rentals, partly due to neglectful mispricing, partly due to the quality problems you mention. And electorally, big rents for a few voters win votes, small dividends to small investors and foreign investors don't.
Fecking stupid idea. All green spaces should be preserved, whether designated "Green Belt" or not.
Brownfield development only. And somebody's big garden is not brownfield. That's another case of idiocy.
I'm very, very sceptical there is enough brownfield land in the UK for 500,000 new homes a year. Which is what we need. I'm even more sceptical that a brownfield-only policy will do wonders for the affordability crisis in housing. You're adding, what, 20% to build costs.
Too many people, not too few homes.
And plenty of empty and under-occupied homes too.
Rather than how many dwellings, how many bed spaces are there in the UK? Probably more than enough.
You want to force every bedroom full all the time? I rent a 3 bedroom, one is my office as I work from home. One is for friends and family visiting and is occuppied about 10 weeks a year. The governement tell me I need to take in a lodger I will knock 2 bedrooms into 1 so I have no spare rooms for a lodger and improvise a room divider for use when visitors come
With that said...
Our tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And, for housing at least, it does not.
Too many oldies have seen their kids leave, are living in homes that are too big for them, and might want to downsize, but stamp duty means they are unlikely to see much financial benefit from doing so.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Flippantly: imagine if you'd been Black on top of all that.
Sensibly: privilege means having a right, advantage, or benefit that isn't available to others. It doesn't mean you're better off than most people, because the same person can have both privilege and disadvantage. White people are privileged because there is more racism against non-Whites. Men are privileged because there is more sexism against women.
In some circumstances, you can find female privilege. In others, male privilege. Circumstances matter too.
So that's the concept.
You're right to feel angry at the idea that you are "privileged" because you can list a whole swathe of disadvantages. But you shouldn't feel angry at the concept of privilege because it is real and it applies in complex ways. Most people benefit from a privilege and suffer disadvantage at the same time. And too often privilege as a concept is used to minimise or ignore disadvantage. People should stop doing that, but the concept has its uses when not abused in that way.
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Of course there are many many white male units of humanity who don't have things at all easy. I didn’t fwiw. I'm from a working class background and at age 22 I was penniless and living in a shed.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Flippantly: imagine if you'd been Black on top of all that.
Sensibly: privilege means having a right, advantage, or benefit that isn't available to others. It doesn't mean you're better off than most people, because the same person can have both privilege and disadvantage. White people are privileged because there is more racism against non-Whites. Men are privileged because there is more sexism against women.
In some circumstances, you can find female privilege. In others, male privilege. Circumstances matter too.
So that's the concept.
You're right to feel angry at the idea that you are "privileged" because you can list a whole swathe of disadvantages. But you shouldn't feel angry at the concept of privilege because it is real and it applies in complex ways. Most people benefit from a privilege and suffer disadvantage at the same time. And too often privilege as a concept is used to minimise or ignore disadvantage. People should stop doing that, but the concept has its uses when not abused in that way.
I think most people view a privilege as
(a) unearned (b) enjoyed only by a minority
Skin colour is unearned. White skin colour is a small minority.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Flippantly: imagine if you'd been Black on top of all that.
Sensibly: privilege means having a right, advantage, or benefit that isn't available to others. It doesn't mean you're better off than most people, because the same person can have both privilege and disadvantage. White people are privileged because there is more racism against non-Whites. Men are privileged because there is more sexism against women.
In some circumstances, you can find female privilege. In others, male privilege. Circumstances matter too.
So that's the concept.
You're right to feel angry at the idea that you are "privileged" because you can list a whole swathe of disadvantages. But you shouldn't feel angry at the concept of privilege because it is real and it applies in complex ways. Most people benefit from a privilege and suffer disadvantage at the same time. And too often privilege as a concept is used to minimise or ignore disadvantage. People should stop doing that, but the concept has its uses when not abused in that way.
I think most people view a privilege as
(a) unearned (b) enjoyed only by a minority
(c) not something they themselves have (not matter how much it appears so), unless they want to demonstrate how much they definitely hate their own privilege.
Poor old Starmer just can't win, can he? As soon as he emerges from a policy vacuum, the people cry "not those policies!". So: "We need more houses to be built! No, not like that!".
For what it's worth, his comments on the Green Belt not being totally sacrosanct seem eminently sensible. His modest proposals, if people care to read them, are a far cry from concreting over this green and pleasant land. They could prove to be popular, regardless of a YouGov poll (which didn't encapsulate the nuance).
The green belt isn't sacrosanct at the moment. It gets built on all the time. True, there are more hoops to go through, but the idea that nothing can be built on green belt land is silly.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Flippantly: imagine if you'd been Black on top of all that.
Sensibly: privilege means having a right, advantage, or benefit that isn't available to others. It doesn't mean you're better off than most people, because the same person can have both privilege and disadvantage. White people are privileged because there is more racism against non-Whites. Men are privileged because there is more sexism against women.
In some circumstances, you can find female privilege. In others, male privilege. Circumstances matter too.
So that's the concept.
You're right to feel angry at the idea that you are "privileged" because you can list a whole swathe of disadvantages. But you shouldn't feel angry at the concept of privilege because it is real and it applies in complex ways. Most people benefit from a privilege and suffer disadvantage at the same time. And too often privilege as a concept is used to minimise or ignore disadvantage. People should stop doing that, but the concept has its uses when not abused in that way.
I think most people view a privilege as
(a) unearned (b) enjoyed only by a minority
Except in Ulster, where being an Ulsterman is always a privilege
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Poor old Starmer just can't win, can he? As soon as he emerges from a policy vacuum, the people cry "not those policies!". So: "We need more houses to be built! No, not like that!".
For what it's worth, his comments on the Green Belt not being totally sacrosanct seem eminently sensible. His modest proposals, if people care to read them, are a far cry from concreting over this green and pleasant land. They could prove to be popular, regardless of a YouGov poll (which didn't encapsulate the nuance).
The green belt isn't sacrosanct at the moment. It gets built on all the time. True, there are more hoops to go through, but the idea that nothing can be built on green belt land is silly.
It's not entirely sacrosanct, but it could also be a tad less sacrosanct and still have a great deal of protection.
Poor old Starmer just can't win, can he? As soon as he emerges from a policy vacuum, the people cry "not those policies!". So: "We need more houses to be built! No, not like that!".
For what it's worth, his comments on the Green Belt not being totally sacrosanct seem eminently sensible. His modest proposals, if people care to read them, are a far cry from concreting over this green and pleasant land. They could prove to be popular, regardless of a YouGov poll (which didn't encapsulate the nuance).
The green belt isn't sacrosanct at the moment. It gets built on all the time. True, there are more hoops to go through, but the idea that nothing can be built on green belt land is silly.
Indeed, it's often a question not of whether anything can be built but what can be built and how much of it. There are questions of density as well as supporting infrastructure.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition
None of which is likely to trouble either of them; I don't suppose they'll even be living in the UK.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Flippantly: imagine if you'd been Black on top of all that.
Sensibly: privilege means having a right, advantage, or benefit that isn't available to others. It doesn't mean you're better off than most people, because the same person can have both privilege and disadvantage. White people are privileged because there is more racism against non-Whites. Men are privileged because there is more sexism against women.
In some circumstances, you can find female privilege. In others, male privilege. Circumstances matter too.
So that's the concept.
You're right to feel angry at the idea that you are "privileged" because you can list a whole swathe of disadvantages. But you shouldn't feel angry at the concept of privilege because it is real and it applies in complex ways. Most people benefit from a privilege and suffer disadvantage at the same time. And too often privilege as a concept is used to minimise or ignore disadvantage. People should stop doing that, but the concept has its uses when not abused in that way.
I think most people view a privilege as
(a) unearned (b) enjoyed only by a minority
Skin colour is unearned. White skin colour is a small minority.
Being white is a minority of the world’s population. Being privileged, in worldwide terms, means living in a first world country. Japanese, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, South Koreans, are just as privileged as Europeans and North Americans. And all ethnic and religious groups benefit from living in such societies.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
You'll be lucky to get someone as moderate and close to the median voter as EdM was. (And is).
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Flippantly: imagine if you'd been Black on top of all that.
Sensibly: privilege means having a right, advantage, or benefit that isn't available to others. It doesn't mean you're better off than most people, because the same person can have both privilege and disadvantage. White people are privileged because there is more racism against non-Whites. Men are privileged because there is more sexism against women.
In some circumstances, you can find female privilege. In others, male privilege. Circumstances matter too.
So that's the concept.
You're right to feel angry at the idea that you are "privileged" because you can list a whole swathe of disadvantages. But you shouldn't feel angry at the concept of privilege because it is real and it applies in complex ways. Most people benefit from a privilege and suffer disadvantage at the same time. And too often privilege as a concept is used to minimise or ignore disadvantage. People should stop doing that, but the concept has its uses when not abused in that way.
I think most people view a privilege as
(a) unearned (b) enjoyed only by a minority
Skin colour is unearned. White skin colour is a small minority.
Being white is a minority of the world’s population. Being privileged, in worldwide terms, means living in a first world country. Japanese, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, South Koreans, are just as privileged as Europeans and North Americans. And all ethnic and religious groups benefit from living in such societies.
Oh I don't disagree. I was merely quibbling with your assertion.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Flippantly: imagine if you'd been Black on top of all that.
Sensibly: privilege means having a right, advantage, or benefit that isn't available to others. It doesn't mean you're better off than most people, because the same person can have both privilege and disadvantage. White people are privileged because there is more racism against non-Whites. Men are privileged because there is more sexism against women.
In some circumstances, you can find female privilege. In others, male privilege. Circumstances matter too.
So that's the concept.
You're right to feel angry at the idea that you are "privileged" because you can list a whole swathe of disadvantages. But you shouldn't feel angry at the concept of privilege because it is real and it applies in complex ways. Most people benefit from a privilege and suffer disadvantage at the same time. And too often privilege as a concept is used to minimise or ignore disadvantage. People should stop doing that, but the concept has its uses when not abused in that way.
But you and your lefty cohort keep telling me I was privileged somehow because I am white....where is this privilege you speak of for me...why should I feel guilty for being white and privileged?
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Of course there are many many white male units of humanity who don't have things at all easy. I didn’t fwiw. I'm from a working class background and at age 22 I was penniless and living in a shed.
Is there a chart somewhere where we can see which white men are and aren't privileged.
TIA.
Don't dumb down yourself like this. I know you understand the point.
Poor old Starmer just can't win, can he? As soon as he emerges from a policy vacuum, the people cry "not those policies!". So: "We need more houses to be built! No, not like that!".
For what it's worth, his comments on the Green Belt not being totally sacrosanct seem eminently sensible. His modest proposals, if people care to read them, are a far cry from concreting over this green and pleasant land. They could prove to be popular, regardless of a YouGov poll (which didn't encapsulate the nuance).
The green belt isn't sacrosanct at the moment. It gets built on all the time. True, there are more hoops to go through, but the idea that nothing can be built on green belt land is silly.
Unfortunately the average voter doesn’t do nuance . Starmer might have just mentioned some limited building but the media are now exclaiming the policy as if it will be everywhere . The Tories and the right wing will have a field day in the run up to the next election .
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Of course there are many many white male units of humanity who don't have things at all easy. I didn’t fwiw. I'm from a working class background and at age 22 I was penniless and living in a shed.
Luxury
Lol. But I was being serious. I did live in a shed and it was only chartered accountancy that got me out of it.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Flippantly: imagine if you'd been Black on top of all that.
Sensibly: privilege means having a right, advantage, or benefit that isn't available to others. It doesn't mean you're better off than most people, because the same person can have both privilege and disadvantage. White people are privileged because there is more racism against non-Whites. Men are privileged because there is more sexism against women.
In some circumstances, you can find female privilege. In others, male privilege. Circumstances matter too.
So that's the concept.
You're right to feel angry at the idea that you are "privileged" because you can list a whole swathe of disadvantages. But you shouldn't feel angry at the concept of privilege because it is real and it applies in complex ways. Most people benefit from a privilege and suffer disadvantage at the same time. And too often privilege as a concept is used to minimise or ignore disadvantage. People should stop doing that, but the concept has its uses when not abused in that way.
I think most people view a privilege as
(a) unearned (b) enjoyed only by a minority
Skin colour is unearned. White skin colour is a small minority.
Being white is a minority of the world’s population. Being privileged, in worldwide terms, means living in a first world country. Japanese, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, South Koreans, are just as privileged as Europeans and North Americans. And all ethnic and religious groups benefit from living in such societies.
Indeed Oriental Singaporeans and Arab Qataris and those from the UAE are richer than most white Europeans and Kiwis and many white Americans, Canadians and Australians too
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
That's an irrational view. Even if they are not planning political careers after 2024 it is not in their personal interests to maximise any loss the party has, since it will make them look worse and limit some of their future options (though no doubt many would still remain).
More likely is like any leaders they are taking the options they think are best, even if they are in fact wrong about that.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Flippantly: imagine if you'd been Black on top of all that.
Sensibly: privilege means having a right, advantage, or benefit that isn't available to others. It doesn't mean you're better off than most people, because the same person can have both privilege and disadvantage. White people are privileged because there is more racism against non-Whites. Men are privileged because there is more sexism against women.
In some circumstances, you can find female privilege. In others, male privilege. Circumstances matter too.
So that's the concept.
You're right to feel angry at the idea that you are "privileged" because you can list a whole swathe of disadvantages. But you shouldn't feel angry at the concept of privilege because it is real and it applies in complex ways. Most people benefit from a privilege and suffer disadvantage at the same time. And too often privilege as a concept is used to minimise or ignore disadvantage. People should stop doing that, but the concept has its uses when not abused in that way.
I think most people view a privilege as
(a) unearned (b) enjoyed only by a minority
Yes. Hence the power (imo) of the 'woke' usage of the word.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
You'll be lucky to get someone as moderate and close to the median voter as EdM was. (And is).
Ed Miliband was well left of David Miliband and the average voter and led Labour to just 30.4% of the vote in 2015, its lowest voteshare since 1983
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Of course there are many many white male units of humanity who don't have things at all easy. I didn’t fwiw. I'm from a working class background and at age 22 I was penniless and living in a shed.
Luxury
Lol. But I was being serious. I did live in a shed and it was only chartered accountancy that got me out of it.
It'd make for a more compelling advert for a career in chartered accountancy than most.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Ed M wasn't the Hard Left's candidate. That was Abbott in 2010.
Sunak is the Con Right. He is likely to be replaced by a Hard Right candidate who will have the strengths and all the weaknesses of the Hard Left. Talking only to themselves (as over the weekend) and never listening to anybody
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
You'll be lucky to get someone as moderate and close to the median voter as EdM was. (And is).
Ed Miliband was well left of David Miliband and the average voter and led Labour to just 30.4% of the vote in 2015, its lowest voteshare since 1983
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
You'll be lucky to get someone as moderate and close to the median voter as EdM was. (And is).
Ed Miliband was well left of David Miliband and the average voter and led Labour to 30% of the vote in 2015, its lowest voteshare since 1987
I think that's the point about the state that the Conservatives are in.
Neither Sunak nor Hunt were considered hopelessly wet when they arrived in government. They are now, because the actual wets have largely been memory holed.
And it's pretty likely that, after a 2024 defeat, the Conservative Party will turn down the chance of a jump to the left in favour of a step to the right. Potentially a rather large one.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
You'll be lucky to get someone as moderate and close to the median voter as EdM was. (And is).
Ed Miliband was well left of David Miliband and the average voter and led Labour to just 30.4% of the vote in 2015, its lowest voteshare since 1983
Labour polled worse in 2010.
Ed increased Labour's vote share in 2015.
OK, fractionally Brown did rather better on seats however, Ed Miliband led Labour to its lowest number of seats since 1987 certainly. Just Corbyn topped that and managed to get even fewer seats in 2019, leading Labour to its lowest number of seats since 1935
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
You'll be lucky to get someone as moderate and close to the median voter as EdM was. (And is).
Ed Miliband was well left of David Miliband and the average voter and led Labour to 30% of the vote in 2015, its lowest voteshare since 1987
I think that's the point about the state that the Conservatives are in.
Neither Sunak nor Hunt were considered hopelessly wet when they arrived in government. They are now, because the actual wets have largely been memory holed.
And it's pretty likely that, after a 2024 defeat, the Conservative Party will turn down the chance of a jump to the left in favour of a step to the right. Potentially a rather large one.
Who will tell the party it is not their fault, it is the voters fault?
Or alternatively, insist that even though people definitely wanted a large shift to the right they instead voted for woke marxist Keir because they were disappointed in the Tories?
Hardly anyone, whatever their politics, in this country has even heard of Chomsky, let alone regards him as a hero. Even on an esteemed know-it-all forum like pb, Chomsky had to be explained recently.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Ed M wasn't the Hard Left's candidate. That was Abbott in 2010.
Sunak is the Con Right. He is likely to be replaced by a Hard Right candidate who will have the strengths and all the weaknesses of the Hard Left. Talking only to themselves (as over the weekend) and never listening to anybody
Steve Barclay, likely next Tory Leader in Opposition in my view, would be right of centre not hard right. It would take Jacob Rees Mogg for instance or Suella Braverman to be elected Tory Leader for a proper Hard Right Leader of the Tories as Corbyn took over Labour from the Hard Left
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
The USA also has elephant graveyard wind farms that stopped when subsidies stopped. You appear to be falsely lumping wind (not cheap, or reliable) in with gas (cheap and reliable).
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
Hardly anyone, whatever their politics, in this country has even heard of Chomsky, let alone regards him as a hero. Even on an esteemed know-it-all forum like pb, Chomsky had to be explained recently.
Yes, but on the basis that he was being brought up by 'Justice and Peace' type leftists online quite a bit, in a manner intended to lend weight to an argument by association with his name. So he is a hero to some people apparently.
Hardly anyone, whatever their politics, in this country has even heard of Chomsky, let alone regards him as a hero. Even on an esteemed know-it-all forum like pb, Chomsky had to be explained recently.
I think you under-estimate his name. 'Manufacturing Consent' is quite "current" in young "alt-right" circles in my experience. Which is a depressingly large % of the politically aware of that generation.
I apologise to Brexiteers, they were right, car manufacturers are intervening to force a good deal.
Three big global carmakers have called on the UK government to renegotiate the Brexit deal, saying rules on where parts are sourced from threaten the future of the British automotive industry.
Ford and Jaguar Land Rover have joined Stellantis, which owns the Vauxhall, Peugeot and Citroën brands, to warn the transition to electric vehicles will be knocked off course unless the UK and EU delay stricter “rules of origin”, due to kick in next year, that could add tariffs on car exports.
Current post-Brexit rules require 40% of an electric vehicle’s parts by value to be sourced in the UK or EU if it is to be sold on the other side of the Channel without a 10% trade tariff.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
That's an irrational view. Even if they are not planning political careers after 2024 it is not in their personal interests to maximise any loss the party has, since it will make them look worse and limit some of their future options (though no doubt many would still remain).
More likely is like any leaders they are taking the options they think are best, even if they are in fact wrong about that.
John Major has a net worth of $50 million now, Ken Clarke is also comfortably a millionaire. There are worse fates than leading the Tories from government to heavy general election defeat, provided you have been seen as reasonably competent https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/john-major-net-worth/
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Ed M wasn't the Hard Left's candidate. That was Abbott in 2010.
Sunak is the Con Right. He is likely to be replaced by a Hard Right candidate who will have the strengths and all the weaknesses of the Hard Left. Talking only to themselves (as over the weekend) and never listening to anybody
Steve Barclay, likely next Tory Leader in Opposition in my view, would be right of centre not hard right. It would take Jacob Rees Mogg for instance or Suella Braverman to be elected Tory Leader for a proper Hard Right Leader of the Tories as Corbyn took over Labour from the Hard Left
I can see the point of Barclay, I can see your logic (he's the "Conservatives haven't noticed that they're out of office and that's a different game" candidate, like Hague or MiliEd). But unless he can keep red meat right wingers off the members vote, how does he avoid losing to someone like Braverman, Badenoch or (gawd help us) Frost selling the old time religion?
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Ed M wasn't the Hard Left's candidate. That was Abbott in 2010.
Sunak is the Con Right. He is likely to be replaced by a Hard Right candidate who will have the strengths and all the weaknesses of the Hard Left. Talking only to themselves (as over the weekend) and never listening to anybody
I can't imagine why you think Sunak is anything other than a repurposed LD. His economic policies were always in the LD mold. And actually quite useless. As PM though he's settled down a bit.
It never ceases to amaze me that the MPs that should have some degree of economic sense like Sunak, or perhaps more clearly like Balls just fail to have even the vaguest grasp when in government.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
That's an irrational view. Even if they are not planning political careers after 2024 it is not in their personal interests to maximise any loss the party has, since it will make them look worse and limit some of their future options (though no doubt many would still remain).
More likely is like any leaders they are taking the options they think are best, even if they are in fact wrong about that.
John Major has a net worth of $50 million now, Ken Clarke is also comfortably a millionaire. There are worse fates than leading the Tories from government to heavy general election defeat, provided you have been seen as reasonably competent https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/john-major-net-worth/
Even not being very competent there are oppotunities to make plenty. But the point was there's no advantage to intentionally blowing things up, even if you yourself will survive the blast.
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
The USA also has elephant graveyard wind farms that stopped when subsidies stopped. You appear to be falsely lumping wind (not cheap, or reliable) in with gas (cheap and reliable).
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
(1) Is wind capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (2) Is coal capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (3) Will the UK coal plant be allowed to sell its coal at prevailing market prices?
(And, by the way, you do understand that the coal that will be produced at Whitehaven is not suitable for power production, right? It's coking coal for the steel industry that's all going to be exported to European steel plants.)
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
Yeah, but fracking a few sq miles of Lancashire will fix all that. Right? I'll just need to pay £1 a month for my energy?
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Ed M wasn't the Hard Left's candidate. That was Abbott in 2010.
Sunak is the Con Right. He is likely to be replaced by a Hard Right candidate who will have the strengths and all the weaknesses of the Hard Left. Talking only to themselves (as over the weekend) and never listening to anybody
Steve Barclay, likely next Tory Leader in Opposition in my view, would be right of centre not hard right. It would take Jacob Rees Mogg for instance or Suella Braverman to be elected Tory Leader for a proper Hard Right Leader of the Tories as Corbyn took over Labour from the Hard Left
I can see the point of Barclay, I can see your logic (he's the "Conservatives haven't noticed that they're out of office and that's a different game" candidate, like Hague or MiliEd). But unless he can keep red meat right wingers off the members vote, how does he avoid losing to someone like Braverman, Badenoch or (gawd help us) Frost selling the old time religion?
For the moment at least none of those 3 would get through MPs, most likely it would be Barclay v Tugendhat or Mordaunt as the last 2 to the members
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
The USA also has elephant graveyard wind farms that stopped when subsidies stopped. You appear to be falsely lumping wind (not cheap, or reliable) in with gas (cheap and reliable).
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
(1) Is wind capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (2) Is coal capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (3) Will the UK coal plant be allowed to sell its coal at prevailing market prices?
1. It will increase or decrease in line with the subsidies available to those with the money to take advantage of them. 2. I suspect it is decreasing, but, as you hint, due to gas, not wind, replacing it as a practicable source of energy, which wind just isn't. 3. I have no idea. All I know is that the UK is sitting on an absolute fuckton of coal, I acknowledge that it might be less easy to get to than some overseas mines, but I don't think it's going to be a huge deal.
Fecking stupid idea. All green spaces should be preserved, whether designated "Green Belt" or not.
Brownfield development only. And somebody's big garden is not brownfield. That's another case of idiocy.
I'm very, very sceptical there is enough brownfield land in the UK for 500,000 new homes a year. Which is what we need. I'm even more sceptical that a brownfield-only policy will do wonders for the affordability crisis in housing. You're adding, what, 20% to build costs.
Too many people, not too few homes.
And plenty of empty and under-occupied homes too.
Rather than how many dwellings, how many bed spaces are there in the UK? Probably more than enough.
You want to force every bedroom full all the time? I rent a 3 bedroom, one is my office as I work from home. One is for friends and family visiting and is occuppied about 10 weeks a year. The governement tell me I need to take in a lodger I will knock 2 bedrooms into 1 so I have no spare rooms for a lodger and improvise a room divider for use when visitors come
The bedrooms meme was invented by some housing industry types banging on about the number of *rooms* they are creating.
Between the fashion for en-suite bathrooms and redividing grounds floor spaces (the utility room, dividing the living room at the front from the kitchen/dining at the back), you can double the number of rooms in a house. Without actually increasing the number of bedrooms.
Jeremy Hunt has signalled that immigration controls will be eased to plug labour shortages in the short term before inactive Britons fill gaps in future.
The chancellor told business leaders at a British Chambers of Commerce conference that the government would always be “sensible and pragmatic” about using immigration to fill vacancies in the economy.
He said he was open to adding more jobs to the shortage occupation list, which makes it easier for companies to recruit from abroad, amid pressure from industries such as hospitality.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Ed M wasn't the Hard Left's candidate. That was Abbott in 2010.
Sunak is the Con Right. He is likely to be replaced by a Hard Right candidate who will have the strengths and all the weaknesses of the Hard Left. Talking only to themselves (as over the weekend) and never listening to anybody
Steve Barclay, likely next Tory Leader in Opposition in my view, would be right of centre not hard right. It would take Jacob Rees Mogg for instance or Suella Braverman to be elected Tory Leader for a proper Hard Right Leader of the Tories as Corbyn took over Labour from the Hard Left
I think a lot depends on how many Conservative MPs will be in the new Parliament.
The likes of Barclay, Badenoch, Braverman and Dowden would survive all but the most unlikely extinction scenarios. Add Coffey and perhaps Shapps to that and there's quite a crowded race as indeed it was in 1997 when Hague won. Given a heavy defeat would suggest ten years in Opposition, it's likely the youngest candidate would have a chance .
Barclay is 51 - Badenoch and Braverman both 43 and Dowden 44 - I suspect the younger candidates will be at an advantage.
Disney’s new version of The Little Mermaid features a scene that appears to mock the Princess of Wales.
The film, released in cinemas next week, stars newcomer Halle Bailey as the mermaid Ariel, who falls for a handsome prince and gives up her voice in order to be with him.
In the first meeting between Ariel and Prince Eric, he tries to guess her name. His first guess is “Diana”. His second guess is “Catherine”, the first name of the Princess of Wales.
At the mention of the latter, Ariel screws up her face. “OK, definitely not Catherine,” Eric says.
The film already has a royal connection: the Duchess of Sussex drew parallels between herself and Ariel in her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Hardly anyone, whatever their politics, in this country has even heard of Chomsky, let alone regards him as a hero. Even on an esteemed know-it-all forum like pb, Chomsky had to be explained recently.
I think you under-estimate his name. 'Manufacturing Consent' is quite "current" in young "alt-right" circles in my experience. Which is a depressingly large % of the politically aware of that generation.
The problem is that is what is current is a very facile interpretation of his views.
This is quite a significant problem at the moment, on both the left and right ; at times quite sophisticated critiques, dating from earlier periods, such as some of the Chomsy's ideas rooted in the new 1960's wariness of institutions, because of the commercialisation and twitterification of public debate, are only shared and communicated as facile conspiracy gibberish.
This also applies to parts of the left drawing on similar resources, I hasten to add, too.
There's been not too much new in the way of substantial left or right thought since around the 2000s, so people are often just drawing on simplified and half-digested versions of twentieth century thought at the moment.
Fecking stupid idea. All green spaces should be preserved, whether designated "Green Belt" or not.
Brownfield development only. And somebody's big garden is not brownfield. That's another case of idiocy.
I'm very, very sceptical there is enough brownfield land in the UK for 500,000 new homes a year. Which is what we need. I'm even more sceptical that a brownfield-only policy will do wonders for the affordability crisis in housing. You're adding, what, 20% to build costs.
Too many people, not too few homes.
And plenty of empty and under-occupied homes too.
Rather than how many dwellings, how many bed spaces are there in the UK? Probably more than enough.
You want to force every bedroom full all the time? I rent a 3 bedroom, one is my office as I work from home. One is for friends and family visiting and is occuppied about 10 weeks a year. The governement tell me I need to take in a lodger I will knock 2 bedrooms into 1 so I have no spare rooms for a lodger and improvise a room divider for use when visitors come
Normal person: "There might be ways to use space more efficiently" You, picking up a sledge hammer: "I swear to God, I'll smash my walls down"
Because I like most people dont want to share my living space with random strangers because we would like to keep a room spare for visitors. I don't want to have to say to friends and family fuck off and get a hotel if you want to visit. One of the advantages of growing up is you get your own front door and can isolate yourself from random strangers. I did bedsits and shared houses in my twenties I have no wish to share space with fuckwits now
You might but I suggest I represent the normal person in this not you
Your reaction would be entirely understandable if someone was telling you you must take in a lodger. But there are gentler ways of incentivising change than mandating you share your bathroom with a stranger. I don't quite know why you leapt straight to the idea of enforced billeting.
How else do you interpret a comment that bedspace is important not houses
The same way I interpret a comment that Brits should on average get more exercise. Not that you're going to woken at 5am for a 10 mile run at gunpoint.
If the point is there are enough bedrooms for everyone so we don't need to build so much housing the only way to make that true is to make people let people use that bedspace. The two things are not in anyway similar. The difference is the only way the bedspace thing work is to make people let others use them.
Have you ever heard of incentives, nudges? There are ways to encourage outcomes without forcing people. Surely you know this by now? Have you ever had any hand in raising any children? Have you ever been involved in any kind of negotiation? Do you know the first thing about anything?
Don't you know there's a whole continent of possibilities between "this is a worthwhile goal" and "WE MUST COMPEL EVERYONE BY LAW TO DO THIS RIGHT NOW"
A nudge you mean making it too expensive for me to keep a bedroom for friends and family by taxing me to the point I give in. That is still a compulsion though you call it a nudge. And yes I do have a child....strangely I like him to be able to visit and stay with me when he wants because I have a spare room he and his wife can stay in where I haven't been taxed into living into a one bedroom flat.
Disincentives are not the only incentives. For example, you could think about tax breaks for people who do decide to downsize or take in lodgers.
I mean, all I'm saying is you don't have to assume that a worthy goal will automatically mean you personally will have to do something you don't want to do. If you value the spare room I don't see why anyone should compel you to give it up, but that doesn't mean we can't find ways to increase occupancy. A policy can be put forward without it meaning its proponents want to create a nightmare tyranny to achieve it at all costs.
When has any government whether red or blue not used the cosh of disincentives rather than incentives are politicians only believe in the stick, carrots are like unicorns to them
I mean, one example off the top of my head is tax breaks on electric cars. There are countless examples of carrots being used; it takes a special kind of blindness to not be aware of any at all.
Electric cars = cars for rich people.
The associated tax breaks are for the companies that buy them.
Well, even if that's the case it's still a carrot designed to encourage outcomes. Whether or not you support the means or the end isn't the point. It's a tax break to encourage a particular outcome that the government deems to be a good thing, which is all I was after. You know that there are many examples, some of which you may like and some of which you may not.
The prices of some electric cars have begun to fall below the average car price in a number of markets.
As batteries keep getting cheaper, electric cars could end up as the cheapest car for the less well off.
This is what the war on woke does. Millennials and younger are quite woke.
It seems to me that the objective of the 'war on woke' is the protection of white and male privilege and its favoured technique is an appeal to people's baser instincts. This is why I have a dim view of it.
White, priveliged male declares war on protection of white, privileged males. And why on earth shouldn't you.
Go you.
Well not really. I'm just commenting (adversely) on the War on Woke. I leave the street fighting stuff to others. Does this delegitimise my contribution? No. You do what you can.
I am a white man, how was I privileged? I left school with no qualifications because it was a sink school, I grew up in a council house with 3 stories and one coal fire. I worked as a trawlerman till our fish quota took us down to 6 weeks fishing a year which didn't support a wage you could live on, I worked and paid my way through college to get o levels and a levels, got a job then got banned due to chemical sensitisation, worked through that with a child where I would have been 30£ a week better off on the dole to retrain to write software. All at my own cost....never got a db pension, never got any help from the state....where is my privilege please? I would like some as I keep being told I got it
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
The USA also has elephant graveyard wind farms that stopped when subsidies stopped. You appear to be falsely lumping wind (not cheap, or reliable) in with gas (cheap and reliable).
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
(1) Is wind capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (2) Is coal capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (3) Will the UK coal plant be allowed to sell its coal at prevailing market prices?
(And, by the way, you do understand that the coal that will be produced at Whitehaven is not suitable for power production, right? It's coking coal for the steel industry that's all going to be exported to European steel plants.)
All coals can be used to generate electricity. It's the steel industry that needs special coal, not the other way around.
Jeremy Hunt has signalled that immigration controls will be eased to plug labour shortages in the short term before inactive Britons fill gaps in future.
The chancellor told business leaders at a British Chambers of Commerce conference that the government would always be “sensible and pragmatic” about using immigration to fill vacancies in the economy.
He said he was open to adding more jobs to the shortage occupation list, which makes it easier for companies to recruit from abroad, amid pressure from industries such as hospitality.
Hardly anyone, whatever their politics, in this country has even heard of Chomsky, let alone regards him as a hero. Even on an esteemed know-it-all forum like pb, Chomsky had to be explained recently.
I think you under-estimate his name. 'Manufacturing Consent' is quite "current" in young "alt-right" circles in my experience. Which is a depressingly large % of the politically aware of that generation.
The problem is that is what is current is a very facile interpretation of his views.
This is a large part of the problem of our current culture, on both the left and right ; at times quite sophisticated critiques, dating from earlier periods, such as some of the Chomsy's ideas rooted in the new 1960's wariness of institutions, because of the commercialisation and twitterification of public debate, are only shared and communicated as facile conspiracy gibberish.
This also applies to parts of the left drawing on similar resources, I hasten to add, too.
There's been not too much new in the way of substantial left or right thought, since the turn of the century, so people are often just drawing one simplified and half-digested versions of twentieth century thought, at the moment.
It doesn't help that Chomsky's own contemporary views have degenerated into facile conspiracy gibberish.
Disney’s new version of The Little Mermaid features a scene that appears to mock the Princess of Wales.
The film, released in cinemas next week, stars newcomer Halle Bailey as the mermaid Ariel, who falls for a handsome prince and gives up her voice in order to be with him.
In the first meeting between Ariel and Prince Eric, he tries to guess her name. His first guess is “Diana”. His second guess is “Catherine”, the first name of the Princess of Wales.
At the mention of the latter, Ariel screws up her face. “OK, definitely not Catherine,” Eric says.
The film already has a royal connection: the Duchess of Sussex drew parallels between herself and Ariel in her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Jeremy Hunt has signalled that immigration controls will be eased to plug labour shortages in the short term before inactive Britons fill gaps in future.
The chancellor told business leaders at a British Chambers of Commerce conference that the government would always be “sensible and pragmatic” about using immigration to fill vacancies in the economy.
He said he was open to adding more jobs to the shortage occupation list, which makes it easier for companies to recruit from abroad, amid pressure from industries such as hospitality.
It really is pathetic . And as for short term we all know that’s nonsense .
The best analogy I’ve seen for Brexit is like trying to get dog shit out of the cracks in your shoe !
Apart for the cheap gotcha about people voting for less immigration and getting more of it, Brexit is completely irrelevant.
The rapid growth in Eastern European economies meant that even without Brexit, the EU would not have continued to be a limitless source of cheap labour.
Hardly anyone, whatever their politics, in this country has even heard of Chomsky, let alone regards him as a hero. Even on an esteemed know-it-all forum like pb, Chomsky had to be explained recently.
I think you under-estimate his name. 'Manufacturing Consent' is quite "current" in young "alt-right" circles in my experience. Which is a depressingly large % of the politically aware of that generation.
The problem is that is what is current is a very facile interpretation of his views.
This is a large part of the problem of our current culture, on both the left and right ; at times quite sophisticated critiques, dating from earlier periods, such as some of the Chomsy's ideas rooted in the new 1960's wariness of institutions, because of the commercialisation and twitterification of public debate, are only shared and communicated as facile conspiracy gibberish.
This also applies to parts of the left drawing on similar resources, I hasten to add, too.
There's been not too much new in the way of substantial left or right thought, since the turn of the century, so people are often just drawing one simplified and half-digested versions of twentieth century thought, at the moment.
It doesn't help that Chomsky's own contemporary views have degenerated into facile conspiracy gibberish.
When a man is lionised (by some) as a titan of intellectual thought but argues with a straight face repeatedly Jeremy Corbyn won the 2017 election it's not very surprising a casual observer might be skeptical of what good work might have been done in the past.
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
The USA also has elephant graveyard wind farms that stopped when subsidies stopped. You appear to be falsely lumping wind (not cheap, or reliable) in with gas (cheap and reliable).
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
(1) Is wind capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (2) Is coal capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (3) Will the UK coal plant be allowed to sell its coal at prevailing market prices?
1. It will increase or decrease in line with the subsidies available to those with the money to take advantage of them. 2. I suspect it is decreasing, but, as you hint, due to gas, not wind, replacing it as a practicable source of energy, which wind just isn't. 3. I have no idea. All I know is that the UK is sitting on an absolute fuckton of coal, I acknowledge that it might be less easy to get to than some overseas mines, but I don't think it's going to be a huge deal.
The coking coal mine you are talking about is only economic because of the requirement for the chemistry of coking coal.
No one is going to pay that much to burn it in a power station. You can get far cheaper coal for that.
The reserves they are mining are also tiny compared to the energy requirements of the country.
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Ed M wasn't the Hard Left's candidate. That was Abbott in 2010.
Sunak is the Con Right. He is likely to be replaced by a Hard Right candidate who will have the strengths and all the weaknesses of the Hard Left. Talking only to themselves (as over the weekend) and never listening to anybody
Steve Barclay, likely next Tory Leader in Opposition in my view, would be right of centre not hard right. It would take Jacob Rees Mogg for instance or Suella Braverman to be elected Tory Leader for a proper Hard Right Leader of the Tories as Corbyn took over Labour from the Hard Left
I think a lot depends on how many Conservative MPs will be in the new Parliament.
The likes of Barclay, Badenoch, Braverman and Dowden would survive all but the most unlikely extinction scenarios. Add Coffey and perhaps Shapps to that and there's quite a crowded race as indeed it was in 1997 when Hague won. Given a heavy defeat would suggest ten years in Opposition, it's likely the youngest candidate would have a chance .
Barclay is 51 - Badenoch and Braverman both 43 and Dowden 44 - I suspect the younger candidates will be at an advantage.
How long the Tories face in opposition, regardless of the new leader (unless an ultra like Braverman) likely depends on how a new Starmer government handles the economy.
If Starmer and Reeves get inflation and the cost of living down, don't raise taxes too high and control strikes then the new Labour government may well be in power a decade or more. If they don't the Tory Opposition will see a quick revival, even more so if Starmer tries imposing development targets all over the greenbelt
I have been a Man U supporter since I was 6 or 7, watching Best, Law and Charlton but I confess I have rarely seen a better club side than the side Pep has built. They are incredible.
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
The USA also has elephant graveyard wind farms that stopped when subsidies stopped. You appear to be falsely lumping wind (not cheap, or reliable) in with gas (cheap and reliable).
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
(1) Is wind capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (2) Is coal capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (3) Will the UK coal plant be allowed to sell its coal at prevailing market prices?
1. It will increase or decrease in line with the subsidies available to those with the money to take advantage of them. 2. I suspect it is decreasing, but, as you hint, due to gas, not wind, replacing it as a practicable source of energy, which wind just isn't. 3. I have no idea. All I know is that the UK is sitting on an absolute fuckton of coal, I acknowledge that it might be less easy to get to than some overseas mines, but I don't think it's going to be a huge deal.
Can I suggest you read through the Annual Reports of the big US Electricity Generators? Companies like Duke Energy or Exelon. These are firms with massive existing generating assets. They discuss in their earnings calls and presentations the relative cost of power production, because they are in the business of making money by generating it as cheaply as possible, and selling it to consumers.
They all say the same thing: coal is the most expensive part of their generating portfolio, and they are investing in wind and natural gas. And the gap in pricing is not trivial. New coal (and bear in mind that coal in the US is dramatically cheaper than in the UK) is around $83/MWh. Onshore wind and gas are about $40 before any subsidy or tax credits.
But don't take my word for it, look at this chart produced by the US electricty companies themselves:
Disney’s new version of The Little Mermaid features a scene that appears to mock the Princess of Wales.
The film, released in cinemas next week, stars newcomer Halle Bailey as the mermaid Ariel, who falls for a handsome prince and gives up her voice in order to be with him.
In the first meeting between Ariel and Prince Eric, he tries to guess her name. His first guess is “Diana”. His second guess is “Catherine”, the first name of the Princess of Wales.
At the mention of the latter, Ariel screws up her face. “OK, definitely not Catherine,” Eric says.
The film already has a royal connection: the Duchess of Sussex drew parallels between herself and Ariel in her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
The USA also has elephant graveyard wind farms that stopped when subsidies stopped. You appear to be falsely lumping wind (not cheap, or reliable) in with gas (cheap and reliable).
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
(1) Is wind capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (2) Is coal capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (3) Will the UK coal plant be allowed to sell its coal at prevailing market prices?
1. It will increase or decrease in line with the subsidies available to those with the money to take advantage of them. 2. I suspect it is decreasing, but, as you hint, due to gas, not wind, replacing it as a practicable source of energy, which wind just isn't. 3. I have no idea. All I know is that the UK is sitting on an absolute fuckton of coal, I acknowledge that it might be less easy to get to than some overseas mines, but I don't think it's going to be a huge deal.
The coking coal mine you are talking about is only economic because of the requirement for the chemistry of coking coal.
No one is going to pay that much to burn it in a power station. You can get far cheaper coal for that.
The reserves they are mining are also tiny compared to the energy requirements of the country.
Quite so, but any excess can burn, and burn well, in a coal power station, so why limit the amount mined? Sell the excess at a lower price for energy generation, displacing an import and contributing more tax revenue. And I never said that the Cumbria mine could power the whole country, or even suggested that it was desirable that it should do.
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
The USA also has elephant graveyard wind farms that stopped when subsidies stopped. You appear to be falsely lumping wind (not cheap, or reliable) in with gas (cheap and reliable).
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
(1) Is wind capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (2) Is coal capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (3) Will the UK coal plant be allowed to sell its coal at prevailing market prices?
1. It will increase or decrease in line with the subsidies available to those with the money to take advantage of them. 2. I suspect it is decreasing, but, as you hint, due to gas, not wind, replacing it as a practicable source of energy, which wind just isn't. 3. I have no idea. All I know is that the UK is sitting on an absolute fuckton of coal, I acknowledge that it might be less easy to get to than some overseas mines, but I don't think it's going to be a huge deal.
Can I suggest you read through the Annual Reports of the big US Electricity Generators? Companies like Duke Energy or Exelon. These are firms with massive existing generating assets. They discuss in their earnings calls and presentations the relative cost of power production, because they are in the business of making money by generating it as cheaply as possible, and selling it to consumers.
They all say the same thing: coal is the most expensive part of their generating portfolio, and they are investing in wind and natural gas. And the gap in pricing is not trivial. New coal (and bear in mind that coal in the US is dramatically cheaper than in the UK) is around $83/MWh. Onshore wind and gas are about $40 before any subsidy or tax credits.
But don't take my word for it, look at this chart produced by the US electricty companies themselves:
And the equivalent costs for offshore wind in the UK are much lower thanks to shallow seas, shorter transmission lines and economies of scale.
Hardly anyone, whatever their politics, in this country has even heard of Chomsky, let alone regards him as a hero. Even on an esteemed know-it-all forum like pb, Chomsky had to be explained recently.
I think you under-estimate his name. 'Manufacturing Consent' is quite "current" in young "alt-right" circles in my experience. Which is a depressingly large % of the politically aware of that generation.
The problem is that is what is current is a very facile interpretation of his views.
This is a large part of the problem of our current culture, on both the left and right ; at times quite sophisticated critiques, dating from earlier periods, such as some of the Chomsy's ideas rooted in the new 1960's wariness of institutions, because of the commercialisation and twitterification of public debate, are only shared and communicated as facile conspiracy gibberish.
This also applies to parts of the left drawing on similar resources, I hasten to add, too.
There's been not too much new in the way of substantial left or right thought, since the turn of the century, so people are often just drawing one simplified and half-digested versions of twentieth century thought, at the moment.
It doesn't help that Chomsky's own contemporary views have degenerated into facile conspiracy gibberish.
It's true that he has become quite a bit more unsubtle, in the last ten years or so.
On the other hand that's also coincided with his becoming very old. Isn't he about 95 ?
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Ed M wasn't the Hard Left's candidate. That was Abbott in 2010.
Sunak is the Con Right. He is likely to be replaced by a Hard Right candidate who will have the strengths and all the weaknesses of the Hard Left. Talking only to themselves (as over the weekend) and never listening to anybody
Steve Barclay, likely next Tory Leader in Opposition in my view, would be right of centre not hard right. It would take Jacob Rees Mogg for instance or Suella Braverman to be elected Tory Leader for a proper Hard Right Leader of the Tories as Corbyn took over Labour from the Hard Left
I think a lot depends on how many Conservative MPs will be in the new Parliament.
The likes of Barclay, Badenoch, Braverman and Dowden would survive all but the most unlikely extinction scenarios. Add Coffey and perhaps Shapps to that and there's quite a crowded race as indeed it was in 1997 when Hague won. Given a heavy defeat would suggest ten years in Opposition, it's likely the youngest candidate would have a chance .
Barclay is 51 - Badenoch and Braverman both 43 and Dowden 44 - I suspect the younger candidates will be at an advantage.
How long the Tories face in opposition, regardless of the new leader (unless an ultra like Braverman) likely depends on how a new Starmer government handles the economy.
If Starmer and Reeves get inflation and the cost of living down, don't raise taxes too high and control strikes then the new Labour government may well be in power a decade or more. If they don't the Tory Opposition will see a quick revival, even more so if Starmer tries imposing development targets all over the greenbelt
That's pretty much the same dilemma the opposition Conservatives faced after 1997. Thanks to the policies of Ken Clarke, Labour inherited a strong economy and with Brown committing to Clarke's spending targets for the first two years there wasn't much the Conservatives could say or do in opposition.
Were Hunt to bequeath Reeves an improving economy and were she not to make a horlicks of it (not guaranteed by any stretch), the Shadow Chancellor would have a tough life.
It took a long time after 1997 for the Conservatives to develop a credible alternative approach.
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
The USA also has elephant graveyard wind farms that stopped when subsidies stopped. You appear to be falsely lumping wind (not cheap, or reliable) in with gas (cheap and reliable).
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
(1) Is wind capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (2) Is coal capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (3) Will the UK coal plant be allowed to sell its coal at prevailing market prices?
1. It will increase or decrease in line with the subsidies available to those with the money to take advantage of them. 2. I suspect it is decreasing, but, as you hint, due to gas, not wind, replacing it as a practicable source of energy, which wind just isn't. 3. I have no idea. All I know is that the UK is sitting on an absolute fuckton of coal, I acknowledge that it might be less easy to get to than some overseas mines, but I don't think it's going to be a huge deal.
The coking coal mine you are talking about is only economic because of the requirement for the chemistry of coking coal.
No one is going to pay that much to burn it in a power station. You can get far cheaper coal for that.
The reserves they are mining are also tiny compared to the energy requirements of the country.
Quite so, but any excess can burn, and burn well, in a coal power station, so why limit the amount mined? Sell the excess at a lower price for energy generation, displacing an import and contributing more tax revenue. And I never said that the Cumbria mine could power the whole country, or even suggested that it was desirable that it should do.
That's not actually true.
You can't just put any coal in any coal fired power station, because different coals burn at different temperatures, and need to be setup to deal with the amount of sulfur/etc.
Hardly anyone, whatever their politics, in this country has even heard of Chomsky, let alone regards him as a hero. Even on an esteemed know-it-all forum like pb, Chomsky had to be explained recently.
I think you under-estimate his name. 'Manufacturing Consent' is quite "current" in young "alt-right" circles in my experience. Which is a depressingly large % of the politically aware of that generation.
The problem is that is what is current is a very facile interpretation of his views.
This is a large part of the problem of our current culture, on both the left and right ; at times quite sophisticated critiques, dating from earlier periods, such as some of the Chomsy's ideas rooted in the new 1960's wariness of institutions, because of the commercialisation and twitterification of public debate, are only shared and communicated as facile conspiracy gibberish.
This also applies to parts of the left drawing on similar resources, I hasten to add, too.
There's been not too much new in the way of substantial left or right thought, since the turn of the century, so people are often just drawing one simplified and half-digested versions of twentieth century thought, at the moment.
It doesn't help that Chomsky's own contemporary views have degenerated into facile conspiracy gibberish.
When a man is lionised (by some) as a titan of intellectual thought but argues with a straight face repeatedly Jeremy Corbyn won the 2017 election it's not very surprising a casual observer might be skeptical of what good work might have been done in the past.
He should probably retire, he is 94. But his political work is worth reading because there is some truth in it - he was good at demonstrating that our government were not benevolent in a way that we used to believe. Where I departed from him was that he was too benevolent and sympathetic towards other governments like China, Iran, Russia etc and was willing to just give them a free pass and regard their atrocities as someone else's problem.
On topic: It's a weird chart though. Each generation is being measured relative to the other generations, so the properly weighted average of silent@85yrs + boomer@70 + x@55 + millennial@40 (+ a few z, if you will) will always be 0.
The millennials staying relatively left is as much a product of the necessary statistical counterbalancing to a rapid lurch rightwards of the boomers as it is a leftward trend in the millennials themselves
Well if he holds his seat, which is a big if given the LDs are targeting it, the newly 'protect our greenbelt' John McDonnell now has more chance of being next Tory leader than Hunt if he takes that attitude. Pushing for more migrants might go down well with the CBI but will go down like a lead balloon in the Shires
I think Sunak and Hunt's mission is a kamikaze one. Pretty sure neither is planning a political career in Britain after 2024.
If as seems likely Sunak and Hunt lead the party to a heavy defeat next year, their wing of the Tories will be out of control of the leadership for at least a decade in my view. The right will take over in opposition.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Ed M wasn't the Hard Left's candidate. That was Abbott in 2010.
Sunak is the Con Right. He is likely to be replaced by a Hard Right candidate who will have the strengths and all the weaknesses of the Hard Left. Talking only to themselves (as over the weekend) and never listening to anybody
Steve Barclay, likely next Tory Leader in Opposition in my view, would be right of centre not hard right. It would take Jacob Rees Mogg for instance or Suella Braverman to be elected Tory Leader for a proper Hard Right Leader of the Tories as Corbyn took over Labour from the Hard Left
I think a lot depends on how many Conservative MPs will be in the new Parliament.
The likes of Barclay, Badenoch, Braverman and Dowden would survive all but the most unlikely extinction scenarios. Add Coffey and perhaps Shapps to that and there's quite a crowded race as indeed it was in 1997 when Hague won. Given a heavy defeat would suggest ten years in Opposition, it's likely the youngest candidate would have a chance .
Barclay is 51 - Badenoch and Braverman both 43 and Dowden 44 - I suspect the younger candidates will be at an advantage.
How long the Tories face in opposition, regardless of the new leader (unless an ultra like Braverman) likely depends on how a new Starmer government handles the economy.
If Starmer and Reeves get inflation and the cost of living down, don't raise taxes too high and control strikes then the new Labour government may well be in power a decade or more. If they don't the Tory Opposition will see a quick revival, even more so if Starmer tries imposing development targets all over the greenbelt
That's pretty much the same dilemma the opposition Conservatives faced after 1997. Thanks to the policies of Ken Clarke, Labour inherited a strong economy and with Brown committing to Clarke's spending targets for the first two years there wasn't much the Conservatives could say or do in opposition.
Were Hunt to bequeath Reeves an improving economy and were she not to make a horlicks of it (not guaranteed by any stretch), the Shadow Chancellor would have a tough life.
It took a long time after 1997 for the Conservatives to develop a credible alternative approach.
Yep. Brown talked a pile of shite but my goodness he did it well. The constant re announcements of the same spending, the addition of years together to make larger sums, the skilful use of fiscal drag, he was a master and various shadows struggled to cope.
Hardly anyone, whatever their politics, in this country has even heard of Chomsky, let alone regards him as a hero. Even on an esteemed know-it-all forum like pb, Chomsky had to be explained recently.
I think you under-estimate his name. 'Manufacturing Consent' is quite "current" in young "alt-right" circles in my experience. Which is a depressingly large % of the politically aware of that generation.
The problem is that is what is current is a very facile interpretation of his views.
This is a large part of the problem of our current culture, on both the left and right ; at times quite sophisticated critiques, dating from earlier periods, such as some of the Chomsy's ideas rooted in the new 1960's wariness of institutions, because of the commercialisation and twitterification of public debate, are only shared and communicated as facile conspiracy gibberish.
This also applies to parts of the left drawing on similar resources, I hasten to add, too.
There's been not too much new in the way of substantial left or right thought, since the turn of the century, so people are often just drawing one simplified and half-digested versions of twentieth century thought, at the moment.
It doesn't help that Chomsky's own contemporary views have degenerated into facile conspiracy gibberish.
When a man is lionised (by some) as a titan of intellectual thought but argues with a straight face repeatedly Jeremy Corbyn won the 2017 election it's not very surprising a casual observer might be skeptical of what good work might have been done in the past.
He should probably retire, he is 94. But his political work is worth reading because there is some truth in it - he was good at demonstrating that our government were not benevolent in a way that we used to believe. Where I departed from him was that he was too benevolent and sympathetic towards other governments like China, Iran, Russia etc and was willing to just give them a free pass and regard their atrocities as someone else's problem.
I agree with quite a lot of this, although he was always, overall, anti-Soviet and anti-Chinese government.
A libertarian socialist, or peaceful anarchist, as he always calls himself.
Jeremy Hunt has signalled that immigration controls will be eased to plug labour shortages in the short term before inactive Britons fill gaps in future.
The chancellor told business leaders at a British Chambers of Commerce conference that the government would always be “sensible and pragmatic” about using immigration to fill vacancies in the economy.
He said he was open to adding more jobs to the shortage occupation list, which makes it easier for companies to recruit from abroad, amid pressure from industries such as hospitality.
It really is pathetic . And as for short term we all know that’s nonsense .
The best analogy I’ve seen for Brexit is like trying to get dog shit out of the cracks in your shoe !
Apart for the cheap gotcha about people voting for less immigration and getting more of it, Brexit is completely irrelevant.
The rapid growth in Eastern European economies meant that even without Brexit, the EU would not have continued to be a limitless source of cheap labour.
So immigration from the EU would have dropped anyway and the UK could still have got more workers from non EU countries . Effectively Brits lose their FOM rights and for what . How on earth can you say Brexit was irrelevant . It’s totally relevant that what drove the Leave vote was the constant anti immigration bile from the right wing . Now Remainers are told you know all that so called concern about migration , we didn’t really mean it and don’t care now that they’ve fucked the country .
Fecking stupid idea. All green spaces should be preserved, whether designated "Green Belt" or not.
Brownfield development only. And somebody's big garden is not brownfield. That's another case of idiocy.
I'm very, very sceptical there is enough brownfield land in the UK for 500,000 new homes a year. Which is what we need. I'm even more sceptical that a brownfield-only policy will do wonders for the affordability crisis in housing. You're adding, what, 20% to build costs.
Too many people, not too few homes.
And plenty of empty and under-occupied homes too.
Rather than how many dwellings, how many bed spaces are there in the UK? Probably more than enough.
You want to force every bedroom full all the time? I rent a 3 bedroom, one is my office as I work from home. One is for friends and family visiting and is occuppied about 10 weeks a year. The governement tell me I need to take in a lodger I will knock 2 bedrooms into 1 so I have no spare rooms for a lodger and improvise a room divider for use when visitors come
Normal person: "There might be ways to use space more efficiently" You, picking up a sledge hammer: "I swear to God, I'll smash my walls down"
Because I like most people dont want to share my living space with random strangers because we would like to keep a room spare for visitors. I don't want to have to say to friends and family fuck off and get a hotel if you want to visit. One of the advantages of growing up is you get your own front door and can isolate yourself from random strangers. I did bedsits and shared houses in my twenties I have no wish to share space with fuckwits now
You might but I suggest I represent the normal person in this not you
Your reaction would be entirely understandable if someone was telling you you must take in a lodger. But there are gentler ways of incentivising change than mandating you share your bathroom with a stranger. I don't quite know why you leapt straight to the idea of enforced billeting.
How else do you interpret a comment that bedspace is important not houses
The same way I interpret a comment that Brits should on average get more exercise. Not that you're going to woken at 5am for a 10 mile run at gunpoint.
If the point is there are enough bedrooms for everyone so we don't need to build so much housing the only way to make that true is to make people let people use that bedspace. The two things are not in anyway similar. The difference is the only way the bedspace thing work is to make people let others use them.
Have you ever heard of incentives, nudges? There are ways to encourage outcomes without forcing people. Surely you know this by now? Have you ever had any hand in raising any children? Have you ever been involved in any kind of negotiation? Do you know the first thing about anything?
Don't you know there's a whole continent of possibilities between "this is a worthwhile goal" and "WE MUST COMPEL EVERYONE BY LAW TO DO THIS RIGHT NOW"
A nudge you mean making it too expensive for me to keep a bedroom for friends and family by taxing me to the point I give in. That is still a compulsion though you call it a nudge. And yes I do have a child....strangely I like him to be able to visit and stay with me when he wants because I have a spare room he and his wife can stay in where I haven't been taxed into living into a one bedroom flat.
Disincentives are not the only incentives. For example, you could think about tax breaks for people who do decide to downsize or take in lodgers.
I mean, all I'm saying is you don't have to assume that a worthy goal will automatically mean you personally will have to do something you don't want to do. If you value the spare room I don't see why anyone should compel you to give it up, but that doesn't mean we can't find ways to increase occupancy. A policy can be put forward without it meaning its proponents want to create a nightmare tyranny to achieve it at all costs.
When has any government whether red or blue not used the cosh of disincentives rather than incentives are politicians only believe in the stick, carrots are like unicorns to them
I mean, one example off the top of my head is tax breaks on electric cars. There are countless examples of carrots being used; it takes a special kind of blindness to not be aware of any at all.
Electric cars = cars for rich people.
The associated tax breaks are for the companies that buy them.
All new technologies are for rich people. Then they aren’t.
Hardly anyone, whatever their politics, in this country has even heard of Chomsky, let alone regards him as a hero. Even on an esteemed know-it-all forum like pb, Chomsky had to be explained recently.
I think you under-estimate his name. 'Manufacturing Consent' is quite "current" in young "alt-right" circles in my experience. Which is a depressingly large % of the politically aware of that generation.
The problem is that is what is current is a very facile interpretation of his views.
This is a large part of the problem of our current culture, on both the left and right ; at times quite sophisticated critiques, dating from earlier periods, such as some of the Chomsy's ideas rooted in the new 1960's wariness of institutions, because of the commercialisation and twitterification of public debate, are only shared and communicated as facile conspiracy gibberish.
This also applies to parts of the left drawing on similar resources, I hasten to add, too.
There's been not too much new in the way of substantial left or right thought, since the turn of the century, so people are often just drawing one simplified and half-digested versions of twentieth century thought, at the moment.
It doesn't help that Chomsky's own contemporary views have degenerated into facile conspiracy gibberish.
When a man is lionised (by some) as a titan of intellectual thought but argues with a straight face repeatedly Jeremy Corbyn won the 2017 election it's not very surprising a casual observer might be skeptical of what good work might have been done in the past.
He should probably retire, he is 94. But his political work is worth reading because there is some truth in it - he was good at demonstrating that our government were not benevolent in a way that we used to believe. Where I departed from him was that he was too benevolent and sympathetic towards other governments like China, Iran, Russia etc and was willing to just give them a free pass and regard their atrocities as someone else's problem.
I watched him give a talk on the Eve of the Iraq war at Harvard (I was visiting a friend there). Outside the protesters were making lots of noise and there was a sense the US was about to do something very stupid.
So I was expecting a polemical tour de force from Chomsky. And sure enough he gave a good ten minutes to talking about the iniquities of US policy on Iraq.
But then he changed topic on to what seemed his much more favoured topic. The iniquities of western policy towards Serbia. That poor misunderstood Balkan country, all they did was a bit of anti imperialist ethnic cleansing to defend themselves and now the West had Serbian blood on their hands. And how Russia would always stick up for Serbia. Russia which the West just misunderstood and underestimated.
I raised an objection muttering some question about war crimes and was waved away dismissively and a little patronisingly. Poor young Englishman, I’d been drinking too much BBC propaganda.
Ok, it's only a MoU, but at least they're on speaking terms.
Don't tell @Luckyguy1983, but Sunak has done a terrific job in building relationships with the EU.
Building relationships with the EU when caving into their demands for little more than Scotch Mist in return is quite easy. See also Tony Blair. They will give you handshakes and smiles aplenty whilst you're doing as they wish. Having a relationship based on mutual respect with the EU is a lot more difficult. Only Margaret Thatcher managed it, and then only to a certain extent.
There are two possible explanations for this: 1. we are a much weaker country than you suppose and getting more is not possible 2. our political system is completely broken and doesn't allow the people who are capable of doing better to rise to the top
I assume you think 2. is closer to the mark in which case what do you think we should do about it?
I think it's far too simplistic to narrow the answer down to two reasons, let alone choose one. In Tony Blair's case I think he was just stupid and naive, surrendering part of the rebate for a vague 'intention' on the part of the French to reform the CAP that never materialised. In Sunak's case I think he is genuinely on board with a grand scheme to reconnect us to the EU, and I am growingly concerned that the strategy includes wrecking the UK economy to such an extent that we need IMF or other help and are forced to accept a package of terms with it that involve reaccession.
Ok, we can add in a third explanation: your policy of ruthlessly squeezing our European frenemies is just not that popular with the electorate. I mean, Blair won all his elections, didn't he? Perhaps you're just a bit out of step with the British public and most people don't care that much?
I would agree there, but this is an attitude that will need to change for national survival of any kind. It is an odd phenomenon of Britain that the general public is so unconnected with their own commercial good, in the sense of 'buying British' for example - even those words sound stupidly gauche, and evoke images of teapots shaped like thatched cottages etc. We're completely disconnected from the national implications of foreign takeovers, British companies losing out on contracts, 'made in China', importing a huge chunk of our energy, in a way that France, Germany, Spain, America, Japan, Australia, just aren't. I hope we don't have to become very poor before we realise that the flow of where money is coming from and going to is important and has real world consequences.
And I don't believe in 'ruthlessly squeezing' anyone - I believe in setting out ones stall clearly and firmly from the beginning, which I think is where respect comes from. The same goes for our dealings with China.
And as Just Stop Oil, XR and all the rest of them are showing us, the general public largely couldn't give a hoot about whether we hit the fabled 1.5C by 2027 or not.
They will give a hoot about the implications though, as food prices shoot up and famines and wars drive even greater waves of migration.
And here we get to the point. When we govern through optics and only choose to do things we think will win us the next election, we are no longer really governing.
I think we can address a changing climate without the catastrophising. Is the Maldives still afloat? And what was that white stuff I saw a few months ago falling from the heavens.
Come on, surely you’re better than the ‘it still snows sometimes therefore climate change is wrong’ nonsense?
He didn't say climate change is wrong he merely told the truth, no one really cares that much except crustie activists
… and my point is that ‘no one really cares about it’ =/= ‘not important’ or ‘not worth doing anything about’.
It’s the inside out of the logic that kept Spaffer going so long; ‘people don’t mind me acting illegally or unprofessionally, therefore it’s fine for me to do’
When I say no one really cares...what I mean is no one really objects to more wind/solar/etc
however they aren't going to stop consuming, they aren't going to eat no meat, they realise other countries are going to want to catch up to our consumption. They are not going to back the we should all be subsistence farmers eating tofu cant of the extremists. They are instead going to assume we will muddle through with technical improvements because they know damn well most of the world is going to say the same
Sadly, some people do object to wind farms, and vociferously too.
There is a lot to object to, as anyone who's given more than a passing thought to the issue is well aware.
Well, if you say so. I'd sooner live near a wind farm than a coal plant.
I'd sooner depend on getting my energy from a coal plant than a wind farm.
Even if it meant paying a lot more for the energy?
I don't see that it would mean that, but reliability is a very valuable attribute.
You do know that even in the US, where Powder River Basin coal is just $15/tonne, and where subsidies for wind in many states are completely unknown, that coal plants are being shut down left right and center?
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
The USA also has elephant graveyard wind farms that stopped when subsidies stopped. You appear to be falsely lumping wind (not cheap, or reliable) in with gas (cheap and reliable).
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
(1) Is wind capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (2) Is coal capacity in the US increasing or decreasing? (3) Will the UK coal plant be allowed to sell its coal at prevailing market prices?
1. It will increase or decrease in line with the subsidies available to those with the money to take advantage of them. 2. I suspect it is decreasing, but, as you hint, due to gas, not wind, replacing it as a practicable source of energy, which wind just isn't. 3. I have no idea. All I know is that the UK is sitting on an absolute fuckton of coal, I acknowledge that it might be less easy to get to than some overseas mines, but I don't think it's going to be a huge deal.
Can I suggest you read through the Annual Reports of the big US Electricity Generators? Companies like Duke Energy or Exelon. These are firms with massive existing generating assets. They discuss in their earnings calls and presentations the relative cost of power production, because they are in the business of making money by generating it as cheaply as possible, and selling it to consumers.
They all say the same thing: coal is the most expensive part of their generating portfolio, and they are investing in wind and natural gas. And the gap in pricing is not trivial. New coal (and bear in mind that coal in the US is dramatically cheaper than in the UK) is around $83/MWh. Onshore wind and gas are about $40 before any subsidy or tax credits.
But don't take my word for it, look at this chart produced by the US electricty companies themselves:
And the equivalent costs for offshore wind in the UK are much lower thanks to shallow seas, shorter transmission lines and economies of scale.
Offshore wind isn't really economic anywhere right now. That will change as costs come down, but just look at the Operations and Maintenance line for the US - that $30 per MWh of O&M alone.
Now, the hope is that a few subsidies right now will lead to lower long-term prices (and that's probably right), but right now, it isn't really economic.
Comments
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/05/17/jeffrey-epstein-moved-money-for-noam-chomsky-paid-bard-president-botstein-150000-report-says/
The housing "problem" isn't just about housing - it cuts to the very heart of how we want to live, where we want to live and the kind of living experience we all want.
How we use land, how much we use, how much we plan - all of that is part of the housing question.
In Newham, it's brownfield or brownfield - redundant retail units are bulldozed and replaced by tower blocks of flats - how does bringing in more people work with an infrastructure which is already creaking under the numbers?
It's East London - shouldn't it be more about renting? What's wrong with a strong, active, well-regulated rental sector apart from the fact renters don't vote Conservative?
Should housing and land availability be controlled by land banking property developers who hoard land and release it in drips and drops to keep supply low and prices high?
The problem is amateur landlords who don't have the cash to keep their property in a decent state of repair.
TIA.
For what it's worth, his comments on the Green Belt not being totally sacrosanct seem eminently sensible. His modest proposals, if people care to read them, are a far cry from concreting over this green and pleasant land. They could prove to be popular, regardless of a YouGov poll (which didn't encapsulate the nuance).
I'm afraid in my part of the world there are many examples of shocking neglect by landlords who, I would argue, have plenty of money but just don't want to spend it on their properties. I'm afraid it's also migrants who have been the biggest sufferers of this exploitation.
The Chancellor suggests we need migrants to boost the economy and deal with labour shortages - the Home Secretary seems to think there is a vast pool of untapped labour in the country which can be trained to pick fruit.
Presumably she thinks, as did the Khmer Rouge, the population of London can be forcibly marched into the countryside to pick fruit and perform other agricultural labour and from that will gain an enhanced sense of national identity and civic pride.
Our tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And, for housing at least, it does not.
Too many oldies have seen their kids leave, are living in homes that are too big for them, and might want to downsize, but stamp duty means they are unlikely to see much financial benefit from doing so.
(a) unearned
(b) enjoyed only by a minority
We dreamed of a shoebox
White skin colour is a small minority.
Much as Brown's defeat in 2010 saw the end of New Labour with the left taking control of the Labour party leadership until Starmer's win in 2020
Americans. And all ethnic and religious groups benefit from living in such societies.
These are relatively modern plants, with cheap locally produced coal. There's no capital cost to build them.
And yet they simply can't compete.
Why? Because natural gas and wind are dramatically cheaper.
And we have no advantage in terms of cheap local coal. We're not Germany with the ability to strip mine lignite at very low cost. We need to buy coal from Colombia, South Africa or Australia (where we're competing with other buyers). We need to ship that coal around the world (have you seen where the Baltic Dry Index is these days?) And then we need to get
the coal from port to the power station.
This isn't rampant greenery, this is market economics.
... Starmer announces a policy that will help but polls poorly...
"No not like that!!"
More likely is like any leaders they are taking the options they think are best, even if they are in fact wrong about that.
Sunak is the Con Right. He is likely to be replaced by a Hard Right candidate who will have the strengths and all the weaknesses of the Hard Left. Talking only to themselves (as over the weekend) and never listening to anybody
Ed increased Labour's vote share in 2015.
Neither Sunak nor Hunt were considered hopelessly wet when they arrived in government. They are now, because the actual wets have largely been memory holed.
And it's pretty likely that, after a 2024 defeat, the Conservative Party will turn down the chance of a jump to the left in favour of a step to the right. Potentially a rather large one.
Or alternatively, insist that even though people definitely wanted a large shift to the right they instead voted for woke marxist Keir because they were disappointed in the Tories?
That person will be the next Tory leader.
Besides which, the proposed new UK coal mine (approved by Gove, who knows when they will break ground) can yield a vast amount of coal - they have even afaicr had to agree to only mine so much, as part of their planning permission. An agreement that I heartily hope will be incinerated in a coal fired power station in due course.
Three big global carmakers have called on the UK government to renegotiate the Brexit deal, saying rules on where parts are sourced from threaten the future of the British automotive industry.
Ford and Jaguar Land Rover have joined Stellantis, which owns the Vauxhall, Peugeot and Citroën brands, to warn the transition to electric vehicles will be knocked off course unless the UK and EU delay stricter “rules of origin”, due to kick in next year, that could add tariffs on car exports.
Current post-Brexit rules require 40% of an electric vehicle’s parts by value to be sourced in the UK or EU if it is to be sold on the other side of the Channel without a 10% trade tariff.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/17/vauxhall-maker-says-brexit-deal-must-be-renegotiated-or-it-could-shut-uk-plant
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/john-major-net-worth/
It never ceases to amaze me that the MPs that should have some degree of economic sense like Sunak, or perhaps more clearly like Balls just fail to have even the vaguest grasp when in government.
(2) Is coal capacity in the US increasing or decreasing?
(3) Will the UK coal plant be allowed to sell its coal at prevailing market prices?
(And, by the way, you do understand that the coal that will be produced at Whitehaven is not suitable for power production, right? It's coking coal for the steel industry that's all going to be exported to European steel plants.)
Nope!!!
It's not a good deal.
It's a marginally less crap deal than the one BoZo signed.
It's still shit.
2. I suspect it is decreasing, but, as you hint, due to gas, not wind, replacing it as a practicable source of energy, which wind just isn't.
3. I have no idea. All I know is that the UK is sitting on an absolute fuckton of coal, I acknowledge that it might be less easy to get to than some overseas mines, but I don't think it's going to be a huge deal.
Between the fashion for en-suite bathrooms and redividing grounds floor spaces (the utility room, dividing the living room at the front from the kitchen/dining at the back), you can double the number of rooms in a house. Without actually increasing the number of bedrooms.
The chancellor told business leaders at a British Chambers of Commerce conference that the government would always be “sensible and pragmatic” about using immigration to fill vacancies in the economy.
He said he was open to adding more jobs to the shortage occupation list, which makes it easier for companies to recruit from abroad, amid pressure from industries such as hospitality.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jeremy-hunt-splits-from-suella-braverman-on-migrant-labour-dpt2c63bq
The likes of Barclay, Badenoch, Braverman and Dowden would survive all but the most unlikely extinction scenarios. Add Coffey and perhaps Shapps to that and there's quite a crowded race as indeed it was in 1997 when Hague won. Given a heavy defeat would suggest ten years in Opposition, it's likely the youngest candidate would have a chance .
Barclay is 51 - Badenoch and Braverman both 43 and Dowden 44 - I suspect the younger candidates will be at an advantage.
Monarchists are such snowflakes.
Disney’s new version of The Little Mermaid features a scene that appears to mock the Princess of Wales.
The film, released in cinemas next week, stars newcomer Halle Bailey as the mermaid Ariel, who falls for a handsome prince and gives up her voice in order to be with him.
In the first meeting between Ariel and Prince Eric, he tries to guess her name. His first guess is “Diana”. His second guess is “Catherine”, the first name of the Princess of Wales.
At the mention of the latter, Ariel screws up her face. “OK, definitely not Catherine,” Eric says.
The film already has a royal connection: the Duchess of Sussex drew parallels between herself and Ariel in her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/17/little-mermaid-film-princess-of-wales-joke-diana-catherine/
This is quite a significant problem at the moment, on both the left and right ; at times quite sophisticated critiques, dating from earlier periods, such as some of the Chomsy's ideas rooted in the new 1960's wariness of institutions, because of the commercialisation and twitterification of public debate, are only shared and communicated as facile conspiracy gibberish.
This also applies to parts of the left drawing on similar resources, I hasten to add, too.
There's been not too much new in the way of substantial left or right thought since around the 2000s, so people are often just drawing on simplified and half-digested versions of twentieth century thought at the moment.
As batteries keep getting cheaper, electric cars could end up as the cheapest car for the less well off.
Etc
The best analogy I’ve seen for Brexit is like trying to get dog shit out of the cracks in your shoe !
The rapid growth in Eastern European economies meant that even without Brexit, the EU would not have continued to be a limitless source of cheap labour.
No one is going to pay that much to burn it in a power station. You can get far cheaper coal for that.
The reserves they are mining are also tiny compared to the energy requirements of the country.
If Starmer and Reeves get inflation and the cost of living down, don't raise taxes too high and control strikes then the new Labour government may well be in power a decade or more. If they don't the Tory Opposition will see a quick revival, even more so if Starmer tries imposing development targets all over the greenbelt
They all say the same thing: coal is the most expensive part of their generating portfolio, and they are investing in wind and natural gas. And the gap in pricing is not trivial. New coal (and bear in mind that coal in the US is dramatically cheaper than in the UK) is around $83/MWh. Onshore wind and gas are about $40 before any subsidy or tax credits.
But don't take my word for it, look at this chart produced by the US electricty companies themselves:
On the other hand that's also coincided with his becoming very old. Isn't he about 95 ?
Were Hunt to bequeath Reeves an improving economy and were she not to make a horlicks of it (not guaranteed by any stretch), the Shadow Chancellor would have a tough life.
It took a long time after 1997 for the Conservatives to develop a credible alternative approach.
You can't just put any coal in any coal fired power station, because different coals burn at different temperatures, and need to be setup to deal with the amount of sulfur/etc.
But his political work is worth reading because there is some truth in it - he was good at demonstrating that our government were not benevolent in a way that we used to believe. Where I departed from him was that he was too benevolent and sympathetic towards other governments like China, Iran, Russia etc and was willing to just give them a free pass and regard their atrocities as someone else's problem.
The millennials staying relatively left is as much a product of the necessary statistical counterbalancing to a rapid lurch rightwards of the boomers as it is a leftward trend in the millennials themselves
A libertarian socialist, or peaceful anarchist, as he always calls himself.
Then they aren’t.
So I was expecting a polemical tour de force from Chomsky. And sure enough he gave a good ten minutes to talking about the iniquities of US policy on Iraq.
But then he changed topic on to what seemed his much more favoured topic. The iniquities of western policy towards Serbia. That poor misunderstood Balkan country, all they did was a bit of anti imperialist ethnic cleansing to defend themselves and now the West had Serbian blood on their hands. And how Russia would always stick up for Serbia. Russia which the West just misunderstood and underestimated.
I raised an objection muttering some question about war crimes and was waved away dismissively and a little patronisingly. Poor young Englishman, I’d been drinking too much BBC propaganda.
Revealed his true colours that night, our Noam.
Now, the hope is that a few subsidies right now will lead to lower long-term prices (and that's probably right), but right now, it isn't really economic.