The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
Private schools are a natural contributor to inequality. The more unequal a society is, the more likely it is to have on average worse health outcomes, higher crime rates, higher infant mortality, and reduced life expectancy. Compare the 'segregation academies' in the southern USA vs Finland.
Capitalism is a natural contributor to inequality. Why not go for a full state controlled economy and be done with it?
Because both uncontrolled capitalism and full communism are bloody awful. It's like the Laffer Curve, people always seem to forget there are two ends to the curve.
Neither communist Korea nor Pinocet's Chile particularly appeal. On the other hand Finland and other Nordic 'Social Democracies' are pretty frequently towards the top of the best countries to live in the world.
Also living in Sydney, I see the corrosive effect of the private schools system over here. About half of all kids in Sydney attend private or fee paying religious schools. It's created an awful 'old school tie' system where jobs are handed out on which school you went to rather than ability. Far worse than London actually.
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
In some places especially around schools 20mph is sensible but blanket 20mph is nonsense
It will affect our son on a RNLI shout call and other emergency workers
I expect a lot of opposition, but then the Welsh Labour government has cancelled all road building projects, and the 3rd Menai crossing necessary due to the Freeport at Holyhead and the unreliability of the old Menai crossing
Ironically Labour have been in power for decades overseeing failing NHS and Education but still Wales remains a Labour stronghold and those of us who live here pay the price
I agree with a 20mph zone around schools and in suburban housing estates - but generally not on through routes.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
Does that include derelict petrol stations that are now run as car wash places by Romanian etc. gangs who keep chickens round the back, e.g. in London the great world city, albeit not in Soho or Knightsbridge?
As well as electric cars appealing most to the kind of metrosexual crowd-follower men who shave their balls (clearly true alphas), what pisses me off about them is the way they're used to sell the idea of a happy future being around the corner. How will their drivers get out and about during prolonged power cuts? They're so trusting.
If power cuts are so prolonged, having a petrol car isn’t going to help. The pumps that pump the fuel from the underground tanks at petrol stations are electric, for a start.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
Really? Thats not evidence. The videos that seem to have kicked all this off are pathetic and have explanations. Where are the clear videos of these things? They are usually just a few pixels, and usually explainable.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
But you claimed the issue was the pinch points, especially over the river.
Surely there's places where there's roads on either side of the river, but no bridge to connect them?
If so, build the bridge and problem solved. Unless the colleges are built on the rivers themselves, or all the banks are taken up by colleges.
Interesting thought experiment.
I think almost all the Cherwell banks are university or college owned, and large parts of the Thames south of Folly Bridge are (that's where the boat-houses are, for example). The sections that aren't are mostly public meadows/parks.
I think it might be possible in engineering terms to temporarily relieve some of the East Oxford jams with a lot of residential demolition and by concreting over two of the city's most loved parks. I'm not going to be the one who suggests it though.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
Does that include derelict petrol stations that are now run as car wash places by Romanian etc. gangs who keep chickens round the back, e.g. in London the great world city, albeit not in Soho or Knightsbridge?
As well as electric cars appealing most to the kind of metrosexual crowd-follower men who shave their balls (clearly true alphas), what pisses me off about them is the way they're used to sell the idea of a happy future being around the corner. How will their drivers get out and about during prolonged power cuts? They're so trusting.
If power cuts are so prolonged, having a petrol car isn’t going to help. The pumps that pump the fuel from the underground tanks at petrol stations are electric, for a start.
I've got 1200 miles' worth of fuel in my garage and will stock up on more if shortage looks imminent. And lawfully I might add, because it's diesel. It will help for a fair while after most electric cars' batteries have run out. Won't last forever, sure.
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
I think Mark is getting ahead of himself, but the direction of travel is in Ukraine's favour, and they are making gains around Bakhmut at a greater pace then the Russians did.
Russia has to decide where to deploy its reserves, if it has any, in the knowledge that Ukraine will probably concentrate on the front Russia doesn't reinforce.
This is why they've played down the incursions into Belgorod. They've no spare units to send to sort it out, so they kinda have to pretend it isn't happening.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
Does that include derelict petrol stations that are now run as car wash places by Romanian etc. gangs who keep chickens round the back, e.g. in London the great world city, albeit not in Soho or Knightsbridge?
As well as electric cars appealing most to the kind of metrosexual crowd-follower men who shave their balls (clearly true alphas), what pisses me off about them is the way they're used to sell the idea of a happy future being around the corner. How will their drivers get out and about during prolonged power cuts? They're so trusting.
If power cuts are so prolonged, having a petrol car isn’t going to help. The pumps that pump the fuel from the underground tanks at petrol stations are electric, for a start.
I've got 1200 miles' worth of fuel in my garage and will stock up on more if shortage looks imminent. And lawfully I might add, because it's diesel. It will help for a fair while after most electric cars' batteries have run out. Won't last forever, sure.
If you have the generation capacity, it’s possible to run your EV well into the End Times. Trying making diesel at home…
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
Massively worth the supermarkets' while if they have you captive for 20 min with nothing to do but shop.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
Private schools are a natural contributor to inequality. The more unequal a society is, the more likely it is to have on average worse health outcomes, higher crime rates, higher infant mortality, and reduced life expectancy. Compare the 'segregation academies' in the southern USA vs Finland.
Capitalism is a natural contributor to inequality. Why not go for a full state controlled economy and be done with it?
Because both uncontrolled capitalism and full communism are bloody awful. It's like the Laffer Curve, people always seem to forget there are two ends to the curve.
Neither communist Korea nor Pinocet's Chile particularly appeal. On the other hand Finland and other Nordic 'Social Democracies' are pretty frequently towards the top of the best countries to live in the world.
Also living in Sydney, I see the corrosive effect of the private schools system over here. About half of all kids in Sydney attend private or fee paying religious schools. It's created an awful 'old school tie' system where jobs are handed out on which school you went to rather than ability. Far worse than London actually.
Plenty of private free schools in Sweden and Denmark and Norway and a few private boarding and international schools too and even Finland has private religious schools.
Australia has social mobility above the OECD average (indeed on some measures higher mobility than Scandinavian nations) so private schools don't seem to be perpetuating much inequality there https://www.oecd.org/economy/growth/49849281.pdf (p9)
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
But you claimed the issue was the pinch points, especially over the river.
Surely there's places where there's roads on either side of the river, but no bridge to connect them?
If so, build the bridge and problem solved. Unless the colleges are built on the rivers themselves, or all the banks are taken up by colleges.
Interesting thought experiment.
I think almost all the Cherwell banks are university or college owned, and large parts of the Thames south of Folly Bridge are (that's where the boat-houses are, for example). The sections that aren't are mostly public meadows/parks.
I think it might be possible in engineering terms to temporarily relieve some of the East Oxford jams with a lot of residential demolition and by concreting over two of the city's most loved parks. I'm not going to be the one who suggests it though.
Probably easier and less opposition to my idea to dig tunnels under Oxford with nuclear shaped charges…
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
How does society benefit from its top spots being monopolised by an oligarchic elite of entitled snobs whose intrinsic mediocrity has been disguised by a flattering veneer of spoon-fed learning and a self-perpetuating system of patronage that sees institutions recruit from among their own networks? If they all fucked off and established their own self-governing Republic of Etonharrovia the rest of the country would prosper mightily without them, while they struggled to find anyone to do the actual work amid a crippling digestive biscuit shortage.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
But you claimed the issue was the pinch points, especially over the river.
Surely there's places where there's roads on either side of the river, but no bridge to connect them?
If so, build the bridge and problem solved. Unless the colleges are built on the rivers themselves, or all the banks are taken up by colleges.
Interesting thought experiment.
I think almost all the Cherwell banks are university or college owned, and large parts of the Thames south of Folly Bridge are (that's where the boat-houses are, for example). The sections that aren't are mostly public meadows/parks.
I think it might be possible in engineering terms to temporarily relieve some of the East Oxford jams with a lot of residential demolition and by concreting over two of the city's most loved parks. I'm not going to be the one who suggests it though.
You could preserve the precious riverside parks by doing it the Tokyo way and building a motorway on elevated concrete pillars above the river.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
Private schools are a natural contributor to inequality. The more unequal a society is, the more likely it is to have on average worse health outcomes, higher crime rates, higher infant mortality, and reduced life expectancy. Compare the 'segregation academies' in the southern USA vs Finland.
Likewise, private ownership of housing, cars, shares etc. all contribute towards inequality.
It's unclear to me who benefits most or loses least in the strict physical military sense..
Seems perfectly clear to me. Ukraine is commencing a large scale counteroffensive. This barbarous act completely neutralises a large section of the front as a possible area of operations for some time. Reducing their options benefits only the Russians.
As for other considerations, only one side has consistently demonstrated they don't give a Dean about civilians, Ukraine's infrastructure, or their own troops.
I suppose it's just about possible Ukraine was responsible, but it's highly implausible.
If the Ukrainian response is to down the Crimea Bridge and the ferries, then all those troops in Crimea are effectively taken out the game. They aren't providing reinforcements anywhere.
Unless of course they moved before the dam was blown. Which is a bit of a giveaway as to who did it....
The dam being blown has cut off the water canal to Crimea, and the suggestion is that Russians are already getting out of there, presumably over the bridge.
Would be a real shame, if another couple of truck bombs could blow that bridge again. I think they only repaired one carriageway so far.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
"Mr Grusch has not seen the alleged material himself."
“Senior officials have spoken out to vouch for Mr Grusch and his claims.
Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, described him as “beyond reproach
Jonathan Grey, a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), said: “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Mr Grey added: “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.””
Whatever the explanation - madness, psyops, someone putting acid in the water across America, visiting aliens - something really really REALLY weird is happening
Bear in mind that the most important, far-reaching effects of the whole pandemic business have been psychological, behavioural, and on structures for preparedness. Corporate-state structures, to use perhaps an old-fashioned term. But what else to call the cooperation between governments and Big Pharma and between governments and infotech-advertising-surveillance companies such as Facebook and Apple and above all, the biggest boy in the garden, the company that makes the IBM of the 20th century seem like a bit part player, Google? So what's next? What will be the "new normal" after this "something really really REALLY weird" plays out a bit? Those focusing on ChatGPT and "AI" may well be looking in the wrong direction if their attention is taken away from Neuralink etc.
Indeed the coincidence of all these epochal, world changing stories is joyously compelling in itself. We are a long way from the “Ed stone”
I'm just waiting for Betelgeuse to go nova. Seriously hope this happens in my lifetime. Or rather, happened in about 1350 AD.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
Does it have to be just one?
Highlights the problem though - cars, and the roads they need, are blooming inefficient. They take up a lot of space.
If you consider the places in Britain that wash their faces economically- London, Oxford, Cambridge, they're dense. Lots of people, lots of jobs, close together. Don't ask me why, but it seems to be the case.
Notice that their centres are car light, or car free. If you don't have to have so much road space, you can put something productive there instead. And your services are cheaper to provide. Charles Marohn of Strong Towns is good on this from a libertarian right perspective.
It's not conclusive but it is compelling. So. Would you be prepared to live somewhere less car-friendly if it made the nation richer?
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
How does society benefit from its top spots being monopolised by an oligarchic elite of entitled snobs whose intrinsic mediocrity has been disguised by a flattering veneer of spoon-fed learning and a self-perpetuating system of patronage that sees institutions recruit from among their own networks? If they all fucked off and established their own self-governing Republic of Etonharrovia the rest of the country would prosper mightily without them, while they struggled to find anyone to do the actual work amid a crippling digestive biscuit shortage.
As they are educated, more likely to be in employment than average and the schools attract pupils from all over the world.
Despite what inverse snob leftwingers like you think private schools are a great asset to this country, yet while you wage class war against the privately educated you turn on the snobbery towards the Brexit voting working classes who never went to university who actually do do the 'actual work' day to day of manual blue collar jobs that keep the country going
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
Really? Thats not evidence. The videos that seem to have kicked all this off are pathetic and have explanations. Where are the clear videos of these things? They are usually just a few pixels, and usually explainable.
“For those asking - the METALLIC ORB UAP video used in demonstration today at the UFO hearing by Dr. Kirkpatrick is NOT the MOSUL ORB video.
MOSUL ORB was filmed in 2016 / this new video is from 2022.
"UAP characteristics and behavior consistent with other 'metallic orb' observations in the region"
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
Will it be unpopular though? I'm not able to easily find any polling on this issue, but many in Edinburgh regard the city-wide 20mph policy to be a success. Some evidence shows a reduction in accidents and fatalities. So that's a good thing.
It may be in a City but Wales have few cities and it is frankly a nonsense
But two thirds of people in Wales live in urban areas. Whether a settlement is a town or a city really isn't the issue here.
Its absolutely an issue.
20 is ridiculously slow for a town's main road. By schools or on residential side streets its fair enough, but a main road then 20 is just slow.
For a city it might make sense, if cities have gridlock anyway, but for towns it doesn't make any sense at all.
If the purpose of the 20mph limits are to protect or at least prioritise pedestrians, the most important street to have within that limit is the main street because that's where the biggest number of pedestrians are.
Not at all.
20 on residential roads make sense because children can be playing on those. On my residential road my kids play in front of our house, they ride their bike and scooter - other kids play football etc. Drive slowly on those roads, as you never know if a kid might run out chasing their ball.
On a main road that people are driving down, I've never seen kids playing football on those roads. People may walk to the shops, but they're not playing kickabout on the road, and if there's a fence separating the children from the cars then the volume of people isn't the issue - its the type of people you're likely to risk coming across.
I think there is data to show that the biggest number of pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries occur on urban main roads. That's because there are more pedestrians on these roads. We can argue about whose fault for specific accidents but it's more important to prevent the accident and save lives. Regardless of fault, it's the car that kills the pedestrian and regardless of fault that car is less likely to kill the pedestrian if it goes at a lower speed.
It's unclear to me who benefits most or loses least in the strict physical military sense..
Seems perfectly clear to me. Ukraine is commencing a large scale counteroffensive. This barbarous act completely neutralises a large section of the front as a possible area of operations for some time. Reducing their options benefits only the Russians.
As for other considerations, only one side has consistently demonstrated they don't give a Dean about civilians, Ukraine's infrastructure, or their own troops.
I suppose it's just about possible Ukraine was responsible, but it's highly implausible.
If the Ukrainian response is to down the Crimea Bridge and the ferries, then all those troops in Crimea are effectively taken out the game. They aren't providing reinforcements anywhere.
Unless of course they moved before the dam was blown. Which is a bit of a giveaway as to who did it....
The dam being blown has cut off the water canal to Crimea, and the suggestion is that Russians are already getting out of there, presumably over the bridge.
Would be a real shame, if another couple of truck bombs could blow that bridge again. I think they only repaired one carriageway so far.
It's always best to leave your enemies an escape route.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
Private schools are a natural contributor to inequality. The more unequal a society is, the more likely it is to have on average worse health outcomes, higher crime rates, higher infant mortality, and reduced life expectancy. Compare the 'segregation academies' in the southern USA vs Finland.
Likewise, private ownership of housing, cars, shares etc. all contribute towards inequality.
That doesn't make them a bad thing.
As has already been mentioned, earned inequality (i.e the ability to buy a nice house, car, holidays etc as the outcome from effort) I have no problem with at all, it should be encouraged. That isn't the same as mediocre children of rich parents ending up with better outcomes than bright children of working class parents, which is what the current system produces.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
Really? Thats not evidence. The videos that seem to have kicked all this off are pathetic and have explanations. Where are the clear videos of these things? They are usually just a few pixels, and usually explainable.
No-one has yet come up with a satisfactory explaination, as to why this is very much an American phenomenon, with very few UFO sightings elsewhere. They also appear to be clustered around military areas, of which there are many in the US.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
Massively worth the supermarkets' while if they have you captive for 20 min with nothing to do but shop.
Yes. Put a big canopy over the car park with solar panels and print money.
But if we are going to do this quickly, where is the progress?
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
Massively worth the supermarkets' while if they have you captive for 20 min with nothing to do but shop.
Yes. Put a big canopy over the car park with solar panels and print money.
But if we are going to do this quickly, where is the progress?
French supermarkets are already going gangbusters on this I think?
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
Massively worth the supermarkets' while if they have you captive for 20 min with nothing to do but shop.
Worse than that, people might spend too much time shopping, and not vacate their parking space once the car is charged.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who will never go to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
I wasn’t arguing for or against, just noting the less obvious externalities.
I think (as someone who works in a university) that universities should be well-funded by the public purse. Research benefits the whole population in various ways. Universities are drivers of innovation and thus the economy. The UK’s universities are a key part of our global brand, an area where we punch above our weight. Overseas students contribute greatly to the economy. A well-educated populace increases productivity.
But how best to fund universities is a vexed question. Many funding mechanisms are inefficient. Others have hidden subsidies (e.g., medical charity funding is significantly subsidised by government, which may well be a sound policy, but I think few realise how much it is going on). One can make a case that more or less of the cost of a degree should fall on the student.
To my mind the whole model of higher education needs reviewed.
Unfortunately, we can't turn back time and reverse the decision to send far many more people to university, which has fueled the need for course fees in the first place.
Businesses over a certain size should pay some form of tax that funds further education and training, unless they can demonstrate that they already expend an equivalent amount on staff training
University courses/education, and any kind of further education should be accessible by anyone of any age, as a combination of distance learning and some in-person attendance. Course fees should be VAT exempt and also tax relief should be claimable by the student. This will allow late bloomers to be able to educate themselves and better their employment opportunities. Government subsidies could be made available for courses/training where there is thought to be a national need.
There also needs to be more carrot and stick to get employers to invest in training staff or at least contributing to the cost of further education. After all, they benefit from it.
I can't understand why successive governments have allowed education to become such a mess, the youth of today are tomorrow's engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, scientists and, dare I say it, politicians of tomorrow. If, as a country, we are not prepared to invest in their education, then we will get the quality of people in these roles that we deserve.
Things seem to be getting a bit embarrassing for Prince Harry. MGN in cross put to him he has no actual evidence that his phone was ever hacked by an MGN journalist. His replies are somewhat unconvincing. Clearly, he believes that to be the case and believes that it has had a very negative effect on his life. But evidence? That seems to be a tad awkward.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
Massively worth the supermarkets' while if they have you captive for 20 min with nothing to do but shop.
Yes. Put a big canopy over the car park with solar panels and print money.
But if we are going to do this quickly, where is the progress?
My local Sainsburys have only just got rid of the bloody annoying car wash people, now will I have to deal with pushy EV recharging blokes?
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
Private schools are a natural contributor to inequality. The more unequal a society is, the more likely it is to have on average worse health outcomes, higher crime rates, higher infant mortality, and reduced life expectancy. Compare the 'segregation academies' in the southern USA vs Finland.
Likewise, private ownership of housing, cars, shares etc. all contribute towards inequality.
That doesn't make them a bad thing.
As has already been mentioned, earned inequality (i.e the ability to buy a nice house, car, holidays etc as the outcome from effort) I have no problem with at all, it should be encouraged. That isn't the same as mediocre children of rich parents ending up with better outcomes than bright children of working class parents, which is what the current system produces.
It didn't when we had more state grammar schools, many of which were performing better academically in exam results than many private schools, until the Labour Party nationally and Labour councils locally in the 1960s and 1970s began the process of abolishing most of them and turning them into comprehensives.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
Massively worth the supermarkets' while if they have you captive for 20 min with nothing to do but shop.
Yes. Put a big canopy over the car park with solar panels and print money.
But if we are going to do this quickly, where is the progress?
French supermarkets are already going gangbusters on this I think?
They certainly are in my part of the world, my local mall has covered half the car park in panels and added half a dozen car chargers.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
But you claimed the issue was the pinch points, especially over the river.
Surely there's places where there's roads on either side of the river, but no bridge to connect them?
If so, build the bridge and problem solved. Unless the colleges are built on the rivers themselves, or all the banks are taken up by colleges.
Interesting thought experiment.
I think almost all the Cherwell banks are university or college owned, and large parts of the Thames south of Folly Bridge are (that's where the boat-houses are, for example). The sections that aren't are mostly public meadows/parks.
I think it might be possible in engineering terms to temporarily relieve some of the East Oxford jams with a lot of residential demolition and by concreting over two of the city's most loved parks. I'm not going to be the one who suggests it though.
Probably easier and less opposition to my idea to dig tunnels under Oxford with nuclear shaped charges…
Simply move some of the colleges to areas which are less oversupplied with higher education. Balliol to Blackpool, Univ to Uttoxeter etc.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
Massively worth the supermarkets' while if they have you captive for 20 min with nothing to do but shop.
Yes. Put a big canopy over the car park with solar panels and print money.
But if we are going to do this quickly, where is the progress?
French supermarkets are already going gangbusters on this I think?
In France it's a legal requirement - we probably should make it one in the UK as well...
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
How does society benefit from its top spots being monopolised by an oligarchic elite of entitled snobs whose intrinsic mediocrity has been disguised by a flattering veneer of spoon-fed learning and a self-perpetuating system of patronage that sees institutions recruit from among their own networks? If they all fucked off and established their own self-governing Republic of Etonharrovia the rest of the country would prosper mightily without them, while they struggled to find anyone to do the actual work amid a crippling digestive biscuit shortage.
As they are educated, more likely to be in employment than average and the schools attract pupils from all over the world.
Despite what inverse snob leftwingers like you think private schools are a great asset to this country, yet while you wage class war against the privately educated you turn on the snobbery towards the Brexit voting working classes who never went to university who actually do do the 'actual work' day to day of manual blue collar jobs that keep the country going
This isn't the point of the debate though. The fact is, you need universities to make engineers and doctors; you don't need private schools to do it.
It's unclear to me who benefits most or loses least in the strict physical military sense..
Seems perfectly clear to me. Ukraine is commencing a large scale counteroffensive. This barbarous act completely neutralises a large section of the front as a possible area of operations for some time. Reducing their options benefits only the Russians.
As for other considerations, only one side has consistently demonstrated they don't give a Dean about civilians, Ukraine's infrastructure, or their own troops.
I suppose it's just about possible Ukraine was responsible, but it's highly implausible.
If the Ukrainian response is to down the Crimea Bridge and the ferries, then all those troops in Crimea are effectively taken out the game. They aren't providing reinforcements anywhere.
Unless of course they moved before the dam was blown. Which is a bit of a giveaway as to who did it....
The dam being blown has cut off the water canal to Crimea, and the suggestion is that Russians are already getting out of there, presumably over the bridge.
Would be a real shame, if another couple of truck bombs could blow that bridge again. I think they only repaired one carriageway so far.
It's always best to leave your enemies an escape route.
Not when they are plundering absolutely everything of any worth when they leave.
Blow the bridge now - and say they will take the Russian's surrender within the next 24 hours. Or everything in Crimea burns.
Everything.
If they surrender, it might well end the war. Not sure how Putin survives losing Crimea. Plus it is needed NOW to house all those who have lost everything by blowing the dam.
Things seem to be getting a bit embarrassing for Prince Harry. MGN in cross put to him he has no actual evidence that his phone was ever hacked by an MGN journalist. His replies are somewhat unconvincing. Clearly, he believes that to be the case and believes that it has had a very negative effect on his life. But evidence? That seems to be a tad awkward.
I’m not sure he ever understood that he would be cross-examined, and certainly doesn’t appear to have done any training for it. I think he expected his own lawyer to answer any awkward questions that came up.
Sound advice from Disney which we can only hope De Santis ignores:
Never smile at a crocodile No, you can't get friendly with a crocodile Don't be taken in by his welcome grin He's imagining how well you'd fit within his skin
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
That'd be progress from where we are now with charger capabilities but still a massive step backwards versus petrol currently. Currently it takes about 2 minutes to fill a tank of petrol, not 15/20 minutes.
For motorway service stations 15 minutes is OK as you'd take a break then anyway, but for routine petrol stations? Currently I fill my car for 2 minutes, drive off, and then the next car can pull in for 2 minutes before driving off and the next car is able to.
Changing that to 15 minutes is a problem for me, and a problem for anyone who wants to charge behind me too.
For routine fill ups you change 2 minutes to 0 minutes - charge it overnight.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
Really? Thats not evidence. The videos that seem to have kicked all this off are pathetic and have explanations. Where are the clear videos of these things? They are usually just a few pixels, and usually explainable.
No-one has yet come up with a satisfactory explaination, as to why this is very much an American phenomenon, with very few UFO sightings elsewhere. They also appear to be clustered around military areas, of which there are many in the US.
Things seem to be getting a bit embarrassing for Prince Harry. MGN in cross put to him he has no actual evidence that his phone was ever hacked by an MGN journalist. His replies are somewhat unconvincing. Clearly, he believes that to be the case and believes that it has had a very negative effect on his life. But evidence? That seems to be a tad awkward.
I’m not sure he ever understood that he would be cross-examined, and certainly doesn’t appear to have done any training for it. I think he expected his own lawyer to answer any awkward questions that came up.
That, and turning up a day late.
If we hear a little less from Hacked Off after this shambles that would be a good thing.
It's unclear to me who benefits most or loses least in the strict physical military sense..
Seems perfectly clear to me. Ukraine is commencing a large scale counteroffensive. This barbarous act completely neutralises a large section of the front as a possible area of operations for some time. Reducing their options benefits only the Russians.
As for other considerations, only one side has consistently demonstrated they don't give a Dean about civilians, Ukraine's infrastructure, or their own troops.
I suppose it's just about possible Ukraine was responsible, but it's highly implausible.
If the Ukrainian response is to down the Crimea Bridge and the ferries, then all those troops in Crimea are effectively taken out the game. They aren't providing reinforcements anywhere.
Unless of course they moved before the dam was blown. Which is a bit of a giveaway as to who did it....
The dam being blown has cut off the water canal to Crimea, and the suggestion is that Russians are already getting out of there, presumably over the bridge.
Would be a real shame, if another couple of truck bombs could blow that bridge again. I think they only repaired one carriageway so far.
It's always best to leave your enemies an escape route.
Not these scum. Let them drown in the river they flooded. Ukraine didn’t choose war.
Things seem to be getting a bit embarrassing for Prince Harry. MGN in cross put to him he has no actual evidence that his phone was ever hacked by an MGN journalist. His replies are somewhat unconvincing. Clearly, he believes that to be the case and believes that it has had a very negative effect on his life. But evidence? That seems to be a tad awkward.
Sounds like Megan and Harry claims about everything....
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
Really? Thats not evidence. The videos that seem to have kicked all this off are pathetic and have explanations. Where are the clear videos of these things? They are usually just a few pixels, and usually explainable.
No-one has yet come up with a satisfactory explaination, as to why this is very much an American phenomenon, with very few UFO sightings elsewhere. They also appear to be clustered around military areas, of which there are many in the US.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
None of this is difficult: Significant numbers of people have a driveway. Charge at home Homes which have parking bays not adjacent to the house - fit sockets by those Homes in a block - fit chargepoints in the carpark Terraced houses - fit chargepoints to the steetlights
We could already do that which is a solution for almost everyone. Not that almost everyone needs an EV right now, and even in the 2030s there will be millions of fossil cars still running which can be bought and sold.
The real barrier is *perception*. Most people's usage for a car is inside its range and most people have the ability to have an off-street charger. So no need to queue for a 20minute charge for most people most of the time. But its made out that everyone would need that every time.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
Does that include derelict petrol stations that are now run as car wash places by Romanian etc. gangs who keep chickens round the back, e.g. in London the great world city, albeit not in Soho or Knightsbridge?
As well as electric cars appealing most to the kind of metrosexual crowd-follower men who shave their balls (clearly true alphas), what pisses me off about them is the way they're used to sell the idea of a happy future being around the corner. How will their drivers get out and about during prolonged power cuts? They're so trusting.
If power cuts are so prolonged, having a petrol car isn’t going to help. The pumps that pump the fuel from the underground tanks at petrol stations are electric, for a start.
I've got 1200 miles' worth of fuel in my garage and will stock up on more if shortage looks imminent. And lawfully I might add, because it's diesel. It will help for a fair while after most electric cars' batteries have run out. Won't last forever, sure.
Diesel starts to become more viscous after 6-12 months & will clog up the fuel lines IIRC. Presumably there’s some kind of reaction going on that lengthens the carbon chains?
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
I think Mark is getting ahead of himself, but the direction of travel is in Ukraine's favour, and they are making gains around Bakhmut at a greater pace then the Russians did.
Russia has to decide where to deploy its reserves, if it has any, in the knowledge that Ukraine will probably concentrate on the front Russia doesn't reinforce.
This is why they've played down the incursions into Belgorod. They've no spare units to send to sort it out, so they kinda have to pretend it isn't happening.
Prighozin will be incandescent if Bakhmut is lost. "We lost 100,00 Russians. For F***ING WHAT?" And it may well cut through to those millions mourning the loss of a family member or friend.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
None of this is difficult: Significant numbers of people have a driveway. Charge at home Homes which have parking bays not adjacent to the house - fit sockets by those Homes in a block - fit chargepoints in the carpark Terraced houses - fit chargepoints to the steetlights
We could already do that which is a solution for almost everyone. Not that almost everyone needs an EV right now, and even in the 2030s there will be millions of fossil cars still running which can be bought and sold.
The real barrier is *perception*. Most people's usage for a car is inside its range and most people have the ability to have an off-street charger. So no need to queue for a 20minute charge for most people most of the time. But its made out that everyone would need that every time.
Also - what do foreigners do? Some elements of the body politic and media seem to think that is below consideration as a solution, never mind being worthy of investigation.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
None of this is difficult: Significant numbers of people have a driveway. Charge at home Homes which have parking bays not adjacent to the house - fit sockets by those Homes in a block - fit chargepoints in the carpark Terraced houses - fit chargepoints to the steetlights
We could already do that which is a solution for almost everyone. Not that almost everyone needs an EV right now, and even in the 2030s there will be millions of fossil cars still running which can be bought and sold.
The real barrier is *perception*. Most people's usage for a car is inside its range and most people have the ability to have an off-street charger. So no need to queue for a 20minute charge for most people most of the time. But its made out that everyone would need that every time.
The biggest effects on “perception” were the Christmas horror stories.
For most people, an EV would be great for 99% of journeys, because they only ever go more than a couple of hundred miles a handful of times a year.
But what happens, when those rare times are the same for *everyone*?
Lloyds are said to value the Telegraph titles at a 600 million.
600 million what? Venezuelan bolívar?
Greatest of Greatest fools who want to own the Telegraph got for "Prestige" (read Access to Government) it gets you.
I’m saving up to by out the telegraph owners. It’s my ambition to turn it back into a conservative paper whose journalism is not compromised by being in anyone’s pocket, political or commercial, I’m some way short of 600M at the moment though.
Seems like quite a lot to fork out for something that might not even exist in a few years time.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
Does it have to be just one?
Highlights the problem though - cars, and the roads they need, are blooming inefficient. They take up a lot of space.
If you consider the places in Britain that wash their faces economically- London, Oxford, Cambridge, they're dense. Lots of people, lots of jobs, close together. Don't ask me why, but it seems to be the case.
Notice that their centres are car light, or car free. If you don't have to have so much road space, you can put something productive there instead. And your services are cheaper to provide. Charles Marohn of Strong Towns is good on this from a libertarian right perspective.
It's not conclusive but it is compelling. So. Would you be prepared to live somewhere less car-friendly if it made the nation richer?
IIRC density leads to a combination of efficiency & faster communication of better ways of doing things from firm to firm as workers change jobs. There’s quite a bit of academic economics work on the topic of why cities are much more economically productive than you would otherwise expect.
It’s an open question why the UK’s second tier cities are all much less productive than their equivalents in France or Germany.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
None of this is difficult: Significant numbers of people have a driveway. Charge at home Homes which have parking bays not adjacent to the house - fit sockets by those Homes in a block - fit chargepoints in the carpark Terraced houses - fit chargepoints to the steetlights
We could already do that which is a solution for almost everyone. Not that almost everyone needs an EV right now, and even in the 2030s there will be millions of fossil cars still running which can be bought and sold.
The real barrier is *perception*. Most people's usage for a car is inside its range and most people have the ability to have an off-street charger. So no need to queue for a 20minute charge for most people most of the time. But its made out that everyone would need that every time.
It doesn't help that for some bizarre reason the tabloids seem to have taken it upon themselves to do what they can to dissuade people from buying EVs, thereby reducing domestic demand and further scuttling the prospects for future domestic car production. It's like they want the country to fail.
...you turn on the snobbery towards the Brexit voting working classes who never went to university who actually do do the 'actual work' day to day of manual blue collar jobs that keep the country going...
It is your party that is adopting a business model to drive down the wages of those manual blue collar workers by importing more and more people from more and more countries to do their jobs for less money.
If it helps, Labour will probably do likewise. But let's not pretend the Conservative party in its current incarnation of rich citizens of nowhere strip-mining the UK and expatriating the profits gives a tuppenny damn about the working classes.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
Privately educated medical students do on average slightly less well than non-privately educated medical students, controlling for other factors, at medical school exams. The effect seems to be that private school students do better at A’levels because of their school for their level of ability. Thus, when you look at medical school performance and control for A’levels performance, the privately educated do less well than you’d expect. Paper at https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1339899/
Doesn't surprise me at all. I've noticed the same - or, to be more accurate, a markedly greater heterogeneity amongst the private vs other educated colleagues in my year at uni - some of the former were absolutely brilliant, having already taken every advantage offered before they arrived, but others crashed and burned away from the teaching.
For anything real life, such as being a doctor or a manager, that doesn't depend on how many A levels one has (and what does?), then this is a real issue.
EDSK, an education think tank, traced back Labour’s claim the policy would raise £1.6 billion to a study published over a decade ago and found that the calculations had mistakenly included over 50,000 pupils who were being educated in state-funded schools.
A report by the think tank also said it believed that the £1.6 billion calculation included adding VAT on fees for privately educated nursery-aged children, which is not Labour’s policy.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
Privately educated medical students do on average slightly less well than non-privately educated medical students, controlling for other factors, at medical school exams. The effect seems to be that private school students do better at A’levels because of their school for their level of ability. Thus, when you look at medical school performance and control for A’levels performance, the privately educated do less well than you’d expect. Paper at https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1339899/
Doesn't surprise me at all. I've noticed the same - or, to be more accurate, a markedly greater heterogeneity amongst the private vs other educated colleagues in my year at uni - some of the former were absolutely brilliant, having already taken every advantage offered before they arrived, but others crashed and burned away from the teaching.
For anything real life, such as being a doctor or a manager, that doesn't depend on how many A levels one has (and what does?), then this is a real issue.
You can't normally be a doctor without decent A levels in science
Things seem to be getting a bit embarrassing for Prince Harry. MGN in cross put to him he has no actual evidence that his phone was ever hacked by an MGN journalist. His replies are somewhat unconvincing. Clearly, he believes that to be the case and believes that it has had a very negative effect on his life. But evidence? That seems to be a tad awkward.
I’m not sure he ever understood that he would be cross-examined, and certainly doesn’t appear to have done any training for it. I think he expected his own lawyer to answer any awkward questions that came up.
That, and turning up a day late.
If we hear a little less from Hacked Off after this shambles that would be a good thing.
How much are MGN’s costs going to be? They must have put millions into the trial.
Harry already got half a million in costs, from trying to sue the government to have them pay his security a few weeks back.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
Oxford has been a traffic nightmare for decades. Even if you make it to the centre and find a parking space in the multi-stories, you are going to be gagging at the overpowering smell of piss.
It’s /particularly/ bad at the moment because the Botley Road (the only route into the city from due west) is closed to through traffic due to engineering works on the railway line, pushing a ton of traffic onto the other arterial roads.
But yes, Oxford traffic has been notably dire for 100 years or more. Dithering about what to do about it has been the sport of local politicians since at least 1920.
...you turn on the snobbery towards the Brexit voting working classes who never went to university who actually do do the 'actual work' day to day of manual blue collar jobs that keep the country going...
It is your party that is adopting a business model to drive down the wages of those manual blue collar workers by importing more and more people from more and more countries to do their jobs for less money.
If it helps, Labour will probably do likewise. But let's not pretend the Conservative party in its current incarnation of rich citizens of nowhere strip-mining the UK and expatriating the profits gives a tuppenny damn about the working classes.
I note in the men's tennis players born in the 1990s have currently won a grand total of two slams. They'll probably going end up as the least winning cohort ever tbh.
EDSK, an education think tank, traced back Labour’s claim the policy would raise £1.6 billion to a study published over a decade ago and found that the calculations had mistakenly included over 50,000 pupils who were being educated in state-funded schools.
A report by the think tank also said it believed that the £1.6 billion calculation included adding VAT on fees for privately educated nursery-aged children, which is not Labour’s policy.
"Tom [Richmond] is the Founder and Director of EDSK.
[...]
"He subsequently spent two years as an advisor to ministers at the Department for Education, first under Michael Gove and then Nicky Morgan, where he helped to design and deliver new policies as well as improve existing ones."
I bought the original Tesla Roadster, and then a Model S.
More recently, I bought a Rivian.
EVs are great if:
(a) you have somewhere to charge it at home (b) you don't regularly do 300+ mile trips
If either of those things are not true, then either a straight ICE or a plug-in hybrid is perfect for you.
There's another requirement: (c) If you can afford one. EVs are still hellishly expensive compared to ICE cars - unless you go for ones with limitations, such as even more reduced range.
The cost differential is closing every day.
The crossover will come by the end of the decade, quite probably.
People will continue to grouse about the charging problem. It will be solved quickly for the wealthy, which might slow the process of solving it for everyone else.
The charging problem is rather a chicken and egg one. It isn't economic to build them until there is a market.
Range anxiety is pretty short lived when owning an EV. How often do you drive more than 250 miles without a half hour break? EV cars are also a pleasure to drive, smooth, powerful and very quick acceleration.
Lots of people do once a year, over Christmas and New Year. Just one three hour wait then (and there were plenty) is enough to spoil your whole year, especially with small children with you. Giles Coren did a piece saying he is retransitioning for this reason.
One three hour wait is enough to ruin your entire year?
I own an electric car (well truck). Over Christmas, the family got into the truck and headed up the mountains to Big Bear. Over the Christmas week, we went round the ski resorts in the area, returning to our AirBnB every night.
Aside from one 20 minute wait for a fast charger, we had no problems whatsoever with a 500 mile round trip.
If you have a driveway, don't regularly travel 300m+ a day, and can afford it, an electric car is best.
Of course, they could all be brainwashed. But the real world evidence is that people who buy Teslas buy Teslas again. And on this very board, everyone who has bought an EV (myself, Foxy, Dura, FrequentLurker) would do so again.
And me. Skoda Enyaq for the win.
Owned a Kia e-niro before that and was very happy. Yes, I have my own driveway (as do a majority of people, but certainly not all). It's staggering the amount of time I wasted refuelling my ICE cars over the years. Once every week-and-a-half having to go and fill up, and when you add up all the time, it usually added 15-20 minutes to my trip home. That adds up over a year. And over thirty years.
Now, plug in when I get home and go indoors. When I come out the following morning, car has charged overnight with cheap electricity. You can't do that with ICE cars.
I've had to recharge away from home a handful of times and I can swear by the Gridserve at Braintree. Even though we now have just about enough range to get from home to my Mum's and back when we go there a couple of times per year, the family insist on taking a break there because it's so plush. Twenty minutes to grab a drink and a loo break and we've got loads of charge for the way home.
And now the 150kW chargers are getting more plentiful and the 350kW chargers are coming in, charging times are coming way down. Twenty minutes at 3.5 miles/kWh gives you 50kW and 175 miles (at 150kW). To get an extra 100 miles at 350kW would take five minutes.
Charging infrastructure has improved a lot over the past three years as well, and one welcome change is that virtually everywhere takes contactless rather than requiring an app.
Great to see that Gridserve are rolling out more of these ultra-rapid hubs! I was charging next to a new one going in at Grantham services last week - a great new addition.
I would query the Enyaq though with regards to your charging example. Until 2022 the standard onboard charger was 50kW, with a chargeable option to go as fast as 125kW. I think (please correct me if I'm wrong!) 125kW is still the fastest it will charge. Which rather makes your Braintree site over-specced as you're getting just under a third of its potential speed.
There are an awful lot of manufacturers follow VAG and hobbling EVs with slow charging. And its been the same for a decade. I don't get it.
Oh, I use the 150kW chargers. They're only a bit over what I need. We stay for twenty minutes and get a charge increase of over 50%. I mentioned the 350kW chargers because once they're widespread and usable by most EV cars, the "waiting around for ages" argument goes away. Sorry if it was ambiguous
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
How does society benefit from its top spots being monopolised by an oligarchic elite of entitled snobs whose intrinsic mediocrity has been disguised by a flattering veneer of spoon-fed learning and a self-perpetuating system of patronage that sees institutions recruit from among their own networks? If they all fucked off and established their own self-governing Republic of Etonharrovia the rest of the country would prosper mightily without them, while they struggled to find anyone to do the actual work amid a crippling digestive biscuit shortage.
As they are educated, more likely to be in employment than average and the schools attract pupils from all over the world.
Despite what inverse snob leftwingers like you think private schools are a great asset to this country, yet while you wage class war against the privately educated you turn on the snobbery towards the Brexit voting working classes who never went to university who actually do do the 'actual work' day to day of manual blue collar jobs that keep the country going
I'm curious, what "actual work" do you do? I know you were recently a councillor, but since you were given the old Spanish archer by the voters, what do you do?
Information management. For the record I didn't stand for my old Town council seat again, I stood for District and lost to the LDs by 20 votes after a recount, the closest result in the district
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
None of this is difficult: Significant numbers of people have a driveway. Charge at home Homes which have parking bays not adjacent to the house - fit sockets by those Homes in a block - fit chargepoints in the carpark Terraced houses - fit chargepoints to the steetlights
We could already do that which is a solution for almost everyone. Not that almost everyone needs an EV right now, and even in the 2030s there will be millions of fossil cars still running which can be bought and sold.
The real barrier is *perception*. Most people's usage for a car is inside its range and most people have the ability to have an off-street charger. So no need to queue for a 20minute charge for most people most of the time. But its made out that everyone would need that every time.
It doesn't help that for some bizarre reason the tabloids seem to have taken it upon themselves to do what they can to dissuade people from buying EVs, thereby reducing domestic demand and further scuttling the prospects for future domestic car production. It's like they want the country to fail.
EDSK, an education think tank, traced back Labour’s claim the policy would raise £1.6 billion to a study published over a decade ago and found that the calculations had mistakenly included over 50,000 pupils who were being educated in state-funded schools.
A report by the think tank also said it believed that the £1.6 billion calculation included adding VAT on fees for privately educated nursery-aged children, which is not Labour’s policy.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
None of this is difficult: Significant numbers of people have a driveway. Charge at home Homes which have parking bays not adjacent to the house - fit sockets by those Homes in a block - fit chargepoints in the carpark Terraced houses - fit chargepoints to the steetlights
We could already do that which is a solution for almost everyone. Not that almost everyone needs an EV right now, and even in the 2030s there will be millions of fossil cars still running which can be bought and sold.
The real barrier is *perception*. Most people's usage for a car is inside its range and most people have the ability to have an off-street charger. So no need to queue for a 20minute charge for most people most of the time. But its made out that everyone would need that every time.
The biggest effects on “perception” were the Christmas horror stories.
For most people, an EV would be great for 99% of journeys, because they only ever go more than a couple of hundred miles a handful of times a year.
But what happens, when those rare times are the same for *everyone*?
What Christmas horror stories?
A few Daily Mail stories about the Tesla supercharger at Tebay, where a Big Queue formed on the busiest driving day of the year. We assume new Tesla owners still learning how the car works.
If you tell it where to navigate to, it routes you automatically to a supercharger. And *reroutes you to a different one if one is busy*. So a big queue could have been avoided by literally all of them. And won't be repeated as Tesla have ripped out the 8 v2 chargers from that site and installed 12 v3 chargers. When busy, a v2 site would vend 75kW fastest, vs a v3 which will vend 250kW at all times.
So they have increased the charging bays by 50% and more than tripled the charging speed. Which doesn't make a "lets bash the left" story so doesn't get covered by the Daily Heil.
It's unclear to me who benefits most or loses least in the strict physical military sense..
Seems perfectly clear to me. Ukraine is commencing a large scale counteroffensive. This barbarous act completely neutralises a large section of the front as a possible area of operations for some time. Reducing their options benefits only the Russians.
As for other considerations, only one side has consistently demonstrated they don't give a Dean about civilians, Ukraine's infrastructure, or their own troops.
I suppose it's just about possible Ukraine was responsible, but it's highly implausible.
The BBC being so even-handed yesterday on who might be responsible veered a long way off credible reportage.
The obligation to present balanced coverage ought not to mean presenting a bad case as equivalent to a good one.
Clearly. in this conflict, it's necessary to assess the claims of both sides with scepticism, as neither have been credible at times. But there's a difference between the unrelenting stream of bullshit and bad faith claims which emanates from Russia, and what comes out of Ukraine. The latter's claims about losses it has inflicted on Russian forces are obviously and consistently exaggerated - but much else is quite straightforward.
EDSK, an education think tank, traced back Labour’s claim the policy would raise £1.6 billion to a study published over a decade ago and found that the calculations had mistakenly included over 50,000 pupils who were being educated in state-funded schools.
A report by the think tank also said it believed that the £1.6 billion calculation included adding VAT on fees for privately educated nursery-aged children, which is not Labour’s policy.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
"Mr Grusch has not seen the alleged material himself."
“Senior officials have spoken out to vouch for Mr Grusch and his claims.
Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, described him as “beyond reproach
Jonathan Grey, a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), said: “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Mr Grey added: “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.””
Whatever the explanation - madness, psyops, someone putting acid in the water across America, visiting aliens - something really really REALLY weird is happening
Bear in mind that the most important, far-reaching effects of the whole pandemic business have been psychological, behavioural, and on structures for preparedness. Corporate-state structures, to use perhaps an old-fashioned term. But what else to call the cooperation between governments and Big Pharma and between governments and infotech-advertising-surveillance companies such as Facebook and Apple and above all, the biggest boy in the garden, the company that makes the IBM of the 20th century seem like a bit part player, Google? So what's next? What will be the "new normal" after this "something really really REALLY weird" plays out a bit? Those focusing on ChatGPT and "AI" may well be looking in the wrong direction if their attention is taken away from Neuralink etc.
Indeed the coincidence of all these epochal, world changing stories is joyously compelling in itself. We are a long way from the “Ed stone”
On the contrary. That is an artefact of such mystery as to rival them all.
EDSK, an education think tank, traced back Labour’s claim the policy would raise £1.6 billion to a study published over a decade ago and found that the calculations had mistakenly included over 50,000 pupils who were being educated in state-funded schools.
A report by the think tank also said it believed that the £1.6 billion calculation included adding VAT on fees for privately educated nursery-aged children, which is not Labour’s policy.
I note in the men's tennis players born in the 1990s have currently won a grand total of two slams. They'll probably going end up as the least winning cohort ever tbh.
Too much avocado toast
Bookies reckon the winner of Alcaraz - Djokovic will go on to win it all in Paris. So looks like another miss for 90s players looming.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
But you claimed the issue was the pinch points, especially over the river.
Surely there's places where there's roads on either side of the river, but no bridge to connect them?
If so, build the bridge and problem solved. Unless the colleges are built on the rivers themselves, or all the banks are taken up by colleges.
The yellow routes that cross the river that cuts Oxford in half include bridges that were built back then & took a huge amount of pressure off the single crossing that had previously existed. (A clue is in the name of the northern loop - Marston Ferry Road!)
There’s space for one bridge nearer the centre that would cut across the middle & join the road from Headington with the small part of the inner ring road was built back then, but that road is already at capacity as it is at peak times so adding more feeder roads might well make things worse, plus it’s an extremely expensive bit of land to cross, both in £ and political capital terms (you’re going to have to build across Magdelen school & Christchurch meadows...)
EDSK, an education think tank, traced back Labour’s claim the policy would raise £1.6 billion to a study published over a decade ago and found that the calculations had mistakenly included over 50,000 pupils who were being educated in state-funded schools.
A report by the think tank also said it believed that the £1.6 billion calculation included adding VAT on fees for privately educated nursery-aged children, which is not Labour’s policy.
"Tom [Richmond] is the Founder and Director of EDSK.
[...]
"He subsequently spent two years as an advisor to ministers at the Department for Education, first under Michael Gove and then Nicky Morgan, where he helped to design and deliver new policies as well as improve existing ones."
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
Privately educated medical students do on average slightly less well than non-privately educated medical students, controlling for other factors, at medical school exams. The effect seems to be that private school students do better at A’levels because of their school for their level of ability. Thus, when you look at medical school performance and control for A’levels performance, the privately educated do less well than you’d expect. Paper at https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1339899/
Doesn't surprise me at all. I've noticed the same - or, to be more accurate, a markedly greater heterogeneity amongst the private vs other educated colleagues in my year at uni - some of the former were absolutely brilliant, having already taken every advantage offered before they arrived, but others crashed and burned away from the teaching.
For anything real life, such as being a doctor or a manager, that doesn't depend on how many A levels one has (and what does?), then this is a real issue.
You can't normally be a doctor without decent A levels in science
Missing the point. THere is a lot more to being a doctor than being spoonfed A level grades in an expensive school.
I bought the original Tesla Roadster, and then a Model S.
More recently, I bought a Rivian.
EVs are great if:
(a) you have somewhere to charge it at home (b) you don't regularly do 300+ mile trips
If either of those things are not true, then either a straight ICE or a plug-in hybrid is perfect for you.
There's another requirement: (c) If you can afford one. EVs are still hellishly expensive compared to ICE cars - unless you go for ones with limitations, such as even more reduced range.
The cost differential is closing every day.
The crossover will come by the end of the decade, quite probably.
People will continue to grouse about the charging problem. It will be solved quickly for the wealthy, which might slow the process of solving it for everyone else.
The charging problem is rather a chicken and egg one. It isn't economic to build them until there is a market.
Range anxiety is pretty short lived when owning an EV. How often do you drive more than 250 miles without a half hour break? EV cars are also a pleasure to drive, smooth, powerful and very quick acceleration.
Lots of people do once a year, over Christmas and New Year. Just one three hour wait then (and there were plenty) is enough to spoil your whole year, especially with small children with you. Giles Coren did a piece saying he is retransitioning for this reason.
One three hour wait is enough to ruin your entire year?
I own an electric car (well truck). Over Christmas, the family got into the truck and headed up the mountains to Big Bear. Over the Christmas week, we went round the ski resorts in the area, returning to our AirBnB every night.
Aside from one 20 minute wait for a fast charger, we had no problems whatsoever with a 500 mile round trip.
If you have a driveway, don't regularly travel 300m+ a day, and can afford it, an electric car is best.
A long-range Rivian truck costs $100,000, does it not?
Yes, there are some good $100k EVs, but 99% of people don’t spend that much on a car, so it’s still very much a luxury good.
If, like most people, you have £30k to spend on a new car, you have the choice of a Leaf, or, umm, not much else. Even the cheapest electric Mini is £33k.
$79k for the Rivian with the large battery pack (350 miles). So, yes, it's a luxury product. But then again it's a self driving truck that has a 350 mile range, will handle pretty much any off road you throw at it, and does 0-60 faster than my old Porsche 911.
Late to the debate but I think you have very well encapsulated the electric car market right now. Whether this will change by 2030 who knows.
I hope it also won't become a vegan-type thing (eg how do you know if someone owns an electric car...)
At last PB can have a proper discussion with publication of a new MRP based on a mega poll. This new poll with Prof Curtice involved should bring Heathener back to reality winning elections just ain’t that easy as she makes out.
Under new boundaries it finds Labour on 35%. It finds Labour support in its lead over Tories is still “quite soft”
Under Labours worse case scenario Tory’s are boosted by taking Reform voters, or there’s no reform standing so the election result is Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286.
And the focus group seems to like Rishi Sunak a lot.
Mid thirties is the best Labour has got in real votes this parliament, maybe we should be thinking that’s about where they will poll in a general election?
Labour on 35% is on the basis that don't knows and not voting are on 20%. If you gross up for those, this suggests that Labour is on 44%.
The MRP looks wrong, as it predicts that the Lib Dems will only get 5 seats - St Albans, Bath and the three south west London seats.
So you intend to eat your hat then if it turns out to be right!
It still gives an amazing historic more than 100 seat gain for Labour if it ends up Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286. So it rings true as realistic in that sense?
A mistake you can make Nicky is constant comparisons with 97. Blair started off 75 seats better off, which is why the majority was so big and the result looked so spectacular. In reality gain sixty or seventy seats or more at general elections is historically a brilliant and rare result. Despite mid term polls and amazing local elections, things don’t tend to move around greatly in MPs from election to election, so this MRP work you are calling wrong still gives Labour way over 100 seat gains!
And you reckon it doesn’t sound like a realistic snapshot of where we are now 🤷♀️
I have a concern with MRPs in general.
For a standard opinion poll, you have to extrapolate from a small sample to the voting population as a whole. This requires an understanding and appropriate adjustments to ensure that the sample is representative of the voting population. As we can see with six polling companies polling on a weekly basis, with more on a fortnightly or monthly rota, the current Conservative range is 25-31%, Labour 42-47%, LDs 9-13%, Greens 3-7%, Reform 4-7%. This is more than a just a pure statisical variation arising from sampling, but reflects "house effects" resulting from the adjustments each polling company makes to try to obtain a representative sample of the voting population.
With a MRP this is replicated on a larger scale. To start you have a number of sub population groups which you have to map to each constituency. This brings in an additional level of variance and complexity. There are assumptions that each sub population have a similar voting pattern accross the country . The sub populations need to be well designed, and may well vary from election to election. Then the polling sample will need to obtain a representative sample of those sub population groups, with adjustments as necessary for each group. Each additional adjustment increases the potential variance. These then need to be extropolated to each consistuency - Peter Kellner had a recent article on proportional vs linear adjustments.
Effectively the black box of the MRP is more complex and thus more liable to systematic errors than a standard opinion poll.
MRPs can be useful, but the engineering approach needs to be taken - standing back and looking at it in general does this look approximately right.
The potential complications with the results of the MRP are Scotland - only SNP and Labour seats - low LD and conservative seats in the basic prediction.
Sounds like you are just calling it wrong because you don’t like the disappointment for Lib Dem’s and Labour in this one and how it boosts the Tories back into the game. But we are moving towards the election now Nicky, polls swinging back into Tories and we can’t have opposition just saying they choose not to believe them because you think they must have it wrong based only on you don’t like them, that’s not proper political betting commentary.
I’ll give you the bottom line Nicky, there was a whole lot of constituency polls showing Lib dems in trouble and Paddy Ashdown made the mistake of saying he’ll eat his hat if those polls were correct, and they were absolutely spot on.
Labour and opposition can’t say this MRP is wrong just because it’s disappointing for them compared to others, the work of top psephologists like Professor Curtis must be respected.
Beside which, when polls predicted labour to get as low as 35% in the locals the polls were scoffed at, yet proved brilliantly spot on.
Bakhmut and Oxford are approximately the same size. It took three months and tens of thousands of casualties for the pro-Russian forces to get from one side of the city of the other and, if the rumors are correct, may not be able to hold it.
Comments
"US military has been observing ‘metallic orbs’ making extraordinary ‘maneuvers’" (@TheHillOpinion) trib.al/CdmWTwu
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1664855958374465537?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Neither communist Korea nor Pinocet's Chile particularly appeal. On the other hand Finland and other Nordic 'Social Democracies' are pretty frequently towards the top of the best countries to live in the world.
Also living in Sydney, I see the corrosive effect of the private schools system over here. About half of all kids in Sydney attend private or fee paying religious schools. It's created an awful 'old school tie' system where jobs are handed out on which school you went to rather than ability. Far worse than London actually.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/07/woking-council-declares-bankruptcy-with-12bn-deficit
I think almost all the Cherwell banks are university or college owned, and large parts of the Thames south of Folly Bridge are (that's where the boat-houses are, for example). The sections that aren't are mostly public meadows/parks.
I think it might be possible in engineering terms to temporarily relieve some of the East Oxford jams with a lot of residential demolition and by concreting over two of the city's most loved parks. I'm not going to be the one who suggests it though.
Aren't you supposed to 'invest' with money you actually have ?
Australia has social mobility above the OECD average (indeed on some measures higher mobility than Scandinavian nations) so private schools don't seem to be perpetuating much inequality there
https://www.oecd.org/economy/growth/49849281.pdf (p9)
If they all fucked off and established their own self-governing Republic of Etonharrovia the rest of the country would prosper mightily without them, while they struggled to find anyone to do the actual work amid a crippling digestive biscuit shortage.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65834167
That doesn't make them a bad thing.
Would be a real shame, if another couple of truck bombs could blow that bridge again. I think they only repaired one carriageway so far.
Then it doesn’t count as spending.
Highlights the problem though - cars, and the roads they need, are blooming inefficient. They take up a lot of space.
If you consider the places in Britain that wash their faces economically- London, Oxford, Cambridge, they're dense. Lots of people, lots of jobs, close together. Don't ask me why, but it seems to be the case.
Notice that their centres are car light, or car free. If you don't have to have so much road space, you can put something productive there instead. And your services are cheaper to provide. Charles Marohn of Strong Towns is good on this from a libertarian right perspective.
It's not conclusive but it is compelling. So. Would you be prepared to live somewhere less car-friendly if it made the nation richer?
Despite what inverse snob leftwingers like you think private schools are a great asset to this country, yet while you wage class war against the privately educated you turn on the snobbery towards the Brexit voting working classes who never went to university who actually do do the 'actual work' day to day of manual blue collar jobs that keep the country going
“For those asking - the METALLIC ORB UAP video used in demonstration today at the UFO hearing by Dr. Kirkpatrick is NOT the MOSUL ORB video.
MOSUL ORB was filmed in 2016 / this new video is from 2022.
"UAP characteristics and behavior consistent with other 'metallic orb' observations in the region"
Why not release the MOSUL ORB video @DoD_AARO?”
https://twitter.com/jeremycorbell/status/1648744599102590976?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Is it just a balloon? If it is, it is going rather fast and in a peculiarly straight line
I cannot decide. We need more evidence. But the more interesting evidence is that the US congress is having hearings on this and taking it seriously
But if we are going to do this quickly, where is the progress?
Unfortunately, we can't turn back time and reverse the decision to send far many more people to university, which has fueled the need for course fees in the first place.
Businesses over a certain size should pay some form of tax that funds further education and training, unless they can demonstrate that they already expend an equivalent amount on staff training
University courses/education, and any kind of further education should be accessible by anyone of any age, as a combination of distance learning and some in-person attendance. Course fees should be VAT exempt and also tax relief should be claimable by the student. This will allow late bloomers to be able to educate themselves and better their employment opportunities. Government subsidies could be made available for courses/training where there is thought to be a national need.
There also needs to be more carrot and stick to get employers to invest in training staff or at least contributing to the cost of further education. After all, they benefit from it.
I can't understand why successive governments have allowed education to become such a mess, the youth of today are tomorrow's engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, scientists and, dare I say it, politicians of tomorrow. If, as a country, we are not prepared to invest in their education, then we will get the quality of people in these roles that we deserve.
600 million what? Venezuelan bolívar?
That's yer levelling up in action, right there.
Blow the bridge now - and say they will take the Russian's surrender within the next 24 hours. Or everything in Crimea burns.
Everything.
If they surrender, it might well end the war. Not sure how Putin survives losing Crimea. Plus it is needed NOW to house all those who have lost everything by blowing the dam.
That, and turning up a day late.
Never smile at a crocodile
No, you can't get friendly with a crocodile
Don't be taken in by his welcome grin
He's imagining how well you'd fit within his skin
https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/assets/4702062/Screen_Shot_2014-07-02_at_2.39.52_PM.png
Edit: What am I doing wrong with images? Why does
Significant numbers of people have a driveway. Charge at home
Homes which have parking bays not adjacent to the house - fit sockets by those
Homes in a block - fit chargepoints in the carpark
Terraced houses - fit chargepoints to the steetlights
We could already do that which is a solution for almost everyone. Not that almost everyone needs an EV right now, and even in the 2030s there will be millions of fossil cars still running which can be bought and sold.
The real barrier is *perception*. Most people's usage for a car is inside its range and most people have the ability to have an off-street charger. So no need to queue for a 20minute charge for most people most of the time. But its made out that everyone would need that every time.
Edit: partly answered by @Theuniondivvie and @eek I see.
For most people, an EV would be great for 99% of journeys, because they only ever go more than a couple of hundred miles a handful of times a year.
But what happens, when those rare times are the same for *everyone*?
Seems like quite a lot to fork out for something that might not even exist in a few years time.
It’s an open question why the UK’s second tier cities are all much less productive than their equivalents in France or Germany.
If it helps, Labour will probably do likewise. But let's not pretend the Conservative party in its current incarnation of rich citizens of nowhere strip-mining the UK and expatriating the profits gives a tuppenny damn about the working classes.
For anything real life, such as being a doctor or a manager, that doesn't depend on how many A levels one has (and what does?), then this is a real issue.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/07/labour-landslide-election-victory-poll-keir-starmer-rishi-sunak-conservatives-constituency-boundaries
A report by the think tank also said it believed that the £1.6 billion calculation included adding VAT on fees for privately educated nursery-aged children, which is not Labour’s policy.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/07/labour-private-schools-tax-raid-flawed/
Harry already got half a million in costs, from trying to sue the government to have them pay his security a few weeks back.
But yes, Oxford traffic has been notably dire for 100 years or more. Dithering about what to do about it has been the sport of local politicians since at least 1920.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-sees-fastest-wage-rises-sectors-most-reliant-eu-workers-indeed-2022-02-25/
From the EDSK website...
"Tom [Richmond] is the Founder and Director of EDSK.
[...]
"He subsequently spent two years as an advisor to ministers at the Department for Education, first under Michael Gove and then Nicky Morgan, where he helped to design and deliver new policies as well as improve existing ones."
I mentioned the 350kW chargers because once they're widespread and usable by most EV cars, the "waiting around for ages" argument goes away. Sorry if it was ambiguous
Labour apparently heading for a majority of 290 with 31 seats in Scotland.
A few Daily Mail stories about the Tesla supercharger at Tebay, where a Big Queue formed on the busiest driving day of the year. We assume new Tesla owners still learning how the car works.
If you tell it where to navigate to, it routes you automatically to a supercharger. And *reroutes you to a different one if one is busy*. So a big queue could have been avoided by literally all of them. And won't be repeated as Tesla have ripped out the 8 v2 chargers from that site and installed 12 v3 chargers. When busy, a v2 site would vend 75kW fastest, vs a v3 which will vend 250kW at all times.
So they have increased the charging bays by 50% and more than tripled the charging speed. Which doesn't make a "lets bash the left" story so doesn't get covered by the Daily Heil.
Clearly. in this conflict, it's necessary to assess the claims of both sides with scepticism, as neither have been credible at times.
But there's a difference between the unrelenting stream of bullshit and bad faith claims which emanates from Russia, and what comes out of Ukraine. The latter's claims about losses it has inflicted on Russian forces are obviously and consistently exaggerated - but much else is quite straightforward.
NEW THREAD
https://twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1666402722852085764?s=20
But it's the logical conclusion of VAT on private schools, how do you add VAT there but not on nurseries and Universities?
The yellow routes that cross the river that cuts Oxford in half include bridges that were built back then & took a huge amount of pressure off the single crossing that had previously existed. (A clue is in the name of the northern loop - Marston Ferry Road!)
There’s space for one bridge nearer the centre that would cut across the middle & join the road from Headington with the small part of the inner ring road was built back then, but that road is already at capacity as it is at peak times so adding more feeder roads might well make things worse, plus it’s an extremely expensive bit of land to cross, both in £ and political capital terms (you’re going to have to build across Magdelen school & Christchurch meadows...)
I hope it also won't become a vegan-type thing (eg how do you know if someone owns an electric car...)
I’ll give you the bottom line Nicky, there was a whole lot of constituency polls showing Lib dems in trouble and Paddy Ashdown made the mistake of saying he’ll eat his hat if those polls were correct, and they were absolutely spot on.
Labour and opposition can’t say this MRP is wrong just because it’s disappointing for them compared to others, the work of top psephologists like Professor Curtis must be respected.
Beside which, when polls predicted labour to get as low as 35% in the locals the polls were scoffed at, yet proved brilliantly spot on.
Бахмут 2023 - Вони не пройдуть