For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
It finally happened, breaking 5 sigma, the same statistical threshold physicists used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
At 2,700,000 km² below the 1991-2020 mean, Antarctic sea ice extent was 5.14σ below the mean, roughly a 1-in-7,400,000 chance.
Thanks.
Don't worry, if you ride a bicycle once in a while, while continuing to drive a diesel the rest of the time, all these problems will be solved apparently.
Who needs the hard work of ensuring clean energy, or switching to clean EVs, when supplementing your diesel with a bike is an option?
I'm not sure if you're still referring to my posts, but as I stated, I have an EV and use that for most of my car journeys. The diesel has been relegated to very occasional long distance journeys and won't be replaced when it expires. For short journeys I walk or use a bike instead of the EV. This saves on energy, road wear, noise, congestion and parking needs and is good for my fitness. I'm really not sure what your beef about this is.
I'm a fan of Neal Lawson, and he strikes me as one of the very few people who properly understand that Labour and the Liberal Democrats have got to work together on the longer-term, Continental-style basis, if Britain isn't going to always revert to being a mainly Tory-ruled country. A lowpoint for the team around Starmer's leaderrhip so far, no question, and to such an extent that it also even calls into question, for me, some of their prior ways of dealing with the Corbynites faction, too.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
I did the school run this morning on an (e-) bike. It's three hilly miles to school, three hilly miles back. Two kids on the back. For this journey - which I make once or twice a day - the bike is no slower than the car door-to-door, takes up less roadspace (which in our constrained Cotswold town is a big deal), and uses less energy than even an electric car would (even before you take construction into account).
There are other particular issues around school runs; one is parents driving their kids to school risking the lives of other children, because they are in a rush, or angry, or frustrated, or whatever.
Collisions are surprisingly common, and drop-off restrictions are hardly ever enforced, which does not work in a road culture of breaking the law where the driver can get away with it.
You're telling me. The yellow zig-zags outside Junior's primary school are regularly occupied by up to three large cars owned by parents who can't be bothered to drive a further 100m. Frequently - this morning, for example - they leave the engine running. Diesel exhaust fumes just where kids are queueing for the school gate. Sigh.
I've spoken to the school. They say they've tried but can't do anything. I've spoken to the police. They say "the drivers tell us to 'do one', suggest you ask the council". I've spoken to the council. They say "it's not up to us, talk to the police". I've tried to speak to the parents themselves but they don't give a crap, and given that they're uniformly from a permanent traveller camp which had an armed police raid last year for a murder investigation, I'm loth to push that too far.
I think I've identified a way through (persuade the council to put a TRO on the yellow zigzags and then the council wardens can enforce it), but ye gods, it would be so much easier if people could just act like human beings.
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
For many members of the ruling elite, it is now clear that Mr. Putin has ceased to be the guarantor of stability he was for so long. A new situation is quickly emerging and what happens next is impossible to know. But it would be prudent, and not just for Russians, to start preparing for what will come after him.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
I did the school run this morning on an (e-) bike. It's three hilly miles to school, three hilly miles back. Two kids on the back. For this journey - which I make once or twice a day - the bike is no slower than the car door-to-door, takes up less roadspace (which in our constrained Cotswold town is a big deal), and uses less energy than even an electric car would (even before you take construction into account).
There are other particular issues around school runs; one is parents driving their kids to school risking the lives of other children, because they are in a rush, or angry, or frustrated, or whatever.
Collisions are surprisingly common, and drop-off restrictions are hardly ever enforced, which does not work in a road culture of breaking the law where the driver can get away with it.
In defence of parents who drive their kids to school: in most circumstances it is not because parents are lazy or can't get up early enough, it is because parents have to go to work - with 9 o'clock starts typical - but primary schools want parents to bring kids to school and don't want them before, say, 8.45. Parents simply don't have the slack in their day to walk home before heading into work.
To be clear, though, this doesn't excuse parking like a dick.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
I suspect he was thinking of bicycles as well as EVs.
Yes, the anti-car obsession of some is remarkably consistent, isn't it? Any excuse to get people out of their vehicles, even when its not justified.
If you have clean energy supplies then riding your bicycle is no better for emissions than EVs.
Time is running out on "climate" being a reason to be hysterically anti-car. Thank goodness.
But bicycle use does have the advantage over EVs of reducing obesity, which is the bit you were questioning. And they also cause less noise and road wear, which were two of his other points.
Your knee-jerk anti-cycling stance is, frankly, a bit weird.
Though cycling from rural areas and risking your life on abike on British roads are big drawbacks.
My wife was quite relieved when, as a consequence of me losing control of my balance, I stopped riding my bike. Next purchase for me is an electric wheelchair or similar.
My mobility has worsened this last year with several balance issues which rules out my bike
Indeed I may need to follow you @OldKingCole, though I know you have had far more complications than myself
You can get quite excellent adult trikes these days, which are great for folk with balance issues. Electric ones too, though of course they cost a fair bit more. Mission and Van Raam are a couple of good suppliers, but I think there are others.
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
“It’s that simple”. The siren call of the right! FFS how many of these rightist “simple” deterrent solutions actually work? You think, for example, that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder? If so I’ve some illuminating statistics for you from Texas.
People hope and think they won’t get caught, that the bad consequences won’t happen to them. Like most smokers think they’re the ones who won’t get cancer. The idea that this hare brained scheme deterrent scheme will work, “the minute” it starts, is hopelessly wishful thinking.
Using Texas as an example for what would happen if we had the death penalty is like using the US as an example of what would happen if we privatised healthcare delivery.
It is impossible on this board to give an example without someone stretching it to breaking point. The point is that the death penalty is not, despite protestations to the contrary on the right, a proven deterrent to murder. Even the US DoJ has concluded that "...there is little empirical evidence in favor of the deterrence hypothesis."(1). Similarly, crass assertions that Rwanda flights will stop boats "the minute" they start is an assertion without evidence.(2) All we have is the results of similar attempts at deterrence, none of which have very conclusive results.
Australia is comprehensive evidence that (2) works, so long as all boat arrivals are immediately put on a flight.
Do not pass go, do not speak to a lawyer, do not have a hearing or attend a court, do not pay any regard to their story.
Virtually as soon as Australia did (2) the boat crossings stopped.
In any system it is certainty and consistency that matters.
I weep. I really do. You never bother to read anything do you? On a webpage the blue things are "links" and the one I posted provided evidence rebutting that very point. There is no evidence the will work here, as confirmed by the Oxford paper I linked to. It states in respect of the Australian scheme (and remember that we are not Australian, we are British, a vastly different thing) -
"...it cannot be inferred from these statistics that Australia’s offshoring policy is wholly or principally responsible for the marked fall in unauthorised maritime arrivals. This is because that policy also coincided with several other enforcement policies, most notably the policies of boat ‘turnbacks’ and boat ‘takebacks’. Turnbacks entailed the interception of boats at sea, and their return to just outside the territorial waters of their country of departure. Takebacks entailed Australia returning people to their country of departure via sea or air transfers. Both of these policies require co-operation with countries of departure, with Australia cooperating with Indonesia on boat turnbacks, and Sri Lanka and Vietnam on takebacks...."
Try reading stuff other than your dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged and you might actually lean something
Yes, but turnbacks worked for the very few boats intercepted (the numbers collapsed) in part because of the policy of transferring too.
Facing a choice of being transferred to Nauru/PNG or going back to point of origin, people decided they'd rather be turned back. The number of turnbacks has been a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people going across pre-Nauru/PNG. Instead of over 20,000 people attempting the journey its been below 100.
Prior to their implementing this system many people were drowning in Australia's water as tens of thousands were making the journey and not all survived. Since implementing this system, nobody has drowned and numbers attempting the journey collapsed from tens of thousands to just tens.
The system has worked.
The UK is never going to turn back boats in the Channel.
Once you accept that then we can all start looking for other solutions.
The main one being helping to make the origin counties attractive places to be so that there is no incentive to come to the UK, or anywhere else. But that of course is beyond the timeframe of a PB thread or Daily Mail headline.
The UK doesn't need to though, if people know they will be sent elsewhere if they make the journey then they won't make the journey in the first place. The number of turnbacks in Australian waters have been utterly negligible as fewer than 100 people a year are even attempting the journey, as opposed to tens of thousands a year in the past.
Making the origin countries attractive places to be makes the UK more attractive, not less. Development vastly increases the desire for migration, it doesn't reduce it.
Really? How many middle class German loss adjusters are queuing up on the beaches of Calais ready to come over here by cover of night in a small boat?
You are sounding quite Farage-y. There is a subset of people who want to come here for economic reasons of course there is but family and own country ties are quite strong and hence we don't have the millions or billions on their way here.
That stealing is illegal in the UK hasn't curtailed occurrences of theft.
Its not Farage-y because I believe in migration. I encourage it. I don't want people dying while doing the journey though. Germans funnily enough can afford a plane ticket or a safe ferry ticket to get here rather than travelling here on an inflatable dinghy. A far higher proportion of Germans than Ethiopians travel to the UK.
Again it's your timeframe that's gone to cock. The aim is to make eg Mali like Germany. That will take time, but not necessarily a crazy amount. How many South Koreans are floating over on flimsy boats overnight from Calais?
The aim? You talk as if making Mali become like Germany were somehow within our control.
If we have this transformative capability, perhaps we should demonstrate it by making some of the deprived parts of England like Germany.
In TOPPINGs mind the way to stop illegal immigration is to economically transform Africa, but we can't get people riding bikes because obesity is a natural fact of the world.
It is wilful do-gooding liberal stupidity of the grossest kind
It is perfectly understandable that the concept of decadal change of the type that has seen societies and countries change dramatically over time eludes some people and hence their lashing out because it is all a bit too much for their smallish minds.
That is not to say that such change can't and won't happen.
This is the problem when you surround yourself with and pander to audiences such as those of The Spectator. Not only do you easily identify what they want to read, you in so doing gradually (or not so gradually) assume their values also.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
I did the school run this morning on an (e-) bike. It's three hilly miles to school, three hilly miles back. Two kids on the back. For this journey - which I make once or twice a day - the bike is no slower than the car door-to-door, takes up less roadspace (which in our constrained Cotswold town is a big deal), and uses less energy than even an electric car would (even before you take construction into account).
There are other particular issues around school runs; one is parents driving their kids to school risking the lives of other children, because they are in a rush, or angry, or frustrated, or whatever.
Collisions are surprisingly common, and drop-off restrictions are hardly ever enforced, which does not work in a road culture of breaking the law where the driver can get away with it.
Driving kids to school doesn't risk the life of anyone. Its perfectly safe and appropriate to do so.
I'm not going to have my kids ride their bikes or walk the 4.8 miles to their school, nor do I have the time to do so either.
Never in my life have I seen a collision near a school either, which is remarkable considering how "common" you think they are.
And our kids school has nobody breaking drop-off restrictions either. Possibly assisted by the presence of a lollipod lady outside the school and the Head Teacher always stands by the gates too to welcome the children and I've little doubt she'd speak to anyone who broke the drop-off restrictions not that it happens.
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
That's the issue though isn't it. What are the real-world solutions?
There's zero evidence that Rwanda for example a) can ever be implemented and b) would prove any sort of deterrent to people who are willing to take a chance on being drunk and sell themselves into slavery for the chance to get to Britain.
I favour an approach* that makes it hard/impossible/unprofitable to smuggle people in but accept that even that might not work.
(* Such an approach would include: incentives to shop rogue employers, a 'work to citizenship' scheme, compulsory ID cards, legalising/taxing/controlling recreational drugs, massively more investment put into processing asylum seekers quickly, closer cooperation with France and other European countries.)
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
I agree with your overall point but South Africa is a rather bad example, given how much apartheid screwed the country. Basically abandoning policing in 90% of the country just allowed criminal cultures to exponentially magnify.
But South Africa had a huge advantage as well. Good infrastructure. Middle income. Decent education. But it’s turning into a disaster zone
Mali has a GDP per capita of $800, Germany has a GDP per capita of $51,000
It will take a century (bar black swans and AI) to turn Mali into Germany; it is quite possibly not do-able (I’d say probably). We need a solution that is more than feeble virtue signalling that makes a middle class liberal feel good
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
Oh are you saying that there is something intrinsic to Mali and South Africa that is somehow preventing them from developing into first world countries? What would that be and what are the "real world solutions"?
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
I agree with your overall point but South Africa is a rather bad example, given how much apartheid screwed the country. Basically abandoning policing in 90% of the country just allowed criminal cultures to exponentially magnify.
Steady on. Next you'll be suggesting reparations.
Still at least we got the concentration camp out of our time there so not all a waste of time.
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
That's the issue though isn't it. What are the real-world solutions?
There's zero evidence that Rwanda for example a) can ever be implemented and b) would prove any sort of deterrent to people who are willing to take a chance on being drunk and sell themselves into slavery for the chance to get to Britain.
I favour an approach* that makes it hard/impossible/unprofitable to smuggle people in but accept that even that might not work.
(* Such an approach would include: incentives to shop rogue employers, a 'work to citizenship' scheme, compulsory ID cards, legalising/taxing/controlling recreational drugs, massively more investment put into processing asylum seekers quickly, closer cooperation with France and other European countries.)
I favour something like Rwanda, but it needs a government with cullions of steel to see off the whining liberals
I am not alone
“Denmark, Greece and Austria, supported by the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Hungary, want the EU to copy the Rwanda policy.”
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
“It’s that simple”. The siren call of the right! FFS how many of these rightist “simple” deterrent solutions actually work? You think, for example, that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder? If so I’ve some illuminating statistics for you from Texas.
People hope and think they won’t get caught, that the bad consequences won’t happen to them. Like most smokers think they’re the ones who won’t get cancer. The idea that this hare brained scheme deterrent scheme will work, “the minute” it starts, is hopelessly wishful thinking.
Using Texas as an example for what would happen if we had the death penalty is like using the US as an example of what would happen if we privatised healthcare delivery.
It is impossible on this board to give an example without someone stretching it to breaking point. The point is that the death penalty is not, despite protestations to the contrary on the right, a proven deterrent to murder. Even the US DoJ has concluded that "...there is little empirical evidence in favor of the deterrence hypothesis."(1). Similarly, crass assertions that Rwanda flights will stop boats "the minute" they start is an assertion without evidence.(2) All we have is the results of similar attempts at deterrence, none of which have very conclusive results.
Australia is comprehensive evidence that (2) works, so long as all boat arrivals are immediately put on a flight.
Do not pass go, do not speak to a lawyer, do not have a hearing or attend a court, do not pay any regard to their story.
Virtually as soon as Australia did (2) the boat crossings stopped.
In any system it is certainty and consistency that matters.
I weep. I really do. You never bother to read anything do you? On a webpage the blue things are "links" and the one I posted provided evidence rebutting that very point. There is no evidence the will work here, as confirmed by the Oxford paper I linked to. It states in respect of the Australian scheme (and remember that we are not Australian, we are British, a vastly different thing) -
"...it cannot be inferred from these statistics that Australia’s offshoring policy is wholly or principally responsible for the marked fall in unauthorised maritime arrivals. This is because that policy also coincided with several other enforcement policies, most notably the policies of boat ‘turnbacks’ and boat ‘takebacks’. Turnbacks entailed the interception of boats at sea, and their return to just outside the territorial waters of their country of departure. Takebacks entailed Australia returning people to their country of departure via sea or air transfers. Both of these policies require co-operation with countries of departure, with Australia cooperating with Indonesia on boat turnbacks, and Sri Lanka and Vietnam on takebacks...."
Try reading stuff other than your dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged and you might actually lean something
Yes, but turnbacks worked for the very few boats intercepted (the numbers collapsed) in part because of the policy of transferring too.
Facing a choice of being transferred to Nauru/PNG or going back to point of origin, people decided they'd rather be turned back. The number of turnbacks has been a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people going across pre-Nauru/PNG. Instead of over 20,000 people attempting the journey its been below 100.
Prior to their implementing this system many people were drowning in Australia's water as tens of thousands were making the journey and not all survived. Since implementing this system, nobody has drowned and numbers attempting the journey collapsed from tens of thousands to just tens.
The system has worked.
The UK is never going to turn back boats in the Channel.
Once you accept that then we can all start looking for other solutions.
The main one being helping to make the origin counties attractive places to be so that there is no incentive to come to the UK, or anywhere else. But that of course is beyond the timeframe of a PB thread or Daily Mail headline.
The UK doesn't need to though, if people know they will be sent elsewhere if they make the journey then they won't make the journey in the first place. The number of turnbacks in Australian waters have been utterly negligible as fewer than 100 people a year are even attempting the journey, as opposed to tens of thousands a year in the past.
Making the origin countries attractive places to be makes the UK more attractive, not less. Development vastly increases the desire for migration, it doesn't reduce it.
Really? How many middle class German loss adjusters are queuing up on the beaches of Calais ready to come over here by cover of night in a small boat?
You are sounding quite Farage-y. There is a subset of people who want to come here for economic reasons of course there is but family and own country ties are quite strong and hence we don't have the millions or billions on their way here.
That stealing is illegal in the UK hasn't curtailed occurrences of theft.
Its not Farage-y because I believe in migration. I encourage it. I don't want people dying while doing the journey though. Germans funnily enough can afford a plane ticket or a safe ferry ticket to get here rather than travelling here on an inflatable dinghy. A far higher proportion of Germans than Ethiopians travel to the UK.
Again it's your timeframe that's gone to cock. The aim is to make eg Mali like Germany. That will take time, but not necessarily a crazy amount. How many South Koreans are floating over on flimsy boats overnight from Calais?
The aim? You talk as if making Mali become like Germany were somehow within our control.
If we have this transformative capability, perhaps we should demonstrate it by making some of the deprived parts of England like Germany.
In TOPPINGs mind the way to stop illegal immigration is to economically transform Africa, but we can't get people riding bikes because obesity is a natural fact of the world.
It is wilful do-gooding liberal stupidity of the grossest kind
It is perfectly understandable that the concept of decadal change of the type that has seen societies and countries change dramatically over time eludes some people and hence their lashing out because it is all a bit too much for their smallish minds.
That is not to say that such change can't and won't happen.
This is the problem when you surround yourself with and pander to audiences such as those of The Spectator. Not only do you easily identify what they want to read, you in so doing gradually (or not so gradually) assume their values also.
So, is this going to be a thing now? Those of us who have never felt the need to join Twitter will no longer be able to view a tweet, even if linked by someone who is? That's disappointing.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
I did the school run this morning on an (e-) bike. It's three hilly miles to school, three hilly miles back. Two kids on the back. For this journey - which I make once or twice a day - the bike is no slower than the car door-to-door, takes up less roadspace (which in our constrained Cotswold town is a big deal), and uses less energy than even an electric car would (even before you take construction into account).
There are other particular issues around school runs; one is parents driving their kids to school risking the lives of other children, because they are in a rush, or angry, or frustrated, or whatever.
Collisions are surprisingly common, and drop-off restrictions are hardly ever enforced, which does not work in a road culture of breaking the law where the driver can get away with it.
Driving kids to school doesn't risk the life of anyone. Its perfectly safe and appropriate to do so.
I'm not going to have my kids ride their bikes or walk the 4.8 miles to their school, nor do I have the time to do so either.
Never in my life have I seen a collision near a school either, which is remarkable considering how "common" you think they are.
And our kids school has nobody breaking drop-off restrictions either. Possibly assisted by the presence of a lollipod lady outside the school and the Head Teacher always stands by the gates too to welcome the children and I've little doubt she'd speak to anyone who broke the drop-off restrictions not that it happens.
Driving kids to school is perfectly acceptable and doesn't introduce any unacceptable levels of danger into anyone's life. But parking like a dick is not acceptable and does introduce danger into people's lives - like the drivers who park across so much of the pavement that people are forced into the road.
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
Oh are you saying that there is something intrinsic to Mali and South Africa that is somehow preventing them from developing into first world countries? What would that be and what are the "real world solutions"?
The point of the Rwanda policy is deterrence. People don't get on channel boats because they want to make a life in Rwanda; they do it to make a life in the UK. The minute that regular flights to Rwanda start, boats stop. It's really that simple.
“It’s that simple”. The siren call of the right! FFS how many of these rightist “simple” deterrent solutions actually work? You think, for example, that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder? If so I’ve some illuminating statistics for you from Texas.
People hope and think they won’t get caught, that the bad consequences won’t happen to them. Like most smokers think they’re the ones who won’t get cancer. The idea that this hare brained scheme deterrent scheme will work, “the minute” it starts, is hopelessly wishful thinking.
Using Texas as an example for what would happen if we had the death penalty is like using the US as an example of what would happen if we privatised healthcare delivery.
It is impossible on this board to give an example without someone stretching it to breaking point. The point is that the death penalty is not, despite protestations to the contrary on the right, a proven deterrent to murder. Even the US DoJ has concluded that "...there is little empirical evidence in favor of the deterrence hypothesis."(1). Similarly, crass assertions that Rwanda flights will stop boats "the minute" they start is an assertion without evidence.(2) All we have is the results of similar attempts at deterrence, none of which have very conclusive results.
Australia is comprehensive evidence that (2) works, so long as all boat arrivals are immediately put on a flight.
Do not pass go, do not speak to a lawyer, do not have a hearing or attend a court, do not pay any regard to their story.
Virtually as soon as Australia did (2) the boat crossings stopped.
In any system it is certainty and consistency that matters.
I weep. I really do. You never bother to read anything do you? On a webpage the blue things are "links" and the one I posted provided evidence rebutting that very point. There is no evidence the will work here, as confirmed by the Oxford paper I linked to. It states in respect of the Australian scheme (and remember that we are not Australian, we are British, a vastly different thing) -
"...it cannot be inferred from these statistics that Australia’s offshoring policy is wholly or principally responsible for the marked fall in unauthorised maritime arrivals. This is because that policy also coincided with several other enforcement policies, most notably the policies of boat ‘turnbacks’ and boat ‘takebacks’. Turnbacks entailed the interception of boats at sea, and their return to just outside the territorial waters of their country of departure. Takebacks entailed Australia returning people to their country of departure via sea or air transfers. Both of these policies require co-operation with countries of departure, with Australia cooperating with Indonesia on boat turnbacks, and Sri Lanka and Vietnam on takebacks...."
Try reading stuff other than your dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged and you might actually lean something
Yes, but turnbacks worked for the very few boats intercepted (the numbers collapsed) in part because of the policy of transferring too.
Facing a choice of being transferred to Nauru/PNG or going back to point of origin, people decided they'd rather be turned back. The number of turnbacks has been a tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people going across pre-Nauru/PNG. Instead of over 20,000 people attempting the journey its been below 100.
Prior to their implementing this system many people were drowning in Australia's water as tens of thousands were making the journey and not all survived. Since implementing this system, nobody has drowned and numbers attempting the journey collapsed from tens of thousands to just tens.
The system has worked.
The UK is never going to turn back boats in the Channel.
Once you accept that then we can all start looking for other solutions.
The main one being helping to make the origin counties attractive places to be so that there is no incentive to come to the UK, or anywhere else. But that of course is beyond the timeframe of a PB thread or Daily Mail headline.
The UK doesn't need to though, if people know they will be sent elsewhere if they make the journey then they won't make the journey in the first place. The number of turnbacks in Australian waters have been utterly negligible as fewer than 100 people a year are even attempting the journey, as opposed to tens of thousands a year in the past.
Making the origin countries attractive places to be makes the UK more attractive, not less. Development vastly increases the desire for migration, it doesn't reduce it.
Really? How many middle class German loss adjusters are queuing up on the beaches of Calais ready to come over here by cover of night in a small boat?
You are sounding quite Farage-y. There is a subset of people who want to come here for economic reasons of course there is but family and own country ties are quite strong and hence we don't have the millions or billions on their way here.
That stealing is illegal in the UK hasn't curtailed occurrences of theft.
Its not Farage-y because I believe in migration. I encourage it. I don't want people dying while doing the journey though. Germans funnily enough can afford a plane ticket or a safe ferry ticket to get here rather than travelling here on an inflatable dinghy. A far higher proportion of Germans than Ethiopians travel to the UK.
Again it's your timeframe that's gone to cock. The aim is to make eg Mali like Germany. That will take time, but not necessarily a crazy amount. How many South Koreans are floating over on flimsy boats overnight from Calais?
The aim? You talk as if making Mali become like Germany were somehow within our control.
If we have this transformative capability, perhaps we should demonstrate it by making some of the deprived parts of England like Germany.
In TOPPINGs mind the way to stop illegal immigration is to economically transform Africa, but we can't get people riding bikes because obesity is a natural fact of the world.
It is wilful do-gooding liberal stupidity of the grossest kind
It is perfectly understandable that the concept of decadal change of the type that has seen societies and countries change dramatically over time eludes some people and hence their lashing out because it is all a bit too much for their smallish minds.
That is not to say that such change can't and won't happen.
This is the problem when you surround yourself with and pander to audiences such as those of The Spectator. Not only do you easily identify what they want to read, you in so doing gradually (or not so gradually) assume their values also.
Lol
I did say smallish. While the larger concepts may be tricky to understand once you've had a few sherbets and get behind your word processor you can turn out some very entertaining prose so there is that.
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
I agree with your overall point but South Africa is a rather bad example, given how much apartheid screwed the country. Basically abandoning policing in 90% of the country just allowed criminal cultures to exponentially magnify.
But South Africa had a huge advantage as well. Good infrastructure. Middle income. Decent education. But it’s turning into a disaster zone
Mali has a GDP per capita of $800, Germany has a GDP per capita of $51,000
It will take a century (bar black swans and AI) to turn Mali into Germany; it is quite possibly not do-able (I’d say probably). We need a solution that is more than feeble virtue signalling that makes a middle class liberal feel good
But we have both black swans and AI (as you never tire of telling us) so there is no issue, right?
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
I did the school run this morning on an (e-) bike. It's three hilly miles to school, three hilly miles back. Two kids on the back. For this journey - which I make once or twice a day - the bike is no slower than the car door-to-door, takes up less roadspace (which in our constrained Cotswold town is a big deal), and uses less energy than even an electric car would (even before you take construction into account).
There are other particular issues around school runs; one is parents driving their kids to school risking the lives of other children, because they are in a rush, or angry, or frustrated, or whatever.
Collisions are surprisingly common, and drop-off restrictions are hardly ever enforced, which does not work in a road culture of breaking the law where the driver can get away with it.
Driving kids to school doesn't risk the life of anyone. Its perfectly safe and appropriate to do so.
I'm not going to have my kids ride their bikes or walk the 4.8 miles to their school, nor do I have the time to do so either.
Never in my life have I seen a collision near a school either, which is remarkable considering how "common" you think they are.
And our kids school has nobody breaking drop-off restrictions either. Possibly assisted by the presence of a lollipod lady outside the school and the Head Teacher always stands by the gates too to welcome the children and I've little doubt she'd speak to anyone who broke the drop-off restrictions not that it happens.
Driving kids to school is perfectly acceptable and doesn't introduce any unacceptable levels of danger into anyone's life. But parking like a dick is not acceptable and does introduce danger into people's lives - like the drivers who park across so much of the pavement that people are forced into the road.
I'm not putting you in that bracket, of course!
I can entirely agree with that.
Thankfully none of that happens outside my kids school.
Now possibly I'm just lucky, possibly its the school having staff outside which discourages the behaviour, or possibly its just that the school has good children and parents who obey the rules.
The latter of course is part of the reason I would rather drive 5 miles each way to take my kids to that school instead of transferring the kids to a school that is within walking distance but perhaps isn't as good as their school they're in currently.
Their education being as good as it can be is more important than mode of transportation, and better to drive further to a good school than dump them in a crappy one that will provide childcare but less good education.
I literally bought a flat to house a refugee family but whatever.
Well done! You are one of the good ones. There is a point to this - lots of people want the country to take many hundreds of thousands of refugees without explaining how it will work with housing, schools, hospitals etc. Many suspect that its a bit like nimbyism for houses. They want others to host, not them.
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
Oh are you saying that there is something intrinsic to Mali and South Africa that is somehow preventing them from developing into first world countries? What would that be and what are the "real world solutions"?
Rwanda. But actually DO IT
How is that working out for you? The Conservative Party with an 80-seat majority can't do it. Who else did you have in mind to actually DO IT?
So, is this going to be a thing now? Those of us who have never felt the need to join Twitter will no longer be able to view a tweet, even if linked by someone who is? That's disappointing.
It's creating more opportunities for an alternative to twitter, because it's creating more incentives for people to find a new platform that doesn't make it so hard for people to see/share what you have to say.
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
That's the issue though isn't it. What are the real-world solutions?
There's zero evidence that Rwanda for example a) can ever be implemented and b) would prove any sort of deterrent to people who are willing to take a chance on being drunk and sell themselves into slavery for the chance to get to Britain.
I favour an approach* that makes it hard/impossible/unprofitable to smuggle people in but accept that even that might not work.
(* Such an approach would include: incentives to shop rogue employers, a 'work to citizenship' scheme, compulsory ID cards, legalising/taxing/controlling recreational drugs, massively more investment put into processing asylum seekers quickly, closer cooperation with France and other European countries.)
I favour something like Rwanda, but it needs a government with cullions of steel to see off the whining liberals
I am not alone
“Denmark, Greece and Austria, supported by the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Hungary, want the EU to copy the Rwanda policy.”
As a self-confessed bleeding-heart liberal I cannot countenance packing children or adults who may be genuine refugees off to Rwanda.
But more significantly for this argument what makes you think any potential refugees are going to give a moment's thought the the possibility that they may end up in Rwanda? Do they currently consider they may get drowned, deported, or sold into slavery?
Rwanda is a sop to those who just feel 'something must be done' but there is no evidence it would prove a disincentive to potential boat immigrants.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
That's the issue though isn't it. What are the real-world solutions?
There's zero evidence that Rwanda for example a) can ever be implemented and b) would prove any sort of deterrent to people who are willing to take a chance on being drunk and sell themselves into slavery for the chance to get to Britain.
I favour an approach* that makes it hard/impossible/unprofitable to smuggle people in but accept that even that might not work.
(* Such an approach would include: incentives to shop rogue employers, a 'work to citizenship' scheme, compulsory ID cards, legalising/taxing/controlling recreational drugs, massively more investment put into processing asylum seekers quickly, closer cooperation with France and other European countries.)
I favour something like Rwanda, but it needs a government with cullions of steel to see off the whining liberals
I am not alone
“Denmark, Greece and Austria, supported by the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Hungary, want the EU to copy the Rwanda policy.”
As a self-confessed bleeding-heart liberal I cannot countenance packing children or adults who may be genuine refugees off to Rwanda.
But more significantly for this argument what makes you think any potential refugees are going to give a moment's thought the the possibility that they may end up in Rwanda? Do they currently consider they may get drowned, deported, or sold into slavery?
Rwanda is a sop to those who just feel 'something must be done' but there is no evidence it would prove a disincentive to potential boat immigrants.
That's crazy talk. Ever since robbery was criminalised there have been no instance of theft so it's bound to work.
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
"Prof. Eliot Jacobson @EliotJacobson It finally happened, breaking 5 sigma, the same statistical threshold physicists used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
At 2,700,000 km² below the 1991-2020 mean, Antarctic sea ice extent was 5.14σ below the mean, roughly a 1-in-7,400,000 chance."
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
Can you imagine Manchester or Birmingham banning all public transport after 7pm?
"In the southern city of Marseille, public demonstrations have been banned today after last night's protests across France. All public transport in Marseille, the country's second-largest city, will also stop as of 19:00 local time tonight, according to local authorities."
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
I agree with your overall point but South Africa is a rather bad example, given how much apartheid screwed the country. Basically abandoning policing in 90% of the country just allowed criminal cultures to exponentially magnify.
But South Africa had a huge advantage as well. Good infrastructure. Middle income. Decent education. But it’s turning into a disaster zone
Mali has a GDP per capita of $800, Germany has a GDP per capita of $51,000
It will take a century (bar black swans and AI) to turn Mali into Germany; it is quite possibly not do-able (I’d say probably). We need a solution that is more than feeble virtue signalling that makes a middle class liberal feel good
But we have both black swans and AI (as you never tire of telling us) so there is no issue, right?
Actually, and to move you on from your petulant whingeing, there IS a chance AI can fix this. The problem in so many African countries is corruption/poor government. Put GPT9 in charge, instead, and bingo. Then Mali could become Germany or at least Portugal
Trouble will be persuading corrupt elites to relinquish power, and we also need AI to hurry up and achieve superpowers
AI could also solve climate change (or at least greatly ameliorate it). Meanwhile things like obesity are about to be solved by new drugs (taking all that pressure off health systems)
It is a fascinating moment in human history. We seem to face impossible global problems - yet at the same time we are on the brink of enormous technological progress which could solve virtually all of them. Cross your fingers
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
Won't someone think of the Scott_xp?
It's not really very hard to cut and paste the text and/or image from a tweet as well as the link.
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
Oh are you saying that there is something intrinsic to Mali and South Africa that is somehow preventing them from developing into first world countries? What would that be and what are the "real world solutions"?
Rwanda. But actually DO IT
How is that working out for you? The Conservative Party with an 80-seat majority can't do it. Who else did you have in mind to actually DO IT?
I literally bought a flat to house a refugee family but whatever.
Well done! You are one of the good ones. There is a point to this - lots of people want the country to take many hundreds of thousands of refugees without explaining how it will work with housing, schools, hospitals etc. Many suspect that its a bit like nimbyism for houses. They want others to host, not them.
The number of refugees being talked about here is small compared to legal migration, which also requires housing, schools, hospitals etc. Boat people are not the main cause of any issues with housing, schools, hospitals.
Can you imagine Manchester or Birmingham banning all public transport after 7pm?
"In the southern city of Marseille, public demonstrations have been banned today after last night's protests across France. All public transport in Marseille, the country's second-largest city, will also stop as of 19:00 local time tonight, according to local authorities."
I literally bought a flat to house a refugee family but whatever.
Well done! You are one of the good ones. There is a point to this - lots of people want the country to take many hundreds of thousands of refugees without explaining how it will work with housing, schools, hospitals etc. Many suspect that its a bit like nimbyism for houses. They want others to host, not them.
The number of refugees being talked about here is small compared to legal migration, which also requires housing, schools, hospitals etc. Boat people are not the main cause of any issues with housing, schools, hospitals.
It's quite tricky to legally migrate here - so you'd have thought the legal migrants would at least be wiping their own face economically speaking.
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
That's the issue though isn't it. What are the real-world solutions?
There's zero evidence that Rwanda for example a) can ever be implemented and b) would prove any sort of deterrent to people who are willing to take a chance on being drunk and sell themselves into slavery for the chance to get to Britain.
I favour an approach* that makes it hard/impossible/unprofitable to smuggle people in but accept that even that might not work.
(* Such an approach would include: incentives to shop rogue employers, a 'work to citizenship' scheme, compulsory ID cards, legalising/taxing/controlling recreational drugs, massively more investment put into processing asylum seekers quickly, closer cooperation with France and other European countries.)
I favour something like Rwanda, but it needs a government with cullions of steel to see off the whining liberals
I am not alone
“Denmark, Greece and Austria, supported by the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Hungary, want the EU to copy the Rwanda policy.”
As a self-confessed bleeding-heart liberal I cannot countenance packing children or adults who may be genuine refugees off to Rwanda.
But more significantly for this argument what makes you think any potential refugees are going to give a moment's thought the the possibility that they may end up in Rwanda? Do they currently consider they may get drowned, deported, or sold into slavery?
Rwanda is a sop to those who just feel 'something must be done' but there is no evidence it would prove a disincentive to potential boat immigrants.
Why, then, do you think the governments of Italy, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and Austria are urging the EU to adopt a Rwanda-style policy?
I literally bought a flat to house a refugee family but whatever.
Well done! You are one of the good ones. There is a point to this - lots of people want the country to take many hundreds of thousands of refugees without explaining how it will work with housing, schools, hospitals etc. Many suspect that its a bit like nimbyism for houses. They want others to host, not them.
The number of refugees being talked about here is small compared to legal migration, which also requires housing, schools, hospitals etc. Boat people are not the main cause of any issues with housing, schools, hospitals.
I don't disagree. We are rubbish at dealing with asylum claims, and need to do better. We also need to address a growing population and the demands of that. Realistically motivated people, the ones who are motivated enough to try for a better life, are the kind of people we ought to want. I don't think many of them are coming to get the benefits, as is so often characterised (such as that chap on last weeks QT).
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
That's the issue though isn't it. What are the real-world solutions?
There's zero evidence that Rwanda for example a) can ever be implemented and b) would prove any sort of deterrent to people who are willing to take a chance on being drunk and sell themselves into slavery for the chance to get to Britain.
I favour an approach* that makes it hard/impossible/unprofitable to smuggle people in but accept that even that might not work.
(* Such an approach would include: incentives to shop rogue employers, a 'work to citizenship' scheme, compulsory ID cards, legalising/taxing/controlling recreational drugs, massively more investment put into processing asylum seekers quickly, closer cooperation with France and other European countries.)
I favour something like Rwanda, but it needs a government with cullions of steel to see off the whining liberals
I am not alone
“Denmark, Greece and Austria, supported by the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Hungary, want the EU to copy the Rwanda policy.”
As a self-confessed bleeding-heart liberal I cannot countenance packing children or adults who may be genuine refugees off to Rwanda.
But more significantly for this argument what makes you think any potential refugees are going to give a moment's thought the the possibility that they may end up in Rwanda? Do they currently consider they may get drowned, deported, or sold into slavery?
Rwanda is a sop to those who just feel 'something must be done' but there is no evidence it would prove a disincentive to potential boat immigrants.
Why, then, do you think the governments of Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and Austria are urging the EU to adopt a Rwanda-style policy?
Same reason Sunak is: 'something must be done', panders to the base, by the time it's seen to be useless it won't matter (to Sunak).
What's wrong with my proposed solution? (Incentives to shop rogue employers, a 'work to citizenship' scheme, compulsory ID cards, legalising/taxing/controlling recreational drugs, massively more investment put into processing asylum seekers quickly.)
@Leon Have you ever been to Rwanda ? Maybe you should go there on a pb fact finding mission. A man of your means could probably afford the gorilla safari too - which is one of the big draws.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
I did the school run this morning on an (e-) bike. It's three hilly miles to school, three hilly miles back. Two kids on the back. For this journey - which I make once or twice a day - the bike is no slower than the car door-to-door, takes up less roadspace (which in our constrained Cotswold town is a big deal), and uses less energy than even an electric car would (even before you take construction into account).
There are other particular issues around school runs; one is parents driving their kids to school risking the lives of other children, because they are in a rush, or angry, or frustrated, or whatever.
Collisions are surprisingly common, and drop-off restrictions are hardly ever enforced, which does not work in a road culture of breaking the law where the driver can get away with it.
Driving kids to school doesn't risk the life of anyone. Its perfectly safe and appropriate to do so.
I'm not going to have my kids ride their bikes or walk the 4.8 miles to their school, nor do I have the time to do so either.
Never in my life have I seen a collision near a school either, which is remarkable considering how "common" you think they are.
And our kids school has nobody breaking drop-off restrictions either. Possibly assisted by the presence of a lollipod lady outside the school and the Head Teacher always stands by the gates too to welcome the children and I've little doubt she'd speak to anyone who broke the drop-off restrictions not that it happens.
Three people have been hit by cars at my son's school this year (fortunately no serious injuries; one - the only child hit - was taken to hospital, but discharged same day). School/council have now installed barriers to block vehicular access outside the school during pick-up and drop-off periods.
We do drive our son to school, but park about five minutes' walk away on a side street on other side of the main road (only 30mph with lollipop man supervising crossing) partly to reduce the scrum of vehicles outside the school and partly to avoid it.
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
I agree with your overall point but South Africa is a rather bad example, given how much apartheid screwed the country. Basically abandoning policing in 90% of the country just allowed criminal cultures to exponentially magnify.
But South Africa had a huge advantage as well. Good infrastructure. Middle income. Decent education. But it’s turning into a disaster zone
Mali has a GDP per capita of $800, Germany has a GDP per capita of $51,000
It will take a century (bar black swans and AI) to turn Mali into Germany; it is quite possibly not do-able (I’d say probably). We need a solution that is more than feeble virtue signalling that makes a middle class liberal feel good
But we have both black swans and AI (as you never tire of telling us) so there is no issue, right?
Actually, and to move you on from your petulant whingeing, there IS a chance AI can fix this. The problem in so many African countries is corruption/poor government. Put GPT9 in charge, instead, and bingo. Then Mali could become Germany or at least Portugal
Trouble will be persuading corrupt elites to relinquish power, and we also need AI to hurry up and achieve superpowers
AI could also solve climate change (or at least greatly ameliorate it). Meanwhile things like obesity are about to be solved by new drugs (taking all that pressure off health systems)
It is a fascinating moment in human history. We seem to face impossible global problems - yet at the same time we are on the brink of enormous technological progress which could solve virtually all of them. Cross your fingers
Your welcome.
We have finally managed to get to a point whereby you recognise your internal contradiction (I appreciate there are a few) of saying both a) there's no way Country X can do anything different because it's always been like that; and b) who knows what technology can do - the sky's the limit.
I won't rub it in but yes we'll cross our fingers because at a time of bleeding edge technological innovation I think if JC can put his shoulder to the wheel also we should be able to crack it in no time.
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
"Prof. Eliot Jacobson @EliotJacobson It finally happened, breaking 5 sigma, the same statistical threshold physicists used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
At 2,700,000 km² below the 1991-2020 mean, Antarctic sea ice extent was 5.14σ below the mean, roughly a 1-in-7,400,000 chance."
Antarctic Sea Ice is interesting. In earlier days on pb.com it was one of the things people used to point to so that they could ignore the massive declines in Arctic sea ice, as there was a small increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice at the time.
Climate scientists hypothesised, with considerable supporting evidence from climate models, that this was a consequence of the ozone hole over the Antarctic - this was modifying the winds over the south pole, which was changing heat transport, and so there was a modest increase in Antarctic sea ice despite global warming. The prediction was that, as the ozone hole recovered, the circulation would change back to normal, and Antarctica would feel the full force of the global warming trend in temperature.
Guess those climate scientists were right after all. Darn.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
In the long-term you may be right but b) implies (requires) all those things I suggested earlier including complusory ID cards. Draconian border control = draconian government.
@Leon Have you ever been to Rwanda ? Maybe you should go there on a pb fact finding mission. A man of your means could probably afford the gorilla safari too - which is one of the big draws.
I’d love to go. Got friends that have done the gorilla experience. They say it’s incredible. Top ten lifetime moment
However right now I have a ton of work. Enjoyable and remunerative but it means - for once - I’m having to rein in my wandering
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
I literally bought a flat to house a refugee family but whatever.
Well done! You are one of the good ones. There is a point to this - lots of people want the country to take many hundreds of thousands of refugees without explaining how it will work with housing, schools, hospitals etc. Many suspect that its a bit like nimbyism for houses. They want others to host, not them.
The number of refugees being talked about here is small compared to legal migration, which also requires housing, schools, hospitals etc. Boat people are not the main cause of any issues with housing, schools, hospitals.
It's partly visibility (we don't know how many people come in legitimately temporarily and just never leave, for example) but also that word "control". And the sense of having lost it, which is blooming scary.
And the hope that someone with sufficient testicular fortitude can restore order is attractive, especially if you think that it will restore order for your life to continue as it was.
It rarely works like that. For example, I would hate to be a bohemian journalist type with a record of publishing filth in current affairs magazines under a proper authoritarian government. But we all like to assume that the 2 am knock at the door will be for someone else.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
I agree with your overall point but South Africa is a rather bad example, given how much apartheid screwed the country. Basically abandoning policing in 90% of the country just allowed criminal cultures to exponentially magnify.
But South Africa had a huge advantage as well. Good infrastructure. Middle income. Decent education. But it’s turning into a disaster zone
Mali has a GDP per capita of $800, Germany has a GDP per capita of $51,000
It will take a century (bar black swans and AI) to turn Mali into Germany; it is quite possibly not do-able (I’d say probably). We need a solution that is more than feeble virtue signalling that makes a middle class liberal feel good
But we have both black swans and AI (as you never tire of telling us) so there is no issue, right?
Actually, and to move you on from your petulant whingeing, there IS a chance AI can fix this. The problem in so many African countries is corruption/poor government. Put GPT9 in charge, instead, and bingo. Then Mali could become Germany or at least Portugal
Trouble will be persuading corrupt elites to relinquish power, and we also need AI to hurry up and achieve superpowers
AI could also solve climate change (or at least greatly ameliorate it). Meanwhile things like obesity are about to be solved by new drugs (taking all that pressure off health systems)
It is a fascinating moment in human history. We seem to face impossible global problems - yet at the same time we are on the brink of enormous technological progress which could solve virtually all of them. Cross your fingers
How is AI going to solve or ameliorate climate change?
For many members of the ruling elite, it is now clear that Mr. Putin has ceased to be the guarantor of stability he was for so long. A new situation is quickly emerging and what happens next is impossible to know. But it would be prudent, and not just for Russians, to start preparing for what will come after him.
Prigozhin was spotted flying into St Petersburg in a helicopter, so the supposed crackdown on his organisation seems to be just PR to protect Putin’s image.
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
"Prof. Eliot Jacobson @EliotJacobson It finally happened, breaking 5 sigma, the same statistical threshold physicists used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
At 2,700,000 km² below the 1991-2020 mean, Antarctic sea ice extent was 5.14σ below the mean, roughly a 1-in-7,400,000 chance."
Antarctic Sea Ice is interesting. In earlier days on pb.com it was one of the things people used to point to so that they could ignore the massive declines in Arctic sea ice, as there was a small increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice at the time.
Climate scientists hypothesised, with considerable supporting evidence from climate models, that this was a consequence of the ozone hole over the Antarctic - this was modifying the winds over the south pole, which was changing heat transport, and so there was a modest increase in Antarctic sea ice despite global warming. The prediction was that, as the ozone hole recovered, the circulation would change back to normal, and Antarctica would feel the full force of the global warming trend in temperature.
Guess those climate scientists were right after all. Darn.
Pretty alarming stuff. However, to play devils advocate, what is the actual sea ice extent at the moment? I'm not for one moment suggesting a Lib Dem style abuse of data, and clearly a 5 sigma event is significant, but what is the total sea ice in antartica?
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
In the long-term you may be right but b) implies (requires) all those things I suggested earlier including complusory ID cards. Draconian border control = draconian government.
By draconian I don't mean those I mean armed patrols on beaches and coastguard vessels towing them back offshore.
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
"Prof. Eliot Jacobson @EliotJacobson It finally happened, breaking 5 sigma, the same statistical threshold physicists used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
At 2,700,000 km² below the 1991-2020 mean, Antarctic sea ice extent was 5.14σ below the mean, roughly a 1-in-7,400,000 chance."
Antarctic Sea Ice is interesting. In earlier days on pb.com it was one of the things people used to point to so that they could ignore the massive declines in Arctic sea ice, as there was a small increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice at the time.
Climate scientists hypothesised, with considerable supporting evidence from climate models, that this was a consequence of the ozone hole over the Antarctic - this was modifying the winds over the south pole, which was changing heat transport, and so there was a modest increase in Antarctic sea ice despite global warming. The prediction was that, as the ozone hole recovered, the circulation would change back to normal, and Antarctica would feel the full force of the global warming trend in temperature.
Guess those climate scientists were right after all. Darn.
The various climate graphs are quite alarming. Right now. It’s like the USS Enterprise when Scotty notes that “she cannae take it” as all the dials scream DANGER
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
Cutting the aid budget, and largely abandoning Africa to the influence of China or Wagner is hardly optimal policy in that context.
Why it is not like the aid budget has ever actually done much except line the pockets of corrupt officials, we have been giving aid for decades and those countries are still the shitholes they were when we first started.
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
"Prof. Eliot Jacobson @EliotJacobson It finally happened, breaking 5 sigma, the same statistical threshold physicists used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
At 2,700,000 km² below the 1991-2020 mean, Antarctic sea ice extent was 5.14σ below the mean, roughly a 1-in-7,400,000 chance."
Antarctic Sea Ice is interesting. In earlier days on pb.com it was one of the things people used to point to so that they could ignore the massive declines in Arctic sea ice, as there was a small increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice at the time.
Climate scientists hypothesised, with considerable supporting evidence from climate models, that this was a consequence of the ozone hole over the Antarctic - this was modifying the winds over the south pole, which was changing heat transport, and so there was a modest increase in Antarctic sea ice despite global warming. The prediction was that, as the ozone hole recovered, the circulation would change back to normal, and Antarctica would feel the full force of the global warming trend in temperature.
Guess those climate scientists were right after all. Darn.
Pretty alarming stuff. However, to play devils advocate, what is the actual sea ice extent at the moment? I'm not for one moment suggesting a Lib Dem style abuse of data, and clearly a 5 sigma event is significant, but what is the total sea ice in antartica?
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
I did the school run this morning on an (e-) bike. It's three hilly miles to school, three hilly miles back. Two kids on the back. For this journey - which I make once or twice a day - the bike is no slower than the car door-to-door, takes up less roadspace (which in our constrained Cotswold town is a big deal), and uses less energy than even an electric car would (even before you take construction into account).
There are other particular issues around school runs; one is parents driving their kids to school risking the lives of other children, because they are in a rush, or angry, or frustrated, or whatever.
Collisions are surprisingly common, and drop-off restrictions are hardly ever enforced, which does not work in a road culture of breaking the law where the driver can get away with it.
You're telling me. The yellow zig-zags outside Junior's primary school are regularly occupied by up to three large cars owned by parents who can't be bothered to drive a further 100m. Frequently - this morning, for example - they leave the engine running. Diesel exhaust fumes just where kids are queueing for the school gate. Sigh.
I've spoken to the school. They say they've tried but can't do anything. I've spoken to the police. They say "the drivers tell us to 'do one', suggest you ask the council". I've spoken to the council. They say "it's not up to us, talk to the police". I've tried to speak to the parents themselves but they don't give a crap, and given that they're uniformly from a permanent traveller camp which had an armed police raid last year for a murder investigation, I'm loth to push that too far.
I think I've identified a way through (persuade the council to put a TRO on the yellow zigzags and then the council wardens can enforce it), but ye gods, it would be so much easier if people could just act like human beings.
That's shocking. My thoughts:
Police can ticket for Obstruction if happening (which includes the road and the pavement), or even for driving on the pavement if that is happening - which can be tricky to make stick. Why are your policemen being intimidated?
If parents are misbehaving to the police, can't they be done for a public order offence like a town-centre drunk? Sounds like a lot of paperwork.
For a Council to enforce they probably need a double yellow with pavement ticks in conjunction with the yellow zig-zags. A double yellow alone still allows drop-off. Yes, would need a TRO.
There's also a host of informal solutions, from walking (or cycling) buses (which are deprecated because they work round a problem not fix it) to School Streets.
It may be possible for the local police to send out NIPs based on photographic evidence collected by a PCSO. See Operation Parksafe, as used in various places - which started in the West Midlands.
The school should have a big voice in asking the police / Council to intervene.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
You know, if he wasn’t captain, his place would be in jeopardy.
Who would England pick instead? The strength in depth of those shown to be able to ever do it at test level is rather lacking. Hence why Crawley is given an extended run in the team.
They could play one of the best wicket keepers in the world and let Bairstow focus on his batting.
A really fit Stokes is like getting 3 players for one. But right now his bowling is so restricted Root is putting in more overs and his batting average is declining. He remains a good fielder if not quite as brilliant as he was. Does he need a rest? He is such a talisman for the team it is hard to imagine but maybe yes.
On a related note, I had my first visit to Lord's yesterday. I'm still buzzing. What a lovely, lovely experience. The finest sporting venue in the world? I can't think of a finer one. It was a different experience from Old Trafford. I love Old Trafford, but its principle virtue is proximity. Watching cricket at Old Trafford (or indeed at Trent Bridge, or, I expect, at Headingley or Edgbaston) is more fun, more raucous; the atmosphere at Lord's at 5.30pm is like that at Old Trafford at 11.10am. The excitement at Lord's rarely gets above an animated hubbub. But don't mistake that for people not enjoying themselves tremendously. I spoke to a lot of interesting people, and what came across in every conversation was a feeling of how fortunate everyone felt to be doing something so giddyingly pleasant.
And what a day's play. First of all, the fact we got a whole day's play. I had been monitoring the forecast all week; the difference between the BBC forecast (rain all day; might get a bit of play after 5) and the Met Office (probably dry from midday) was puzzling. In the even, it was better than both, but the BBC was way out. But the play; a long slog back from England being right out of it to roughly parity. Australia clearly attempted to stifle Bazball with astonishingly defensive fields with everyone out on the boundary; all England needed to do - which they largely did - was tootle along in singles and doubles. Granted the wickets were all down to pointless slogs, but, hey, most wickets are given away. I said at the start of the day that England would rattle through the five remaining wickets before lunch and that the middle order would still be in at the close, but I don't think I really believed it would happen.
Really glad you enjoyed your day. Personally, I prefer the Oval which has excellent facilities and if there is a poor viewing point in the entire ground I have yet to find it.
Yes, the Oval is objectively the better ground, but Lord’s is, well, Lord’s.
To be fair, they’ve spent a lot of money on upgrading the Lord’s facilities in recent years, certainly since I was last there. Those new stands either side of the media centre, look like a good place to spend an afternoon drinking beer.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
Cutting the aid budget, and largely abandoning Africa to the influence of China or Wagner is hardly optimal policy in that context.
Why it is not like the aid budget has ever actually done much except line the pockets of corrupt officials, we have been giving aid for decades and those countries are still the shitholes they were when we first started.
Actually to be fair those countries are a lot more developed mainly than they were when we first started. A lot of that is due to market economics and technological spread more than the aid budget, though aid can help sometimes.
Which is part of the reason migration is increasing. Development increases emigration, it doesn't reduce it.
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
Won't someone think of the Scott_xp?
Wow. Great news. There is a god and he's called Elon. Maybe that 3 rd Xmas gift was actually Musk not Myrrh !
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
It would certainly be great to see Mali, and other desperately poor countries become like Germany, but it would require a radical transformation in outlook, on the part of their ruling classes.
Mali is basically Western Europe 1,000 years ago, with guns and better technology.
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
I agree with your overall point but South Africa is a rather bad example, given how much apartheid screwed the country. Basically abandoning policing in 90% of the country just allowed criminal cultures to exponentially magnify.
But South Africa had a huge advantage as well. Good infrastructure. Middle income. Decent education. But it’s turning into a disaster zone
Mali has a GDP per capita of $800, Germany has a GDP per capita of $51,000
It will take a century (bar black swans and AI) to turn Mali into Germany; it is quite possibly not do-able (I’d say probably). We need a solution that is more than feeble virtue signalling that makes a middle class liberal feel good
But we have both black swans and AI (as you never tire of telling us) so there is no issue, right?
Actually, and to move you on from your petulant whingeing, there IS a chance AI can fix this. The problem in so many African countries is corruption/poor government. Put GPT9 in charge, instead, and bingo. Then Mali could become Germany or at least Portugal
Trouble will be persuading corrupt elites to relinquish power, and we also need AI to hurry up and achieve superpowers
AI could also solve climate change (or at least greatly ameliorate it). Meanwhile things like obesity are about to be solved by new drugs (taking all that pressure off health systems)
It is a fascinating moment in human history. We seem to face impossible global problems - yet at the same time we are on the brink of enormous technological progress which could solve virtually all of them. Cross your fingers
How is AI going to solve or ameliorate climate change?
By being incredibly smart
I sound glib I know, but I’m serious
Climate change strikes me as one of those problems which is so profound, intractable and complex it might be outwith human ability to solve it
But a computer ten million times cleverer than Einstein? Maybe
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
It’s already happening. Thousands are drowning in the Med as European countries “turn a blind eye” and those that are caught get sent to Libyan slave camps
That’s why I prefer Rwanda. It’s brutal but it’s better than drowning or slavery
For those of us who don't log on to Twitter it might be helpful to suggest what the link is about.
Yes, it would appear those without twitter accounts can no longer see tweets. I don't know whether this is a positive or negative for twitter. But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
"Prof. Eliot Jacobson @EliotJacobson It finally happened, breaking 5 sigma, the same statistical threshold physicists used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
At 2,700,000 km² below the 1991-2020 mean, Antarctic sea ice extent was 5.14σ below the mean, roughly a 1-in-7,400,000 chance."
Antarctic Sea Ice is interesting. In earlier days on pb.com it was one of the things people used to point to so that they could ignore the massive declines in Arctic sea ice, as there was a small increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice at the time.
Climate scientists hypothesised, with considerable supporting evidence from climate models, that this was a consequence of the ozone hole over the Antarctic - this was modifying the winds over the south pole, which was changing heat transport, and so there was a modest increase in Antarctic sea ice despite global warming. The prediction was that, as the ozone hole recovered, the circulation would change back to normal, and Antarctica would feel the full force of the global warming trend in temperature.
Guess those climate scientists were right after all. Darn.
Pretty alarming stuff. However, to play devils advocate, what is the actual sea ice extent at the moment? I'm not for one moment suggesting a Lib Dem style abuse of data, and clearly a 5 sigma event is significant, but what is the total sea ice in antartica?
You can get the figures by following the link I provided.
It's early winter in the southern hemisphere, so this anomaly is equivalent to a ~3 week delay in the seasonal freeze-up. It's indicative of how much extra heat is sloshing around, which will have more consequence in Antarctic spring, when the sea-ice melts more quickly, and then the heat can work away at the edge of the ice sheet.
I literally bought a flat to house a refugee family but whatever.
Then well done you. Seriously!
But of all the affluent left wing people I know - friends and family - and it’s a lot - not one would host a refugee in the garden
Ukrainians just maybe. For a bit. But not dinghy people/economic migrants
Tens of thousands of people have been accommodating Ukranians for over a year now. They deserve thanks.
Mostly women and children of course, and from a country relatively close by where there’s clearly a war going on, and the vast majority of whom plen on returning when conditions allow.
Anyone else starting to think 5-0 is looking likely in the Ashes? I'm getting a sense of doom today.
This is Lords. We always lose at Lords.
But losing at Edgbaston has made 5-0 more likely. That's our best chance normally.
I am a fan of what they have tried to do. They were (arguably) a touch unlucky in the last match. The disappointment is that having used the aggression to get into a good place, they didn't then take advantage. Yesterday there was no need to try to keep chasing the short ball. There were oodles of singles everywhere. You can get 6 an over with a single every ball. I think the Aussies have been pretty sensible in adapting what they are doing.
We shouldn't forget that the Aussies are also the best team in the world.
Let’s drill down into @TOPPING’s brilliant solution to the migrant problem. “Turning Mali into Germany”
How long will that take?
Well we can always look at South Africa, which should by now be experiencing Singaporean levels of affluence, given that they had a huge post-colonial head start as a middle income country, and they are blessed with immense natural resources
How are they doing?
The electricity has blacked out and now they are running out of water
“First electricity, now water – South Africa’s infrastructure is falling apart
Just as the country has been unable to keep the lights on, there are now questions about its ability to provide safe, clean water”
I’m not optimistic that Mali will turn into Bavaria any time soon, so we maybe need to look at real world solutions
That's the issue though isn't it. What are the real-world solutions?
There's zero evidence that Rwanda for example a) can ever be implemented and b) would prove any sort of deterrent to people who are willing to take a chance on being drunk and sell themselves into slavery for the chance to get to Britain.
I favour an approach* that makes it hard/impossible/unprofitable to smuggle people in but accept that even that might not work.
(* Such an approach would include: incentives to shop rogue employers, a 'work to citizenship' scheme, compulsory ID cards, legalising/taxing/controlling recreational drugs, massively more investment put into processing asylum seekers quickly, closer cooperation with France and other European countries.)
I favour something like Rwanda, but it needs a government with cullions of steel to see off the whining liberals
I am not alone
“Denmark, Greece and Austria, supported by the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Hungary, want the EU to copy the Rwanda policy.”
As a self-confessed bleeding-heart liberal I cannot countenance packing children or adults who may be genuine refugees off to Rwanda.
But more significantly for this argument what makes you think any potential refugees are going to give a moment's thought the the possibility that they may end up in Rwanda? Do they currently consider they may get drowned, deported, or sold into slavery?
Rwanda is a sop to those who just feel 'something must be done' but there is no evidence it would prove a disincentive to potential boat immigrants.
That's crazy talk. Ever since robbery was criminalised there have been no instance of theft so it's bound to work.
But you prove my point.
When we had draconian punishments for theft did it stop?
Those trying to get across in boats are either desperate or stupid or some combination of the two; sensible, non-desperate people don't attempt it. Similarly, theft.
Sure there have to be some disincentives to make crossing in a boat stupid. Rapid processing and deportation, and not allowing asylum-seekers to disappear off the radar, would be the best.
I usually try to go to Lords on the final day for £20 as a last minute booking, but that isn't possible with this match because the final day is on a Sunday and therefore sold out.
I usually try to go to Lords on the final day for £20 as a last minute booking, but that isn't possible with this match because the final day is on a Sunday and therefore sold out.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
I did the school run this morning on an (e-) bike. It's three hilly miles to school, three hilly miles back. Two kids on the back. For this journey - which I make once or twice a day - the bike is no slower than the car door-to-door, takes up less roadspace (which in our constrained Cotswold town is a big deal), and uses less energy than even an electric car would (even before you take construction into account).
There are other particular issues around school runs; one is parents driving their kids to school risking the lives of other children, because they are in a rush, or angry, or frustrated, or whatever.
Collisions are surprisingly common, and drop-off restrictions are hardly ever enforced, which does not work in a road culture of breaking the law where the driver can get away with it.
In defence of parents who drive their kids to school: in most circumstances it is not because parents are lazy or can't get up early enough, it is because parents have to go to work - with 9 o'clock starts typical - but primary schools want parents to bring kids to school and don't want them before, say, 8.45. Parents simply don't have the slack in their day to walk home before heading into work.
I think that's actually an argument for staggering of school days (and term times?), perhaps continental schooldays, sharing of transporting of kids to school with neighbours, more working from home, and safer routes to schools.
Plus of course the majority of normal primary schools have small catchment geographical catchment areas, so walking is the logical default. Here I have anti-wheelchair barriers on the short and direct path between the local housing estate and the local primary school, so a lot of people can't even walk their children to school without considerable difficulty.
If our society is not safe for senior school students to go to school on their own, then it is an enormous red flag.
It needs some coherent thought and a modicum of courage from politicians.
The spectacle of folks like Leon arguing simultaneously that there are >literally billions< of would be refugees heading to the UK, and, by riding roughshod across our international agreements to deport a couple of thousand unfortunates at most, we'll put an end to the determination of these 'billions' is striking.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
The estimate of refugees due to climate change in the next 3 decades is indeed in the billions most of whom will head for european countries.
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in or b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
We've heard these visions of doom before as an excuse for racism now. Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Well if you think european countries and their populations are going to accept that level of refugees then I have a bridge to sell you.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
I am not downplaying the seriousness of climate change and support action to tackle climate change (much, much more action). Clearly, such action will pay for itself if it can reduce these numbers.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
Most refugees will be coming from Africa and the middle east in all probability and countries such as bangladesh. If they are migrating they will be looking to move on to developed countries. That means mostly they will head to Europe as indeed do most current refugees from those countries. As they can't easily get to the US,Canada etc.
This will be against a backdrop of
Decreasing land area due to sea rises Increasing crop failures due to drought and floods and extreme weather events so less food to go round.
Zac Goldsmith has resigned his ministerial role to spend more time with his money.
No, he's genuinely primarily in politics for environmental issues and has been increasingly critical of the Government's approach (or non-approach). I've been surprised how long he's stayed on as a Minister. The fact that he's rich isn't relevant here.
He can afford to be an environmentalist. Many people are not so fortunate.
Can any of us afford to not be environmentalists?
Apart from the longer term 'saving the world' aspect, environmental practices (active/public transport where possible, reduced energy consumption, reducing and re-using) are cheaper than non-enviromental practices.
There are three costs associated with climate change - mitigation, adaptation and damage.
On mitigation, I'm very pessimistic, but think we should do it where the CBA is a slam dunk. This is particularly the case with transport due to massive positive externalities.
On adaptation, we need to get moving much more quickly. It holds an inverse relationship with damage.
On damage - I would be most concerned about health. It might not be affected as much as other areas, but a 5% increase in costs here dwarfs a 15% increase in fixing railway lines.
On mitigation, end use emissions in the UK are:
29% Transport (25% in 1990). Low hanging fruit, lots of positive externalities like obesity, air pollution, road noise, less road wear.
28% Business and industry (38% in 1990). Already made massive progress, but difficult to do more without slowing growth
23% Buildings (25% in 1990). Difficult again with gas supply etc
11% Agriculture (7% in 1990).
So hit transport hard to take the strain off everything else
Transportation is being hit hard by the switch to electric vehicles, its just going to take time to make the transition, but that fruit is inevitably getting plucked so is the last place that should be concentrated upon besides smoothing the transition such as dealing with how people are going to charge their vehicles if they don't have off-road parking - it is an already solved problem.
I'm curious how electric vehicles reduce obesity though.
It's not all about electric vehicles! 50% of all car trips in the UK are below 2 miles. That's a 12 minute cycle.
It is all about electric vehicles.
Those 50% of journeys make up a small fraction of emissions. Oddly enough a 90 mile journey creates far more emissions than a sub 2 mile journey does. And of course only small proportion of that half are suitable for being replaced with bike journeys anyway, if I drive 2 miles to the shops to fill my boot and then drive home again, I can't replace that with a bike ride.
In order to get to net zero we need to deal with all car trips and ensuring they're all clean, not just a small fraction of them.
Ride a bike because riding a bike is fun and healthy, not because of the planet. We need the planet to be able to cope with all journeys, not just the half of them that do the least damage anyway.
I did the school run this morning on an (e-) bike. It's three hilly miles to school, three hilly miles back. Two kids on the back. For this journey - which I make once or twice a day - the bike is no slower than the car door-to-door, takes up less roadspace (which in our constrained Cotswold town is a big deal), and uses less energy than even an electric car would (even before you take construction into account).
There are other particular issues around school runs; one is parents driving their kids to school risking the lives of other children, because they are in a rush, or angry, or frustrated, or whatever.
Collisions are surprisingly common, and drop-off restrictions are hardly ever enforced, which does not work in a road culture of breaking the law where the driver can get away with it.
Driving kids to school doesn't risk the life of anyone. Its perfectly safe and appropriate to do so.
I'm not going to have my kids ride their bikes or walk the 4.8 miles to their school, nor do I have the time to do so either.
Never in my life have I seen a collision near a school either, which is remarkable considering how "common" you think they are.
And our kids school has nobody breaking drop-off restrictions either. Possibly assisted by the presence of a lollipod lady outside the school and the Head Teacher always stands by the gates too to welcome the children and I've little doubt she'd speak to anyone who broke the drop-off restrictions not that it happens.
Three people have been hit by cars at my son's school this year (fortunately no serious injuries; one - the only child hit - was taken to hospital, but discharged same day). School/council have now installed barriers to block vehicular access outside the school during pick-up and drop-off periods.
We do drive our son to school, but park about five minutes' walk away on a side street on other side of the main road (only 30mph with lollipop man supervising crossing) partly to reduce the scrum of vehicles outside the school and partly to avoid it.
That's terrible.
Curious if there's a reason why the school don't have a lollipop person of their own outside? Someone supervising what is happening might discourage the people who are being dangerous. But yes, parking down side-streets and walking the rest of the way is a good idea, that's what I do too if there is no easy parking outside the school.
Amusingly where I live there's a school walking distance from us [we are the closest estate to the school from this side] and the Council have recently permanently closed the road outside it, as there's a new road opening up instead for through-traffic which is heading towards the motorway. So now the school is located at a dead-end of the road, only accessible from the other side (as the new road isn't open yet).
As a result parents who are dropping off their kids at this school are parking outside my house, at the same time as I'm loading my kids into the car to drive them to their school where I park outside somebody else's house to drop them off.
I usually try to go to Lords on the final day for £20 as a last minute booking, but that isn't possible with this match because the final day is on a Sunday and therefore sold out.
Day 5 tickets to Test matches were a magical time, as a young and poor student. It’s real shame it doesn’t happen any more, even though I understand the reasons.
It would certainly be great to see Mali, and other desperately poor countries become like Germany, but it would require a radical transformation in outlook, on the part of their ruling classes.
Mali is basically Western Europe 1,000 years ago, with guns and better technology.
South Korea and Mali had very similar gdp per capita in 1950. South Korea is now broadly close to the UK.
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/30/compass-chief-says-labour-has-expelled-him-and-attacks-party-tyranny
I've spoken to the school. They say they've tried but can't do anything. I've spoken to the police. They say "the drivers tell us to 'do one', suggest you ask the council". I've spoken to the council. They say "it's not up to us, talk to the police". I've tried to speak to the parents themselves but they don't give a crap, and given that they're uniformly from a permanent traveller camp which had an armed police raid last year for a murder investigation, I'm loth to push that too far.
I think I've identified a way through (persuade the council to put a TRO on the yellow zigzags and then the council wardens can enforce it), but ye gods, it would be so much easier if people could just act like human beings.
But, yes, @Eabhal what does the tweet say?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/opinion/putin-prigozhin-russia.html
That is not to say that such change can't and won't happen.
This is the problem when you surround yourself with and pander to audiences such as those of The Spectator. Not only do you easily identify what they want to read, you in so doing gradually (or not so gradually) assume their values also.
I'm not going to have my kids ride their bikes or walk the 4.8 miles to their school, nor do I have the time to do so either.
Never in my life have I seen a collision near a school either, which is remarkable considering how "common" you think they are.
And our kids school has nobody breaking drop-off restrictions either. Possibly assisted by the presence of a lollipod lady outside the school and the Head Teacher always stands by the gates too to welcome the children and I've little doubt she'd speak to anyone who broke the drop-off restrictions not that it happens.
There's zero evidence that Rwanda for example a) can ever be implemented and b) would prove any sort of deterrent to people who are willing to take a chance on being drunk and sell themselves into slavery for the chance to get to Britain.
I favour an approach* that makes it hard/impossible/unprofitable to smuggle people in but accept that even that might not work.
(* Such an approach would include: incentives to shop rogue employers, a 'work to citizenship' scheme, compulsory ID cards, legalising/taxing/controlling recreational drugs, massively more investment put into processing asylum seekers quickly, closer cooperation with France and other European countries.)
Mali has a GDP per capita of $800, Germany has a GDP per capita of $51,000
It will take a century (bar black swans and AI) to turn Mali into Germany; it is quite possibly not do-able (I’d say probably). We need a solution that is more than feeble virtue signalling that makes a middle class liberal feel good
Still at least we got the concentration camp out of our time there so not all a waste of time.
I am not alone
“Denmark, Greece and Austria, supported by the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Hungary, want the EU to copy the Rwanda policy.”
https://twitter.com/nj_timothy/status/1674672214015090688?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Lol
I'm not putting you in that bracket, of course!
Thankfully none of that happens outside my kids school.
Now possibly I'm just lucky, possibly its the school having staff outside which discourages the behaviour, or possibly its just that the school has good children and parents who obey the rules.
The latter of course is part of the reason I would rather drive 5 miles each way to take my kids to that school instead of transferring the kids to a school that is within walking distance but perhaps isn't as good as their school they're in currently.
Their education being as good as it can be is more important than mode of transportation, and better to drive further to a good school than dump them in a crappy one that will provide childcare but less good education.
But of all the affluent left wing people I know - friends and family - and it’s a lot - not one would host a refugee in the garden
Ukrainians just maybe. For a bit. But not dinghy people/economic migrants
I call people, who demand no houses be built, the racists they are. They are *provably* racist.
But more significantly for this argument what makes you think any potential refugees are going to give a moment's thought the the possibility that they may end up in Rwanda? Do they currently consider they may get drowned, deported, or sold into slavery?
Rwanda is a sop to those who just feel 'something must be done' but there is no evidence it would prove a disincentive to potential boat immigrants.
Not so much cullions of steel, as brains of rock.
@EliotJacobson
It finally happened, breaking 5 sigma, the same statistical threshold physicists used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
At 2,700,000 km² below the 1991-2020 mean, Antarctic sea ice extent was 5.14σ below the mean, roughly a 1-in-7,400,000 chance."
Even if you assume every allegation about the Hunter Biden affair is true (unlikely) ...
Paul Manafort Remains a Bigger Scandal than Hunter Biden
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/06/30/paul-manafort-remains-a-bigger-scandal-than-hunter-biden/
Germany or at least Portugal
Trouble will be persuading corrupt elites to relinquish power, and we also need AI to hurry up and achieve superpowers
AI could also solve climate change (or at least greatly ameliorate it). Meanwhile things like obesity are about to be solved by new drugs (taking all that pressure off health systems)
It is a fascinating moment in human history. We seem to face impossible global problems - yet at the same time we are on the brink of enormous technological progress which could solve virtually all of them. Cross your fingers
Not in my garden, but right next door is fine.
PS: Spanner is dick
Tbf Scott tends to do that already.
What's wrong with my proposed solution? (Incentives to shop rogue employers, a 'work to citizenship' scheme, compulsory ID cards, legalising/taxing/controlling recreational drugs, massively more investment put into processing asylum seekers quickly.)
While it will sadden me I suspect out of 2 options
a) Let them all in
or
b) Ever more draconian border control leading to fortress europe
that all european countries will opt for b) as their populations will not put up with taking in the numbers it implies
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/09/climate-crisis-could-displace-12bn-people-by-2050-report-warns
We do drive our son to school, but park about five minutes' walk away on a side street on other side of the main road (only 30mph with lollipop man supervising crossing) partly to reduce the scrum of vehicles outside the school and partly to avoid it.
You never comment. You never reply or interact. It doesn’t do anything. You sit there with zero followers
But it means you can read tweets. That’s it. Will take you 3 minutes to set it up
We have finally managed to get to a point whereby you recognise your internal contradiction (I appreciate there are a few) of saying both a) there's no way Country X can do anything different because it's always been like that; and b) who knows what technology can do - the sky's the limit.
I won't rub it in but yes we'll cross our fingers because at a time of bleeding edge technological innovation I think if JC can put his shoulder to the wheel also we should be able to crack it in no time.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Antarctic Sea Ice is interesting. In earlier days on pb.com it was one of the things people used to point to so that they could ignore the massive declines in Arctic sea ice, as there was a small increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice at the time.
Climate scientists hypothesised, with considerable supporting evidence from climate models, that this was a consequence of the ozone hole over the Antarctic - this was modifying the winds over the south pole, which was changing heat transport, and so there was a modest increase in Antarctic sea ice despite global warming. The prediction was that, as the ozone hole recovered, the circulation would change back to normal, and Antarctica would feel the full force of the global warming trend in temperature.
Guess those climate scientists were right after all. Darn.
However right now I have a ton of work. Enjoyable and remunerative but it means - for once - I’m having to rein in my wandering
And the hope that someone with sufficient testicular fortitude can restore order is attractive, especially if you think that it will restore order for your life to continue as it was.
It rarely works like that. For example, I would hate to be a bohemian journalist type with a record of publishing filth in current affairs magazines under a proper authoritarian government. But we all like to assume that the 2 am knock at the door will be for someone else.
Police can ticket for Obstruction if happening (which includes the road and the pavement), or even for driving on the pavement if that is happening - which can be tricky to make stick. Why are your policemen being intimidated?
If parents are misbehaving to the police, can't they be done for a public order offence like a town-centre drunk? Sounds like a lot of paperwork.
For a Council to enforce they probably need a double yellow with pavement ticks in conjunction with the yellow zig-zags. A double yellow alone still allows drop-off. Yes, would need a TRO.
There's also a host of informal solutions, from walking (or cycling) buses (which are deprecated because they work round a problem not fix it) to School Streets.
It may be possible for the local police to send out NIPs based on photographic evidence collected by a PCSO. See Operation Parksafe, as used in various places - which started in the West Midlands.
The school should have a big voice in asking the police / Council to intervene.
ATB.
The vision of doom for the scale of migration is not one I made up it is what those studying the effects of climate change are predicting.
@BritainElects
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 46% (+1)
CON: 27% (-2)
LDEM: 11% (+1)
REF: 6% (+1)
GRN: 5% (-)
via @techneUK, 28 - 29 Jun"
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1674764452678205440
To be fair, they’ve spent a lot of money on upgrading the Lord’s facilities in recent years, certainly since I was last there. Those new stands either side of the media centre, look like a good place to spend an afternoon drinking beer.
Which is part of the reason migration is increasing. Development increases emigration, it doesn't reduce it.
I question your interpretation of what might happen: that the 1.2 billion will all come to Europe (that's not what the article says, that's something you've invented) and that there are only 2 possible options in how to respond (all or nothing).
Mali is basically Western Europe 1,000 years ago, with guns and better technology.
But losing at Edgbaston has made 5-0 more likely. That's our best chance normally.
I sound glib I know, but I’m serious
Climate change strikes me as one of those problems which is so profound, intractable and complex it might be outwith human ability to solve it
But a computer ten million times cleverer than Einstein? Maybe
That’s why I prefer Rwanda. It’s brutal but it’s better than drowning or slavery
It's early winter in the southern hemisphere, so this anomaly is equivalent to a ~3 week delay in the seasonal freeze-up. It's indicative of how much extra heat is sloshing around, which will have more consequence in Antarctic spring, when the sea-ice melts more quickly, and then the heat can work away at the edge of the ice sheet.
Mostly women and children of course, and from a country relatively close by where there’s clearly a war going on, and the vast majority of whom plen on returning when conditions allow.
We shouldn't forget that the Aussies are also the best team in the world.
When we had draconian punishments for theft did it stop?
Those trying to get across in boats are either desperate or stupid or some combination of the two; sensible, non-desperate people don't attempt it. Similarly, theft.
Sure there have to be some disincentives to make crossing in a boat stupid. Rapid processing and deportation, and not allowing asylum-seekers to disappear off the radar, would be the best.
CaspianReport 20230620: Rwanda to become the next Singapore?
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG0ecfs4ArU
Plus of course the majority of normal primary schools have small catchment geographical catchment areas, so walking is the logical default. Here I have anti-wheelchair barriers on the short and direct path between the local housing estate and the local primary school, so a lot of people can't even walk their children to school without considerable difficulty.
If our society is not safe for senior school students to go to school on their own, then it is an enormous red flag.
It needs some coherent thought and a modicum of courage from politicians.
This will be against a backdrop of
Decreasing land area due to sea rises
Increasing crop failures due to drought and floods and extreme weather events so less food to go round.
We are also seeing the rise of anti immigrant rhetoric parties in much of the EU even now. Believing that won't accelerate as more people are displaced is I think misguided. Several eu countries are already becoming harsher over refugees cf the med drownings like this https://sea-watch.org/en/up-to-600-people-drown-off-pylos-greece-only-days-after-eu-leaders-agreed-to-further-erode-the-right-to-asylum-2/
I think all the evidence points very much to b)
You suggest there are other possible outcomes, feel free to suggest them. I don't see them
Curious if there's a reason why the school don't have a lollipop person of their own outside? Someone supervising what is happening might discourage the people who are being dangerous. But yes, parking down side-streets and walking the rest of the way is a good idea, that's what I do too if there is no easy parking outside the school.
Amusingly where I live there's a school walking distance from us [we are the closest estate to the school from this side] and the Council have recently permanently closed the road outside it, as there's a new road opening up instead for through-traffic which is heading towards the motorway. So now the school is located at a dead-end of the road, only accessible from the other side (as the new road isn't open yet).
As a result parents who are dropping off their kids at this school are parking outside my house, at the same time as I'm loading my kids into the car to drive them to their school where I park outside somebody else's house to drop them off.