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.
It needs some coherent thought and a modicum of courage from politicians.
We should make catchment areas as big as possible, give people a choice of which school that they go to and send their kids to, not compel people to go to their nearest school.
People can choose the nearest school if they want it, but if someone would rather drive their kids a bit further to send their kids to a better rated school, then what's wrong with that?
Should only parents who can afford the houses in a good schools catchment area be able to send their kids there?
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.
Andy got in fairly cheaply to Edgbaston on the final day iirc. England's style doesn't lend itself to a test going the whole five days though. We've normally either won or lost by day 4.
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.
The incidents were on the access road to the school - there's the village green between the main road and a side road and the school, with the school access road (to the staff car park etc, also provides access to two houses adjacent to the school) off the side road and going across the green. This access road was never supposed to be used by parents dropping kids off (plenty of emails, messages, highlighted in newsletter etc) but it took the erection of the barrier (gate) to actually solve the problem. There's no lollipop person on the access road because there shouldn't be any cars on it outside of staff arrival and departure times. It took a while to sort as it's council property, not school property, so the council had to be convinced of the need for a barrier, given the cost etc.
One parent was successfully prosecuted for the collision involving the child.
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.
In 1950 Korea was having a civil war, I sort of expect that to cause a drop in gdp per capita
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.
Sorry all, I didn't realise that twitter blocks you off now. I shall screenshot or copy the text next time.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
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.
Sorry all, I didn't realise that twitter blocks you off now. I shall screenshot or copy the text next time.
There is a problem induced by that though, if people can't easily goto the tweet then it allows for selective copying of what it says. Not I am sure that anyone on PB will do that
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.
In 1950 Korea was having a civil war, I sort of expect that to cause a drop in gdp per capita
Halved from 1941 to 1952. Since then it's gone up ~ 37 fold whereas Mali only looks to have experienced a 60% increase in gdp per capita since then. Statista's exact figures won't be ultraprecise I think but the general gist is correct as you can quickly see by examining Seoul vs Bamako.
All that you Twitter-phobes have to do is acquire what’s called a Twitter “burner account”
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
Yeah, but signing on to twitter, its just not right.
Also, being truly anonymous in twatter is hard as one has to give details on signup. So someone knows what one has been looking at, apart obvs from pussies and Mr Curtice and Mr Sim and so on. What's Mr Musk going to do next? And to get round that apparently you need to use Tor, a disposable email address, a disposable burner phone ... and only sign on with Tor.
If I were a journo using tweets to tell people of/lead to the main story on the media website, then I'd be very teed off - ditto the media execs.
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.
Sorry all, I didn't realise that twitter blocks you off now. I shall screenshot or copy the text next time.
There is a problem induced by that though, if people can't easily goto the tweet then it allows for selective copying of what it says. Not I am sure that anyone on PB will do that
Already happens. Barefacedly. Albeit on occasion. We're too suspicious.
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.
It is achievable. I think the greatest human achievement of my lifetime has been lifting billions of people out of absolute poverty.
When I was born, in 1967, 55% of the world lived in absolute poverty. Now the figure is 8%.
But, it can only be achieved by Malian leaders, although we can assist them.
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.
Up to and until a certain point and then of course it decreases. You are being untypically illogical. If development increased education with no limit then we would have millions of Swiss bankers on our shores having made the treacherous crossing from Calais.
The point is well made that as countries develop then the returns to the products of that development increase abroad, typically, but equally there is a point where there is an equivalence of return and hence people are indifferent to whether they are at home or abroad eg Swiss bankers.
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?
I imagine in @Leon's hyperbolic world it will send Terminators back through time to kill the wokerati in their millions, thereby immediately reducing the global generation of greenhouse gasses caused by their incessant chattering and their not really carbon offset trips to the Maldives and conspicuous consumption of un-environmentally friendly lentils.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
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.
Ahem. I was agreeing with you.
Surely it is a Friday afternoon if I have to explain my droll, arch, acute posts on here. I need a drink.
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.
In 1950 Korea was having a civil war, I sort of expect that to cause a drop in gdp per capita
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.
Andy got in fairly cheaply to Edgbaston on the final day iirc. England's style doesn't lend itself to a test going the whole five days though. We've normally either won or lost by day 4.
Looking like England will be toast within 4 days in this test.
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.
In 1950 Korea was having a civil war, I sort of expect that to cause a drop in gdp per capita
Halved from 1941 to 1952. Since then it's gone up ~ 37 fold whereas Mali only looks to have experienced a 60% increase in gdp per capita since then. Statista's exact figures won't be ultraprecise I think but the general gist is correct as you can quickly see by examining Seoul vs Bamako.
Also South Korea had the advantage of keeping the prosperous parts of Korea and hiving off most of the peasants to North Korea
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."
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.
{stops gene splicing machine, looks up guiltily}
You *didnt* mean literally Draconian?
Oops. Sorry.
Now I have to mutate the salt water crocodiles back. And three of them have escaped….
At least there is one Republican to have the balls to go after Trump.
If you think Christie is going to sink Trump, I've got a bridge to sell you.
I didn't say that. Christie has a range of weaknesses but it will be interesting if his comments bring out others. Surely even the current Republican party must realise that Trump is seriously damaged goods.
The history of South Korea's incredible rise is really fascinating. A sort of hybrid "managed" economy where large family businesses where told by the government what industries they would be expected to now partake in (with lots of state support), combined with competition among themselves & the world.
And when one of these failed, again the state has in the past told one of these families you must pick up this and make it work.
Its neither been truly capitalist, a bit like the Chinese (with state picking the big priorities) and a bit Russian with Oligarchy of families run all the large wealthy businesses. And somehow out the other side it has worked very well.
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.
Up to and until a certain point and then of course it decreases. You are being untypically illogical. If development increased education with no limit then we would have millions of Swiss bankers on our shores having made the treacherous crossing from Calais.
The point is well made that as countries develop then the returns to the products of that development increase abroad, typically, but equally there is a point where there is an equivalence of return and hence people are indifferent to whether they are at home or abroad eg Swiss bankers.
You are the one being illogical.
You're far more likely to have someone from Switzerland migrate to the UK than from Mali.
Now personally I think migration is a good thing, but if you're arguing migration is a bad thing and we should prevent it by encouraging development then you are doubly wrong.
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.
{stops gene splicing machine, looks up guiltily}
You *didnt* mean literally Draconian?
Oops. Sorry.
Now I have to mutate the salt water crocodiles back. And three of them have escaped….
Dragons do not seem terribly eco friendly it has to be said so if you make one don't tell George Monbiot
The history of South Korea's incredible rise is really fascinating. A sort of hybrid "managed" economy where large family businesses where told by thr government what industries they would be expected to now partske in, combined with competition among them.
A fascinating society, simultaneously brilliant and calamitous. They can take over entire industries in a few years - see the rise of K-Pop - but they are unable to have kids and will all be gone within about 30 years (I exaggerate, but only a touch)
The two phenomena must be linked. Korea is the country-level equivalent of a high achieving superwoman who sacrifices motherhood to have a stellar career
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.
{stops gene splicing machine, looks up guiltily}
You *didnt* mean literally Draconian?
Oops. Sorry.
Now I have to mutate the salt water crocodiles back. And three of them have escaped….
Dragons do not seem terribly eco friendly it has to be said so if you make one don't tell George Monbiot
Depends if they eat meat or veg - the latter would make them very efficient, though I worry about their hydrocarbon-rich farts, with all the methane.
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.
{stops gene splicing machine, looks up guiltily}
You *didnt* mean literally Draconian?
Oops. Sorry.
Now I have to mutate the salt water crocodiles back. And three of them have escaped….
Dragons do not seem terribly eco friendly it has to be said so if you make one don't tell George Monbiot
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.
In 1950 Korea was having a civil war, I sort of expect that to cause a drop in gdp per capita
Halved from 1941 to 1952. Since then it's gone up ~ 37 fold whereas Mali only looks to have experienced a 60% increase in gdp per capita since then. Statista's exact figures won't be ultraprecise I think but the general gist is correct as you can quickly see by examining Seoul vs Bamako.
In absolute fairness, Mali was always going to have significantly greater issues developing than South Korea. Geographical situation is a big one, relative societal stability is another. SK's strategic significance for the US is yet another.
Botswana is a country that I find interesting as an example of a country that has developed effectively so far. For different reasons, Vietnam is another.
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.
{stops gene splicing machine, looks up guiltily}
You *didnt* mean literally Draconian?
Oops. Sorry.
Now I have to mutate the salt water crocodiles back. And three of them have escaped….
Dragons do not seem terribly eco friendly it has to be said so if you make one don't tell George Monbiot
Depends if they eat meat or veg - the latter would make them very efficient, though I worry about their hydrocarbon-rich farts, with all the methane.
I don't remember dragon's being notoriously vegetarian, however where you would get a supply of virgin princesses to chain to rocks might make them difficult to keep alive....plus all that fiery breath and setting things alight must make them heavy on the CO2 production
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
We don't need a 10^7 Einstein AI to tell us how to achieve net zero: replace fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear, insulate our homes properly, eat less meat and fly a lot less. The difficulty is in getting people to actually do those things, though perhaps some people might prefer to listen to an AI rather than a scientist.
The history of South Korea's incredible rise is really fascinating. A sort of hybrid "managed" economy where large family businesses where told by thr government what industries they would be expected to now partske in, combined with competition among them.
A fascinating society, simultaneously brilliant and calamitous. They can take over entire industries in a few years - see the rise of K-Pop - but they are unable to have kids and will all be gone within about 30 years (I exaggerate, but only a touch)
The two phenomena must be linked. Korea is the country-level equivalent of a high achieving superwoman who sacrifices motherhood to have a stellar career
The cultural aspect is incredibly strong. The age based respect is taken to quite extreme lengths. The famous story of Korean Air all having to retrained by western trainers because terrible safety record due to this inability to criticise those more senior (even when your plane is about to crash).
I have a Korean friend (who now lives back in Korean) and the first time we met he thought he was older than me....so acted a certain way. Not arrogant as such, but confident, driving the conversation etc. When he worked out be was actually younger, he totally changed, the drink hiding etc, even though this was in the West.
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.
{stops gene splicing machine, looks up guiltily}
You *didnt* mean literally Draconian?
Oops. Sorry.
Now I have to mutate the salt water crocodiles back. And three of them have escaped….
Dragons do not seem terribly eco friendly it has to be said so if you make one don't tell George Monbiot
Depends if they eat meat or veg - the latter would make them very efficient, though I worry about their hydrocarbon-rich farts, with all the methane.
I don't remember dragon's being notoriously vegetarian, however where you would get a supply of virgin princesses to chain to rocks might make them difficult to keep alive....plus all that fiery breath and setting things alight must make them heavy on the CO2 production
If you had enough of them, then the smoke produced could contribute towards global cooling...
The history of South Korea's incredible rise is really fascinating. A sort of hybrid "managed" economy where large family businesses where told by thr government what industries they would be expected to now partske in, combined with competition among them.
A fascinating society, simultaneously brilliant and calamitous. They can take over entire industries in a few years - see the rise of K-Pop - but they are unable to have kids and will all be gone within about 30 years (I exaggerate, but only a touch)
The two phenomena must be linked. Korea is the country-level equivalent of a high achieving superwoman who sacrifices motherhood to have a stellar career
The cultural aspect is incredibly strong. The age based respect is taken to quite extreme lengths. The famous story of Korean Air all having to retrained by western trainers because terrible safety record due to this inability to criticise those more senior (even when your plane is about to crash).
Though to be fair everyone in South Korea is now a couple of years younger so they may have solved the aging population problem
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
We don't need a 10^6 Einstein AI to tell us how to achieve net zero: replace fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear, insulate our homes properly, eat less meat and fly a lot less. The difficulty is in getting people to do those things, though perhaps some people might prefer to listen to an AI rather than a scientist.
But superpowerful AI might have soutions that make all that WAYYYY more palatable: it will design really tasty synthetic meat, it will devise plane engines with zero emissions, and so on
Again, I am serious. I'm a techno-optimist. The potential in AI is - as others have said - as big as the advent of electricity or maybe even bigger - like the advent of the wheel, or fire - or even beyond that
Of course there is the 5-10% chance it will kill us all, but we are doing a decent job of that anyway, without any of the upside, so I say hand it all over to the Robots
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.
The last para sounds like good practice, which is excellent.
Behaviour of parents driving near a *lot* of schools *does* cause significant injury - it happens widely and all the time. Check the local press.
Here's one in Wandsworth that went through the Courts in July 2022. School run mum mounted the pavement in her car and hit a group of 11, including 7 pupils. Nine of them were taken to hospital.
A car crash which injured children and adults outside a primary school was described as “every parent’s worst nightmare” by a judge as he sentenced a mother for careless driving.
The issue is proximity of parents driving vehicles to vulnerable road users. If the zig-zag lines were respected, it would be less of an issue - but they are not respected.
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.
Up to and until a certain point and then of course it decreases. You are being untypically illogical. If development increased education with no limit then we would have millions of Swiss bankers on our shores having made the treacherous crossing from Calais.
The point is well made that as countries develop then the returns to the products of that development increase abroad, typically, but equally there is a point where there is an equivalence of return and hence people are indifferent to whether they are at home or abroad eg Swiss bankers.
You are the one being illogical.
You're far more likely to have someone from Switzerland migrate to the UK than from Mali.
Now personally I think migration is a good thing, but if you're arguing migration is a bad thing and we should prevent it by encouraging development then you are doubly wrong.
Not at all. Your own paper described an inverse-U distribution. Or didn't you read that bit?
Absolutely as development increases from a low base then (unintuitively) emigration increases because the returns to those improved skills is higher elsewhere. But then the next bit of the U kicks in and returns equalise and you have a situation where there is likely equal migration between equally-developed nations eg the UK and Switzerland.
I suppose distance might be a factor so you might get more Swiss than Malians when we reach that stage. We don't have a huge number of South Koreans here, and nor are there too many UK emigrants to South Korea.
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.
And the contrary opinion (again). I live four doors down from a large school in Crosby. 800 primary children. Many walk. Many do not. My car is on the drive.
If I try to get out after 8.30am, there is inevitably a car right across the drive. Parked up. Not even sitting there in the car. They've just parked across the drive. After all, why should they care? They're not blocked in. I won't be getting out till 9am. Depends if they spot a friend at the gate or not and stop for a natter. Same situation between 3pm and 3.30pm.
When I confront some of them, a few are apologetic, many are not. Some have even said, "It's only once." but forget that 400 of them do it one a day every school day. So they only do it once, but rotate around. Bastards.
I've been clever though.... once I parked on the road! Then I could get out. I came out to no wing mirror and a nice dent in the door. No note left. Never again.
And of course, some parents have parked on my drive (and neighbours drive). They don't do this very often though.... not because they have any shame... no. They don't do it because they get blocked in by the next parent to park across the drive.
I've got more reg plates in my notes than I've had hot dinners. I've considered form V888 for a few persistent arseholes, but its never quite come to that and speaking to them usually yields some apology.
But as soon as they 'learn', its a new school year, and it starts all over again.
The history of South Korea's incredible rise is really fascinating. A sort of hybrid "managed" economy where large family businesses where told by thr government what industries they would be expected to now partske in, combined with competition among them.
A fascinating society, simultaneously brilliant and calamitous. They can take over entire industries in a few years - see the rise of K-Pop - but they are unable to have kids and will all be gone within about 30 years (I exaggerate, but only a touch)
The two phenomena must be linked. Korea is the country-level equivalent of a high achieving superwoman who sacrifices motherhood to have a stellar career
The cultural aspect is incredibly strong. The age based respect is taken to quite extreme lengths. The famous story of Korean Air all having to retrained by western trainers because terrible safety record due to this inability to criticise those more senior (even when your plane is about to crash).
Though to be fair everyone in South Korea is now a couple of years younger so they may have solved the aging population problem
I believe a big reason for that old system was to ease the who is older / younger, if you all change age on 1st Jan.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
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.
The last para sounds like good practice, which is excellent.
Behaviour of parents driving near a *lot* of schools *does* cause significant injury - it happens widely and all the time. Check the local press.
Here's one in Wandsworth that went through the Courts in July 2022. School run mum mounted the pavement in her car and hit a group of 11, including 7 pupils. Nine of them were taken to hospital.
A car crash which injured children and adults outside a primary school was described as “every parent’s worst nightmare” by a judge as he sentenced a mother for careless driving.
Dolly Rincon-Aguilar was on the school run when a group of pupils and parents who were standing near the gates of Beatrix Potter Primary School in Openview, Earlsfield, were hit by the Toyota Rav4 she was driving.
The issue is proximity of parents driving vehicles to vulnerable road users. If the zig-zag lines were respected, it would be less of an issue - but they are not respected.
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.
In 1950 Korea was having a civil war, I sort of expect that to cause a drop in gdp per capita
Halved from 1941 to 1952. Since then it's gone up ~ 37 fold whereas Mali only looks to have experienced a 60% increase in gdp per capita since then. Statista's exact figures won't be ultraprecise I think but the general gist is correct as you can quickly see by examining Seoul vs Bamako.
In absolute fairness, Mali was always going to have significantly greater issues developing than South Korea. Geographical situation is a big one, relative societal stability is another. SK's strategic significance for the US is yet another.
Botswana is a country that I find interesting as an example of a country that has developed effectively so far. For different reasons, Vietnam is another.
Vietnam is the most "promising" country I have visited in my recent travels (which have been worldwide)
It is a new South Korea in the making, but with lots more people and possibly even more determination. They are hard working, smart, resourceful, high IQ and dynamic. And they still have a decent fertility rate (over 2). If I knew how to invest in a country I would invest in Vietnam
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
We don't need a 10^7 Einstein AI to tell us how to achieve net zero: replace fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear, insulate our homes properly, eat less meat and fly a lot less. The difficulty is in getting people to actually do those things, though perhaps some people might prefer to listen to an AI rather than a scientist.
Looks like I was wrong the other week in suggesting PE would replace private landlords. Looks like it will be corporates instead. (No crystal ball — was looking at what has happened with large companies owning thousands of student flats.)
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
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
We don't need a 10^6 Einstein AI to tell us how to achieve net zero: replace fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear, insulate our homes properly, eat less meat and fly a lot less. The difficulty is in getting people to do those things, though perhaps some people might prefer to listen to an AI rather than a scientist.
But superpowerful AI might have soutions that make all that WAYYYY more palatable: it will design really tasty synthetic meat, it will devise plane engines with zero emissions, and so on
Again, I am serious. I'm a techno-optimist. The potential in AI is - as others have said - as big as the advent of electricity or maybe even bigger - like the advent of the wheel, or fire - or even beyond that
Of course there is the 5-10% chance it will kill us all, but we are doing a decent job of that anyway, without any of the upside, so I say hand it all over to the Robots
This sounds like the latest iteration of the "technology will save us, so we don't need to do anything now" argument. Maybe it will, but I'm not so sure that betting the planet on green zero is such a great approach.
Looks like I was wrong the other week in suggesting PE would replace private landlords. Looks like it will be corporates instead. (No crystal ball — was looking at what has happened with large companies owning thousands of student flats.)
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.
In 1950 Korea was having a civil war, I sort of expect that to cause a drop in gdp per capita
Halved from 1941 to 1952. Since then it's gone up ~ 37 fold whereas Mali only looks to have experienced a 60% increase in gdp per capita since then. Statista's exact figures won't be ultraprecise I think but the general gist is correct as you can quickly see by examining Seoul vs Bamako.
In absolute fairness, Mali was always going to have significantly greater issues developing than South Korea. Geographical situation is a big one, relative societal stability is another. SK's strategic significance for the US is yet another.
Botswana is a country that I find interesting as an example of a country that has developed effectively so far. For different reasons, Vietnam is another.
Vietnam is the most "promising" country I have visited in my recent travels (which have been worldwide)
It is a new South Korea in the making, but with lots more people and possibly even more determination. They are hard working, smart, resourceful, high IQ and dynamic. And they still have a decent fertility rate (over 2). If I knew how to invest in a country I would invest in Vietnam
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.
It needs some coherent thought and a modicum of courage from politicians.
We should make catchment areas as big as possible, give people a choice of which school that they go to and send their kids to, not compel people to go to their nearest school.
People can choose the nearest school if they want it, but if someone would rather drive their kids a bit further to send their kids to a better rated school, then what's wrong with that?
Should only parents who can afford the houses in a good schools catchment area be able to send their kids there?
I can't comment on overlapping catchment areas - so far I've been looking at (physical) barriers to active travel to my closest schools, and how to remove them. The closest primary is notably small and has had new housing built close by over the last decade, with more to come. There is some overlap and choice, though.
However, here we have a functioning housing market and there are reasonably priced Council and Private rentals around.
No evidence of any impropriety in the appointment according to ACOBA so what will the Daily Hate do now !
"Serious concerns were raised today over the impartiality of ACOBA after it emerged that the niece of one of its members made a series of positive comments about Ed Miliband on Twitter in the run up to the 2015 General Election. Senior Conservative MP, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, commented..."
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
We don't need a 10^7 Einstein AI to tell us how to achieve net zero: replace fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear, insulate our homes properly, eat less meat and fly a lot less. The difficulty is in getting people to actually do those things, though perhaps some people might prefer to listen to an AI rather than a scientist.
AI driven nudge apps may change people's behaviour in this area as they are in other areas
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.
And the contrary opinion (again). I live four doors down from a large school in Crosby. 800 primary children. Many walk. Many do not. My car is on the drive.
If I try to get out after 8.30am, there is inevitably a car right across the drive. Parked up. Not even sitting there in the car. They've just parked across the drive. After all, why should they care? They're not blocked in. I won't be getting out till 9am. Depends if they spot a friend at the gate or not and stop for a natter. Same situation between 3pm and 3.30pm.
When I confront some of them, a few are apologetic, many are not. Some have even said, "It's only once." but forget that 400 of them do it one a day every school day. So they only do it once, but rotate around. Bastards.
I've been clever though.... once I parked on the road! Then I could get out. I came out to no wing mirror and a nice dent in the door. No note left. Never again.
And of course, some parents have parked on my drive (and neighbours drive). They don't do this very often though.... not because they have any shame... no. They don't do it because they get blocked in by the next parent to park across the drive.
I've got more reg plates in my notes than I've had hot dinners. I've considered form V888 for a few persistent arseholes, but its never quite come to that and speaking to them usually yields some apology.
But as soon as they 'learn', its a new school year, and it starts all over again.
We need 15 minute cities then kids could walk to school. Our kids walk to school, we are lucky that the primary is a 5 minute walk up the road and the secondary is a 15 minute walk away. I don't know why we are building low density housing projects with no schools within walking distance. Oh look the kids are all fat and everyone is driving around getting angry with each other, what a fucking surprise.
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.
Five more years under the Tories and the UK will have a similar GDP to Mali.
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
We don't need a 10^6 Einstein AI to tell us how to achieve net zero: replace fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear, insulate our homes properly, eat less meat and fly a lot less. The difficulty is in getting people to do those things, though perhaps some people might prefer to listen to an AI rather than a scientist.
But superpowerful AI might have soutions that make all that WAYYYY more palatable: it will design really tasty synthetic meat, it will devise plane engines with zero emissions, and so on
Again, I am serious. I'm a techno-optimist. The potential in AI is - as others have said - as big as the advent of electricity or maybe even bigger - like the advent of the wheel, or fire - or even beyond that
Of course there is the 5-10% chance it will kill us all, but we are doing a decent job of that anyway, without any of the upside, so I say hand it all over to the Robots
This sounds like the latest iteration of the "technology will save us, so we don't need to do anything now" argument. Maybe it will, but I'm not so sure that betting the planet on green zero is such a great approach.
AI is a potential gamechanger. Question is whether it changes the game in time, or we cripple it in fear, etc
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
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.
Five more years under the Tories and the UK will have a similar GDP to Mali.
Five years under Labour and Mali will look like a well run balanced economy.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Yes we can hope they got both wrong, my comments are about what if they haven't. It does not mean I would prefer they weren't to happen
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Will never happen in Russia as currently constituted, but imagine a future where a newly independent Siberia implements liberal democracy, low tax rates and an open immigration policy with free land allocations (and no planning constraints) to anyone from anywhere who can show they will live on and farm the land for at least 3 years.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
On the plus side however if the predicted level rises are accurate I will be within 15 min of the beach. 15 minute city by the back door.
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.
Five more years under the Tories and the UK will have a similar GDP to Mali.
Five years under Labour and Mali will look like a well run balanced economy.
Well, let's hope Mali elects a Labour government then!
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
We don't need a 10^6 Einstein AI to tell us how to achieve net zero: replace fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear, insulate our homes properly, eat less meat and fly a lot less. The difficulty is in getting people to do those things, though perhaps some people might prefer to listen to an AI rather than a scientist.
But superpowerful AI might have soutions that make all that WAYYYY more palatable: it will design really tasty synthetic meat, it will devise plane engines with zero emissions, and so on
Again, I am serious. I'm a techno-optimist. The potential in AI is - as others have said - as big as the advent of electricity or maybe even bigger - like the advent of the wheel, or fire - or even beyond that
Of course there is the 5-10% chance it will kill us all, but we are doing a decent job of that anyway, without any of the upside, so I say hand it all over to the Robots
This sounds like the latest iteration of the "technology will save us, so we don't need to do anything now" argument. Maybe it will, but I'm not so sure that betting the planet on green zero is such a great approach.
A few weeks ago you were saying that it would be "unfair" not to allow the billions of people in the developing world not to exceed our per capita emissions because they need to catch up industrially, so I don't believe you are really overly concerned about the planet.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Will never happen in Russia as currently constituted, but imagine a future where a newly independent Siberia implements liberal democracy, low tax rates and an open immigration policy with free land allocations (and no planning constraints) to anyone from anywhere who can show they will live on and farm the land for at least 3 years.
Imagine their were unicorns and free owls for all...sorry flippant but imagining huge changes like that happening that quickly in Russia I suspect comes into the "what are you smoking and can I have some" category.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
On the plus side however if the predicted level rises are accurate I will be within 15 min of the beach. 15 minute city by the back door.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
On the plus side however if the predicted level rises are accurate I will be within 15 min of the beach. 15 minute city by the back door.
The Norfolk Broads will become the Norfolk Bay.
That should suit them, don't a lot of them have webbed fingers already?
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.
In 1950 Korea was having a civil war, I sort of expect that to cause a drop in gdp per capita
Halved from 1941 to 1952. Since then it's gone up ~ 37 fold whereas Mali only looks to have experienced a 60% increase in gdp per capita since then. Statista's exact figures won't be ultraprecise I think but the general gist is correct as you can quickly see by examining Seoul vs Bamako.
Also South Korea had the advantage of keeping the prosperous parts of Korea and hiving off most of the peasants to North Korea
Not really. The north had most of the industry and almost all of the natural resources. The south has eff all apart from rather a lot of US aid. And the fish.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The history of South Korea's incredible rise is really fascinating. A sort of hybrid "managed" economy where large family businesses where told by the government what industries they would be expected to now partake in (with lots of state support), combined with competition among themselves & the world.
And when one of these failed, again the state has in the past told one of these families you must pick up this and make it work.
Its neither been truly capitalist, a bit like the Chinese (with state picking the big priorities) and a bit Russian with Oligarchy of families run all the large wealthy businesses. And somehow out the other side it has worked very well.
IIRC the famous fact often quoted is that in about 1955 Ghana was wealthier per head than South Korea.
Seven years since the country was inexplicably hit with collective stupidity, along with the help of some expert social media manipulation by Moscow - or not if you believe "The Russia Report")
Interesting that not even our government seems to want to remind us of "the benefits of Brexit" as no-one can find any.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
Yea, but not quite the 10 meters that would have been forecast back then. It is pretty difficult to measure to be fair, particularly when you have gravity anomalies in the Indian Ocean
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
The history of South Korea's incredible rise is really fascinating. A sort of hybrid "managed" economy where large family businesses where told by the government what industries they would be expected to now partake in (with lots of state support), combined with competition among themselves & the world.
And when one of these failed, again the state has in the past told one of these families you must pick up this and make it work.
Its neither been truly capitalist, a bit like the Chinese (with state picking the big priorities) and a bit Russian with Oligarchy of families run all the large wealthy businesses. And somehow out the other side it has worked very well.
IIRC the famous fact often quoted is that in about 1955 Ghana was wealthier per head than South Korea.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Will never happen in Russia as currently constituted, but imagine a future where a newly independent Siberia implements liberal democracy, low tax rates and an open immigration policy with free land allocations (and no planning constraints) to anyone from anywhere who can show they will live on and farm the land for at least 3 years.
That would indeed be a sensible approach for Russia to take. The only problem with that, is that the place is currently occcupied by Russians - for whom sensible has a long history of being absent.
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).
The logical places for peoples to move to en masse if we have significant global warming are surely Russia and Canada? Massive areas of largely unused land currently but could become similar to Northern Europe with a bit of global warming.
Logical if you just look it as space, if you were having to uproot your family from say rwanda due to climate change....would you rather take them to germany or russia. Logic for your family dictates the modern liberal democracy not the oligarch infested kleptocracy where your children will be likely fed to a war machine.
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
The government of Russia today may be quite different to the government of Russia in 30-50 years time. As may be the case in Germany.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Well given both Germany and Russia have been run pretty much the same as they are now for the last 60 years then I am not holding my breath they will change that much in the next 5 or so election cycles...the claimed figure is by 2050 so 27 years.
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Maybe if we are lucky the climate change refugees will be as elusive as the much heralded but somewhat elusive eustatic sea level change.
Nasa thinks we're up ~ 10 centimetres since 1993.
On the plus side however if the predicted level rises are accurate I will be within 15 min of the beach. 15 minute city by the back door.
The Norfolk Broads will become the Norfolk Bay.
Can't see how we'll hit 35 cm by 2050 as some are predicting, the 3 mm a year scenario looks most likely to me - which if we're at ~10 cm now is 18 cm. Mind you the current Antarctic anomaly could translate to something or other..
I literally bought a flat to house a refugee family but whatever.
As I implied before, the problem is that many British people already have a problem affording somewhere to live. The fact that a small number of people can afford to buy places for refugees is irrelevant to that problem.
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.
To me that's rather buying into the American idea that cycling is a leisure pursuit - it is not.
I mainly utility-cycle, but I can't cycle 4 miles for my occasional supermarket shop because the supermarket has no really safe cycle parking. Ditto the local hospital when I need a blood test. Ditto the local Doctor's surgery where I was this morning.
And if I want to use an off road route down a former local railway they it is blocked by "anti-motobike" barriers that don't block motobikes, but do block cycles, wheelchairs and mobility scooters (the latter two illegally since 2005). The Sustrans Audit in 2018 found 16,000 such barriers on their walking / wheeling / cycling network (of 13,000 miles).
The route to my local hospital even includes multiple pedestrian crossings where the chicanes in the middle are so narrow as to block mobility scooters. And no one notices.
We have about 50-80 years of non-investment to catch up on to make non-motor-vehicular transport attractive for short (say less than 5 miles say) journeys, then when those more appropriate and better (life expectancy, reduction of type 2 diabetes etc) forms of transport are more convenient they will be used.
That needs adjustments to our transport environment, including discouragement of private motor vehicles where not apprropriate. We are seeing the differences in some places already (notably some parts of London and a few other places), but it is a long-term project for a generation, and needs a culture change as part of it.
Sorry, you had me until your final paragraph. Yes, removing roadblocks to cycling so that those who can cycle are able to do so if they want to is an entirely reasonable objective. Similarly for walking too, too many routes lack safe footpaths and if a journey is sub-2 miles then that is within walking distance for those who are fit and healthy.
However the use of private motor vehicles is never "not appropriate". Indeed for those with mobility or balance issues it can be their only safe means of transportation.
Discouraging the use of private motor vehicles is no better than discouraging the use of cycling. Far better is to ensure the two can safely coexist side by side and let people choose freely and without pressure which suits them.
Cheers for the response.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
The political issues are two fold here though
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
There is a c), if you make public transport as convenient as possible, and tax car externalities appropriately (not excessively), then people will choose public transport, at least some of the time.
c) Is not achievable, I mostly use the bus when I absolutely have to go out but its never going to be convenient and there is no way it can be made as convenient as a car. The inconvenience of the bus actually means there are many times I think oh I could go do this then think shit no that means a bus and we have a pretty good bus service here compared to most places outside central london.
Comments
People can choose the nearest school if they want it, but if someone would rather drive their kids a bit further to send their kids to a better rated school, then what's wrong with that?
Should only parents who can afford the houses in a good schools catchment area be able to send their kids there?
The DeSantis campaign just pissed off New York Republicans
Rockland County GOP Chair Lawrence Garvey said he got no heads up from the DeSantis campaign before it sent out a flier for a $6,600-a-person fundraiser.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/29/ron-desantis-new-york-fundraiser-gop-backlash-00104157
I think he's quite likely toast this cycle, even if Trump goes down in flames (for whichever of several things that might bring that about).
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/after-44-years-labour-is-expelling-me-and-my-mp-and-activist-friends-are-asking-who-will-be-next/ar-AA1dfIUH?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=376c601f24f14ec59924260635276d92&ei=12
One parent was successfully prosecuted for the collision involving the child.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4075535-christie-says-trump-wishes-he-could-be-putin-in-america/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66067865
‘Please don’t forward this email,’ begs £4m-a-year water chief Liv Garfield
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/severn-trent-thames-water-nationalisation-labour-b1091238.html
Water bosses are trying to steer Labour away from nationalisation.
If I were a journo using tweets to tell people of/lead to the main story on the media website, then I'd be very teed off - ditto the media execs.
When I was born, in 1967, 55% of the world lived in absolute poverty. Now the figure is 8%.
But, it can only be achieved by Malian leaders, although we can assist them.
The point is well made that as countries develop then the returns to the products of that development increase abroad, typically, but equally there is a point where there is an equivalence of return and hence people are indifferent to whether they are at home or abroad eg Swiss bankers.
There's no long-term future for non-Tory Britain without co-operation. You have to heal the Lib/Labour rift dating to the 1920s first.
It does sound quite an interesting solution TBH
Canada would fit modern liberal democracy but a) its harder to get too and b) requires canada to want you as well
Surely it is a Friday afternoon if I have to explain my droll, arch, acute posts on here. I need a drink.
You *didnt* mean literally Draconian?
Oops. Sorry.
Now I have to mutate the salt water crocodiles back. And three of them have escaped….
And when one of these failed, again the state has in the past told one of these families you must pick up this and make it work.
Its neither been truly capitalist, a bit like the Chinese (with state picking the big priorities) and a bit Russian with Oligarchy of families run all the large wealthy businesses. And somehow out the other side it has worked very well.
You're far more likely to have someone from Switzerland migrate to the UK than from Mali.
Now personally I think migration is a good thing, but if you're arguing migration is a bad thing and we should prevent it by encouraging development then you are doubly wrong.
The two phenomena must be linked. Korea is the country-level equivalent of a high achieving superwoman who sacrifices motherhood to have a stellar career
Botswana is a country that I find interesting as an example of a country that has developed effectively so far. For different reasons, Vietnam is another.
I have a Korean friend (who now lives back in Korean) and the first time we met he thought he was older than me....so acted a certain way. Not arrogant as such, but confident, driving the conversation etc. When he worked out be was actually younger, he totally changed, the drink hiding etc, even though this was in the West.
Again, I am serious. I'm a techno-optimist. The potential in AI is - as others have said - as big as the advent of electricity or maybe even bigger - like the advent of the wheel, or fire - or even beyond that
Of course there is the 5-10% chance it will kill us all, but we are doing a decent job of that anyway, without any of the upside, so I say hand it all over to the Robots
Draconian means like this bloke. Dragons don't come in to it.
Westminster Voting Intention:
LAB: 43% (-3)
CON: 31% (+3)
LDM: 10% (-1)
RFM: 5% (+1)
SNP: 4% (+1)
GRN: 3% (=)
Savanta_UK , 23-25 Jun.
Changes w/ 16-18 Jun.
Behaviour of parents driving near a *lot* of schools *does* cause significant injury - it happens widely and all the time. Check the local press.
Here's one in Wandsworth that went through the Courts in July 2022. School run mum mounted the pavement in her car and hit a group of 11, including 7 pupils. Nine of them were taken to hospital.
A car crash which injured children and adults outside a primary school was described as “every parent’s worst nightmare” by a judge as he sentenced a mother for careless driving.
Dolly Rincon-Aguilar was on the school run when a group of pupils and parents who were standing near the gates of Beatrix Potter Primary School in Openview, Earlsfield, were hit by the Toyota Rav4 she was driving.
https://www.wandsworthguardian.co.uk/news/20585692.wandsworth-mum-fined-careless-driving-11-injured-crash/
The issue is proximity of parents driving vehicles to vulnerable road users. If the zig-zag lines were respected, it would be less of an issue - but they are not respected.
Absolutely as development increases from a low base then (unintuitively) emigration increases because the returns to those improved skills is higher elsewhere. But then the next bit of the U kicks in and returns equalise and you have a situation where there is likely equal migration between equally-developed nations eg the UK and Switzerland.
I suppose distance might be a factor so you might get more Swiss than Malians when we reach that stage. We don't have a huge number of South Koreans here, and nor are there too many UK emigrants to South Korea.
I live four doors down from a large school in Crosby. 800 primary children. Many walk. Many do not.
My car is on the drive.
If I try to get out after 8.30am, there is inevitably a car right across the drive. Parked up. Not even sitting there in the car. They've just parked across the drive. After all, why should they care? They're not blocked in. I won't be getting out till 9am. Depends if they spot a friend at the gate or not and stop for a natter.
Same situation between 3pm and 3.30pm.
When I confront some of them, a few are apologetic, many are not. Some have even said, "It's only once." but forget that 400 of them do it one a day every school day. So they only do it once, but rotate around. Bastards.
I've been clever though.... once I parked on the road! Then I could get out.
I came out to no wing mirror and a nice dent in the door. No note left.
Never again.
And of course, some parents have parked on my drive (and neighbours drive). They don't do this very often though.... not because they have any shame... no. They don't do it because they get blocked in by the next parent to park across the drive.
I've got more reg plates in my notes than I've had hot dinners. I've considered form V888 for a few persistent arseholes, but its never quite come to that and speaking to them usually yields some apology.
But as soon as they 'learn', its a new school year, and it starts all over again.
Yes of course Russia is currently not welcoming. It has just suffered a major brain drain with educated young people leaving and being needlessly killed because of Putins fantasy. That leaves a bit of a vaccuum in the demographics and nature abhors a vaccuum.
There will be an opportunity for Russia to rebuild through a mix of immigration and its resource vs climate changes. It may or may not take it.
And Canada is pretty pro immigrant and has the example of the US to follow/learn from.
Aggregate Result of the 13 Council By-Elections Since LE2023:
LAB: 5 (-1)
GRN: 3 (+2)
LDM: 2 (-1)
IND: 2 (+2)
CON: 1 (-1)
SNP: 0 (-1)
Horrific injuries: https://www.itv.com/news/london/2022-07-29/school-run-mum-fined-after-11-injured-in-crash-which-left-children-trapped
There should be a minimum driving bans for careless/dangerous which cause injuries or deaths.
It is a new South Korea in the making, but with lots more people and possibly even more determination. They are hard working, smart, resourceful, high IQ and dynamic. And they still have a decent fertility rate (over 2). If I knew how to invest in a country I would invest in Vietnam
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/30/john-lewis-defends-plans-to-build-10000-rental-homes-on-its-land
Looks like I was wrong the other week in suggesting PE would replace private landlords. Looks like it will be corporates instead. (No crystal ball — was looking at what has happened with large companies owning thousands of student flats.)
Canada is welcoming of immigrants it wants currently yes, that though is a far cry however from welcoming say 50 million of them.
The cream of climate change refugees will no doubt be accepted by countries, the rest I suspect not so much
Not advice!
However, here we have a functioning housing market and there are reasonably priced Council and Private rentals around.
years.
PBers seem to have an awful lot of spare bridges they want to dispose of.
Weird.
The north had most of the industry and almost all of the natural resources. The south has eff all apart from rather a lot of US aid.
And the fish.
The issue is about allocation of scarce resources - eg road space - so there are decisions that have to be made.
The challenge is sharpest in cities. And the factors include efficiency (private vehicles being the most inefficient in terms of moving people), equality (many people *cannot* get a driving license for eg medical reasons), safety, perceived safety, emissions, and others I can't think of for now.
Discouraging / reducing use of private motor vehicles in cities helps efficiency and congestion for two desirable outcomes.
Do we give this 3.5m of road width to a second general lane, or to an extra 1.0m of pavement, a 2m protected mobility lane for cycles, mobility scooters, wheelers, and e-scooters, and a 0.5m protective buffer to stop the motor vehicles injuring people?
Or the recent case of Kensington High Street, where the Borough Council removed a protected mobility lane, and that space is now taken up mainly by a very small number of parked cars? Desirable?
We need to make decisions so that they different modes *can* exist safely side by side. Cycles, pedestrians, wheelers etc do not mix safely with general traffic unless the general traffic is a very small minority, and the speed limit is under 20mph.
Equally, there is an argument for separated road / mobility / pedestrian networks everywhere to encourage cycles and mobility scooters to stay off roads.
I'd say that decisions are somewhat different in rural areas.
Conservatives have broadly stopped falling.
Interesting that not even our government seems to want to remind us of "the benefits of Brexit" as no-one can find any.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/digested-week-sunak-hit-by-seven-year-hitch-on-brexit-vote-anniversary/ar-AA1dfpvP?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=10a5df5d77784c54b2e461539c85032b&ei=10
My ticket is for day 5 so I am basically praying for bad light/rain
Otherwise I reckon this will be done by day 4, with maybe a few minutes on day 5
a) People like the convenience of cars where as public transport is inconvenient
b) The only real way to get less cars because of a) is to make them evermore expensive to run and then that will be perceived as pricing the poor of the road.
*Note I don't own a car or motorcycle and haven't driven in 15 years or so and therefore really have no skin in the game
Impoverished malarial toilets, 60 years ago
Rishi Sunak = Brendan McCullum (the coach)