This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Complete bollocks.
Every Corbyn supporter cared about winning.
It's centrists within Labour who didn't care about winning see the Forde report for evidence of the factional movement of resources at GE2107 away from the winnable marginals to centrist favourites seats with huge majorities.
Centrists in most of the marginals weren't going to vote for Corbyn even if Labour campaigned there 24/7. As 2019 proved
Corbyn didn’t want centrist votes. For every one vote he secured for himself he recruited two for his opponent. He wasn’t smart and lost badly twice.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Kudos for Shapps who laid an elephant trap but Labour blundered into it and even conceded the Tories might be right.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
I would imagine there would be quite a few civil liberties concerns about that.
You are already being photographed every few hundred yards in much of London, already.
Edit: And the sat nav route planners are selling your travel commercially. Bet the government slurps that as well.
Yes. Hence why I always try and look my best when I go out. You never know who might take a look at that footage. Could be someone scouting for late middle-aged talent.
I am rich!
I have cashed out the 2-1 series result, because the weather looks pretty good now for Thursday, and put half the take on an England win so I can watch with head and heart aligned.
Latest Nimby News, aka supporting flagship policies, in the Graun feed just now: (an d specially for @JosiasJessop and any grads of Fenland Tech)
'In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.
But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them. [...]
The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. [...]'
Hunter Mahan @HunterMahan The crowd this year is so opposite of all the experience’s I’ve had at @TheOpen . Any ideas why??
Crowds this summer seem to be more common, oiks at Lord's also booed Australia's team and at Wimbledon Djokovic had some boos
Come, come my Essex friend! The worst abuse of the Aussies at Lords was in the Long Room. Members only.
Grey and rather overcast here this morning. Not like summer at all!
Yes people getting MCC membership who shouldn't have it
You mean shouldn’t have it now, as a consequence of their behaviour, or should never have been accepted as members? If the latter, what particular characteristics or life histories do you think should disqualify you from MCC membership?
Hunter Mahan @HunterMahan The crowd this year is so opposite of all the experience’s I’ve had at @TheOpen . Any ideas why??
Crowds this summer seem to be more common, oiks at Lord's also booed Australia's team and at Wimbledon Djokovic had some boos
Come, come my Essex friend! The worst abuse of the Aussies at Lords was in the Long Room. Members only.
Grey and rather overcast here this morning. Not like summer at all!
Yes people getting MCC membership who shouldn't have it
You mean shouldn’t have it now, as a consequence of their behaviour, or should never have been accepted as members? If the latter, what particular characteristics or life histories do you think should disqualify you from MCC membership?
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
In the medium term, because petrol/diesel are becoming less relevant.
In the short term, because it would send The Sun potty. Fuel duty has been frozen since 2010 and it will be a brave government that starts increasing it, even in line with inflation.
Hunter Mahan @HunterMahan The crowd this year is so opposite of all the experience’s I’ve had at @TheOpen . Any ideas why??
Crowds this summer seem to be more common, oiks at Lord's also booed Australia's team and at Wimbledon Djokovic had some boos
Come, come my Essex friend! The worst abuse of the Aussies at Lords was in the Long Room. Members only.
Grey and rather overcast here this morning. Not like summer at all!
Yes people getting MCC membership who shouldn't have it
You mean shouldn’t have it now, as a consequence of their behaviour, or should never have been accepted as members? If the latter, what particular characteristics or life histories do you think should disqualify you from MCC membership?
Not an expert on this stuff by any means so don't rule out Armageddon/End Times.
That’s an interesting aircraft, especially one on the UK civilian register.
Used by the private contractor now doing the basic pilot training for the RAF?
FR (formerly Flight Refuelling). Called up when you want a pretend enemy. FR used to provide jets to pretend to attack RN ships too IIRC for Thursday Wars in the Channel.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
I would imagine there would be quite a few civil liberties concerns about that.
Why? This is the UK. We carry tracking devices in our pocket. Insurance companies offer discounts to put monitoring devices in the boot.
Some of us carry tracking devices in our pockets just like some of us post our entire lives on faecesbook.
There is a difference between choosing to and being mandated to however
Hunter Mahan @HunterMahan The crowd this year is so opposite of all the experience’s I’ve had at @TheOpen . Any ideas why??
Crowds this summer seem to be more common, oiks at Lord's also booed Australia's team and at Wimbledon Djokovic had some boos
Come, come my Essex friend! The worst abuse of the Aussies at Lords was in the Long Room. Members only.
Grey and rather overcast here this morning. Not like summer at all!
Yes people getting MCC membership who shouldn't have it
You mean shouldn’t have it now, as a consequence of their behaviour, or should never have been accepted as members? If the latter, what particular characteristics or life histories do you think should disqualify you from MCC membership?
Hunter Mahan @HunterMahan The crowd this year is so opposite of all the experience’s I’ve had at @TheOpen . Any ideas why??
Crowds this summer seem to be more common, oiks at Lord's also booed Australia's team and at Wimbledon Djokovic had some boos
Come, come my Essex friend! The worst abuse of the Aussies at Lords was in the Long Room. Members only.
Grey and rather overcast here this morning. Not like summer at all!
Yes people getting MCC membership who shouldn't have it
You mean shouldn’t have it now, as a consequence of their behaviour, or should never have been accepted as members? If the latter, what particular characteristics or life histories do you think should disqualify you from MCC membership?
Eton and Harrow are amateurs. Winchester hs been banned since 1912 for misconduct during the EW match.
Oh, didn't know that. Obviously a special kind of thug and vandal goes to Winchester. And New College Oxon IIRC?
I think they are expected to have matured a bit by the time they get there. Most of us probably did things in our mid teens whicdh we are very thankful were not caught on CCTV. I did.
Hunter Mahan @HunterMahan The crowd this year is so opposite of all the experience’s I’ve had at @TheOpen . Any ideas why??
Crowds this summer seem to be more common, oiks at Lord's also booed Australia's team and at Wimbledon Djokovic had some boos
Come, come my Essex friend! The worst abuse of the Aussies at Lords was in the Long Room. Members only.
Grey and rather overcast here this morning. Not like summer at all!
Yes people getting MCC membership who shouldn't have it
You mean shouldn’t have it now, as a consequence of their behaviour, or should never have been accepted as members? If the latter, what particular characteristics or life histories do you think should disqualify you from MCC membership?
Eton and Harrow are amateurs. Winchester hs been banned since 1912 for misconduct during the EW match.
Oh, didn't know that. Obviously a special kind of thug and vandal goes to Winchester. And New College Oxon IIRC?
I think they are expected to have matured a bit by the time they get there. Most of us probably did things in our mid teens whicdh we are very thankful were not caught on CCTV. I did.
At the next election, a 35-year-old prospective MP will likely have had an iPhone and a Facebook account since they were 18 or 19. So will all of their old friends of the same age.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Not an expert on this stuff by any means so don't rule out Armageddon/End Times.
That’s an interesting aircraft, especially one on the UK civilian register.
Used by the private contractor now doing the basic pilot training for the RAF?
FR (formerly Flight Refuelling). Called up when you want a pretend enemy. FR used to provide jets to pretend to attack RN ships too IIRC for Thursday Wars in the Channel.
From the Grauniad so accuracy check needed, but with that in mind here's the next instalment in GESpain83
"...Negotiations by the two blocs to form governments will start after a new parliament convenes on 17 August. King Felipe VI will invite the PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to try to secure the prime ministership. In a similar situation in 2015, PP leader Mariano Rajoy declined the king’s invitation, saying he could not muster the support.
If Feijoo declines, the king may turn to the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, with the same request. The law does not set a deadline for the process but if no candidate secures a majority within two months of the first vote on the prime minister, new elections must be held..."
From the Grauniad so accuracy check needed, but with that in mind here's the next instalment in GESpain83
"...Negotiations by the two blocs to form governments will start after a new parliament convenes on 17 August. King Felipe VI will invite the PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to try to secure the prime ministership. In a similar situation in 2015, PP leader Mariano Rajoy declined the king’s invitation, saying he could not muster the support.
If Feijoo declines, the king may turn to the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, with the same request. The law does not set a deadline for the process but if no candidate secures a majority within two months of the first vote on the prime minister, new elections must be held..."
So they have two months over the summer to pass a vote of confidence in some form of government, or else it’s a second election. A properly hung Parliament.
Hunter Mahan @HunterMahan The crowd this year is so opposite of all the experience’s I’ve had at @TheOpen . Any ideas why??
Crowds this summer seem to be more common, oiks at Lord's also booed Australia's team and at Wimbledon Djokovic had some boos
Come, come my Essex friend! The worst abuse of the Aussies at Lords was in the Long Room. Members only.
Grey and rather overcast here this morning. Not like summer at all!
Yes people getting MCC membership who shouldn't have it
You mean shouldn’t have it now, as a consequence of their behaviour, or should never have been accepted as members? If the latter, what particular characteristics or life histories do you think should disqualify you from MCC membership?
Eton and Harrow are amateurs. Winchester hs been banned since 1912 for misconduct during the EW match.
Oh, didn't know that. Obviously a special kind of thug and vandal goes to Winchester. And New College Oxon IIRC?
I think they are expected to have matured a bit by the time they get there. Most of us probably did things in our mid teens whicdh we are very thankful were not caught on CCTV. I did.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
I would imagine there would be quite a few civil liberties concerns about that.
You are already being photographed every few hundred yards in much of London, already.
Edit: And the sat nav route planners are selling your travel commercially. Bet the government slurps that as well.
Yes. Hence why I always try and look my best when I go out. You never know who might take a look at that footage. Could be someone scouting for late middle-aged talent.
I am rich!
I have cashed out the 2-1 series result, because the weather looks pretty good now for Thursday, and put half the take on an England win so I can watch with head and heart aligned.
So thanks for that.
Pleasure. Yes it's nice to get wish and wallet in the same place for the last match. It still means something, 2/2 is different to 1/2 and very different to 1/3.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
As with ULEZ there is a bit of an optics problem, regardless of facts. Wood burning is as ancient as the hills, a naturally occurring phenomenon and returns to the air only the CO2 that it removed in the first place - which is why recently it was commended as the big way forward - part of the 'biomass' revolution.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
I burn wood and I'm not a good person, but I can see the fallacies there. We are responsible for what we do, not for forest fires in faraway countries, and we are relatively more responsible to our literal and moral neighbours than to the world in general.
Having said which I am in the middle of nowhere and would be burning oil otherwise, so no change here. I think any ban will be on new installations, in cities, anyway.
But this is another skirmish in the Man-Ent Wars. Trees have virtually no benefit over low lying vegetation, being just vegetation on stilts. They burn, which we now agree is a bad thing whether intentional or not. We no longer need them to build new ships nor to hold birds and animals to shoot and hunt. The interior of a wood is a gloomy and frightening place, and if you plant beech or softwood, as sterile as a shopping centre. And even if they are the bees knees, they are too late. We don't have a 30 year horizon.
Still displaying your stunning levels of ignorance I see.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
This is why the government(s) over the years wanted hydrogen to be the fuel of he future. Easy to tax and control.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
At a max of 3 kw per hour it'll take a while, mind
I don't remember the fires in 2007, but it's interesting that that was a washout summer here. I guess the jet stream was doing a similar thing back then.
It was quite a different jet stream pattern. This month we've had mobile Westerlies, a little South of normal but nothing out of the ordinary. Wet weather in the NW and relatively dry most of the time in the SE. Overall average.
In May to July 2007 we had a very Southerly displaced jet with blocking high to the North and slow moving depressions parked over the UK. Hence flooding. Similar pattern in 2012.
The impact on the Med was different too. 2007, meridional slow moving jet diving down into Western Europe then back up in SE Europe giving them hot dry weather. 2023, quite fast zonal jet bottling up the heat across the whole subtropics including Western and Eastern Med, from Spain to Turkey.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
The current charge point operators are arguing that they should be subject to the 5% VAT rate that home charging attracts, rather than the 20% VAT rate they have to use as a commercial operator.
I don't remember the fires in 2007, but it's interesting that that was a washout summer here. I guess the jet stream was doing a similar thing back then.
It was quite a different jet stream pattern. This month we've had mobile Westerlies, a little South of normal but nothing out of the ordinary. Wet weather in the NW and relatively dry most of the time in the SE. Overall average.
In May to July 2007 we had a very Southerly displaced jet with blocking high to the North and slow moving depressions parked over the UK. Hence flooding. Similar pattern in 2012.
The impact on the Med was different too. 2007, meridional slow moving jet diving down into Western Europe then back up in SE Europe giving them hot dry weather. 2023, quite fast zonal jet bottling up the heat across the whole subtropics including Western and Eastern Med, from Spain to Turkey.
I’ve got only 38ºC and overcast today. Usually we’d expect 45ºC and more humid in July and August. It looks like the hot weather is staying in southern Europe, and not making it as far as the sandpit.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
I think an incentive to charge at home is perhaps a good thing.
Many users of charge points use shared resources ie space.
Perhaps applied to on street charging points?
I think there are probably better ways, though, I quite like the idea of an annual axle weight tax based on the 4th power of the axle weight which is the formula for wear on roads, as I have argued before.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
As with ULEZ there is a bit of an optics problem, regardless of facts. Wood burning is as ancient as the hills, a naturally occurring phenomenon and returns to the air only the CO2 that it removed in the first place - which is why recently it was commended as the big way forward - part of the 'biomass' revolution.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
I burn wood and I'm not a good person, but I can see the fallacies there. We are responsible for what we do, not for forest fires in faraway countries, and we are relatively more responsible to our literal and moral neighbours than to the world in general.
Having said which I am in the middle of nowhere and would be burning oil otherwise, so no change here. I think any ban will be on new installations, in cities, anyway.
But this is another skirmish in the Man-Ent Wars. Trees have virtually no benefit over low lying vegetation, being just vegetation on stilts. They burn, which we now agree is a bad thing whether intentional or not. We no longer need them to build new ships nor to hold birds and animals to shoot and hunt. The interior of a wood is a gloomy and frightening place, and if you plant beech or softwood, as sterile as a shopping centre. And even if they are the bees knees, they are too late. We don't have a 30 year horizon.
Still displaying your stunning levels of ignorance I see.
OK about as content-free a rejoinder as you'll hope to see.
In the light of current events you really need to make a case for tree planting strong enough to outweigh the fact that they are a bloody great unforced error of a fire hazard. You possibly think that was abroad and it couldn't happen here? let me remind you of conditions last summer, and the fact that we'll be 20-30 years further on when your trees are ready to burn.
So, my case is that trees are just vegetation on a useless and dangerous stalk. If you think they have magical powers of carbon capture denied to other photosynthesisers you need to make the case. Obviously we should have some trees for their own sake and the biodiversity they support, but a TREES! YAY! case where they get on the podium with motherhood and apple pie is simply dangerous and damaging.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Complete bollocks.
Every Corbyn supporter cared about winning.
It's centrists within Labour who didn't care about winning see the Forde report for evidence of the factional movement of resources at GE2107 away from the winnable marginals to centrist favourites seats with huge majorities.
Centrists in most of the marginals weren't going to vote for Corbyn even if Labour campaigned there 24/7. As 2019 proved
Corbyn didn’t want centrist votes. For every one vote he secured for himself he recruited two for his opponent. He wasn’t smart and lost badly twice.
Lost badly once. 2017 was a loss but it felt like a win vs expectations and startpoint.
However I'm now onboard with the Starmer 'NL' strategy, ie that to ensure the win at GE24 the best approach is to keep things very safe, in particular give no scope for the old 'Labour can't be trusted with your money' trope to get into play.
I don't particularly like agreeing with this - for me one of the delights of the Corbyn era was the contempt shown for Murdoch/Dacre opeds and Sun, Mail, Telegraph sensibilities - but I do agree. The evidence says it's right and my intuition says the same.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
As with ULEZ there is a bit of an optics problem, regardless of facts. Wood burning is as ancient as the hills, a naturally occurring phenomenon and returns to the air only the CO2 that it removed in the first place - which is why recently it was commended as the big way forward - part of the 'biomass' revolution.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
For the woodburners the problem is that they dump their particulates locally. A forest fire half way around the world spreads it’s output across the entire atmosphere before it reaches us. Every second house in suburban London having a woodburner (I know this is an exaggeration, work with me here) results in London’s air becoming a killer smog when the weather conditions prevent the smoke dispersing elsewhere & permanently increase the particulate load on the London population the rest of the time.
The latter means that people die of respiratory diseases who would otherwise live. Sure, some of them are just old, but many of them are the young & unlucky - people with asthma, or those who for other reasons have much reduced lung capacity.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
At a max of 3 kw per hour it'll take a while, mind
You could combine the outputs of sockets on different fuses/RCDs if you bond the earths. Apparently you can kill yourself or burn your gaff down to the ground if the impedence loads don't match but I've done it a few times and I'm still here. (As is my house.)
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
The current charge point operators are arguing that they should be subject to the 5% VAT rate that home charging attracts, rather than the 20% VAT rate they have to use as a commercial operator.
Nobody wants to stick their head over the parapet & say the obvious: either we start paying per mile or taxes have to rise elsewhere.
Neither is politically palatable, so governments have been avoiding the issue & hoping something will turn up for years. Eventually they will have to act, because the impact on the government’s finances will be obvious to everyone, but it doesn’t seem that we can expect any kind of forward planning at all. Plus ça change?
I don't remember the fires in 2007, but it's interesting that that was a washout summer here. I guess the jet stream was doing a similar thing back then.
It was quite a different jet stream pattern. This month we've had mobile Westerlies, a little South of normal but nothing out of the ordinary. Wet weather in the NW and relatively dry most of the time in the SE. Overall average.
In May to July 2007 we had a very Southerly displaced jet with blocking high to the North and slow moving depressions parked over the UK. Hence flooding. Similar pattern in 2012.
The impact on the Med was different too. 2007, meridional slow moving jet diving down into Western Europe then back up in SE Europe giving them hot dry weather. 2023, quite fast zonal jet bottling up the heat across the whole subtropics including Western and Eastern Med, from Spain to Turkey.
I’ve got only 38ºC and overcast today. Usually we’d expect 45ºC and more humid in July and August. It looks like the hot weather is staying in southern Europe, and not making it as far as the sandpit.
You have as high upper air temperatures as normal, and regional anomaly maps show it hotter than normal across the entire Middle East, so it looks more like local conditions - a little disturbance coming up from the Arabian sea through Oman. The ITCZ that brings the monsoonal rains to East Africa is further North than usual.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
At a max of 3 kw per hour it'll take a while, mind
You could combine the outputs of sockets on different fuses/RCDs if you bond the earths. Apparently you can kill yourself or burn your gaff down to the ground if the impedence loads don't match but I've done it a few times and I'm still here. (As is my house.)
Sparkies might be getting work for "second oven" installations.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
I think an incentive to charge at home is perhaps a good thing.
Many users of charge points use shared resources ie space.
Perhaps applied to on street charging points?
I think there are probably better ways, though, I quite like the idea of an annual axle weight tax based on the 4th power of the axle weight which is the formula for wear on roads, as I have argued before.
One way or the other fuel duty needs to be replaced which will require electricity used to charge cars to be taxed accordingly or some other method such as you suggest. However using the method you describe penalises the people who drive little vs those that drive a lot if just based on axle weight. It will also like result in electric cars with extra axles. No reason a car is limited to 4 wheels
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Complete bollocks.
Every Corbyn supporter cared about winning.
It's centrists within Labour who didn't care about winning see the Forde report for evidence of the factional movement of resources at GE2107 away from the winnable marginals to centrist favourites seats with huge majorities.
Centrists in most of the marginals weren't going to vote for Corbyn even if Labour campaigned there 24/7. As 2019 proved
Corbyn didn’t want centrist votes. For every one vote he secured for himself he recruited two for his opponent. He wasn’t smart and lost badly twice.
Lost badly once. 2017 was a loss but it felt like a win vs expectations and startpoint.
However I'm now onboard with the Starmer 'NL' strategy, ie that to ensure the win at GE24 the best approach is to keep things very safe, in particular give no scope for the old 'Labour can't be trusted with your money' trope to get into play.
I don't particularly like agreeing with this - for me one of the delights of the Corbyn era was the contempt shown for Murdoch/Dacre opeds and Sun, Mail, Telegraph sensibilities - but I do agree. The evidence says it's right and my intuition says the same.
Except in Uxbridge where Starmer/NL reluctance to take on the Tories over Ulez led to defeat.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
The current charge point operators are arguing that they should be subject to the 5% VAT rate that home charging attracts, rather than the 20% VAT rate they have to use as a commercial operator.
Nobody wants to stick their head over the parapet & say the obvious: either we start paying per mile or taxes have to rise elsewhere.
Neither is politically palatable, so governments have been avoiding the issue & hoping something will turn up for years. Eventually they will have to act, because the impact on the government’s finances will be obvious to everyone, but it doesn’t seem that we can expect any kind of forward planning at all. Plus ça change?
A problem with "per mile" is that shorter journeys are the ones we want to reduce. In Edinburgh, about 2/3rds of car commutes are less than 10km (6 miles). 1/3 are less than 5km.
Latest Nimby News, aka supporting flagship policies, in the Graun feed just now: (an d specially for @JosiasJessop and any grads of Fenland Tech)
'In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.
But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them. [...]
The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. [...]'
What's his objection? Well-paid jobs for the lower classes?
Latest Nimby News, aka supporting flagship policies, in the Graun feed just now: (an d specially for @JosiasJessop and any grads of Fenland Tech)
'In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.
But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them. [...]
The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. [...]'
Thanks for that - it's *another* reason not to vote for Browne. He's not been a terrible local MP; certainly not as bad as Lansley, but he's suffered from being in the loony party at this time.
All the parties locally are being disingenuous. Everyone knows we need more housing, but tell us plebs it'll be elsewhere. Even the Lib Dems - who run the council - are trying to build high-density housing on what is supposed to be business park land because they're sh*t-scared of building on greenfield sites.
And it'll be the same for Labour as well. I'm generally for more housing, as long as we get the infrastructure to go with it (and that's one heck of a caveat). The duelling of the A428 between Cambourne and the A1 at Black Cat is going ahead after the nutty 'green' objections. The rail line is needed - and that is already a massive hot potato locally. As is an eastbound A428 to M11 south link - to save Madingley Road and Coton from rat running.
Then there is the need for better shopping, leisure, industry and business provision in the new settlements.
All of this - and everything else required - is going to be mahossively expensive. But it's important to build communities, not just houses. They generally did this with Cambourne; I fear they're forgetting the lessons for Northstowe, Waterbeach and elsewhere.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
As with ULEZ there is a bit of an optics problem, regardless of facts. Wood burning is as ancient as the hills, a naturally occurring phenomenon and returns to the air only the CO2 that it removed in the first place - which is why recently it was commended as the big way forward - part of the 'biomass' revolution.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
I burn wood and I'm not a good person, but I can see the fallacies there. We are responsible for what we do, not for forest fires in faraway countries, and we are relatively more responsible to our literal and moral neighbours than to the world in general.
Having said which I am in the middle of nowhere and would be burning oil otherwise, so no change here. I think any ban will be on new installations, in cities, anyway.
But this is another skirmish in the Man-Ent Wars. Trees have virtually no benefit over low lying vegetation, being just vegetation on stilts. They burn, which we now agree is a bad thing whether intentional or not. We no longer need them to build new ships nor to hold birds and animals to shoot and hunt. The interior of a wood is a gloomy and frightening place, and if you plant beech or softwood, as sterile as a shopping centre. And even if they are the bees knees, they are too late. We don't have a 30 year horizon.
Still displaying your stunning levels of ignorance I see.
OK about as content-free a rejoinder as you'll hope to see.
In the light of current events you really need to make a case for tree planting strong enough to outweigh the fact that they are a bloody great unforced error of a fire hazard. You possibly think that was abroad and it couldn't happen here? let me remind you of conditions last summer, and the fact that we'll be 20-30 years further on when your trees are ready to burn.
So, my case is that trees are just vegetation on a useless and dangerous stalk. If you think they have magical powers of carbon capture denied to other photosynthesisers you need to make the case. Obviously we should have some trees for their own sake and the biodiversity they support, but a TREES! YAY! case where they get on the podium with motherhood and apple pie is simply dangerous and damaging.
Trees are not particularly more dangerous than any other form of vegetation when it comes to burning. Plenty of large-scale grass, gorse, or even bog fires when the conditions are right.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
The current charge point operators are arguing that they should be subject to the 5% VAT rate that home charging attracts, rather than the 20% VAT rate they have to use as a commercial operator.
Nobody wants to stick their head over the parapet & say the obvious: either we start paying per mile or taxes have to rise elsewhere.
Neither is politically palatable, so governments have been avoiding the issue & hoping something will turn up for years. Eventually they will have to act, because the impact on the government’s finances will be obvious to everyone, but it doesn’t seem that we can expect any kind of forward planning at all. Plus ça change?
It's an example of a completely logical policy being completely politically impossible even to suggest.
No other tax model is as closely linked to the actual value the motorist gets than road pricing. VED bears no relation to actual car usage. Fuel duty is OK but rapidly becomes a problem once people move away from ICE, and doesn't distinguish between driving in congested urban areas or open country roads. Road pricing means you are paying for mobility, in exactly the same way you do when boarding a bus, train or aeroplane.
The trouble with this topic (like the one on wood burners) is there are multiple different though related problems we are trying to address:
1. Road traffic congestion (mainly an economic and quality of life impact) 2. Local air pollution (respiratory and cardiac health impact) 3. Global carbon emissions (climate impact)
The solutions to each do overlap but often not perfectly.
Latest Nimby News, aka supporting flagship policies, in the Graun feed just now: (an d specially for @JosiasJessop and any grads of Fenland Tech)
'In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.
But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them. [...]
The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. [...]'
What's his objection? Well-paid jobs for the lower classes?
It's actually an interesting angle:
"Cambridge already has about the highest housebuilding in the country, and under the local plans that is set to double with 50,000 new homes by 2050, effectively doubling the size of Cambridge. But there is one major problem: we have run out of water."
"For the first time ever, the Environment Agency is systematically blocking all major new development around Cambridge because there is no water for them. We are the driest part of the country with the highest population growth."
Worth a read IMO, for the way it's not just about houses, but infrastructure. We've just had a massive storage reservoir built just outside the village.
But he ignores that the houses will not be built overnight, and the new houses won't all be complete in the twenty years it takes to build the reservoirs.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
As with ULEZ there is a bit of an optics problem, regardless of facts. Wood burning is as ancient as the hills, a naturally occurring phenomenon and returns to the air only the CO2 that it removed in the first place - which is why recently it was commended as the big way forward - part of the 'biomass' revolution.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
I burn wood and I'm not a good person, but I can see the fallacies there. We are responsible for what we do, not for forest fires in faraway countries, and we are relatively more responsible to our literal and moral neighbours than to the world in general.
Having said which I am in the middle of nowhere and would be burning oil otherwise, so no change here. I think any ban will be on new installations, in cities, anyway.
But this is another skirmish in the Man-Ent Wars. Trees have virtually no benefit over low lying vegetation, being just vegetation on stilts. They burn, which we now agree is a bad thing whether intentional or not. We no longer need them to build new ships nor to hold birds and animals to shoot and hunt. The interior of a wood is a gloomy and frightening place, and if you plant beech or softwood, as sterile as a shopping centre. And even if they are the bees knees, they are too late. We don't have a 30 year horizon.
Still displaying your stunning levels of ignorance I see.
OK about as content-free a rejoinder as you'll hope to see.
In the light of current events you really need to make a case for tree planting strong enough to outweigh the fact that they are a bloody great unforced error of a fire hazard. You possibly think that was abroad and it couldn't happen here? let me remind you of conditions last summer, and the fact that we'll be 20-30 years further on when your trees are ready to burn.
So, my case is that trees are just vegetation on a useless and dangerous stalk. If you think they have magical powers of carbon capture denied to other photosynthesisers you need to make the case. Obviously we should have some trees for their own sake and the biodiversity they support, but a TREES! YAY! case where they get on the podium with motherhood and apple pie is simply dangerous and damaging.
The environmental benefits of trees are immense. They capture carbon, and generate oxygen. They provide a habitat for all manner of wildlife. Woodlands have an ecosystem all of their own.
They contribute to human well-being, due to their beauty, and shade.
And, of course, they remain extremely useful as sources of wood and fruit.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
As with ULEZ there is a bit of an optics problem, regardless of facts. Wood burning is as ancient as the hills, a naturally occurring phenomenon and returns to the air only the CO2 that it removed in the first place - which is why recently it was commended as the big way forward - part of the 'biomass' revolution.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
For the woodburners the problem is that they dump their particulates locally. A forest fire half way around the world spreads it’s output across the entire atmosphere before it reaches us. Every second house in suburban London having a woodburner (I know this is an exaggeration, work with me here) results in London’s air becoming a killer smog when the weather conditions prevent the smoke dispersing elsewhere & permanently increase the particulate load on the London population the rest of the time.
The latter means that people die of respiratory diseases who would otherwise live. Sure, some of them are just old, but many of them are the young & unlucky - people with asthma, or those who for other reasons have much reduced lung capacity.
Yes. There are four or five subjects here not to be confused. They are: Optics or appearances; How to Get Votes in General Election; Post Election Political Choices and Actions; Atmospheric Science; The End of The World/Civilisation. They are incommensurable subjects even if they shouldn't be.
Hunter Mahan @HunterMahan The crowd this year is so opposite of all the experience’s I’ve had at @TheOpen . Any ideas why??
Crowds this summer seem to be more common, oiks at Lord's also booed Australia's team and at Wimbledon Djokovic had some boos
Come, come my Essex friend! The worst abuse of the Aussies at Lords was in the Long Room. Members only.
Grey and rather overcast here this morning. Not like summer at all!
Yes people getting MCC membership who shouldn't have it
You mean shouldn’t have it now, as a consequence of their behaviour, or should never have been accepted as members? If the latter, what particular characteristics or life histories do you think should disqualify you from MCC membership?
It's a simple fact that MCC members in previous decades wouldn't have behaved in the way those few people did in the Long Room a few weeks ago.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
The current charge point operators are arguing that they should be subject to the 5% VAT rate that home charging attracts, rather than the 20% VAT rate they have to use as a commercial operator.
Nobody wants to stick their head over the parapet & say the obvious: either we start paying per mile or taxes have to rise elsewhere.
Neither is politically palatable, so governments have been avoiding the issue & hoping something will turn up for years. Eventually they will have to act, because the impact on the government’s finances will be obvious to everyone, but it doesn’t seem that we can expect any kind of forward planning at all. Plus ça change?
A problem with "per mile" is that shorter journeys are the ones we want to reduce. In Edinburgh, about 2/3rds of car commutes are less than 10km (6 miles). 1/3 are less than 5km.
Per trip (say £3 fixed charge) plus a variable price per mile makes sense, with higher pricing in more congested areas and at busy times. All perfectly technologically feasible.
Latest Nimby News, aka supporting flagship policies, in the Graun feed just now: (an d specially for @JosiasJessop and any grads of Fenland Tech)
'In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.
But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them. [...]
The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. [...]'
Thanks for that - it's *another* reason not to vote for Browne. He's not been a terrible local MP; certainly not as bad as Lansley, but he's suffered from being in the loony party at this time.
All the parties locally are being disingenuous. Everyone knows we need more housing, but tell us plebs it'll be elsewhere. Even the Lib Dems - who run the council - are trying to build high-density housing on what is supposed to be business park land because they're sh*t-scared of building on greenfield sites.
And it'll be the same for Labour as well. I'm generally for more housing, as long as we get the infrastructure to go with it (and that's one heck of a caveat). The duelling of the A428 between Cambourne and the A1 at Black Cat is going ahead after the nutty 'green' objections. The rail line is needed - and that is already a massive hot potato locally. As is an eastbound A428 to M11 south link - to save Madingley Road and Coton from rat running.
Then there is the need for better shopping, leisure, industry and business provision in the new settlements.
All of this - and everything else required - is going to be mahossively expensive. But it's important to build communities, not just houses. They generally did this with Cambourne; I fear they're forgetting the lessons for Northstowe, Waterbeach and elsewhere.
Been there, done that, in Greater Glasgow, Edinburgh, etc. etc. passim in the 1950s-60s. Hence the ''deserts wi windaes'' in Billy Connolly's phrase.
But where on earth is this new Govetown urban quarter going to be? It alll seems terribly full up to me.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
I think an incentive to charge at home is perhaps a good thing.
Many users of charge points use shared resources ie space.
Perhaps applied to on street charging points?
I think there are probably better ways, though, I quite like the idea of an annual axle weight tax based on the 4th power of the axle weight which is the formula for wear on roads, as I have argued before.
One way or the other fuel duty needs to be replaced which will require electricity used to charge cars to be taxed accordingly or some other method such as you suggest. However using the method you describe penalises the people who drive little vs those that drive a lot if just based on axle weight. It will also like result in electric cars with extra axles. No reason a car is limited to 4 wheels
It will also like result in electric cars with extra axles.
Latest Nimby News, aka supporting flagship policies, in the Graun feed just now: (an d specially for @JosiasJessop and any grads of Fenland Tech)
'In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.
But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them. [...]
The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. [...]'
Latest Nimby News, aka supporting flagship policies, in the Graun feed just now: (an d specially for @JosiasJessop and any grads of Fenland Tech)
'In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.
But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them. [...]
The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. [...]'
What's his objection? Well-paid jobs for the lower classes?
It's actually an interesting angle:
"Cambridge already has about the highest housebuilding in the country, and under the local plans that is set to double with 50,000 new homes by 2050, effectively doubling the size of Cambridge. But there is one major problem: we have run out of water."
"For the first time ever, the Environment Agency is systematically blocking all major new development around Cambridge because there is no water for them. We are the driest part of the country with the highest population growth."
Worth a read IMO, for the way it's not just about houses, but infrastructure. We've just had a massive storage reservoir built just outside the village.
But he ignores that the houses will not be built overnight, and the new houses won't all be complete in the twenty years it takes to build the reservoirs.
Build reservoirs and get the water companies to plug leaks.
Following yesterday’s conversation about the debasement of language I wanted to share this gem from the daily mail
As proof of the emergency nature of the crisis they noted that “holidaymakers [at the airport] have been photographed anxiously studying the departure board”…
Latest Nimby News, aka supporting flagship policies, in the Graun feed just now: (an d specially for @JosiasJessop and any grads of Fenland Tech)
'In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.
But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them. [...]
The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. [...]'
There are three big areas of unbuilt greenspace within Oxford that aren't floodplain. One is Oxford Golf Club. The second is South Park (no, not that one). The third is Jordan Hill Golf Course.
I am 100% here for the Conservatives fighting GE2024 on a "concrete over golf courses and build urban housing" policy. Not sure Sir Bufton Tufton will approve though.
I understand that Mike was focused on Bedford however I would argue that in Middlesbrough the Ind would certainly have been elected under the old system. FPTP delivered that one to Lab. Mansfield and Leicester would probably have still been Lab
Latest Nimby News, aka supporting flagship policies, in the Graun feed just now: (an d specially for @JosiasJessop and any grads of Fenland Tech)
'In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.
But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them. [...]
The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. [...]'
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
The current charge point operators are arguing that they should be subject to the 5% VAT rate that home charging attracts, rather than the 20% VAT rate they have to use as a commercial operator.
Nobody wants to stick their head over the parapet & say the obvious: either we start paying per mile or taxes have to rise elsewhere.
Neither is politically palatable, so governments have been avoiding the issue & hoping something will turn up for years. Eventually they will have to act, because the impact on the government’s finances will be obvious to everyone, but it doesn’t seem that we can expect any kind of forward planning at all. Plus ça change?
Fuel duty income isn't going to disappear in a single year, so the governments of the day are likely to be able to make up the difference one fudge and salami-slice at a time.
Zero chance of road-pricing being introduced. No Westminster government has dared even complete a revaluation for council tax, how would they possibly see a scheme like road-pricing through from legislation to implementation?
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
As with ULEZ there is a bit of an optics problem, regardless of facts. Wood burning is as ancient as the hills, a naturally occurring phenomenon and returns to the air only the CO2 that it removed in the first place - which is why recently it was commended as the big way forward - part of the 'biomass' revolution.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
I burn wood and I'm not a good person, but I can see the fallacies there. We are responsible for what we do, not for forest fires in faraway countries, and we are relatively more responsible to our literal and moral neighbours than to the world in general.
Having said which I am in the middle of nowhere and would be burning oil otherwise, so no change here. I think any ban will be on new installations, in cities, anyway.
But this is another skirmish in the Man-Ent Wars. Trees have virtually no benefit over low lying vegetation, being just vegetation on stilts. They burn, which we now agree is a bad thing whether intentional or not. We no longer need them to build new ships nor to hold birds and animals to shoot and hunt. The interior of a wood is a gloomy and frightening place, and if you plant beech or softwood, as sterile as a shopping centre. And even if they are the bees knees, they are too late. We don't have a 30 year horizon.
Still displaying your stunning levels of ignorance I see.
OK about as content-free a rejoinder as you'll hope to see.
In the light of current events you really need to make a case for tree planting strong enough to outweigh the fact that they are a bloody great unforced error of a fire hazard. You possibly think that was abroad and it couldn't happen here? let me remind you of conditions last summer, and the fact that we'll be 20-30 years further on when your trees are ready to burn.
So, my case is that trees are just vegetation on a useless and dangerous stalk. If you think they have magical powers of carbon capture denied to other photosynthesisers you need to make the case. Obviously we should have some trees for their own sake and the biodiversity they support, but a TREES! YAY! case where they get on the podium with motherhood and apple pie is simply dangerous and damaging.
The environmental benefits of trees are immense. They capture carbon, and generate oxygen. They provide a habitat for all manner of wildlife. Woodlands have an ecosystem all of their own.
They contribute to human well-being, due to their beauty, and shade.
And, of course, they remain extremely useful as sources of wood and fruit.
Mature deciduous trees are very difficult to burn too, with the exception of some birches. Lots of wet biomass in the summer season when fire conditions are most suitable. Evergreens and scrub trees much easier to ignite.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
I think an incentive to charge at home is perhaps a good thing.
Many users of charge points use shared resources ie space.
Perhaps applied to on street charging points?
I think there are probably better ways, though, I quite like the idea of an annual axle weight tax based on the 4th power of the axle weight which is the formula for wear on roads, as I have argued before.
One way or the other fuel duty needs to be replaced which will require electricity used to charge cars to be taxed accordingly or some other method such as you suggest. However using the method you describe penalises the people who drive little vs those that drive a lot if just based on axle weight. It will also like result in electric cars with extra axles. No reason a car is limited to 4 wheels
It will also like result in electric cars with extra axles.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
As with ULEZ there is a bit of an optics problem, regardless of facts. Wood burning is as ancient as the hills, a naturally occurring phenomenon and returns to the air only the CO2 that it removed in the first place - which is why recently it was commended as the big way forward - part of the 'biomass' revolution.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
I burn wood and I'm not a good person, but I can see the fallacies there. We are responsible for what we do, not for forest fires in faraway countries, and we are relatively more responsible to our literal and moral neighbours than to the world in general.
Having said which I am in the middle of nowhere and would be burning oil otherwise, so no change here. I think any ban will be on new installations, in cities, anyway.
But this is another skirmish in the Man-Ent Wars. Trees have virtually no benefit over low lying vegetation, being just vegetation on stilts. They burn, which we now agree is a bad thing whether intentional or not. We no longer need them to build new ships nor to hold birds and animals to shoot and hunt. The interior of a wood is a gloomy and frightening place, and if you plant beech or softwood, as sterile as a shopping centre. And even if they are the bees knees, they are too late. We don't have a 30 year horizon.
Still displaying your stunning levels of ignorance I see.
OK about as content-free a rejoinder as you'll hope to see.
In the light of current events you really need to make a case for tree planting strong enough to outweigh the fact that they are a bloody great unforced error of a fire hazard. You possibly think that was abroad and it couldn't happen here? let me remind you of conditions last summer, and the fact that we'll be 20-30 years further on when your trees are ready to burn.
So, my case is that trees are just vegetation on a useless and dangerous stalk. If you think they have magical powers of carbon capture denied to other photosynthesisers you need to make the case. Obviously we should have some trees for their own sake and the biodiversity they support, but a TREES! YAY! case where they get on the podium with motherhood and apple pie is simply dangerous and damaging.
Trees are not particularly more dangerous than any other form of vegetation when it comes to burning. Plenty of large-scale grass, gorse, or even bog fires when the conditions are right.
Depends on the tree as well. Some don’t really burn very well. Others explode like bombs if someone strikes a match in the middle distance.
8 years after the event, just noticed that Con + UKIP polled 51% of the vote in Great Britain at the 2015 general election, (50.7% to be more precise. 37.8% and 12.9%).
I don't think anyone pointed this out at the time. Maybe because we were so surprised about the Tories winning a majority. But in hindsight it was perhaps an indicator of the 51.8% vote for Brexit at the referendum about a year later.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
The current charge point operators are arguing that they should be subject to the 5% VAT rate that home charging attracts, rather than the 20% VAT rate they have to use as a commercial operator.
Nobody wants to stick their head over the parapet & say the obvious: either we start paying per mile or taxes have to rise elsewhere.
Neither is politically palatable, so governments have been avoiding the issue & hoping something will turn up for years. Eventually they will have to act, because the impact on the government’s finances will be obvious to everyone, but it doesn’t seem that we can expect any kind of forward planning at all. Plus ça change?
A problem with "per mile" is that shorter journeys are the ones we want to reduce. In Edinburgh, about 2/3rds of car commutes are less than 10km (6 miles). 1/3 are less than 5km.
Per trip (say £3 fixed charge) plus a variable price per mile makes sense, with higher pricing in more congested areas and at busy times. All perfectly technologically feasible.
Could be accompanied by reduced taxes elsewhere.
True, but again it punishes rural areas that have no other option but to drive. Need a 🥕 and stick approach if you want to reduce the negative externalities associated with car driving rather than just use it as a revenue stream.
Following yesterday’s conversation about the debasement of language I wanted to share this gem from the daily mail
As proof of the emergency nature of the crisis they noted that “holidaymakers [at the airport] have been photographed anxiously studying the departure board”…
What's the problem with the sentence?
'anxiously' could be applied to two different verbs ... so the meanijng of the sentence flickers between the two, like a Danish physicist's cat in a box.
Reports that a Saudi team have offered €300m for Mbappe
With a salary of - wait for it - €700m A YEAR
That’ll upset the golfers, they only got $50m or $100m each - although Tiger was rumoured to have turned down something in the $750m range over three years.
Following yesterday’s conversation about the debasement of language I wanted to share this gem from the daily mail
As proof of the emergency nature of the crisis they noted that “holidaymakers [at the airport] have been photographed anxiously studying the departure board”…
What's the problem with the sentence?
I have no idea; but, going off at a tangent, there are some stations where just to stand or sit and watch the fluctuating departure board, glancing too at the trains coming and going as the concrete reality the board symbolises, is a sort of installation art form. Leeds and Preston are good. Euston has its moments but lacks the extra dimension of the non-terminus. It is of course best done when you have no personal stake in the timetable, but all day and all night to get nowhere in particular.
Edit: Speaking of timetables, why are there now no scheduled flights between North Korea and China (and of course anywhere else). There used to be.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
The current charge point operators are arguing that they should be subject to the 5% VAT rate that home charging attracts, rather than the 20% VAT rate they have to use as a commercial operator.
Nobody wants to stick their head over the parapet & say the obvious: either we start paying per mile or taxes have to rise elsewhere.
Neither is politically palatable, so governments have been avoiding the issue & hoping something will turn up for years. Eventually they will have to act, because the impact on the government’s finances will be obvious to everyone, but it doesn’t seem that we can expect any kind of forward planning at all. Plus ça change?
Fuel duty income isn't going to disappear in a single year, so the governments of the day are likely to be able to make up the difference one fudge and salami-slice at a time.
Zero chance of road-pricing being introduced. No Westminster government has dared even complete a revaluation for council tax, how would they possibly see a scheme like road-pricing through from legislation to implementation?
Indeed, but this is precisely the problem: instead of a simple, easy to understand system of taxation we end up with this progressively more & more baroque tower of complexity as the government tries to squeeze a bit from here & a bit from there within the current system.
Fuel taxes on are a one way trip to Zero: we can deal with that like grown-ups, or we can stick our collective heads in the sand and hope something comes along.
I’m not sure which is chicken & which is egg though: should we blame the politicians for failing to lead, or the population for screaming blue murder every time the obvious is pointed out to them? The tabloids printing alternate screaming headlines about “war on the motorist” & “your tax bill to rise!” aren’t helping of course.
Reports that a Saudi team have offered €300m for Mbappe
With a salary of - wait for it - €700m A YEAR
That’ll upset the golfers, they only got $50m or $100m each - although Tiger was rumoured to have turned down something in the $750m range over three years.
He would instantly and surely become the highest paid sportsman of all time. And by a massive distance?
If that mbappe deal did come off it would be final proof that football has reached an insane level of craziness. A world obsession with global prices
Would seem to me to be more of a particularly Saudi madness, than a global one. They can see the end of an era approaching, and it's producing a series of completely mad responses - war in Yemen, gruesome murder of journalists, bizarre tech-utopia desert cities, and ostentatious displays of wealth (soccer).
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
The current charge point operators are arguing that they should be subject to the 5% VAT rate that home charging attracts, rather than the 20% VAT rate they have to use as a commercial operator.
Nobody wants to stick their head over the parapet & say the obvious: either we start paying per mile or taxes have to rise elsewhere.
Neither is politically palatable, so governments have been avoiding the issue & hoping something will turn up for years. Eventually they will have to act, because the impact on the government’s finances will be obvious to everyone, but it doesn’t seem that we can expect any kind of forward planning at all. Plus ça change?
Fuel duty income isn't going to disappear in a single year, so the governments of the day are likely to be able to make up the difference one fudge and salami-slice at a time.
Zero chance of road-pricing being introduced. No Westminster government has dared even complete a revaluation for council tax, how would they possibly see a scheme like road-pricing through from legislation to implementation?
The trouble with road pricing is many fold. As I mentioned I actually saw a draft proposal from the dft back in 2001. The pricing was not surge pricing in anyway shape or form. The same charge was to be levied at 2am as at 5pm and was based purely on road type with motorways costing the highest per mile. It was pretty clear that the intent was to price people out of cars. That is also how most of the public would see it. Do we want to return to a world where only the rich can afford to drive and everyone else is stuck in their own locality.
Surge pricing wouldn't be a bad idea however it would also require cooperation by companies to work. Most would stick to all staff to be in at 9am I fear so surge pricing will do little if people have no choice about the time of travel.
Thirdly even if the introduced road pricing at a low rate of say a penny per mile most would be cynical about it and assume that the price is going to ratchet up rapidly as politicians cannot resist the urge to dip into our pockets.
Fourthly it will bring home to people that the governement is tracking their every movement. I know they already are however it would now be blatantly in peoples face
Reports that a Saudi team have offered €300m for Mbappe
With a salary of - wait for it - €700m A YEAR
Obscene.
It’s quite possibly nonsense. Maybe spread by the Saudis themselves just to say: Look how much money we have
It's truly bonkers, more than Pat Mahomes (The best QB in the NFL) will earn over his entire current contract with the Chiefs; triple Tiger Woods official tournament earnings; more than triple Djokovic's tournament winnings; roughly 17 times what the top baseball pitchers are earning; multiples in a year of what even Floyd Mayweather managed to bank in a year...
I am so old I can remember when it was mildly shocking when a player cost over £1m (it was Trevor Francis who broke the British barrier in 1979)
€300m
Jesus
I wonder if we'll eventually reach the situation where Saudi Arabia simply owns all sport and that's just accepted as a way of life. Is there anything stopping that from happening?
If that mbappe deal did come off it would be final proof that football has reached an insane level of craziness. A world obsession with global prices
Would seem to me to be more of a particularly Saudi madness, than a global one. They can see the end of an era approaching, and it's producing a series of completely mad responses - war in Yemen, gruesome murder of journalists, bizarre tech-utopia desert cities, and ostentatious displays of wealth (soccer).
I’m not sure that’s true at all
They genuinely have insane amounts of cash. Aramco is an enormous company
More like they can see the eventual end of hydrocarbons and they want to turn Saudi into a UAE x 10
Reports that a Saudi team have offered €300m for Mbappe
With a salary of - wait for it - €700m A YEAR
Mbappe is a genius of a player, but that is a ridiculous salary.
The Saudis make a far better case for stopping oil than the orange shirted eco-loons ever could.
They are still likely to be one if the global energy giants, for gge foreseeable future, given how cheap and reliable solar electricity is in their country.
I am so old I can remember when it was mildly shocking when a player cost over £1m (it was Trevor Francis who broke the British barrier in 1979)
€300m
Jesus
I wonder if we'll eventually reach the situation where Saudi Arabia simply owns all sport and that's just accepted as a way of life. Is there anything stopping that from happening?
I'm guessing they will steer clear of women's sports.
Half of world oil consumption is road transport. All the countries whose economies are reliant on oil exports are shafted, with the possible exception of Norway, who have done what they can to prepare for the end.
The rest can see what is coming, but are a lot more vulnerable to the consequences.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Fuel will be electricity.
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
Trouble with adding a levy to charge points is that you can charge from a normal 13amp socket so a lot of people would be evading the levy
The current charge point operators are arguing that they should be subject to the 5% VAT rate that home charging attracts, rather than the 20% VAT rate they have to use as a commercial operator.
Nobody wants to stick their head over the parapet & say the obvious: either we start paying per mile or taxes have to rise elsewhere.
Neither is politically palatable, so governments have been avoiding the issue & hoping something will turn up for years. Eventually they will have to act, because the impact on the government’s finances will be obvious to everyone, but it doesn’t seem that we can expect any kind of forward planning at all. Plus ça change?
It's an example of a completely logical policy being completely politically impossible even to suggest.
No other tax model is as closely linked to the actual value the motorist gets than road pricing. VED bears no relation to actual car usage. Fuel duty is OK but rapidly becomes a problem once people move away from ICE, and doesn't distinguish between driving in congested urban areas or open country roads. Road pricing means you are paying for mobility, in exactly the same way you do when boarding a bus, train or aeroplane.
The trouble with this topic (like the one on wood burners) is there are multiple different though related problems we are trying to address:
1. Road traffic congestion (mainly an economic and quality of life impact) 2. Local air pollution (respiratory and cardiac health impact) 3. Global carbon emissions (climate impact)
The solutions to each do overlap but often not perfectly.
4. We need to pay for the upkeep on the road network somehow, together with all the ancillary costs.
IIRC from the last time we went over this, Fuel duty brings in about twice as many £ as it costs to keep the road network going. But eventually that income is going away & the cash to maintain the roads is going to have to come from somewhere.
& yes, the conflicting costs & the different way they impact on others is one of the things that bedevils taxing vehicles. If you can’t agree on what you’re trying to achieve then it’s impossible to come up with a viable scheme of taxation / fees.
Reports that a Saudi team have offered €300m for Mbappe
With a salary of - wait for it - €700m A YEAR
Mbappe is a genius of a player, but that is a ridiculous salary.
The Saudis make a far better case for stopping oil than the orange shirted eco-loons ever could.
They are still likely to be one if the global energy giants, for gge foreseeable future, given how cheap and reliable solar electricity is in their country.
Plenty of other countries have that sort of advantage & others, Morocco for instance is better placed to serve the key EU market. Location really does matter for solar, unlike oil which can be shipped everywhere. Also massive investment needed everywhere for huge interconnectors if that really is the route they're going down & losses that you just don't get with LNG or oil also.
If that mbappe deal did come off it would be final proof that football has reached an insane level of craziness. A world obsession with global prices
Would seem to me to be more of a particularly Saudi madness, than a global one. They can see the end of an era approaching, and it's producing a series of completely mad responses - war in Yemen, gruesome murder of journalists, bizarre tech-utopia desert cities, and ostentatious displays of wealth (soccer).
I’m not sure that’s true at all
They genuinely have insane amounts of cash. Aramco is an enormous company
More like they can see the eventual end of hydrocarbons and they want to turn Saudi into a UAE x 10
Their strategy makes sense
Yes, if you are close to a pariah state whilst spending $500bn in creating one new city, investing $20bn or something of that order in elite sport to improve your image makes sense to me.
If that mbappe deal did come off it would be final proof that football has reached an insane level of craziness. A world obsession with global prices
Would seem to me to be more of a particularly Saudi madness, than a global one. They can see the end of an era approaching, and it's producing a series of completely mad responses - war in Yemen, gruesome murder of journalists, bizarre tech-utopia desert cities, and ostentatious displays of wealth (soccer).
I’m not sure that’s true at all
They genuinely have insane amounts of cash. Aramco is an enormous company
More like they can see the eventual end of hydrocarbons and they want to turn Saudi into a UAE x 10
Their strategy makes sense
Really? Pay $1 billion for a player for one year and then he goes to Real Madrid. Seems an odd way to increase Saudi's appeal.
UAE have been much smarter. Sunshine and shopping.
Comments
At what point do you admit you were wrong and that MCC includes thugs as per definition?
I have cashed out the 2-1 series result, because the weather looks pretty good now for Thursday, and put half the take on an England win so I can watch with head and heart aligned.
So thanks for that.
'In the news release issued overnight ahead of Gove’s speech, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said the government was planning “a new urban quarter in Cambridge which will unlock the city’s full potential as a source of innovation and talent”.
But this morning Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has condemned the proposals as “nonsense” and vowed to do everything he can to stop them. [...]
The Browne tweet supports the claim made by Keir Starmer, when he announced Labour’s housing plan, that the Conservatives cannot be the party of mass housebuilding because their MPs routinely block these initiatives on behalf of their “nimby” constituents. [...]'
Used by the private contractor now doing the basic pilot training for the RAF?
But then see this:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/may/12/eton-v-harrow-father-time-draws-near-for-annual-schoolboy-lords-jolly
In the short term, because it would send The Sun potty. Fuel duty has been frozen since 2010 and it will be a brave government that starts increasing it, even in line with inflation.
https://www.scramble.nl/military-news/draken-europe-s-agressors-are-go
There is a difference between choosing to and being mandated to however
What could possibly go wrong there?
I can seem some case for a levy on charge point electricity as it goes only to fuel vehicles, but that would drive home charging - a good thing for the large majority of people with off street parking perhaps.
On the downside we would need a sharp remedy for the people who create trip hazards by draping cables across pavements.
"...Negotiations by the two blocs to form governments will start after a new parliament convenes on 17 August. King Felipe VI will invite the PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to try to secure the prime ministership. In a similar situation in 2015, PP leader Mariano Rajoy declined the king’s invitation, saying he could not muster the support.
If Feijoo declines, the king may turn to the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, with the same request. The law does not set a deadline for the process but if no candidate secures a majority within two months of the first vote on the prime minister, new elections must be held..."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/23/spainish-election-conservative-party-ahead-but-unlikely-to-win-majority
Necessary since the tories binned 736NAS and Tatty Ton.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_L-159_ALCA
Prob Draken Intl.
In May to July 2007 we had a very Southerly displaced jet with blocking high to the North and slow moving depressions parked over the UK. Hence flooding. Similar pattern in 2012.
The impact on the Med was different too. 2007, meridional slow moving jet diving down into Western Europe then back up in SE Europe giving them hot dry weather. 2023, quite fast zonal jet bottling up the heat across the whole subtropics including Western and Eastern Med, from Spain to Turkey.
Many users of charge points use shared resources ie space.
Perhaps applied to on street charging points?
I think there are probably better ways, though, I quite like the idea of an annual axle weight tax based on the 4th power of the axle weight which is the formula for wear on roads, as I have argued before.
In the light of current events you really need to make a case for tree planting strong enough to outweigh the fact that they are a bloody great unforced error of a fire hazard. You possibly think that was abroad and it couldn't happen here? let me remind you of conditions last summer, and the fact that we'll be 20-30 years further on when your trees are ready to burn.
So, my case is that trees are just vegetation on a useless and dangerous stalk. If you think they have magical powers of carbon capture denied to other photosynthesisers you need to make the case. Obviously we should have some trees for their own sake and the biodiversity they support, but a TREES! YAY! case where they get on the podium with motherhood and apple pie is simply dangerous and damaging.
However I'm now onboard with the Starmer 'NL' strategy, ie that to ensure the win at GE24 the best approach is to keep things very safe, in particular give no scope for the old 'Labour can't be trusted with your money' trope to get into play.
I don't particularly like agreeing with this - for me one of the delights of the Corbyn era was the contempt shown for Murdoch/Dacre opeds and Sun, Mail, Telegraph sensibilities - but I do agree. The evidence says it's right and my intuition says the same.
The latter means that people die of respiratory diseases who would otherwise live. Sure, some of them are just old, but many of them are the young & unlucky - people with asthma, or those who for other reasons have much reduced lung capacity.
Neither is politically palatable, so governments have been avoiding the issue & hoping something will turn up for years. Eventually they will have to act, because the impact on the government’s finances will be obvious to everyone, but it doesn’t seem that we can expect any kind of forward planning at all. Plus ça change?
With a salary of - wait for it - €700m A YEAR
All the parties locally are being disingenuous. Everyone knows we need more housing, but tell us plebs it'll be elsewhere. Even the Lib Dems - who run the council - are trying to build high-density housing on what is supposed to be business park land because they're sh*t-scared of building on greenfield sites.
And it'll be the same for Labour as well. I'm generally for more housing, as long as we get the infrastructure to go with it (and that's one heck of a caveat). The duelling of the A428 between Cambourne and the A1 at Black Cat is going ahead after the nutty 'green' objections. The rail line is needed - and that is already a massive hot potato locally. As is an eastbound A428 to M11 south link - to save Madingley Road and Coton from rat running.
Then there is the need for better shopping, leisure, industry and business provision in the new settlements.
All of this - and everything else required - is going to be mahossively expensive. But it's important to build communities, not just houses. They generally did this with Cambourne; I fear they're forgetting the lessons for Northstowe, Waterbeach and elsewhere.
And, although I haven’t done the research yet, I seem to have some distant cousins in Essex
and Kent, courtesy of the Kent coalfield!
No other tax model is as closely linked to the actual value the motorist gets than road pricing. VED bears no relation to actual car usage. Fuel duty is OK but rapidly becomes a problem once people move away from ICE, and doesn't distinguish between driving in congested urban areas or open country roads. Road pricing means you are paying for mobility, in exactly the same way you do when boarding a bus, train or aeroplane.
The trouble with this topic (like the one on wood burners) is there are multiple different though related problems we are trying to address:
1. Road traffic congestion (mainly an economic and quality of life impact)
2. Local air pollution (respiratory and cardiac health impact)
3. Global carbon emissions (climate impact)
The solutions to each do overlap but often not perfectly.
"Cambridge already has about the highest housebuilding in the country, and under the local plans that is set to double with 50,000 new homes by 2050, effectively doubling the size of Cambridge. But there is one major problem: we have run out of water."
"For the first time ever, the Environment Agency is systematically blocking all major new development around Cambridge because there is no water for them. We are the driest part of the country with the highest population growth."
https://twitter.com/AnthonyBrowneMP/status/1683392957502701568
Worth a read IMO, for the way it's not just about houses, but infrastructure. We've just had a massive storage reservoir built just outside the village.
But he ignores that the houses will not be built overnight, and the new houses won't all be complete in the twenty years it takes to build the reservoirs.
They contribute to human well-being, due to their beauty, and shade.
And, of course, they remain extremely useful as sources of wood and fruit.
Could be accompanied by reduced taxes elsewhere.
But where on earth is this new Govetown urban quarter going to be? It alll seems terribly full up to me.
Well if it does, that'll be better for road wear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLJGv_M2EW8
Cambridge today, Oxford tomorrow (...twas ever thus).
There are three big areas of unbuilt greenspace within Oxford that aren't floodplain. One is Oxford Golf Club. The second is South Park (no, not that one). The third is Jordan Hill Golf Course.
I am 100% here for the Conservatives fighting GE2024 on a "concrete over golf courses and build urban housing" policy. Not sure Sir Bufton Tufton will approve though.
Zero chance of road-pricing being introduced. No Westminster government has dared even complete a revaluation for council tax, how would they possibly see a scheme like road-pricing through from legislation to implementation?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWzSctqcDZI
I can’t see what’s in this for the Saudis. Yes they are insanely rich but €1bn for one player for one season?! What’s the point
Also I don’t think mbappe would ever go to Saudi. Not at this peak career moment. He’ll go to Real, or, failing that, maybe a Chelsea
I don't think anyone pointed this out at the time. Maybe because we were so surprised about the Tories winning a majority. But in hindsight it was perhaps an indicator of the 51.8% vote for Brexit at the referendum about a year later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election#2015
€300m
Jesus
Edit: Speaking of timetables, why are there now no scheduled flights between North Korea and China (and of course anywhere else). There used to be.
Fuel taxes on are a one way trip to Zero: we can deal with that like grown-ups, or we can stick our collective heads in the sand and hope something comes along.
I’m not sure which is chicken & which is egg though: should we blame the politicians for failing to lead, or the population for screaming blue murder every time the obvious is pointed out to them? The tabloids printing alternate screaming headlines about “war on the motorist” & “your tax bill to rise!” aren’t helping of course.
Surge pricing wouldn't be a bad idea however it would also require cooperation by companies to work. Most would stick to all staff to be in at 9am I fear so surge pricing will do little if people have no choice about the time of travel.
Thirdly even if the introduced road pricing at a low rate of say a penny per mile most would be cynical about it and assume that the price is going to ratchet up rapidly as politicians cannot resist the urge to dip into our pockets.
Fourthly it will bring home to people that the governement is tracking their every movement. I know they already are however it would now be blatantly in peoples face
They genuinely have insane amounts of cash. Aramco is an enormous company
More like they can see the eventual end of hydrocarbons and they want to turn Saudi into a UAE x 10
Their strategy makes sense
The rest can see what is coming, but are a lot more vulnerable to the consequences.
IIRC from the last time we went over this, Fuel duty brings in about twice as many £ as it costs to keep the road network going. But eventually that income is going away & the cash to maintain the roads is going to have to come from somewhere.
& yes, the conflicting costs & the different way they impact on others is one of the things that bedevils taxing vehicles. If you can’t agree on what you’re trying to achieve then it’s impossible to come up with a viable scheme of taxation / fees.
Betting on Brazil v Panama in the women's world cup is probably the closest thing to free money. DYOR though.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/football/market/1.213918454
Location really does matter for solar, unlike oil which can be shipped everywhere. Also massive investment needed everywhere for huge interconnectors if that really is the route they're going down & losses that you just don't get with LNG or oil also.
UAE have been much smarter. Sunshine and shopping.