Henry V should be remembered not as the heroic victor of Agincourt but as an uncivilised warmonger, according to author and comedian David Mitchell.
The monarch’s skilful use of English longbowmen in the battle in 1415 against a French army up to five times their size was immortalised in William Shakespeare’s history play and its screen adaptations.
However Mitchell, whose latest work Unruly: A History of Kings and Queens chronicles the lives of English monarchs until the unification with Scotland, argues such romanticism has glossed over the brutal realities of his reign.
For Mitchell, Henry V was a “troublemaker” who died an ignominious death from dysentery before “all his plans collapsed around him”.
“I think if there has been misrepresentation it would be that Henry V was that terrific. He was a great warrior but in his aims, which are to totally take over France, he was not very civilised,” he told the audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Saturday evening.
He added: “It is a nasty thing to do, so I think representing him as a nationalistic hero is misrepresenting him.
“There was no way he was going to succeed in keeping control of England and France, that was just bound to fail ...it couldn’t have worked”.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
Tidal may or may not work but the reason it fell over is the business case wasn't attractive enough and so no-one invested.
Do HMT take some of the blame in this?
Yes. They will take virtually no risk and this kills all sorts of aspects of our industrial strategy.
One reason that's partly our fault though: if it doesn't pan out HMG would quickly be criticising for 'wasting taxpayers money', 'government gravy trains', and 'this could have paid for X more doctors and Y more nurses', and so forth - so we all have a part to play if we want to the Government to do more of this.
When you make bets they don't always pay off. But the point is enough of them do to make it worth your while.
Yes, and also the government shouldn't be placing its bets purely based on monetary expected return. Projects that are good bets purely financially can likely get backed by private investment anyway. The government should have an eye to the long term and to more "research" type bets where the payout is not necessarily purely monetary and short term.
Tidal may or may not work but the reason it fell over is the business case wasn't attractive enough and so no-one invested.
Do HMT take some of the blame in this?
Yes. They will take virtually no risk and this kills all sorts of aspects of our industrial strategy.
One reason that's partly our fault though: if it doesn't pan out HMG would quickly be criticising for 'wasting taxpayers money', 'government gravy trains', and 'this could have paid for X more doctors and Y more nurses', and so forth - so we all have a part to play if we want to the Government to do more of this.
When you make bets they don't always pay off. But the point is enough of them do to make it worth your while.
I'm a big fan of "let the market decide".
And the problem here is that nuclear has rather captured the attention of policymakers.
Henry V should be remembered not as the heroic victor of Agincourt but as an uncivilised warmonger, according to author and comedian David Mitchell.
The monarch’s skilful use of English longbowmen in the battle in 1415 against a French army up to five times their size was immortalised in William Shakespeare’s history play and its screen adaptations.
However Mitchell, whose latest work Unruly: A History of Kings and Queens chronicles the lives of English monarchs until the unification with Scotland, argues such romanticism has glossed over the brutal realities of his reign.
For Mitchell, Henry V was a “troublemaker” who died an ignominious death from dysentery before “all his plans collapsed around him”.
“I think if there has been misrepresentation it would be that Henry V was that terrific. He was a great warrior but in his aims, which are to totally take over France, he was not very civilised,” he told the audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Saturday evening.
He added: “It is a nasty thing to do, so I think representing him as a nationalistic hero is misrepresenting him.
“There was no way he was going to succeed in keeping control of England and France, that was just bound to fail ...it couldn’t have worked”.
Medieval monarchs were not, on the whole, adherents to the Hague and Geneva Conventions. Waging war to enforce one's claim to a throne was considered to be entirely legitimate among contemporary theorists.
I think there's a better argument that had Henry succeeded in enforcing his claim as King of France, then England would have been relegated to a backwater, next to the more populous and prosperous kingdom.
But calling him "nasty" and "uncivilised" is a silly case of presentism.
It's also ahistorical. Part of Henry V's success is that he won the support of larger numbers of the nobles of Normandy, in particular, because he was able to bring more order to the area, that the weak King of France was not able to do. That is too day that he brought more civilization in the form of the rule of law, such as it was in the 15th century.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Surely that's just saying that most medieval monarchs were useless ? And what's wrong with condemning modern day politicians for conforming with the modern day norm of being equally useless ?
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
Tidal may or may not work but the reason it fell over is the business case wasn't attractive enough and so no-one invested.
Do HMT take some of the blame in this?
Yes. They will take virtually no risk and this kills all sorts of aspects of our industrial strategy.
One reason that's partly our fault though: if it doesn't pan out HMG would quickly be criticising for 'wasting taxpayers money', 'government gravy trains', and 'this could have paid for X more doctors and Y more nurses', and so forth - so we all have a part to play if we want to the Government to do more of this.
When you make bets they don't always pay off. But the point is enough of them do to make it worth your while.
I'm a big fan of "let the market decide".
And the problem here is that nuclear has rather captured the attention of policymakers.
And nuclear is not a market solution. It is not private enterprise building our nuclear power stations, it is the Chinese and French governments (competent) thanks to promise of gargantuan subsidies from our government (incompetent).
But with any mode of power generation, if we want a market solution we need a steady hand on the regulatory tiller. And too many Tory MPs are luddite wazzocks.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
Israel is running graphic adverts on social media showing they were attacked.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
This is easy.
What the UK lacks is gas storage.
Gas power stations are cheap. They cost almost nothing to maintain. And they're efficient. It really isn't complicated to have enough CCGT and OGCTs to power the UK.
They're also - unlike coal or nuclear - flexible.
Sun shining and wind blowing? Turn 'em off.
The issue is that the UK bugger all gas storage. This meant that, when Russia invaded Ukraine and the gas market was thrown into flux, we had to pay crazy prices to import gas.
The Germans, by contrast, just ran their storage down.
The chart below is gas storage cacpacity in TWh for European countries:
If you have enough gas storage for - say - three months usage for the UK, then you can have as much renewables as you like. They will be used when available. And stored gas will be used when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
That gives energy security - but doesn't really "establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030", if the backbone of the thing is burning gas.
My understanding is that we forward buy lots of LNG shipments scheduled to arrive around the winter to get round the gas storage issue. I'm not sure if paying for a massive gas storage facility would actually save us any money (although it does remove the risk from our LNG shipments being interrupted by war, terror, piracy etc.).
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Mitchell is not saying that. He is saying that uniting Britain and France was an expensive fool's errand. Buy yourself the book and gift it to all your friends and loved ones this winterval.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
"Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension."
What do they have in common?
You can't expect the English taxpayers* to keep funding London with the HS2 moneys. Or what is left after the costs of scrapping.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
"Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension."
What do they have in common?
Read my post - they are ail projects with good business cases, or at least better than HS2.
Mr. JohnL, fair enough if Mr. Eagles was misrepresenting the claims (though it's also worth remembering it was only Henry V's premature death that stopped the Treaty of Troyes being enforced. That said, Henry VI was so incompetent things would've probably failed in his reign instead).
Miss Cyclefree, I think Henry V was pretty good at maintaining order, though. It's not like he just tore stuff up in a war, and he was certainly far better than the corruption and incompetence of Henry VI, or the corruption/favouritism of Richard II.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
"Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension."
What do they have in common?
Read my post - they are ail projects with good business cases, or at least better than HS2.
Sure, but theyt wouldn't be any good either if they were restricted to the first quarter of each!
Also, the point stands about relative regional investment.
Apparently Britain is putting its diplomatic weight behind Ukraine's EU membership bid, but is having to do so covertly because the cognitive dissonance with Brexit would be too unbearable if it were to do so overtly.
How is it any of our business who is in the EU? Hopefully once they have stopped laughing the EU will politely tell us to fuck off.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
This is easy.
What the UK lacks is gas storage.
Gas power stations are cheap. They cost almost nothing to maintain. And they're efficient. It really isn't complicated to have enough CCGT and OGCTs to power the UK.
They're also - unlike coal or nuclear - flexible.
Sun shining and wind blowing? Turn 'em off.
The issue is that the UK bugger all gas storage. This meant that, when Russia invaded Ukraine and the gas market was thrown into flux, we had to pay crazy prices to import gas.
The Germans, by contrast, just ran their storage down.
The chart below is gas storage cacpacity in TWh for European countries:
If you have enough gas storage for - say - three months usage for the UK, then you can have as much renewables as you like. They will be used when available. And stored gas will be used when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
That gives energy security - but doesn't really "establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030", if the backbone of the thing is burning gas.
My understanding is that we forward buy lots of LNG shipments scheduled to arrive around the winter to get round the gas storage issue. I'm not sure if paying for a massive gas storage facility would actually save us any money (although it does remove the risk from our LNG shipments being interrupted by war, terror, piracy etc.).
LNG has a lot of natural floating storage: that’s the great thing about great hulking big boats that carry the stuff around. You can bunker up the gas and float it - not for as long as oil but for a while.
Still dependent on shipments from various geopolitically or geographically problematic regions. For example, a hot war in the gulf involving Iran and Israel with the straits of Hormuz blockaded at the same time as a hurricane takes out US export facilities in the GoM, would be a challenge.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
Apparently Britain is putting its diplomatic weight behind Ukraine's EU membership bid, but is having to do so covertly because the cognitive dissonance with Brexit would be too unbearable if it were to do so overtly.
How is it any of our business who is in the EU? Hopefully once they have stopped laughing the EU will politely tell us to fuck off.
To be fair the Americans frequently make it known who they want in the EU (including the UK).
Apparently Britain is putting its diplomatic weight behind Ukraine's EU membership bid, but is having to do so covertly because the cognitive dissonance with Brexit would be too unbearable if it were to do so overtly.
How is it any of our business who is in the EU? Hopefully once they have stopped laughing the EU will politely tell us to fuck off.
To be fair the Americans frequently make it known who they want in the EU (including the UK).
Yes but the Americans are the world's most powerful country whose security umbrella protects Europe, so their opinion matters.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe...
Of course. But it's a mark of Netanyahu's failure, not success, that he will now invade his neighbour.
In other news it’s a pleasant hazy morning on the WCML out of Euston heading up to Liverpool where I’ll be doing some conferency stuff today including a panel with one of the shadow ministers.
Will @NickPalmer or any other Lab members be there?
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
Not sure about Netanyahu - I think he'll consolidate his position at the top of the Israeli tree (Flag rally leader). He has been written off, and has had more comebacks than Sinatra.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
On Mid-Beds, I'm happy just to have laid the Tories, and hope they don't come through the middle. After Rutherglen and their conference, it probably is the case that Labour is now on a roll.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
"Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension."
What do they have in common?
Read my post - they are ail projects with good business cases, or at least better than HS2.
All the money is spent on London , anywhere else can be cut on a whim if they get any in the first place.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
True. It's not existential. But its import can not be overestimated. Where does Netanyahu go from here? What does a reoccupation do. I suppose the calculus is that if you have 2m people who want you dead then what is the difference between having them on the other side of a border, which we have seen is pretty ineffective, or having them in every other street you patrol.
Seeing pictures of the cheering masses (and ofc not just in Gaza) applauding Hamas' actions I wonder what Gaza residents are now thinking about the ongoing and forthcoming actions.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
Hamas crossings are in their hundreds versus tens of thousands of IDF with tanks. They will eventually be wiped out its only the media adding to the immediacy of a crisis.
For Israel the big question is what next ? Hamas have already set a series traps for the Israelis to walk in to - bombing civilian Gaza, inciting the arab world to anger etc. Israel needs to find a way to avoid this. Since the prime beneficiary of this will be Iran, Israel should avoid Gaza fight and take its revenge on the Tehran regime.
Therefore
1. kick Hamas out of Israel and reseal the border. 2 Broker a deal with the Saudis whereby Israel says no more bombing of Gaza if Saudi and Israel can have normal relations 3. Transfer all Palestinian prisoners to Saudi so Hamas have nothing to negotiate for 4. Concentrate on neutering Iranian regime 5 Take out Irans nuclear programme
Iran is a state of 80 million, but ethnic persians are only about 55% of the population there are a lot of disaffected minorities. The regime survives by hard force but even the Persians are fed up with the clerics. Iran is ripe for a regime change which will then cut the funding and arming of the extremists surrounding Israel.
Better to aim for the kingpins than kill a few footsoldiers in Gaza
The inept government could end up winning but also losing at their SC appeal as it’s possible the Asylum Procedures Directive continues to have effect as EU retained law .
So Rwanda could be deemed as a safe country but the directive states asylum seekers can only be sent to a safe country with which they have a connection .
The respondents solicitor in the previous court hearing made a distinction between freedom of movement and asylum , the changes to EU retained law were on the former but the government says that includes asylum .
Clearly if they lose on that technicality they can change the law .
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
Hamas crossings are in their hundreds versus tens of thousands of IDF with tanks. They will eventually be wiped out its only the media adding to the immediacy of a crisis.
For Israel the big question is what next ? Hamas have already set a series traps for the Israelis to walk in to - bombing civilian Gaza, inciting the arab world to anger etc. Israel needs to find a way to avoid this. Since the prime beneficiary of this will be Iran, Israel should avoid Gaza fight and take its revenge on the Tehran regime.
Therefore
1. kick Hamas out of Israel and reseal the border. 2 Broker a deal with the Saudis whereby Israel says no more bombing of Gaza if Saudi and Israel can have normal relations 3. Transfer all Palestinian prisoners to Saudi so Hamas have nothing to negotiate for 4. Concentrate on neutering Iranian regime 5 Take out Irans nuclear programme
Iran is a state of 80 million, but ethnic persians are only about 55% of the population there are a lot of disaffected minorities. The regime survives by hard force but even the Persians are fed up with the clerics. Iran is ripe for a regime change which will then cut the funding and arming of the extremists surrounding Israel.
Better to aim for the kingpins than kill a few footsoldiers in Gaza
Not a bad shopping list. But I'm not sure Saudi would at this point want to be seen to be doing anything with Israel. Certainly back channels (which were and I have no doubt still are continuing) might be suggesting this but I'm not sure the Saudis will be able to be seen to do as you suggest.
The inept government could end up winning but also losing at their SC appeal as it’s possible the Asylum Procedures Directive continues to have effect as EU retained law .
So Rwanda could be deemed as a safe country but the directive states asylum seekers can only be sent to a safe country with which they have a connection .
The respondents solicitor in the previous court hearing made a distinction between freedom of movement and asylum , the changes to EU retained law were on the former but the government says that includes asylum .
Clearly if they lose on that technicality they can change the law .
Apparently 14 people from Rwanda have successfully claimed asylum in the UK since Cruella started her crusade as it is not safe for them to return there
The inept government could end up winning but also losing at their SC appeal as it’s possible the Asylum Procedures Directive continues to have effect as EU retained law .
So Rwanda could be deemed as a safe country but the directive states asylum seekers can only be sent to a safe country with which they have a connection .
The respondents solicitor in the previous court hearing made a distinction between freedom of movement and asylum , the changes to EU retained law were on the former but the government says that includes asylum .
Clearly if they lose on that technicality they can change the law .
Apparently 14 people from Rwanda have successfully claimed asylum in the UK since Cruella started her crusade as it is not safe for them to return there
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
As others point out, those are all rather London-focussed.
And the Bakerloo line extension shows the problem well. Nearly ten years ago, that was specced out at £2-3 billion for 7.5 km. Three years later, it was £4.7bn to £7.9bn. HS2 phase 1 is over 200km.
If we take the BLE cost at a low £4 billion and length at 8km, then that is £500 million per km. It makes HS2 look cheap...
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
One thing that always makes me chuckle when people are denouncing things in the past that offends them, is realising that what is currently considered right-on will one day be seen as reactionary. If it can happen to someone like Germaine Greer it can happen to all of us.
Mr. JohnL, fair enough if Mr. Eagles was misrepresenting the claims (though it's also worth remembering it was only Henry V's premature death that stopped the Treaty of Troyes being enforced. That said, Henry VI was so incompetent things would've probably failed in his reign instead).
Miss Cyclefree, I think Henry V was pretty good at maintaining order, though. It's not like he just tore stuff up in a war, and he was certainly far better than the corruption and incompetence of Henry VI, or the corruption/favouritism of Richard II.
Henry VI came to the throne too young, and wasn’t ‘king’ material anyway. He wouldn’t have been in modern times, let alone when he actually was.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
As others point out, those are all rather London-focussed.
And the Bakerloo line extension shows the problem well. Nearly ten years ago, that was specced out at £2-3 billion for 7.5 km. Three years later, it was £4.7bn to £7.9bn. HS2 phase 1 is over 200km.
If we take the BLE cost at a low £4 billion and length at 8km, then that is £500 million per km. It makes HS2 look cheap...
Yes a line that is built entirely underground and involves building from scratch or substantially remodelling five underground stations is going to cost a fair amount of money. It will also unlock tens of thousands of new homes - right now there are loads of building opportunities that are blocked until the line is built because there is no transport capacity down the Old Kent Road - and vastly improve transport links in an area with poor connectivity. The BLE would be a no brainier in any country serious about solving its housing and infrastructure deficits.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
Hamas crossings are in their hundreds versus tens of thousands of IDF with tanks. They will eventually be wiped out its only the media adding to the immediacy of a crisis.
For Israel the big question is what next ? Hamas have already set a series traps for the Israelis to walk in to - bombing civilian Gaza, inciting the arab world to anger etc. Israel needs to find a way to avoid this. Since the prime beneficiary of this will be Iran, Israel should avoid Gaza fight and take its revenge on the Tehran regime.
Therefore
1. kick Hamas out of Israel and reseal the border. 2 Broker a deal with the Saudis whereby Israel says no more bombing of Gaza if Saudi and Israel can have normal relations 3. Transfer all Palestinian prisoners to Saudi so Hamas have nothing to negotiate for 4. Concentrate on neutering Iranian regime 5 Take out Irans nuclear programme
Iran is a state of 80 million, but ethnic persians are only about 55% of the population there are a lot of disaffected minorities. The regime survives by hard force but even the Persians are fed up with the clerics. Iran is ripe for a regime change which will then cut the funding and arming of the extremists surrounding Israel.
Better to aim for the kingpins than kill a few footsoldiers in Gaza
Not a bad shopping list. But I'm not sure Saudi would at this point want to be seen to be doing anything with Israel. Certainly back channels (which were and I have no doubt still are continuing) might be suggesting this but I'm not sure the Saudis will be able to be seen to do as you suggest.
The saner Saudis will realise they are targetted by Hamas to do Irans bidding. Thats why stepping in as saviour of Gaza and a place for prisoners might just swing arab opinion.
It cuts the ground from under Irans plan and Saudis can buy some popcorn as they watch Israel take its revenge.
If they really wanted some fun they could open the oil taps and watch Russia and Iran struggle to fund their militaries,
Mr. JohnL, fair enough if Mr. Eagles was misrepresenting the claims (though it's also worth remembering it was only Henry V's premature death that stopped the Treaty of Troyes being enforced. That said, Henry VI was so incompetent things would've probably failed in his reign instead).
Miss Cyclefree, I think Henry V was pretty good at maintaining order, though. It's not like he just tore stuff up in a war, and he was certainly far better than the corruption and incompetence of Henry VI, or the corruption/favouritism of Richard II.
Henry VI came to the throne too young, and wasn’t ‘king’ material anyway. He wouldn’t have been in modern times, let alone when he actually was.
Also Shakespeare's Henry V is pretty blatant pro-regime propaganda (ie the C16/17 regime). Just needed a quick dustoff to be just right for 1941, apart of course from the name of the enemy.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Mitchell is not saying that. He is saying that uniting Britain and France was an expensive fool's errand. Buy yourself the book and gift it to all your friends and loved ones this winterval.
Had Henry lived another 15 years, I think he'd have made good his claim. A lof of the French movers and shakers supported him, over a king and Dauphin who were both hapless.
But, I'm not convinced it would have been in England's interests to have a monarch whose focus would have been on a country that was five times as populous.
It’s a fair question to ask though; could a mediaeval England/France state have survived for long?
A medieval England/France would not survive long, because the personal involvement of the monarch in maintaining relationships with their great nobles was too important, and would have been too hard to maintain. This is one factor that lay behind the collapse of the Angevin Empire.
However, the medieval age was approaching its end in the 15th century, and an early modern state of the 16th century would have had more of a chance of holding things together - though the experience of the Spanish/Hapsburgs shows that could be complicated by wars of religion.
So if Henry V had lived out his three score and ten, not dying until the 1450s, you'd probably only need one decent monarch, with a capable reforming privy council, to hold things together until the wars of religion tore them apart.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
True. It's not existential. But its import can not be overestimated. Where does Netanyahu go from here? What does a reoccupation do. I suppose the calculus is that if you have 2m people who want you dead then what is the difference between having them on the other side of a border, which we have seen is pretty ineffective, or having them in every other street you patrol.
Seeing pictures of the cheering masses (and ofc not just in Gaza) applauding Hamas' actions I wonder what Gaza residents are now thinking about the ongoing and forthcoming actions.
What surprises me is that the border has not been sealed. I would have expected fortifications and minefields, rather than a fence that can be breached quite easily,
Conservatives to scrape home in Mid Bedfordshire helped by the opposition split between Labour and LD.
Labour to gain Tamworth
Sounds quite possible, though I'm not seeing much reporting from Tamworth. The conference may help persuade tactical non-Tories to go Labour, though so far it's been overshadowed by Gaza. I still don't see any route for the LibDems to win it, and wish they'd ease off from muddying the tactical water. I think the Betfair odds are probably about right.
An interesting point is the classic LibDem argument that they are better-placed to win over Tories, who can't imagine voting for evil socialists. That certainly used to be true, but it may not be now for a slightly depressing reason for someone like me - Labour has moved so far to the centre that most people can't see any difference from the LibDems, except possibly that Labour is keener on housing and the NHS and the LibDems are keener on the EU and PR. I know Labour people who vote LibDem without wincing and vice versa, as the tactical position suggests, but also former Tories who are voting for either on the same basis.
That said, if Labour wins an overall majority next year, I suspect a lot of LD/Lab tactical voting will evaporate, replaced by ConLD tacticals, as the LibDems will be targeting Labour as the Government.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
As others point out, those are all rather London-focussed.
And the Bakerloo line extension shows the problem well. Nearly ten years ago, that was specced out at £2-3 billion for 7.5 km. Three years later, it was £4.7bn to £7.9bn. HS2 phase 1 is over 200km.
If we take the BLE cost at a low £4 billion and length at 8km, then that is £500 million per km. It makes HS2 look cheap...
Yes a line that is built entirely underground and involves building from scratch or substantially remodelling five underground stations is going to cost a fair amount of money. It will also unlock tens of thousands of new homes - right now there are loads of building opportunities that are blocked until the line is built because there is no transport capacity down the Old Kent Road - and vastly improve transport links in an area with poor connectivity. The BLE would be a no brainier in any country serious about solving its housing and infrastructure deficits.
The same arguments can be applied to HS2: lots of it is underground (some at a great cost only to satisfy NIMBYs); it involves massive redevelopment of two cities for phase , and unlocks lots of potential development.
As ever, why not do both? Why was re in such a declinist mindset that promoting *my* project means that *your* project has to be denigrated? It's a stupid thought process, esp. as such negativity hurts all infrastructure investment, mine or yours.
Meanwhile a kosher restaurant in Golders Green got smashed up last night and there was other vandalism in the area. The extent of anti-semitism and justification of terror is truly depressing. Many people from all nationalities were killed and taken hostage, including reports now say, about 40 Israeli Arabs.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
As others point out, those are all rather London-focussed.
And the Bakerloo line extension shows the problem well. Nearly ten years ago, that was specced out at £2-3 billion for 7.5 km. Three years later, it was £4.7bn to £7.9bn. HS2 phase 1 is over 200km.
If we take the BLE cost at a low £4 billion and length at 8km, then that is £500 million per km. It makes HS2 look cheap...
Yes a line that is built entirely underground and involves building from scratch or substantially remodelling five underground stations is going to cost a fair amount of money. It will also unlock tens of thousands of new homes - right now there are loads of building opportunities that are blocked until the line is built because there is no transport capacity down the Old Kent Road - and vastly improve transport links in an area with poor connectivity. The BLE would be a no brainier in any country serious about solving its housing and infrastructure deficits.
If that is the primary argument, it does imply subsidising each new house/flat to the tune of something of the order of 100K of public moneys (assuming no cockup) - 4x10e9 divided by say 4x10e4 houses.
Though that could be adjusted down by including existiung houses. I wasn't aware that the area was empty at present, Betjeman's Metroland style?
Yet another boost to the London houysing market, though, is hardly good public policy.
Yes, its why the whole net zero programme is wrong for the UK, its not our priority. We will not have any major crisis because our temperatures will simply become like central France. The Severn will be the new Garonne.
Our priorities should be eliminating plastics, energy security, protecting bio diversity and future proofing infrastructure.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
I think it is reasonable to expect Palestinian self-styled freedom fighters to keep to the rules of war. Keep to military targets and avoid civilian casualties as much as possible.
If they had done so I think they would find they had a lot more sympathy in the West. I don't accept that the brutal targeting of civilians we have seen is an inevitable consequence of occupation.
Conservatives to scrape home in Mid Bedfordshire helped by the opposition split between Labour and LD.
Labour to gain Tamworth
Sounds quite possible, though I'm not seeing much reporting from Tamworth. The conference may help persuade tactical non-Tories to go Labour, though so far it's been overshadowed by Gaza. I still don't see any route for the LibDems to win it, and wish they'd ease off from muddying the tactical water. I think the Betfair odds are probably about right.
An interesting point is the classic LibDem argument that they are better-placed to win over Tories, who can't imagine voting for evil socialists. That certainly used to be true, but it may not be now for a slightly depressing reason for someone like me - Labour has moved so far to the centre that most people can't see any difference from the LibDems, except possibly that Labour is keener on housing and the NHS and the LibDems are keener on the EU and PR. I know Labour people who vote LibDem without wincing and vice versa, as the tactical position suggests, but also former Tories who are voting for either on the same basis.
That said, if Labour wins an overall majority next year, I suspect a lot of LD/Lab tactical voting will evaporate, replaced by ConLD tacticals, as the LibDems will be targeting Labour as the Government.
Nick hi I'm sure the prospects of Mid-Beds are all consuming but as a (current? Wiki) member of LFOI I wondered what your take is on events.
Yes, its why the whole net zero programme is wrong for the UK, its not our priority. We will not have any major crisis because our temperatures will simply become like central France. The Severn will be the new Garonne.
Our priorities should be eliminating plastics, energy security, protecting bio diversity and future proofing infrastructure.
Thankfully we need not be selfish here, because the causes of energy security and net zero go hand in hand.
We could also do with the investment and productivity growth.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
From Wikipedia:
"A poll carried out in 2011 by the Hebrew University indicated that a growing number of Palestinians and Israelis supported a settlement to the conflict based on the Parameters. The poll found that 58% of Israelis and 50% of Palestinians supported a two-state solution based on the Clinton Parameters, compared with 47% of Israelis and 39% of Palestinians in 2003, the first year the poll was carried out."
If only there had been the political will, this would seem to indicate that peace between Israel and Palestine could have been achieved.
Yes, its why the whole net zero programme is wrong for the UK, its not our priority. We will not have any major crisis because our temperatures will simply become like central France. The Severn will be the new Garonne.
Our priorities should be eliminating plastics, energy security, protecting bio diversity and future proofing infrastructure.
Thankfully we need not be selfish here, because the causes of energy security and net zero go hand in hand.
We could also do with the investment and productivity growth.
Also struck by the notion that having the English climate become like central francde wouldn't be a huge crisis in itself.
Yes, its why the whole net zero programme is wrong for the UK, its not our priority. We will not have any major crisis because our temperatures will simply become like central France. The Severn will be the new Garonne.
Our priorities should be eliminating plastics, energy security, protecting bio diversity and future proofing infrastructure.
Britain imports a huge proportion of its food. One of the major risks from climate change is disrupting global agriculture. If the world moves into a food deficit, and some food-exporting nations ban exports to prevent their own poor being priced out of food, then Britain is in a very vulnerable position.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
The PLO do not govern Gaza. Hamas do and Hamas do not accept Israel's right to exist. The Israeli government has given up on peace proposals but how can you negotiate with groups that want you gone, dead, disappeared? Wasn't the withdrawal from Gaza an example of giving up land for peace?
How did that work out?
So now the situation is incalculably worse, Israel has an appalling government which has failed in its basic duty to keep its people safe and has no peace strategy and now Hamas has turned into an ISIS-style group sponsored by a repellent Iranian regime.
Another illustration of why this is existential for Israel. From the Guardian
“[The general] said the IDF military response had two primary objectives in its response to the Hamas attack. “At the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians … Hamas will not be able to govern the Gaza Strip.” The Israeli military has called up around 100,000 reservists.”
These are the obvious aims we discussed last night. Problem is: how on earth do you achieve them? Without slaughtering tens of thousands of Gazans?
Even worse, how do you keep Gaza under such a tight grip it cannot repeat October 7?
You can’t. So Israel is left with two options: push everyone in Gaza into Egypt, which is unfeasible, or accept the existence of Gaza as it is, which is intolerable
Yes, its why the whole net zero programme is wrong for the UK, its not our priority. We will not have any major crisis because our temperatures will simply become like central France. The Severn will be the new Garonne.
Our priorities should be eliminating plastics, energy security, protecting bio diversity and future proofing infrastructure.
It's sea level that is our biggest problem. London could probably withstand a rise of up to 5m or so, but would then be lost. In a worst-case scenario, this level could be reached by around the year 2150. Of course an awful lot of low-lying farmland would also be lost.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
As others point out, those are all rather London-focussed.
And the Bakerloo line extension shows the problem well. Nearly ten years ago, that was specced out at £2-3 billion for 7.5 km. Three years later, it was £4.7bn to £7.9bn. HS2 phase 1 is over 200km.
If we take the BLE cost at a low £4 billion and length at 8km, then that is £500 million per km. It makes HS2 look cheap...
Yes a line that is built entirely underground and involves building from scratch or substantially remodelling five underground stations is going to cost a fair amount of money. It will also unlock tens of thousands of new homes - right now there are loads of building opportunities that are blocked until the line is built because there is no transport capacity down the Old Kent Road - and vastly improve transport links in an area with poor connectivity. The BLE would be a no brainier in any country serious about solving its housing and infrastructure deficits.
The same arguments can be applied to HS2: lots of it is underground (some at a great cost only to satisfy NIMBYs); it involves massive redevelopment of two cities for phase , and unlocks lots of potential development.
As ever, why not do both? Why was re in such a declinist mindset that promoting *my* project means that *your* project has to be denigrated? It's a stupid thought process, esp. as such negativity hurts all infrastructure investment, mine or yours.
The starting point has to be that the UK doesn't spend enough on infrastructure in general, preferring current consumption and tax cuts.
It's a parallel argument to the one made against immigration (businesses should be forced to invest by cutting off the supply of cheap labour). Personally, I suspect that logic has more holes in it than the Network North map, but there's a genuine mindset problem.
And until we fix it, things aren't really going to get better. Are we prepared to consume less now so that our children/grandchildren can collectively have better lives in the future? Or are we going to keep eating this (no doubt delicious) seedcorn?
Yes, its why the whole net zero programme is wrong for the UK, its not our priority. We will not have any major crisis because our temperatures will simply become like central France. The Severn will be the new Garonne.
Our priorities should be eliminating plastics, energy security, protecting bio diversity and future proofing infrastructure.
Britain imports a huge proportion of its food. One of the major risks from climate change is disrupting global agriculture. If the world moves into a food deficit, and some food-exporting nations ban exports to prevent their own poor being priced out of food, then Britain is in a very vulnerable position.
Currently brits are among the fattest people in the world.
Brits throw away something like 25% of all the food we buy.
The government spends millions trying to slim us down and stop food waste.
We have a long way to go before we hit starvation and the steps before we get there might be good for us.
Yes, its why the whole net zero programme is wrong for the UK, its not our priority. We will not have any major crisis because our temperatures will simply become like central France. The Severn will be the new Garonne.
Our priorities should be eliminating plastics, energy security, protecting bio diversity and future proofing infrastructure.
Britain imports a huge proportion of its food. One of the major risks from climate change is disrupting global agriculture. If the world moves into a food deficit, and some food-exporting nations ban exports to prevent their own poor being priced out of food, then Britain is in a very vulnerable position.
Indeed. One or two Tories seem to have realised the issue, as it was mentioned in at least one conference speech. But you'd think fans of Winston Churchill would have cottoned on earlier.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
I would have been 9. And reading about them it seems that both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities had issues with the plan - Arafat wanted some degree of right to return for displaced people, and Israel wanted more territorial control over Jerusalem and the other areas they would have been in control of. It seems that at the beginning Palestinian concerns where quite large, but also the Knesset and right wing of the Israeli state probably wouldn't have accepted the agreement anyway.
But at the end of the day, like many similar conflicts like it throughout history, we have to understand that people when pushed to the edge of precarious living with choose to lash out violently instead of coming around the negotiating table - especially when over time they have been told again and again that there will be no negotiations. This happened in India, in Ireland, in South Africa - and many other places.
England has been lucky that, in modern history at least, there has been no full scale invasion of our country. We all know what the plans were should the Germans have invaded during WW2 - for everyone to become a guerrilla fighter, stashes of weapons and explosives hidden for civilians to pick up if needed, for a government in exile to find safe haven overseas and help coordinate the resistance movement and so on. And we know, if that had come to pass, that would have been justified: not just because it was the Nazis doing the invading, but because it would have meant a military invasion and occupation that removed the freedom of the people within the nation - to speak their language, to practice their religion, to have their will expressed in a democratic forum. We can recognise that if it were our country invaded and occupied and our people oppressed, even if it had been the case for 80 years or more, that a group doing Hamas style attacks could exist and that we would understand or even have sympathy for their cause. And we know what we would demand as freedom that would end such attacks - a sincere removal of occupying forces, a real democratic government chosen by the people, an investigation and reconciliation process, reparations and so on.
That Palestinians were offered less than that and did not scoop it up is understandable, even if the realpolitik suggested they should have. But considering Israeli state reaction to the Parameters, as well as their actions in the decades since, I think it is clear why the events we are seeing are happening.
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
As others point out, those are all rather London-focussed.
And the Bakerloo line extension shows the problem well. Nearly ten years ago, that was specced out at £2-3 billion for 7.5 km. Three years later, it was £4.7bn to £7.9bn. HS2 phase 1 is over 200km.
If we take the BLE cost at a low £4 billion and length at 8km, then that is £500 million per km. It makes HS2 look cheap...
Yes a line that is built entirely underground and involves building from scratch or substantially remodelling five underground stations is going to cost a fair amount of money. It will also unlock tens of thousands of new homes - right now there are loads of building opportunities that are blocked until the line is built because there is no transport capacity down the Old Kent Road - and vastly improve transport links in an area with poor connectivity. The BLE would be a no brainier in any country serious about solving its housing and infrastructure deficits.
If that is the primary argument, it does imply subsidising each new house/flat to the tune of something of the order of 100K of public moneys (assuming no cockup) - 4x10e9 divided by say 4x10e4 houses.
Though that could be adjusted down by including existiung houses. I wasn't aware that the area was empty at present, Betjeman's Metroland style?
Yet another boost to the London houysing market, though, is hardly good public policy.
London is where housing demand furthest outstrips supply, hence its high house prices. Plus Londoners are less NIMBY than people elsewhere, so it's a good place to build housing. The area around the Old Kent Road between Elephant and New Cross has the worst transport links of anywhere that close to Central London. And there are a load of brownfield sites available there to build housing. There is a whole raft of projects ready to go that simply won't be allowed to be built until the transport infrastructure is provided. Yet no money is forthcoming. This is why we never solve any of our problems.
Yes, its why the whole net zero programme is wrong for the UK, its not our priority. We will not have any major crisis because our temperatures will simply become like central France. The Severn will be the new Garonne.
Our priorities should be eliminating plastics, energy security, protecting bio diversity and future proofing infrastructure.
It's sea level that is our biggest problem. London could probably withstand a rise of up to 5m or so, but would then be lost. In a worst-case scenario, this level could be reached by around the year 2150. Of course an awful lot of low-lying farmland would also be lost.
Which goes back to my point on future proofing
Large chunks of the Netherlands are below sea level, we will need to adopt similar flood defences.
Meanwhile a kosher restaurant in Golders Green got smashed up last night and there was other vandalism in the area. The extent of anti-semitism and justification of terror is truly depressing. Many people from all nationalities were killed and taken hostage, including reports now say, about 40 Israeli Arabs.
I have been shocked, and rather saddened, at the amount of support given to the terrorists on social media including by mainstream politicians. Even members of the Green side of the ruling Scottish coalition.
I am more inclined towards supporting the Palestinians cause but surely no one, whatever side of this conflict they sit, can in any way condone or support any of the actions we have seen from the Hamas militia over the weekend. There can be no justification for the actions we have seen.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
From Wikipedia:
"A poll carried out in 2011 by the Hebrew University indicated that a growing number of Palestinians and Israelis supported a settlement to the conflict based on the Parameters. The poll found that 58% of Israelis and 50% of Palestinians supported a two-state solution based on the Clinton Parameters, compared with 47% of Israelis and 39% of Palestinians in 2003, the first year the poll was carried out."
If only there had been the political will, this would seem to indicate that peace between Israel and Palestine could have been achieved.
It foundered on Arafat insisting on the Right of Return. But the narrative, as with our young blade @148grss, is that Israel is the one which has never offered the Palestinians anything and hence we should boycott them or, as he acknowledges, resort to violence because peaceful protest has been made impossible. Of all the posters on PB I hadn't necessarily expected @148grss to be a strong advocate of violence against civilians.
Also, given Attlee came in as PM with the nation suffering the appalling effects of the war and preceding depression, it's interesting that ConHome sees such a strong parallel with Starmer coming in as PM after 13 years of the Tories.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
I would have been 9. And reading about them it seems that both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities had issues with the plan - Arafat wanted some degree of right to return for displaced people, and Israel wanted more territorial control over Jerusalem and the other areas they would have been in control of. It seems that at the beginning Palestinian concerns where quite large, but also the Knesset and right wing of the Israeli state probably wouldn't have accepted the agreement anyway.
But at the end of the day, like many similar conflicts like it throughout history, we have to understand that people when pushed to the edge of precarious living with choose to lash out violently instead of coming around the negotiating table - especially when over time they have been told again and again that there will be no negotiations. This happened in India, in Ireland, in South Africa - and many other places.
England has been lucky that, in modern history at least, there has been no full scale invasion of our country. We all know what the plans were should the Germans have invaded during WW2 - for everyone to become a guerrilla fighter, stashes of weapons and explosives hidden for civilians to pick up if needed, for a government in exile to find safe haven overseas and help coordinate the resistance movement and so on. And we know, if that had come to pass, that would have been justified: not just because it was the Nazis doing the invading, but because it would have meant a military invasion and occupation that removed the freedom of the people within the nation - to speak their language, to practice their religion, to have their will expressed in a democratic forum. We can recognise that if it were our country invaded and occupied and our people oppressed, even if it had been the case for 80 years or more, that a group doing Hamas style attacks could exist and that we would understand or even have sympathy for their cause. And we know what we would demand as freedom that would end such attacks - a sincere removal of occupying forces, a real democratic government chosen by the people, an investigation and reconciliation process, reparations and so on.
That Palestinians were offered less than that and did not scoop it up is understandable, even if the realpolitik suggested they should have. But considering Israeli state reaction to the Parameters, as well as their actions in the decades since, I think it is clear why the events we are seeing are happening.
So you are with the group of people who didn't accept those parameters. Fair enough. I can see why you would advocate violence.
It’s a fair question to ask though; could a mediaeval England/France state have survived for long?
It's a good question.
One of the arguments in favour of Henry V is that his military success (both domestically against rebellions, and particularly in France) forged a new sense of national identity. It's hard to see that applying across both countries.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
I think it is reasonable to expect Palestinian self-styled freedom fighters to keep to the rules of war. Keep to military targets and avoid civilian casualties as much as possible.
If they had done so I think they would find they had a lot more sympathy in the West. I don't accept that the brutal targeting of civilians we have seen is an inevitable consequence of occupation.
Why - they have been the inevitable consequences of previous occupations; again, Ireland, India, South Africa: all had civilian targets and casualties.
Again - let's go to my thought experiment I previously mentioned of an occupied England 80 years after WW2 (and, for the sake of argument, let us remove the spectre of Nazism - not because fascism is not an extra existential threat, but because I want to highlight a reaction to any military occupation, not just a fascist one). Do you think "English freedom fighters" would not target, say, Berlin or Munich or even a German run London or Manchester? That, after 80 years of occupation, they might kidnap German citizens who were present in England - even if they had nothing to do directly with the occupation? I think it is clearly inevitable; ideologically, because those civilians would represent occupation as much as the state or military, but also strategically, because they would be easier to target and you could leverage them easier than a politician or a soldier.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Mitchell is not saying that. He is saying that uniting Britain and France was an expensive fool's errand. Buy yourself the book and gift it to all your friends and loved ones this winterval.
Had Henry lived another 15 years, I think he'd have made good his claim. A lof of the French movers and shakers supported him, over a king and Dauphin who were both hapless.
But, I'm not convinced it would have been in England's interests to have a monarch whose focus would have been on a country that was five times as populous.
Even TSE might draw the line at being a mere province of France.
King Cole, maybe. Worth remembering what did for the Carolingians and Francia was not an external threat but the partition by inheritance. That said, both England and France were a lot more solidly established in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
From Wikipedia:
"A poll carried out in 2011 by the Hebrew University indicated that a growing number of Palestinians and Israelis supported a settlement to the conflict based on the Parameters. The poll found that 58% of Israelis and 50% of Palestinians supported a two-state solution based on the Clinton Parameters, compared with 47% of Israelis and 39% of Palestinians in 2003, the first year the poll was carried out."
If only there had been the political will, this would seem to indicate that peace between Israel and Palestine could have been achieved.
It foundered on Arafat insisting on the Right of Return. But the narrative, as with our young blade @148grss, is that Israel is the one which has never offered the Palestinians anything and hence we should boycott them or, as he acknowledges, resort to violence because peaceful protest has been made impossible. Of all the posters on PB I hadn't necessarily expected @148grss to be a strong advocate of violence against civilians.
You could say with equal justification that it foundered on Barak's refusal to accept any right of return whatsoever. Surely it could have been possible to negotiate some limited right of return with grudging acceptance by both sides.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
Hamas crossings are in their hundreds versus tens of thousands of IDF with tanks. They will eventually be wiped out its only the media adding to the immediacy of a crisis.
For Israel the big question is what next ? Hamas have already set a series traps for the Israelis to walk in to - bombing civilian Gaza, inciting the arab world to anger etc. Israel needs to find a way to avoid this. Since the prime beneficiary of this will be Iran, Israel should avoid Gaza fight and take its revenge on the Tehran regime.
Therefore
1. kick Hamas out of Israel and reseal the border. 2 Broker a deal with the Saudis whereby Israel says no more bombing of Gaza if Saudi and Israel can have normal relations 3. Transfer all Palestinian prisoners to Saudi so Hamas have nothing to negotiate for 4. Concentrate on neutering Iranian regime 5 Take out Irans nuclear programme
Iran is a state of 80 million, but ethnic persians are only about 55% of the population there are a lot of disaffected minorities. The regime survives by hard force but even the Persians are fed up with the clerics. Iran is ripe for a regime change which will then cut the funding and arming of the extremists surrounding Israel.
Better to aim for the kingpins than kill a few footsoldiers in Gaza
One of the more interesting facets (so far) has been the lack of outpouring in Arab nations in support of Hamas. Yes, there have been demonstrations in Jordan, Turkey etc and the shooting in Alexandria but, given the scale of the attack and its consequences, you would have expected far more.
Apart from what that says about whether these demonstrations are truly spontaneous or are orchestrated, I think it is becoming more and more obvious that Hamas has had a big tactical victory but this will be a massive strategic disaster on several fronts.
Firstly, for the Middle Eastern regimes such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, this is a massive blow. Not necessarily because of the peace accords but because what Hamas has done is so spectacular, it has put their carefully laid out long-term strategic plans in jeopardy. Does Dubai look such a great long-term investment after this? Do you want Saudis running your sports leagues and clubs? The western world - and most of the investment still comes from there with China looking an uncertain bet more and more - counts. Plus, without going Jeremy Corbyn, there are a lot of influential links between Israel and its citizens and many decision makers.
Secondly, this will massively undercut the apologists for the Palestinians in the West. Look at the reaction to Corbyn's mealy-mouthed response or the fringe events at the Labour party conference. The pictures are so graphic, anything less than 100% support for Israel will be seen as appeasement. So now Starmer is likely to have to reopen action against those who are pro-Palestine. In the States, the Squad - rightfully - is coming under major attack for their calls for a ceasefire. I see Schumer laid into the Chinese for their response this morning and, given Biden is under attack not just for the unfreezing of $6 billion of assets to Iran but also the Robert Malley affair (look it up), chances are he feels he needs to show his toughness on the issue.
Thirdly, and it goes without saying and has been emphasised time and time again, Israel will now destroy them and, electorally, has to pound them into the ground.
If you want to look at how quickly the penny is dropping, look at Iran's statements this morning. They can't get away enough from saying they had nothing to do with the attack after being reticent to deny it on Saturday. They must be sh1t scared they have gone too far.
Another illustration of why this is existential for Israel. From the Guardian
“[The general] said the IDF military response had two primary objectives in its response to the Hamas attack. “At the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians … Hamas will not be able to govern the Gaza Strip.” The Israeli military has called up around 100,000 reservists.”
These are the obvious aims we discussed last night. Problem is: how on earth do you achieve them? Without slaughtering tens of thousands of Gazans?
Even worse, how do you keep Gaza under such a tight grip it cannot repeat October 7?
You can’t. So Israel is left with two options: push everyone in Gaza into Egypt, which is unfeasible, or accept the existence of Gaza as it is, which is intolerable
I think the chances of Israel expelling the Gazans is growing.
It creates other problems for Israel, but those problems are not Hamas fighters killing civilians in Israeli border towns, or killing soldiers in an occupation force.
With 700 confirmed dead, another 100 hostages who are likely soon to be dead, the Israeli tolerance for dead Gazans will be high.
Preparing to deal with 2 million Gazans in the Sinai desert feels a bit like collusion with their expulsion, but if the Israelis cannot be persuaded to hold back that is where they're heading. At first.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
I would have been 9. And reading about them it seems that both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities had issues with the plan - Arafat wanted some degree of right to return for displaced people, and Israel wanted more territorial control over Jerusalem and the other areas they would have been in control of. It seems that at the beginning Palestinian concerns where quite large, but also the Knesset and right wing of the Israeli state probably wouldn't have accepted the agreement anyway.
But at the end of the day, like many similar conflicts like it throughout history, we have to understand that people when pushed to the edge of precarious living with choose to lash out violently instead of coming around the negotiating table - especially when over time they have been told again and again that there will be no negotiations. This happened in India, in Ireland, in South Africa - and many other places.
England has been lucky that, in modern history at least, there has been no full scale invasion of our country. We all know what the plans were should the Germans have invaded during WW2 - for everyone to become a guerrilla fighter, stashes of weapons and explosives hidden for civilians to pick up if needed, for a government in exile to find safe haven overseas and help coordinate the resistance movement and so on. And we know, if that had come to pass, that would have been justified: not just because it was the Nazis doing the invading, but because it would have meant a military invasion and occupation that removed the freedom of the people within the nation - to speak their language, to practice their religion, to have their will expressed in a democratic forum. We can recognise that if it were our country invaded and occupied and our people oppressed, even if it had been the case for 80 years or more, that a group doing Hamas style attacks could exist and that we would understand or even have sympathy for their cause. And we know what we would demand as freedom that would end such attacks - a sincere removal of occupying forces, a real democratic government chosen by the people, an investigation and reconciliation process, reparations and so on.
That Palestinians were offered less than that and did not scoop it up is understandable, even if the realpolitik suggested they should have. But considering Israeli state reaction to the Parameters, as well as their actions in the decades since, I think it is clear why the events we are seeing are happening.
So you are with the group of people who didn't accept those parameters. Fair enough. I can see why you would advocate violence.
In their position, had the same thing happened to England, would you or I accept those parameters? I am not in charge of a nation, I am not a representative of all my peoples. Maybe they should have done - again, I think the issue is moot because it seems the Israeli government was also not likely to accept the parameters either.
Also where in my statements did I advocate violence? I just explained a situation where I think violence has been made inevitable. Am I an advocate of gravity if I say that if I drop a stone it will fall? You can also see in my first comment that you replied to where I said "Is it right to attack civilians, of course not". But what is "right" and what will happen in certain circumstances are different things.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
From Wikipedia:
"A poll carried out in 2011 by the Hebrew University indicated that a growing number of Palestinians and Israelis supported a settlement to the conflict based on the Parameters. The poll found that 58% of Israelis and 50% of Palestinians supported a two-state solution based on the Clinton Parameters, compared with 47% of Israelis and 39% of Palestinians in 2003, the first year the poll was carried out."
If only there had been the political will, this would seem to indicate that peace between Israel and Palestine could have been achieved.
It foundered on Arafat insisting on the Right of Return. But the narrative, as with our young blade @148grss, is that Israel is the one which has never offered the Palestinians anything and hence we should boycott them or, as he acknowledges, resort to violence because peaceful protest has been made impossible. Of all the posters on PB I hadn't necessarily expected @148grss to be a strong advocate of violence against civilians.
You could say with equal justification that it foundered on Barak's refusal to accept any right of return whatsoever. Surely it could have been possible to negotiate some limited right of return with grudging acceptance by both sides.
I think he was concerned about the principle of right of return. Because how would you choose which were allowed to return once you agreed that there was a fundamental right to return. It would have meant, would currently mean potentially millions of previously displaced people "returning" to the homeland of their parents/grandparents.
‘Only Good News Today’ — Russia’s Propagandists Delight as Israelis Die
https://cepa.org/article/only-good-news-today-russias-propagandists-delight-as-israelis-die/ ...Sergey Mardan, one of Russia’s best-known propagandists and host of the eponymous show on the state channel Solovyov Live, wrote on his Telegram channel that he was happy for the Russians who moved to Israel because they didn’t want to live in a country that is at war with its neighbors.
He added, “This mess is beneficial for Russia, because the globalist toad will be distracted from Ukraine and will get busy trying to put out the eternal Middle Eastern fire.” Mardan explained, “Iran is our real military ally. Israel is an ally of the United States. Therefore, choosing a side is easy!”
During his show, “Mardan,” the host made a bizarre comparison between Palestine and Russia, claiming that Russia “has been occupied since 1991” and is only now seeking to correct the situation. Russian propagandists frequently claim that Ukraine is “occupying” Russian lands, which Russia is fighting to reclaim.
Head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, wrote on her X/Twitter account, “The country that is not at war with its neighbors is again at war with its neighbors. We await the exodus of Russian pacifists. Then again, we won’t hold our breath.”
Host of the show “Morning Z” on Solovyov Live, Boris Yakemenko, blamed the violence on gender issues (presumably a reference to LGBT+ debates in the West), stating, “What is happening today in different corners of the world shows that the world has come to a dangerous point, beyond which lies the new world. Crossing into it will be preceded by horrendous casualties, because of a feeling of total injustice, insanity, a total lack of understanding of what is happening, with all of these genders, with all of these strange phenomena!” ..
The party says the bill will enable a Labour government to establish a UK electricity system fully based on clean power by 2030, with the largest expansion of renewable power in Britain’s history, and establish “GB Energy”, a publicly owned energy company announced by Keir Starmer last year.
Labour sources have suggested the party would aim to include the act in the king’s speech so it could become law soon after a general election win. One source said the act showcased “modern public ownership, working with the private sector without the need to nationalise”...
Out of interest, other than creating some quangos and spraying lots of money around, how exactly are they planning to do this?
We currently have lots of green power when the wind blows, and not much when it doesn't, especially if this coincides with it also being dark. This gap mostly gets filled in with gas, for which we barely have enough generating capacity (we were lucky last winter was mild, and we've even less coal capacity available for last resort action this winter).
Grid scale battery storage still seems to be too expensive to make more than marginal differences, and we don't yet seem to have found a way to make the wind blow at convenient times, or arrange for it not to be dark during the times of peak winter electrical demand.
Building more renewables is all well and good, but we're already curtailing their output half the time because we've got too much power relative to demand. Build lots more and the annual useful amount of electricity generated per turbine will drop as curtailment rates rise. This will mean someone somewhere (guess what, either taxpayers or consumers) paying out lots of money for turbines which generate very little as they are only useful in marginal (low but not zero wind) conditions. Meanwhile, I still don't see how that gets us away from burning lots of gas when the wind drops. Until the intermittency problem is solved (i.e. batteries become very cheap), the grid will have to stay gas based, not "clean energy" based.
If they do go wild overbuilding turbines there is of course a potential bonanza for anyone with an industrial use for vast amounts of almost free electricity supplied at random times and durations, but I'm struggling to think of good applications in a UK context (in the middle east, desalination plants would be an obvious one - make your plant 10x the size required and have good storage capacity for your clean water, run it in bursts to coincide with times of excess electricity supply, and bingo, no energy cost for you plant).
As currently envisaged, it wouldn't cur bills, just cement them at their high level, because the renewables providers would all need to be paid at a far higher level than gas prices are likely to return to when sanity comes back into fashion.
I would be interested in seeing whether they have plans to get tidal over the line though. That's an exciting renewable. Wind and Solar can piss off.
Missing the fact that if you don't look at crackpot conspiracy theorists that NEW wind was cheaper than gas even before the price of gas surged to it's peaks.
Of course if you only look at old wind from when the technology was nascent and being developed, it's a different matter.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from wind that has effectively zero input cost.
Except, every wind turbine (and solar panel) currently producing will be scrap metal in 30 years. It all has to be built again from the ground up. With new contracts being negotiated.
I'd rather be able to charge my car cheaply from a 3,200 MW tidal plant that will last a minimum of 120 years (and probably far longer) that has effectively zero input cost. And, delivering itself to your door twice a day, for free, is as reliable as nuclear but for a fraction of the cost. And if you build several of them around the coast, with guarnateed baseload because of the differing times of high tide.
Nuclear-scale tidal power stations will get built.
Green NIMBYism will prevent that - they will require 20 years of planning, while will cost hundreds of millions - just for the enquiry.
Then you will find that the price of building (essentially) a chunk of beach will be 50 times what it costs to build artificial reefs and beaches elsewhere. Because Big Government Project.
Planning consent for Swansea took 2 years, not 20. Tidal gets built becore nuclear even has its planning boots on.
It had over 80% local support through that planning process.
And it is a private enterprise project, not a Big Government Project. Private enterprise built small towns on stilts in the middle of the North Sea. Left to Big Government, the oil there would stil be under the seabed.
It won't, because the anti-progress NIMBYs and BANANAs will jump on the project.
I am tidal-sceptical, but not enough to want to stop a project if it gets the go-ahead. Sadly, there are lots of people who are anti-progress. Like the people who were against HS2....
Tidal had and has massive support. And more to the point it has a practical purpose - unlike the HS2 white elephant. Tidal is progress and tomorrow's technology. HS2 was last centuries' solution to last centuries' problems.
(Sighs theatrically)
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
The need for HS2 doesn't remotely cover the exorbitant cost. Even the fantasy cost benefit analysis had great difficulty justifying it, but now the costs have spiralled beyond all reason the best thing to do is ditch it and spend on transport projects with much better business cases, like road projects, Crossrail 2, West London Orbital Rail and the Bakerloo line extension.
As others point out, those are all rather London-focussed.
And the Bakerloo line extension shows the problem well. Nearly ten years ago, that was specced out at £2-3 billion for 7.5 km. Three years later, it was £4.7bn to £7.9bn. HS2 phase 1 is over 200km.
If we take the BLE cost at a low £4 billion and length at 8km, then that is £500 million per km. It makes HS2 look cheap...
Yes a line that is built entirely underground and involves building from scratch or substantially remodelling five underground stations is going to cost a fair amount of money. It will also unlock tens of thousands of new homes - right now there are loads of building opportunities that are blocked until the line is built because there is no transport capacity down the Old Kent Road - and vastly improve transport links in an area with poor connectivity. The BLE would be a no brainier in any country serious about solving its housing and infrastructure deficits.
If that is the primary argument, it does imply subsidising each new house/flat to the tune of something of the order of 100K of public moneys (assuming no cockup) - 4x10e9 divided by say 4x10e4 houses.
Though that could be adjusted down by including existiung houses. I wasn't aware that the area was empty at present, Betjeman's Metroland style?
Yet another boost to the London houysing market, though, is hardly good public policy.
London is where housing demand furthest outstrips supply, hence its high house prices. Plus Londoners are less NIMBY than people elsewhere, so it's a good place to build housing. The area around the Old Kent Road between Elephant and New Cross has the worst transport links of anywhere that close to Central London. And there are a load of brownfield sites available there to build housing. There is a whole raft of projects ready to go that simply won't be allowed to be built until the transport infrastructure is provided. Yet no money is forthcoming. This is why we never solve any of our problems.
That makes sense, re the brownfields for instance. But the beneficiaries are much more closely identifiable. The developers, and thje people already in the area who own houses which hugely increase in value. So charge the developers and increase council tax (and do a revaluation every 7 years, with more higher rate bands).
That's on a strict financial analysis, though, which is part of the wider problem! Also assuming no central gmt money, which would be now politically explosive after the way people from Berwick to Devon have been treated, above all in the last week.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
From Wikipedia:
"A poll carried out in 2011 by the Hebrew University indicated that a growing number of Palestinians and Israelis supported a settlement to the conflict based on the Parameters. The poll found that 58% of Israelis and 50% of Palestinians supported a two-state solution based on the Clinton Parameters, compared with 47% of Israelis and 39% of Palestinians in 2003, the first year the poll was carried out."
If only there had been the political will, this would seem to indicate that peace between Israel and Palestine could have been achieved.
It foundered on Arafat insisting on the Right of Return. But the narrative, as with our young blade @148grss, is that Israel is the one which has never offered the Palestinians anything and hence we should boycott them or, as he acknowledges, resort to violence because peaceful protest has been made impossible. Of all the posters on PB I hadn't necessarily expected @148grss to be a strong advocate of violence against civilians.
Again - I did not say that anyone should resort to violence if peaceful solutions are unavailable - only that people will resort to violence if they believe that peaceful solutions won't work. These are two different statements, and I think it is insincere of you to be conflating them.
Meanwhile a kosher restaurant in Golders Green got smashed up last night and there was other vandalism in the area. The extent of anti-semitism and justification of terror is truly depressing. Many people from all nationalities were killed and taken hostage, including reports now say, about 40 Israeli Arabs.
I have been shocked, and rather saddened, at the amount of support given to the terrorists on social media including by mainstream politicians. Even members of the Green side of the ruling Scottish coalition.
I am more inclined towards supporting the Palestinians cause but surely no one, whatever side of this conflict they sit, can in any way condone or support any of the actions we have seen from the Hamas militia over the weekend. There can be no justification for the actions we have seen.
I am not surprised. Those excusing or justifying the terrorists deny them any moral agency or responsibility - hence the grotesqueness of claiming, as Ms Chapman did, that there is a "context" to the rape of girls, one which is according to her understandable - while attributing agency and responsibility to the victims whom they hate. The victims are culpable and asking for it because they are Jews. It is the oldest hatred in the world and it is disgusting to see politicians here coming out with it.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
The Clinton Parameters were probably before your time.
I would have been 9. And reading about them it seems that both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities had issues with the plan - Arafat wanted some degree of right to return for displaced people, and Israel wanted more territorial control over Jerusalem and the other areas they would have been in control of. It seems that at the beginning Palestinian concerns where quite large, but also the Knesset and right wing of the Israeli state probably wouldn't have accepted the agreement anyway.
But at the end of the day, like many similar conflicts like it throughout history, we have to understand that people when pushed to the edge of precarious living with choose to lash out violently instead of coming around the negotiating table - especially when over time they have been told again and again that there will be no negotiations. This happened in India, in Ireland, in South Africa - and many other places.
England has been lucky that, in modern history at least, there has been no full scale invasion of our country. We all know what the plans were should the Germans have invaded during WW2 - for everyone to become a guerrilla fighter, stashes of weapons and explosives hidden for civilians to pick up if needed, for a government in exile to find safe haven overseas and help coordinate the resistance movement and so on. And we know, if that had come to pass, that would have been justified: not just because it was the Nazis doing the invading, but because it would have meant a military invasion and occupation that removed the freedom of the people within the nation - to speak their language, to practice their religion, to have their will expressed in a democratic forum. We can recognise that if it were our country invaded and occupied and our people oppressed, even if it had been the case for 80 years or more, that a group doing Hamas style attacks could exist and that we would understand or even have sympathy for their cause. And we know what we would demand as freedom that would end such attacks - a sincere removal of occupying forces, a real democratic government chosen by the people, an investigation and reconciliation process, reparations and so on.
That Palestinians were offered less than that and did not scoop it up is understandable, even if the realpolitik suggested they should have. But considering Israeli state reaction to the Parameters, as well as their actions in the decades since, I think it is clear why the events we are seeing are happening.
So you are with the group of people who didn't accept those parameters. Fair enough. I can see why you would advocate violence.
In their position, had the same thing happened to England, would you or I accept those parameters? I am not in charge of a nation, I am not a representative of all my peoples. Maybe they should have done - again, I think the issue is moot because it seems the Israeli government was also not likely to accept the parameters either.
Also where in my statements did I advocate violence? I just explained a situation where I think violence has been made inevitable. Am I an advocate of gravity if I say that if I drop a stone it will fall? You can also see in my first comment that you replied to where I said "Is it right to attack civilians, of course not". But what is "right" and what will happen in certain circumstances are different things.
It's ok I understand your thinking. You believe the Palestinians had no alternative but to choose violence. It is a legitimate point of view. It is how violence is justified in many of the places it occurs.
Another illustration of why this is existential for Israel. From the Guardian
“[The general] said the IDF military response had two primary objectives in its response to the Hamas attack. “At the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians … Hamas will not be able to govern the Gaza Strip.” The Israeli military has called up around 100,000 reservists.”
These are the obvious aims we discussed last night. Problem is: how on earth do you achieve them? Without slaughtering tens of thousands of Gazans?
Even worse, how do you keep Gaza under such a tight grip it cannot repeat October 7?
You can’t. So Israel is left with two options: push everyone in Gaza into Egypt, which is unfeasible, or accept the existence of Gaza as it is, which is intolerable
Can't they do basically the previous state of affairs only with more guys on and near the border? Hamas managed to break through their defences this time but it seems like the Israelis weren't really prepared for an attack like that, so what they can do now is prepare for an attack like that.
That said, if Labour wins an overall majority next year, I suspect a lot of LD/Lab tactical voting will evaporate, replaced by ConLD tacticals, as the LibDems will be targeting Labour as the Government.
I'm not sure that's right.
2001 saw a consolidation of anti-Tory tactical voting with some further Lib Dem gains (and one Labour gain) in a fairly static election.
By 2005, Iraq meant the focus had shifted for the Lib Dems to fighting Labour in university towns - but even then it was principally Labour to Lib Dem direct switching rather than tactical voting (I'm sure there was some, but I don't think desire for a Michael Howard government was driving it).
Indeed, part of the reason the Lib Dems did quite so badly in the Coalition years is that, even by 2010, most of its voters were not motivated by removing Labour.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
Hamas crossings are in their hundreds versus tens of thousands of IDF with tanks. They will eventually be wiped out its only the media adding to the immediacy of a crisis.
For Israel the big question is what next ? Hamas have already set a series traps for the Israelis to walk in to - bombing civilian Gaza, inciting the arab world to anger etc. Israel needs to find a way to avoid this. Since the prime beneficiary of this will be Iran, Israel should avoid Gaza fight and take its revenge on the Tehran regime.
Therefore
1. kick Hamas out of Israel and reseal the border. 2 Broker a deal with the Saudis whereby Israel says no more bombing of Gaza if Saudi and Israel can have normal relations 3. Transfer all Palestinian prisoners to Saudi so Hamas have nothing to negotiate for 4. Concentrate on neutering Iranian regime 5 Take out Irans nuclear programme
Iran is a state of 80 million, but ethnic persians are only about 55% of the population there are a lot of disaffected minorities. The regime survives by hard force but even the Persians are fed up with the clerics. Iran is ripe for a regime change which will then cut the funding and arming of the extremists surrounding Israel.
Better to aim for the kingpins than kill a few footsoldiers in Gaza
One of the more interesting facets (so far) has been the lack of outpouring in Arab nations in support of Hamas. Yes, there have been demonstrations in Jordan, Turkey etc and the shooting in Alexandria but, given the scale of the attack and its consequences, you would have expected far more.
Apart from what that says about whether these demonstrations are truly spontaneous or are orchestrated, I think it is becoming more and more obvious that Hamas has had a big tactical victory but this will be a massive strategic disaster on several fronts.
Firstly, for the Middle Eastern regimes such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, this is a massive blow. Not necessarily because of the peace accords but because what Hamas has done is so spectacular, it has put their carefully laid out long-term strategic plans in jeopardy. Does Dubai look such a great long-term investment after this? Do you want Saudis running your sports leagues and clubs? The western world - and most of the investment still comes from there with China looking an uncertain bet more and more - counts. Plus, without going Jeremy Corbyn, there are a lot of influential links between Israel and its citizens and many decision makers.
Secondly, this will massively undercut the apologists for the Palestinians in the West. Look at the reaction to Corbyn's mealy-mouthed response or the fringe events at the Labour party conference. The pictures are so graphic, anything less than 100% support for Israel will be seen as appeasement. So now Starmer is likely to have to reopen action against those who are pro-Palestine. In the States, the Squad - rightfully - is coming under major attack for their calls for a ceasefire. I see Schumer laid into the Chinese for their response this morning and, given Biden is under attack not just for the unfreezing of $6 billion of assets to Iran but also the Robert Malley affair (look it up), chances are he feels he needs to show his toughness on the issue.
Thirdly, and it goes without saying and has been emphasised time and time again, Israel will now destroy them and, electorally, has to pound them into the ground.
If you want to look at how quickly the penny is dropping, look at Iran's statements this morning. They can't get away enough from saying they had nothing to do with the attack after being reticent to deny it on Saturday. They must be sh1t scared they have gone too far.
Yes no doubt Hamas has put the cat among the pigeons and is hoping Israel will over react which with Netanyehu is more than possible.
But if Israel steps back and decides not to be channelled down Hamas` path it will regain control of the situation and can then sort out Iran.
With all the atrocious and depressing flag waving going on recently, here is some good flag waving.
Thibaud Pinot, a famous French cyclist, who was riding his last race before retirement got quite the send off. Incredible how he even made it through these crowds of Pinot Ultras. A great send off and quite uplifting!
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
I think it is reasonable to expect Palestinian self-styled freedom fighters to keep to the rules of war. Keep to military targets and avoid civilian casualties as much as possible.
If they had done so I think they would find they had a lot more sympathy in the West. I don't accept that the brutal targeting of civilians we have seen is an inevitable consequence of occupation.
Yes, I think that's right. We don't need to take sides to say that the targeting of civilians is barbaric. I certainly don't subscribe to The Kitchen Cabinet's view that we must therefore be 100% pro-Israel as a sort of reflex action - some of the ongoing policies of Netanyahu's government have been indefensible and will have strengthened support for Hamas. But what Hamas is doing no is an own goal for Palestinians in the medium term, however they much they may enjoy the temporary success.
Another illustration of why this is existential for Israel. From the Guardian
“[The general] said the IDF military response had two primary objectives in its response to the Hamas attack. “At the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians … Hamas will not be able to govern the Gaza Strip.” The Israeli military has called up around 100,000 reservists.”
These are the obvious aims we discussed last night. Problem is: how on earth do you achieve them? Without slaughtering tens of thousands of Gazans?
Even worse, how do you keep Gaza under such a tight grip it cannot repeat October 7?
You can’t. So Israel is left with two options: push everyone in Gaza into Egypt, which is unfeasible, or accept the existence of Gaza as it is, which is intolerable
I think the chances of Israel expelling the Gazans is growing.
It creates other problems for Israel, but those problems are not Hamas fighters killing civilians in Israeli border towns, or killing soldiers in an occupation force.
With 700 confirmed dead, another 100 hostages who are likely soon to be dead, the Israeli tolerance for dead Gazans will be high.
Preparing to deal with 2 million Gazans in the Sinai desert feels a bit like collusion with their expulsion, but if the Israelis cannot be persuaded to hold back that is where they're heading. At first.
Agreed re the chances of that growing. Any Israeli Government that does not resolve the issue once and for all will fall.
My guess is it won't be a forced expulsion but more a tightening of the screws - blockade stopping goods coming in, no electricity, limited water supplies etc.
The only other option would be some sort of Egyptian-Israeli codominium with the Egyptians essentially doing the brutal crackdown stuff. Slim chance though.
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
Hamas crossings are in their hundreds versus tens of thousands of IDF with tanks. They will eventually be wiped out its only the media adding to the immediacy of a crisis.
For Israel the big question is what next ? Hamas have already set a series traps for the Israelis to walk in to - bombing civilian Gaza, inciting the arab world to anger etc. Israel needs to find a way to avoid this. Since the prime beneficiary of this will be Iran, Israel should avoid Gaza fight and take its revenge on the Tehran regime.
Therefore
1. kick Hamas out of Israel and reseal the border. 2 Broker a deal with the Saudis whereby Israel says no more bombing of Gaza if Saudi and Israel can have normal relations 3. Transfer all Palestinian prisoners to Saudi so Hamas have nothing to negotiate for 4. Concentrate on neutering Iranian regime 5 Take out Irans nuclear programme
Iran is a state of 80 million, but ethnic persians are only about 55% of the population there are a lot of disaffected minorities. The regime survives by hard force but even the Persians are fed up with the clerics. Iran is ripe for a regime change which will then cut the funding and arming of the extremists surrounding Israel.
Better to aim for the kingpins than kill a few footsoldiers in Gaza
One of the more interesting facets (so far) has been the lack of outpouring in Arab nations in support of Hamas. Yes, there have been demonstrations in Jordan, Turkey etc and the shooting in Alexandria but, given the scale of the attack and its consequences, you would have expected far more.
Apart from what that says about whether these demonstrations are truly spontaneous or are orchestrated, I think it is becoming more and more obvious that Hamas has had a big tactical victory but this will be a massive strategic disaster on several fronts.
Firstly, for the Middle Eastern regimes such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, this is a massive blow. Not necessarily because of the peace accords but because what Hamas has done is so spectacular, it has put their carefully laid out long-term strategic plans in jeopardy. Does Dubai look such a great long-term investment after this? Do you want Saudis running your sports leagues and clubs? The western world - and most of the investment still comes from there with China looking an uncertain bet more and more - counts. Plus, without going Jeremy Corbyn, there are a lot of influential links between Israel and its citizens and many decision makers.
Secondly, this will massively undercut the apologists for the Palestinians in the West. Look at the reaction to Corbyn's mealy-mouthed response or the fringe events at the Labour party conference. The pictures are so graphic, anything less than 100% support for Israel will be seen as appeasement. So now Starmer is likely to have to reopen action against those who are pro-Palestine. In the States, the Squad - rightfully - is coming under major attack for their calls for a ceasefire. I see Schumer laid into the Chinese for their response this morning and, given Biden is under attack not just for the unfreezing of $6 billion of assets to Iran but also the Robert Malley affair (look it up), chances are he feels he needs to show his toughness on the issue.
Thirdly, and it goes without saying and has been emphasised time and time again, Israel will now destroy them and, electorally, has to pound them into the ground.
If you want to look at how quickly the penny is dropping, look at Iran's statements this morning. They can't get away enough from saying they had nothing to do with the attack after being reticent to deny it on Saturday. They must be sh1t scared they have gone too far.
Yes no doubt Hamas has put the cat among the pigeons and is hoping Israel will over react which with Netanyehu is more than possible.
But if Israel steps back and decides not to be channelled down Hamas` path it will regain control of the situation and can then sort out Iran.
Do we think Netanyahu is the person to step back? He will believe, surely, that his failure over security can be expunged by the severity of his response. Do we really think that he will take this time to reflect on the strategic benefits of stepping back?
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
Even in the 21st century the most important thing a government has to do is keep its country safe. H'aretz the Israeli newspaper has been pretty brutal in its attack on the Israeli PM for appointing incompetents to security posts. There will be a reckoning for Netanyahu - and I am not all sure that bombing Gaza is going to help him.
That most basic of governmental functions often gets lost sight of, in socieities that take peace for granted.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
The incredible military/intel failure in Israel is ONGOING
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
No it isn't. Israel's military is much too strong. It will still exist in its current form this time next year, and so will its occupation of most of the lands it seized in 1967.
The half hearted efforts by Hezbollah so far in the North imply this can’t be a true Iranian proxy attack, unless they are hiding their time for a second strike. But even with two fronts this will peter out, I agree.
Question is what happens next.
You misunderstand. This is not an existential crisis for Israel because the IDF are incapable of squashing this incursion. Of course they will get it done (tho it is taking a remarkably long time)
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
What this makes clear has essentially been what anyone sensible has been saying for decades - the only solution that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people is a peaceful two state solution. The PLO have been ready to negotiate that for a long time - it is the Israeli governments which have refused and have, indeed, made matters worse by increasing illegal settlements. As the PLO spokespeople have been saying - acts like those we have seen over the weekend have not been a question of if, but when, considering the conditions the Palestinian people have been kept in. Is it right to attack civilians, of course not. But organised, peaceful attempts - from within Palestine and outside of Palestine (think BDS) - have been made impossible.
I think it is reasonable to expect Palestinian self-styled freedom fighters to keep to the rules of war. Keep to military targets and avoid civilian casualties as much as possible.
If they had done so I think they would find they had a lot more sympathy in the West. I don't accept that the brutal targeting of civilians we have seen is an inevitable consequence of occupation.
Why - they have been the inevitable consequences of previous occupations; again, Ireland, India, South Africa: all had civilian targets and casualties.
Again - let's go to my thought experiment I previously mentioned of an occupied England 80 years after WW2 (and, for the sake of argument, let us remove the spectre of Nazism - not because fascism is not an extra existential threat, but because I want to highlight a reaction to any military occupation, not just a fascist one). Do you think "English freedom fighters" would not target, say, Berlin or Munich or even a German run London or Manchester? That, after 80 years of occupation, they might kidnap German citizens who were present in England - even if they had nothing to do directly with the occupation? I think it is clearly inevitable; ideologically, because those civilians would represent occupation as much as the state or military, but also strategically, because they would be easier to target and you could leverage them easier than a politician or a soldier.
Many "freedom fighters' are worse than the occupying power, Hamas being a good example. IS and the Taliban are other examples.
They don't fight for freedom, but rather, for the right to turn the country into their own brand of sewer. So, if we were a satellite of Germany, and the resistance wished to turn the UK into the kind of state that Hamas wish to create, one might conclude that Germany was the lesser evil.
Comments
Mr. Eagles, Mitchell's a moron. Expecting 15th century monarchs to abide by 21st century social and legal norms is akin to condemning modern day politicians for failing to follow the standard approaches of the 27th century.
I also question his grasp of the most basic tents of medieval history if he thinks Henry V was remarkable for being into war quite a lot.
HS2 was not a white elephant. There was a need for it - and before you say "Home working!!!", look at how rail travel has recovered since Covid. whilst commuter traffic is down somewhat (though not precipitously), long-distance travel is up. And HS2 was meant to be long-distance travel...
And the idea that increasing rail travel is not a 'practical purpose' is quite staggering. As is the idea that high-speed rail is not 'progress' is quite amusing. I might as well point at Eling tide mill and say tidal turbines are medieval tech!
I want tidal power. But expect the very same arguments used against HS2 to be used against project you like - or to be used to increase the costs past viability.
And the problem here is that nuclear has rather captured the attention of policymakers.
And what's wrong with condemning modern day politicians for conforming with the modern day norm of being equally useless ?
But with any mode of power generation, if we want a market solution we need a steady hand on the regulatory tiller. And too many Tory MPs are luddite wazzocks.
Better a ruthless leader who succeeds at war than a nice guy who sees his country invaded.
Hopefully, the one silver lining in this affair will be that a man who has been a cancer in Israeli politics for decades will see his career ended.
My understanding is that we forward buy lots of LNG shipments scheduled to arrive around the winter to get round the gas storage issue. I'm not sure if paying for a massive gas storage facility would actually save us any money (although it does remove the risk from our LNG shipments being interrupted by war, terror, piracy etc.).
Or watch Mitchell being interviewed about his thesis.
Waterstones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INabb1VL8qg
Dan Snow/History Hit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqwMLCh8RnE
What do they have in common?
You can't expect the English taxpayers* to keep funding London with the HS2 moneys. Or what is left after the costs of scrapping.
*Assuming not declared UK-wide budget spending.
Hamas fighters are still in Israel, killing Israelis, and still crossing the border
Guardian liveblog:
“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus says situation is ‘dire’ in south, with Hamas still able to cross border from Gaza”
This is an existential crisis for Israel
Miss Cyclefree, I think Henry V was pretty good at maintaining order, though. It's not like he just tore stuff up in a war, and he was certainly far better than the corruption and incompetence of Henry VI, or the corruption/favouritism of Richard II.
Also, the point stands about relative regional investment.
Still dependent on shipments from various geopolitically or geographically problematic regions. For example, a hot war in the gulf involving Iran and Israel with the straits of Hormuz blockaded at the same time as a hurricane takes out US export facilities in the GoM, would be a challenge.
Question is what happens next.
But it's a mark of Netanyahu's failure, not success, that he will now invade his neighbour.
Will @NickPalmer or any other Lab members be there?
The deeper problem for Israel - and I’d say it is now fundamental - is that there is no obvious way for them to stop this happening again, as long as Gaza exists. And if this keeps happening then investment and people will flee Israel
And it is not possible for them to obliterate Gaza, as we discussed at length last night. They are in a terrible bind
Seeing pictures of the cheering masses (and ofc not just in Gaza) applauding Hamas' actions I wonder what Gaza residents are now thinking about the ongoing and forthcoming actions.
For Israel the big question is what next ? Hamas have already set a series traps for the Israelis to walk in to - bombing civilian Gaza, inciting the arab world to anger etc. Israel needs to find a way to avoid this. Since the prime beneficiary of this will be Iran, Israel should avoid Gaza fight and take its revenge on the Tehran regime.
Therefore
1. kick Hamas out of Israel and reseal the border.
2 Broker a deal with the Saudis whereby Israel says no more bombing of Gaza if Saudi and Israel can have normal relations
3. Transfer all Palestinian prisoners to Saudi so Hamas have nothing to negotiate for
4. Concentrate on neutering Iranian regime
5 Take out Irans nuclear programme
Iran is a state of 80 million, but ethnic persians are only about 55% of the population there are a lot of disaffected minorities. The regime survives by hard force but even the Persians are fed up with the clerics. Iran is ripe for a regime change which will then cut the funding and arming of the extremists surrounding Israel.
Better to aim for the kingpins than kill a few footsoldiers in Gaza
So Rwanda could be deemed as a safe country but the directive states asylum seekers can only be sent to a safe country with which they have a connection .
The respondents solicitor in the previous court hearing made a distinction between freedom of movement and asylum , the changes to EU retained law were on the former but the government says that includes asylum .
Clearly if they lose on that technicality they can change the law .
And the Bakerloo line extension shows the problem well. Nearly ten years ago, that was specced out at £2-3 billion for 7.5 km. Three years later, it was £4.7bn to £7.9bn. HS2 phase 1 is over 200km.
If we take the BLE cost at a low £4 billion and length at 8km, then that is £500 million per km. It makes HS2 look cheap...
It cuts the ground from under Irans plan and Saudis can buy some popcorn as they watch Israel take its revenge.
If they really wanted some fun they could open the oil taps and watch Russia and Iran struggle to fund their militaries,
But, I'm not convinced it would have been in England's interests to have a monarch whose focus would have been on a country that was five times as populous.
However, the medieval age was approaching its end in the 15th century, and an early modern state of the 16th century would have had more of a chance of holding things together - though the experience of the Spanish/Hapsburgs shows that could be complicated by wars of religion.
So if Henry V had lived out his three score and ten, not dying until the 1450s, you'd probably only need one decent monarch, with a capable reforming privy council, to hold things together until the wars of religion tore them apart.
“Climate change leads homebuyers to seek a place not in the sun“
https://www.ft.com/content/d036caa2-2d9d-4704-b288-da15f2738e70
An interesting point is the classic LibDem argument that they are better-placed to win over Tories, who can't imagine voting for evil socialists. That certainly used to be true, but it may not be now for a slightly depressing reason for someone like me - Labour has moved so far to the centre that most people can't see any difference from the LibDems, except possibly that Labour is keener on housing and the NHS and the LibDems are keener on the EU and PR. I know Labour people who vote LibDem without wincing and vice versa, as the tactical position suggests, but also former Tories who are voting for either on the same basis.
That said, if Labour wins an overall majority next year, I suspect a lot of LD/Lab tactical voting will evaporate, replaced by ConLD tacticals, as the LibDems will be targeting Labour as the Government.
https://conservativehome.com/2023/10/09/britain-needs-labour-to-offer-another-attlee-will-it-be-saddled-with-starmer-and-our-stagnant-status-quo/
ConHome damns Starmer with faint praise. MRDA.
As ever, why not do both? Why was re in such a declinist mindset that promoting *my* project means that *your* project has to be denigrated? It's a stupid thought process, esp. as such negativity hurts all infrastructure investment, mine or yours.
Though that could be adjusted down by including existiung houses. I wasn't aware that the area was empty at present, Betjeman's Metroland style?
Yet another boost to the London houysing market, though, is hardly good public policy.
Our priorities should be eliminating plastics, energy security, protecting bio diversity and future proofing infrastructure.
If they had done so I think they would find they had a lot more sympathy in the West. I don't accept that the brutal targeting of civilians we have seen is an inevitable consequence of occupation.
We could also do with the investment and productivity growth.
"A poll carried out in 2011 by the Hebrew University indicated that a growing number of Palestinians and Israelis supported a settlement to the conflict based on the Parameters. The poll found that 58% of Israelis and 50% of Palestinians supported a two-state solution based on the Clinton Parameters, compared with 47% of Israelis and 39% of Palestinians in 2003, the first year the poll was carried out."
If only there had been the political will, this would seem to indicate that peace between Israel and Palestine could have been achieved.
How did that work out?
So now the situation is incalculably worse, Israel has an appalling government which has failed in its basic duty to keep its people safe and has no peace strategy and now Hamas has turned into an ISIS-style group sponsored by a repellent Iranian regime.
No - I don't have any answers either.
“[The general] said the IDF military response had two primary objectives in its response to the Hamas attack. “At the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians … Hamas will not be able to govern the Gaza Strip.” The Israeli military has called up around 100,000 reservists.”
These are the obvious aims we discussed last night. Problem is: how on earth do you achieve them? Without slaughtering tens of thousands of Gazans?
Even worse, how do you keep Gaza under such a tight grip it cannot repeat October 7?
You can’t. So Israel is left with two options: push everyone in Gaza into Egypt, which is unfeasible, or accept the existence of Gaza as it is, which is intolerable
It's a parallel argument to the one made against immigration (businesses should be forced to invest by cutting off the supply of cheap labour). Personally, I suspect that logic has more holes in it than the Network North map, but there's a genuine mindset problem.
And until we fix it, things aren't really going to get better. Are we prepared to consume less now so that our children/grandchildren can collectively have better lives in the future? Or are we going to keep eating this (no doubt delicious) seedcorn?
Brits throw away something like 25% of all the food we buy.
The government spends millions trying to slim us down and stop food waste.
We have a long way to go before we hit starvation and the steps before we get there might be good for us.
But at the end of the day, like many similar conflicts like it throughout history, we have to understand that people when pushed to the edge of precarious living with choose to lash out violently instead of coming around the negotiating table - especially when over time they have been told again and again that there will be no negotiations. This happened in India, in Ireland, in South Africa - and many other places.
England has been lucky that, in modern history at least, there has been no full scale invasion of our country. We all know what the plans were should the Germans have invaded during WW2 - for everyone to become a guerrilla fighter, stashes of weapons and explosives hidden for civilians to pick up if needed, for a government in exile to find safe haven overseas and help coordinate the resistance movement and so on. And we know, if that had come to pass, that would have been justified: not just because it was the Nazis doing the invading, but because it would have meant a military invasion and occupation that removed the freedom of the people within the nation - to speak their language, to practice their religion, to have their will expressed in a democratic forum. We can recognise that if it were our country invaded and occupied and our people oppressed, even if it had been the case for 80 years or more, that a group doing Hamas style attacks could exist and that we would understand or even have sympathy for their cause. And we know what we would demand as freedom that would end such attacks - a sincere removal of occupying forces, a real democratic government chosen by the people, an investigation and reconciliation process, reparations and so on.
That Palestinians were offered less than that and did not scoop it up is understandable, even if the realpolitik suggested they should have. But considering Israeli state reaction to the Parameters, as well as their actions in the decades since, I think it is clear why the events we are seeing are happening.
Large chunks of the Netherlands are below sea level, we will need to adopt similar flood defences.
I am more inclined towards supporting the Palestinians cause but surely no one, whatever side of this conflict they sit, can in any way condone or support any of the actions we have seen from the Hamas militia over the weekend. There can be no justification for the actions we have seen.
One of the arguments in favour of Henry V is that his military success (both domestically against rebellions, and particularly in France) forged a new sense of national identity.
It's hard to see that applying across both countries.
Again - let's go to my thought experiment I previously mentioned of an occupied England 80 years after WW2 (and, for the sake of argument, let us remove the spectre of Nazism - not because fascism is not an extra existential threat, but because I want to highlight a reaction to any military occupation, not just a fascist one). Do you think "English freedom fighters" would not target, say, Berlin or Munich or even a German run London or Manchester? That, after 80 years of occupation, they might kidnap German citizens who were present in England - even if they had nothing to do directly with the occupation? I think it is clearly inevitable; ideologically, because those civilians would represent occupation as much as the state or military, but also strategically, because they would be easier to target and you could leverage them easier than a politician or a soldier.
Apart from what that says about whether these demonstrations are truly spontaneous or are orchestrated, I think it is becoming more and more obvious that Hamas has had a big tactical victory but this will be a massive strategic disaster on several fronts.
Firstly, for the Middle Eastern regimes such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, this is a massive blow. Not necessarily because of the peace accords but because what Hamas has done is so spectacular, it has put their carefully laid out long-term strategic plans in jeopardy. Does Dubai look such a great long-term investment after this? Do you want Saudis running your sports leagues and clubs? The western world - and most of the investment still comes from there with China looking an uncertain bet more and more - counts. Plus, without going Jeremy Corbyn, there are a lot of influential links between Israel and its citizens and many decision makers.
Secondly, this will massively undercut the apologists for the Palestinians in the West. Look at the reaction to Corbyn's mealy-mouthed response or the fringe events at the Labour party conference. The pictures are so graphic, anything less than 100% support for Israel will be seen as appeasement. So now Starmer is likely to have to reopen action against those who are pro-Palestine. In the States, the Squad - rightfully - is coming under major attack for their calls for a ceasefire. I see Schumer laid into the Chinese for their response this morning and, given Biden is under attack not just for the unfreezing of $6 billion of assets to Iran but also the Robert Malley affair (look it up), chances are he feels he needs to show his toughness on the issue.
Thirdly, and it goes without saying and has been emphasised time and time again, Israel will now destroy them and, electorally, has to pound them into the ground.
If you want to look at how quickly the penny is dropping, look at Iran's statements this morning. They can't get away enough from saying they had nothing to do with the attack after being reticent to deny it on Saturday. They must be sh1t scared they have gone too far.
It creates other problems for Israel, but those problems are not Hamas fighters killing civilians in Israeli border towns, or killing soldiers in an occupation force.
With 700 confirmed dead, another 100 hostages who are likely soon to be dead, the Israeli tolerance for dead Gazans will be high.
Preparing to deal with 2 million Gazans in the Sinai desert feels a bit like collusion with their expulsion, but if the Israelis cannot be persuaded to hold back that is where they're heading. At first.
Also where in my statements did I advocate violence? I just explained a situation where I think violence has been made inevitable. Am I an advocate of gravity if I say that if I drop a stone it will fall? You can also see in my first comment that you replied to where I said "Is it right to attack civilians, of course not". But what is "right" and what will happen in certain circumstances are different things.
I imagine was the thinking.
https://cepa.org/article/only-good-news-today-russias-propagandists-delight-as-israelis-die/
...Sergey Mardan, one of Russia’s best-known propagandists and host of the eponymous show on the state channel Solovyov Live, wrote on his Telegram channel that he was happy for the Russians who moved to Israel because they didn’t want to live in a country that is at war with its neighbors.
He added, “This mess is beneficial for Russia, because the globalist toad will be distracted from Ukraine and will get busy trying to put out the eternal Middle Eastern fire.” Mardan explained, “Iran is our real military ally. Israel is an ally of the United States. Therefore, choosing a side is easy!”
During his show, “Mardan,” the host made a bizarre comparison between Palestine and Russia, claiming that Russia “has been occupied since 1991” and is only now seeking to correct the situation. Russian propagandists frequently claim that Ukraine is “occupying” Russian lands, which Russia is fighting to reclaim.
Head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, wrote on her X/Twitter account, “The country that is not at war with its neighbors is again at war with its neighbors. We await the exodus of Russian pacifists. Then again, we won’t hold our breath.”
Host of the show “Morning Z” on Solovyov Live, Boris Yakemenko, blamed the violence on gender issues (presumably a reference to LGBT+ debates in the West), stating, “What is happening today in different corners of the world shows that the world has come to a dangerous point, beyond which lies the new world. Crossing into it will be preceded by horrendous casualties, because of a feeling of total injustice, insanity, a total lack of understanding of what is happening, with all of these genders, with all of these strange phenomena!” ..
That's on a strict financial analysis, though, which is part of the wider problem! Also assuming no central gmt money, which would be now politically explosive after the way people from Berwick to Devon have been treated, above all in the last week.
2001 saw a consolidation of anti-Tory tactical voting with some further Lib Dem gains (and one Labour gain) in a fairly static election.
By 2005, Iraq meant the focus had shifted for the Lib Dems to fighting Labour in university towns - but even then it was principally Labour to Lib Dem direct switching rather than tactical voting (I'm sure there was some, but I don't think desire for a Michael Howard government was driving it).
Indeed, part of the reason the Lib Dems did quite so badly in the Coalition years is that, even by 2010, most of its voters were not motivated by removing Labour.
But if Israel steps back and decides not to be channelled down Hamas` path it will regain control of the situation and can then sort out Iran.
Thibaud Pinot, a famous French cyclist, who was riding his last race before retirement got quite the send off. Incredible how he even made it through these crowds of Pinot Ultras. A great send off and quite uplifting!
Pinot’s corner 🥺🙌🏼
📹 Sea Are Content on IG.
#IlLombardia
https://x.com/Laura_Meseguer/status/1710928274308657588?s=20
If they had done so I think they would find they had a lot more sympathy in the West. I don't accept that the brutal targeting of civilians we have seen is an inevitable consequence of occupation.
Yes, I think that's right. We don't need to take sides to say that the targeting of civilians is barbaric. I certainly don't subscribe to The Kitchen Cabinet's view that we must therefore be 100% pro-Israel as a sort of reflex action - some of the ongoing policies of Netanyahu's government have been indefensible and will have strengthened support for Hamas. But what Hamas is doing no is an own goal for Palestinians in the medium term, however they much they may enjoy the temporary success.
My guess is it won't be a forced expulsion but more a tightening of the screws - blockade stopping goods coming in, no electricity, limited water supplies etc.
The only other option would be some sort of Egyptian-Israeli codominium with the Egyptians essentially doing the brutal crackdown stuff. Slim chance though.
They don't fight for freedom, but rather, for the right to turn the country into their own brand of sewer. So, if we were a satellite of Germany, and the resistance wished to turn the UK into the kind of state that Hamas wish to create, one might conclude that Germany was the lesser evil.