One thing on which there seems to be a consensus is that rather than turning off supporters Trump is gaining from the various legal attacks on him. It is depriving everyone else on the GOP side of oxygen, it has allowed him to remain above the fray within the party rather than debating and it is making a lot of people angry that an "unelected official" thinks she can determine whether or not the choice of a major party is on the ballot or not.
This has, ironically, created a surge for Trump which is more significant than any slow decline in Biden's numbers but Biden is particularly struggling with black males and Hispanics, both essential parts of his 2016 coalition.
I feel like this kind of thing must make it hard to poll though. If you think your guy is being unfairly treated, and you're offered the chance to support him at no cost by naming him in an opinion poll, you'd probably take it. Does that same dynamic work in an actual caucus or primary? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, I have no idea.
Yes, there is more uncertainty than normal. It's one thing to think that the people have the right to choose and another to choose Trump who is clearly not the man he was, for good or ill, in 2016.
It's also something we have talked about quite a lot on here of late. Biden's record on the economy is world leading but most Americans think the economy is a mess. Biden's record on inflation is also very good but Americans think it isn't. Biden's record on crime is incredible but most Americans think law and order is breaking down. Even Biden's support for Israel and Ukraine is being questioned.
The picture painted in the US media is overwhelmingly and unfairly negative and seems to be turning incumbency into a disadvantage rather than a strength. Can this continue to the election?
Biden should be applauded for focussing on the wealth creating aspect of the economy.
And its that focus which might be detrimental to public support.
Because there's a lot more people who want governments to hand them another subsidy than there are who want governments to incentivise new industrial investments in a place where they don't live.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Are you suggesting Brexiteers are not very bright? How many would it take to change a lightbulb?
Doesn’t matter how many there are, they would blame the non operating lightbulb situation on Remoaners and demand they change the lightbulb. When that didn’t work they’d decide being in the dark was quite nice actually.
Turns out the Remoaner has their facts wrong and is just taking a fact-free swipe at something he doesn’t like.
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
It seems like the Waymo testing in Phoenix is going OK? I know they picked the easiest place to do it, but it seems to be a working thing, it's not vapourware. If they can make it good enough the potential cost savings are immense, so I don't think it's at all clear that the $100 billion was badly spent.
For self-driving cars to be ubiquitous, with humans as merely passengers as imagined, the cars would need to be able to navigate a city like London with all its complexity. That is a long way from where any of the manufacturers are right now.
Autonomous motorway driving is much more viable and will make life easier on long journeys, but we're not getting robo taxis anytime soon.
See also narrow country lanes with passing places, prone to flooding, tractors, escaped livestock, etc...
Cattle herds in the Somerset levels being taken to pasture; the need to be careful when sheep (too often suicidally panic-prone) are grazing on the verge of unfenced southern Scottish hill roads; cattle grids on ditto (how does the robot open the gate?), ...
Erm. I thought the whole point of driverless cars was that they would carry passengers. There is no point having cars driving round with no one in them.
Some use cases will involve driving empty sometimes -- for example a robo taxi driving out to pick up a fare, or the family car driving back to the house after dropping the kids off at school. Though how likely such trips are to involve remote Scottish rural cattle grid roads is less clear.
those are the cases that need special attention to. driving across London empty would be one of the most common journeys but would also be one of the most tested so is less likely to go wrong. where you need to pay attention in testing are the scenarios which are less likely as they'll be tested a lot less. for example driving across the highlands in snow, in a white car, heading away from the sun at sunset while there's no-one in the car and someone is coming the other way.
it's the corner cases which cause the worst accidents because the developers will generally reply with 'I didn't even conceive of you using it that way'
Which is why we have the “99% there” problem in the first place. It turns out that there’s millions of these edge cases, and they all need to be programmed and tested individually.
Humans do quite a remarkable job of dealing with many of these on a daily basis, as well as very non-standard things for a computer such as getting out of the way of an ambulance, or dealing with temporary roadworks or obstruction with a man signalling to traffic.
The early driverless cars had to be programmed to identify a policeman in the road, and interpret what his or her signals might mean. And of course, police look and behave differently in different places, and even have multiple uniforms in the same place. To a human this is really easy, but not to a computer.
Maths. Suppose you are driving all day in urban driving, 10 hours in all. That is 600 minutes and 36000 seconds. You are attending to stuff all the time you are moving, and to a lesser extent all the time you are stopped. Mostly humans do this without accident.
If my maths is right with 99.9% reliability there will be 36 seconds out of the 36000 in which the system is unreliable. Imagine a million cars in city driving with 36 seconds of unreliability per X unit of time. That's 36,000,000 seconds. That's a lot of opportunities for trouble.
In the real world your human doing 10 hours of driving will have more than 36 seconds of "unreliability". We all have spells where we are sat there connected to the controls but our thoughts or attention are elsewhere.
Good point. But humans have a remarkable capacity to select our unreliabilities. If not we would all be dead, and this must be an evolved capacity. The 36,000,000 seconds of unreliability I suggest would be randomly distributed and have no regard for circumstances. That's the nature of the non human machine.
This is a fairly nothing article (man doesn’t pay his road tax, van gets impounded).
But it did flag an interesting point. He is in his late 30s “establishing himself” on the comedy circuit.
He survives on £300 per month and feeds himself with food provided by food banks.
This is just an indication of why we need to be careful with statistics on food bank usage. He is clearly poor by any definition. However it’s a *lifestyle*choice - he is a trained electrician so could have a different job if he wanted.
You can certainly make the argument that society is better off because an individual can pursue the career he wants (no matter how realistic or not) but it does suggest it’s wrong to simply say “good bank usage up, everyone is starving, government bad”
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Nah, the light bulbs efficiency hasn't changed, just that the EU now includes other metrics as well. Brexit has been underwhelming, but our light bulbs haven't become suddenly less efficient because of it.
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
It seems like the Waymo testing in Phoenix is going OK? I know they picked the easiest place to do it, but it seems to be a working thing, it's not vapourware. If they can make it good enough the potential cost savings are immense, so I don't think it's at all clear that the $100 billion was badly spent.
For self-driving cars to be ubiquitous, with humans as merely passengers as imagined, the cars would need to be able to navigate a city like London with all its complexity. That is a long way from where any of the manufacturers are right now.
Autonomous motorway driving is much more viable and will make life easier on long journeys, but we're not getting robo taxis anytime soon.
See also narrow country lanes with passing places, prone to flooding, tractors, escaped livestock, etc...
Cattle herds in the Somerset levels being taken to pasture; the need to be careful when sheep (too often suicidally panic-prone) are grazing on the verge of unfenced southern Scottish hill roads; cattle grids on ditto (how does the robot open the gate?), ...
Erm. I thought the whole point of driverless cars was that they would carry passengers. There is no point having cars driving round with no one in them.
Some use cases will involve driving empty sometimes -- for example a robo taxi driving out to pick up a fare, or the family car driving back to the house after dropping the kids off at school. Though how likely such trips are to involve remote Scottish rural cattle grid roads is less clear.
those are the cases that need special attention to. driving across London empty would be one of the most common journeys but would also be one of the most tested so is less likely to go wrong. where you need to pay attention in testing are the scenarios which are less likely as they'll be tested a lot less. for example driving across the highlands in snow, in a white car, heading away from the sun at sunset while there's no-one in the car and someone is coming the other way.
it's the corner cases which cause the worst accidents because the developers will generally reply with 'I didn't even conceive of you using it that way'
Which is why we have the “99% there” problem in the first place. It turns out that there’s millions of these edge cases, and they all need to be programmed and tested individually.
Humans do quite a remarkable job of dealing with many of these on a daily basis, as well as very non-standard things for a computer such as getting out of the way of an ambulance, or dealing with temporary roadworks or obstruction with a man signalling to traffic.
The early driverless cars had to be programmed to identify a policeman in the road, and interpret what his or her signals might mean. And of course, police look and behave differently in different places, and even have multiple uniforms in the same place. To a human this is really easy, but not to a computer.
Maths. Suppose you are driving all day in urban driving, 10 hours in all. That is 600 minutes and 36000 seconds. You are attending to stuff all the time you are moving, and to a lesser extent all the time you are stopped. Mostly humans do this without accident.
If my maths is right with 99.9% reliability there will be 36 seconds out of the 36000 in which the system is unreliable. Imagine a million cars in city driving with 36 seconds of unreliability per X unit of time. That's 36,000,000 seconds. That's a lot of opportunities for trouble.
from a probabilistic point of view that is correct. but from a software and systems point of view it's not. software works 100% of the time when it is correct, it fails 100% of the time when it is not. whereas human control is never 100% correct or 100% incorrect.
for example, if you have a piece of road where the road markings are unclear or misleading, most human drivers will compensate but every one of the driverless cars would misinterpret it and potentially cause a crash.
if that bit of road is very busy it'd fail the 99.9% because of the inputs to the system rather than the car itself.
Yes, and as drivers we have all had moments of inattention when something unexpected happens, which brings a sudden sharp awareness and emergency action. Can an autonomous vehicle replicate this yet?
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Are you suggesting Brexiteers are not very bright? How many would it take to change a lightbulb?
Two. One to change the bulb and one to write a letter to the Daily Telegraph.
Sajid Javed has been knighted. Sir The Saj. It is perhaps an acknowledgement that his career at the top of politics is over. In truth, it probably died when Dominic Cummings Boris Johnson sacked him for standing up for his SpAds. He has already announced he will not seek re-election next year.
Javed must wake up every day thinking 'I could have been PM if I hadn't flounced on a point of principle'.
Having principles is why he got on in politics, but came to grief when high in the modern Conservative Party.
Not quite. It's more general than the Tories. Starmer is likely to be the next PM. he has thrown principle out of the window and has played politics with brilliance. This includes a series of about turns done so well that several million Tories intend to vote for the man who not long ago was the key player in support of the 'friend of Hamas' and quite a few Brexit voters intend to vote for 'Ref2 man'.
Thus far it is genius. It is how, in politics, to get things done.
Compare his fate with principled people. Rory, Saj, Grieve, Gauke, and lots of others.
Well, he’s discouraging me from voting Labour! There’s no chance of me voting Conservative though.
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
Senior car execs have been duped by the techies - could it be they are too used to being chauffeured around to appreciate the complexities of driving?
I think that depends on the company. Musk has been lying about the capabilities of Tesla's system in order to ramp up Tesla's share price. Google went for an all-or-bust approach - which is to be commended IMO.
Some other manufacturers have taken more iterative approaches; developing things like good and reliable adaptative cruise control, lane detection and other systems, as driver aids, rather than going for full autonomy out of the box.
My belief has always been that the iterative approach would win over the big-bang approach of Tesla and Google.
Yes, some driver aids are useful and some are not. My unsmart car beeps at me occasionally when I get to close to the middle lane marker, and gets bewildered by parked cars on the sides of bendy roads. The only way driverless cars take off is by banning pedestrians imo.
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
It seems like the Waymo testing in Phoenix is going OK? I know they picked the easiest place to do it, but it seems to be a working thing, it's not vapourware. If they can make it good enough the potential cost savings are immense, so I don't think it's at all clear that the $100 billion was badly spent.
For self-driving cars to be ubiquitous, with humans as merely passengers as imagined, the cars would need to be able to navigate a city like London with all its complexity. That is a long way from where any of the manufacturers are right now.
Autonomous motorway driving is much more viable and will make life easier on long journeys, but we're not getting robo taxis anytime soon.
See also narrow country lanes with passing places, prone to flooding, tractors, escaped livestock, etc...
Cattle herds in the Somerset levels being taken to pasture; the need to be careful when sheep (too often suicidally panic-prone) are grazing on the verge of unfenced southern Scottish hill roads; cattle grids on ditto (how does the robot open the gate?), ...
Erm. I thought the whole point of driverless cars was that they would carry passengers. There is no point having cars driving round with no one in them.
Some use cases will involve driving empty sometimes -- for example a robo taxi driving out to pick up a fare, or the family car driving back to the house after dropping the kids off at school. Though how likely such trips are to involve remote Scottish rural cattle grid roads is less clear.
those are the cases that need special attention to. driving across London empty would be one of the most common journeys but would also be one of the most tested so is less likely to go wrong. where you need to pay attention in testing are the scenarios which are less likely as they'll be tested a lot less. for example driving across the highlands in snow, in a white car, heading away from the sun at sunset while there's no-one in the car and someone is coming the other way.
it's the corner cases which cause the worst accidents because the developers will generally reply with 'I didn't even conceive of you using it that way'
Which is why we have the “99% there” problem in the first place. It turns out that there’s millions of these edge cases, and they all need to be programmed and tested individually.
Humans do quite a remarkable job of dealing with many of these on a daily basis, as well as very non-standard things for a computer such as getting out of the way of an ambulance, or dealing with temporary roadworks or obstruction with a man signalling to traffic.
The early driverless cars had to be programmed to identify a policeman in the road, and interpret what his or her signals might mean. And of course, police look and behave differently in different places, and even have multiple uniforms in the same place. To a human this is really easy, but not to a computer.
Maths. Suppose you are driving all day in urban driving, 10 hours in all. That is 600 minutes and 36000 seconds. You are attending to stuff all the time you are moving, and to a lesser extent all the time you are stopped. Mostly humans do this without accident.
If my maths is right with 99.9% reliability there will be 36 seconds out of the 36000 in which the system is unreliable. Imagine a million cars in city driving with 36 seconds of unreliability per X unit of time. That's 36,000,000 seconds. That's a lot of opportunities for trouble.
from a probabilistic point of view that is correct. but from a software and systems point of view it's not. software works 100% of the time when it is correct, it fails 100% of the time when it is not. whereas human control is never 100% correct or 100% incorrect.
for example, if you have a piece of road where the road markings are unclear or misleading, most human drivers will compensate but every one of the driverless cars would misinterpret it and potentially cause a crash.
if that bit of road is very busy it'd fail the 99.9% because of the inputs to the system rather than the car itself.
Yes, and as drivers we have all had moments of inattention when something unexpected happens, which brings a sudden sharp awareness and emergency action. Can an autonomous vehicle replicate this yet?
The autonomous car would not 'be inattentive' in the first place.
the problem that autonomous cars will have are the scenarios where their programming fails to deal with them safely. if all cars were autonomous then it'd take out one of the main causes of risk in driving (the other drivers) but it'd not remove all of the risk (eg poor road maintenance, poor car maintenance, pedestrians)
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
Senior car execs have been duped by the techies - could it be they are too used to being chauffeured around to appreciate the complexities of driving?
It’s a combination of a decade of cheap money, and the (utopian tech bro) idea that one company would end up dominating the space, where in future millions of automated taxis would replace traditional private transport. The likes of Google, Apple, and Tesla, had access to plenty of VC money, and GM felt they had to get either involved or miss out.
The most difficult bit, as we’ve discussed on here many times before, is where the technology can do most of the driving, but can and will disengage itself at short notice, meaning that the human needs to stay awake and alert at all times - something which humans find quite difficult, even the professional test drivers.
Meanwhile, that old favourite of new car technology, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, has what looks to be the best system deployed so far in the new 2024 model, with very little hype. It’s a “Level 3” system up to 40mph, meaning the car drives itself and Mercedes are insured for any damage it causes. https://carbuzz.com/news/mercedes-announces-first-level-3-self-driving-for-s-class-and-eqs-sedan You can’t use it to drop the kids at school or collect you from the pub yet though, which is what most people think a self-driving car should be able to do, a taxi without the human driver.
BIB: Mick Lynch just texted me to say that is why train drivers get paid so much. Their job is to maintain concentration through 99.999 per cent tedium so they can react instantly to obstructions.
Whereas bus drivers can be paid about half train drivers because all they do is collect the fares, act as the police force, do social care for the elderly and drive the bus, 100% attention all the time, on roads full of drunks, druggies, under age bikers, boys showing off and delivery drivers double parking.
Indeed. My bus driver mate always said that if they don't want to pay their fares, that's fine because he doesn't want to get stabbed over 50p.
That said, what car-driving PBers might not have noticed is there are lots of lady bus drivers nowadays, thanks mainly to power steering.
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
It seems like the Waymo testing in Phoenix is going OK? I know they picked the easiest place to do it, but it seems to be a working thing, it's not vapourware. If they can make it good enough the potential cost savings are immense, so I don't think it's at all clear that the $100 billion was badly spent.
For self-driving cars to be ubiquitous, with humans as merely passengers as imagined, the cars would need to be able to navigate a city like London with all its complexity. That is a long way from where any of the manufacturers are right now.
Autonomous motorway driving is much more viable and will make life easier on long journeys, but we're not getting robo taxis anytime soon.
See also narrow country lanes with passing places, prone to flooding, tractors, escaped livestock, etc...
Cattle herds in the Somerset levels being taken to pasture; the need to be careful when sheep (too often suicidally panic-prone) are grazing on the verge of unfenced southern Scottish hill roads; cattle grids on ditto (how does the robot open the gate?), ...
Erm. I thought the whole point of driverless cars was that they would carry passengers. There is no point having cars driving round with no one in them.
Some use cases will involve driving empty sometimes -- for example a robo taxi driving out to pick up a fare, or the family car driving back to the house after dropping the kids off at school. Though how likely such trips are to involve remote Scottish rural cattle grid roads is less clear.
those are the cases that need special attention to. driving across London empty would be one of the most common journeys but would also be one of the most tested so is less likely to go wrong. where you need to pay attention in testing are the scenarios which are less likely as they'll be tested a lot less. for example driving across the highlands in snow, in a white car, heading away from the sun at sunset while there's no-one in the car and someone is coming the other way.
it's the corner cases which cause the worst accidents because the developers will generally reply with 'I didn't even conceive of you using it that way'
Which is why we have the “99% there” problem in the first place. It turns out that there’s millions of these edge cases, and they all need to be programmed and tested individually.
Humans do quite a remarkable job of dealing with many of these on a daily basis, as well as very non-standard things for a computer such as getting out of the way of an ambulance, or dealing with temporary roadworks or obstruction with a man signalling to traffic.
The early driverless cars had to be programmed to identify a policeman in the road, and interpret what his or her signals might mean. And of course, police look and behave differently in different places, and even have multiple uniforms in the same place. To a human this is really easy, but not to a computer.
Maths. Suppose you are driving all day in urban driving, 10 hours in all. That is 600 minutes and 36000 seconds. You are attending to stuff all the time you are moving, and to a lesser extent all the time you are stopped. Mostly humans do this without accident.
If my maths is right with 99.9% reliability there will be 36 seconds out of the 36000 in which the system is unreliable. Imagine a million cars in city driving with 36 seconds of unreliability per X unit of time. That's 36,000,000 seconds. That's a lot of opportunities for trouble.
from a probabilistic point of view that is correct. but from a software and systems point of view it's not. software works 100% of the time when it is correct, it fails 100% of the time when it is not. whereas human control is never 100% correct or 100% incorrect.
for example, if you have a piece of road where the road markings are unclear or misleading, most human drivers will compensate but every one of the driverless cars would misinterpret it and potentially cause a crash.
if that bit of road is very busy it'd fail the 99.9% because of the inputs to the system rather than the car itself.
Yes, and as drivers we have all had moments of inattention when something unexpected happens, which brings a sudden sharp awareness and emergency action. Can an autonomous vehicle replicate this yet?
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
OK I might have an answer for this having had a similar experience with new Christmas lights which were rated 'E' even though they were LEDs.
The next thing I noticed was the Wattage figure given at 2kw. 2kw for a string of led bulbs?????
Then I noticed the small print 2kw/1000 hours so actually 2W and very efficient for 240 bulbs.
I looked on the internet and saw that there is a new way of expressing energy efficiency because of the confusion caused in the past by using wattage for brightness (which it isn't) which is then confusing when buying LEDs which are expressed in wattage with an equivalent wattage for brightness (which of course is bonkers but what we have been doing rather than using you know an actual brightness measure). Invariable someone somewhere has ordered a 60W led bulb and got a nice suntan.
The new scheme rather than simplifying things will probably cause more confusion and one obvious one appears to be a light bulb apparently, but incorrectly, rated at 2kw (when they are 2kw/1000h) with a response of 'F**k me, that will be an E rating then.
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
Sajid Javed has been knighted. Sir The Saj. It is perhaps an acknowledgement that his career at the top of politics is over. In truth, it probably died when Dominic Cummings Boris Johnson sacked him for standing up for his SpAds. He has already announced he will not seek re-election next year.
Javed must wake up every day thinking 'I could have been PM if I hadn't flounced on a point of principle'.
Having principles is why he got on in politics, but came to grief when high in the modern Conservative Party.
Not quite. It's more general than the Tories. Starmer is likely to be the next PM. he has thrown principle out of the window and has played politics with brilliance. This includes a series of about turns done so well that several million Tories intend to vote for the man who not long ago was the key player in support of the 'friend of Hamas' and quite a few Brexit voters intend to vote for 'Ref2 man'.
Thus far it is genius. It is how, in politics, to get things done.
Compare his fate with principled people. Rory, Saj, Grieve, Gauke, and lots of others.
Well, he’s discouraging me from voting Labour! There’s no chance of me voting Conservative though.
That trend is enough. The great majority of the core Labour vote will turn up; huge numbers of the Tory vote will vote for alternative loonies, stay at home or vote Labour. That's all he needs.
Currently at the lower end of polling the Tory vote has nearly halved - from 43.6% to about 22%.
Having said that I still think that NOM but Labour led government is the most likely result.
One thing on which there seems to be a consensus is that rather than turning off supporters Trump is gaining from the various legal attacks on him. It is depriving everyone else on the GOP side of oxygen, it has allowed him to remain above the fray within the party rather than debating and it is making a lot of people angry that an "unelected official" thinks she can determine whether or not the choice of a major party is on the ballot or not.
This has, ironically, created a surge for Trump which is more significant than any slow decline in Biden's numbers but Biden is particularly struggling with black males and Hispanics, both essential parts of his 2016 coalition.
I feel like this kind of thing must make it hard to poll though. If you think your guy is being unfairly treated, and you're offered the chance to support him at no cost by naming him in an opinion poll, you'd probably take it. Does that same dynamic work in an actual caucus or primary? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, I have no idea.
Yes, there is more uncertainty than normal. It's one thing to think that the people have the right to choose and another to choose Trump who is clearly not the man he was, for good or ill, in 2016.
It's also something we have talked about quite a lot on here of late. Biden's record on the economy is world leading but most Americans think the economy is a mess. Biden's record on inflation is also very good but Americans think it isn't. Biden's record on crime is incredible but most Americans think law and order is breaking down. Even Biden's support for Israel and Ukraine is being questioned.
The picture painted in the US media is overwhelmingly and unfairly negative and seems to be turning incumbency into a disadvantage rather than a strength. Can this continue to the election?
It is fascinating to behold. We all know that there can be a difference between the statistical economy and the real experienced economy. In the UK we have a wazzock government trying to claim people's lived experience is wrong, and also increasingly simply lying about the statistics to even have a case that the economy is good.
Yet in America, it really IS good. So what is happening? Are people who's lived experience is good being constantly gaslit to persuade them to ignore their senses? Is the good performance very spiky so that certain groups do amazingly well and others amazingly badly? What is going on?
People get they economy they deserve.
People vote according to the economy they think they deserve.
So its what they think they're entitled to versus the reality of what they're getting.
A problem being is that what people think they're entitled to tends to continually increase whereas what people think they should be contributing does not.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
It’s not the case that we are less stringent - see this…
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
It’s not the case that we are less stringent - see this…
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Sajid Javed has been knighted. Sir The Saj. It is perhaps an acknowledgement that his career at the top of politics is over. In truth, it probably died when Dominic Cummings Boris Johnson sacked him for standing up for his SpAds. He has already announced he will not seek re-election next year.
Javed must wake up every day thinking 'I could have been PM if I hadn't flounced on a point of principle'.
Having principles is why he got on in politics, but came to grief when high in the modern Conservative Party.
Not quite. It's more general than the Tories. Starmer is likely to be the next PM. he has thrown principle out of the window and has played politics with brilliance. This includes a series of about turns done so well that several million Tories intend to vote for the man who not long ago was the key player in support of the 'friend of Hamas' and quite a few Brexit voters intend to vote for 'Ref2 man'.
Thus far it is genius. It is how, in politics, to get things done.
Compare his fate with principled people. Rory, Saj, Grieve, Gauke, and lots of others.
Well, he’s discouraging me from voting Labour! There’s no chance of me voting Conservative though.
That trend is enough. The great majority of the core Labour vote will turn up; huge numbers of the Tory vote will vote for alternative loonies, stay at home or vote Labour. That's all he needs.
Currently at the lower end of polling the Tory vote has nearly halved - from 43.6% to about 22%.
Having said that I still think that NOM but Labour led government is the most likely result.
reform putting up a full slate of candidates will definitely help Labour
This is a fairly nothing article (man doesn’t pay his road tax, van gets impounded).
But it did flag an interesting point. He is in his late 30s “establishing himself” on the comedy circuit.
He survives on £300 per month and feeds himself with food provided by food banks.
This is just an indication of why we need to be careful with statistics on food bank usage. He is clearly poor by any definition. However it’s a *lifestyle*choice - he is a trained electrician so could have a different job if he wanted.
You can certainly make the argument that society is better off because an individual can pursue the career he wants (no matter how realistic or not) but it does suggest it’s wrong to simply say “good bank usage up, everyone is starving, government bad”
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
It’s not the case that we are less stringent - see this…
That article explains the EU's new labelling but doesn't explain why UK labelling didn't change at the same time. I still don't really understand why a product bought this year would show different ratings for the EU/NI vs UK if our rules are supposedly aligned.
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
Senior car execs have been duped by the techies - could it be they are too used to being chauffeured around to appreciate the complexities of driving?
It’s a combination of a decade of cheap money, and the (utopian tech bro) idea that one company would end up dominating the space, where in future millions of automated taxis would replace traditional private transport. The likes of Google, Apple, and Tesla, had access to plenty of VC money, and GM felt they had to get either involved or miss out.
The most difficult bit, as we’ve discussed on here many times before, is where the technology can do most of the driving, but can and will disengage itself at short notice, meaning that the human needs to stay awake and alert at all times - something which humans find quite difficult, even the professional test drivers.
Meanwhile, that old favourite of new car technology, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, has what looks to be the best system deployed so far in the new 2024 model, with very little hype. It’s a “Level 3” system up to 40mph, meaning the car drives itself and Mercedes are insured for any damage it causes. https://carbuzz.com/news/mercedes-announces-first-level-3-self-driving-for-s-class-and-eqs-sedan You can’t use it to drop the kids at school or collect you from the pub yet though, which is what most people think a self-driving car should be able to do, a taxi without the human driver.
BIB: Mick Lynch just texted me to say that is why train drivers get paid so much. Their job is to maintain concentration through 99.999 per cent tedium so they can react instantly to obstructions.
Whereas bus drivers can be paid about half train drivers because all they do is collect the fares, act as the police force, do social care for the elderly and drive the bus, 100% attention all the time, on roads full of drunks, druggies, under age bikers, boys showing off and delivery drivers double parking.
Indeed. My bus driver mate always said that if they don't want to pay their fares, that's fine because he doesn't want to get stabbed over 50p.
That said, what car-driving PBers might not have noticed is there are lots of lady bus drivers nowadays, thanks mainly to power steering.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
It’s not the case that we are less stringent - see this…
It appears in my reply I might have been too cynical having come across the issue and finding a web site that confirmed my suspicions having bought light bulbs with what appeared to be a nonsense rating.
Not sure why they wanted to change power usage to kw/1000h though.
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
Not quite. Universal free education to age 18 is a developed world universal and has been around for decades. Child benefit for most merely gives back a small amount of the tax you pay, and if you pay a lot of tax you don't get it at all. Social services engagement with families and children involves a tiny percent of the total. That massive engagement should occur with complex needs and special cases is called being a civilized country.
Outside the urban world of movers, shakers, wealthy and nannies,parents and grandparents/other family do nearly all the heavy lifting of child care. In my small town existence it is quite moving to be around (doing my bit!) at the infant/junior school
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
When will you guys realise it wasn’t about the economics?
You don’t value the philosophical freedoms and therefore the costs seem pointless. Someone who does value them thinks it makes sense.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Good morning everyone.
I don't think our standards are les stringent. The old A+++ went up to about
Is the extra delay not more likely to be:
a - The UK Govt huffing and puffing and footdragging and bawling about being in line with the EU, for the benefit of the mouth-breathing Love Brexit But Don't Get When Alignment Is Appropriate lobby?
or
b - Sheer UK Govt crass incompetence?
or
c - Rishi dithering then pretending that it is a "demonstration" ie lack of virtue signal.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
One thing on which there seems to be a consensus is that rather than turning off supporters Trump is gaining from the various legal attacks on him. It is depriving everyone else on the GOP side of oxygen, it has allowed him to remain above the fray within the party rather than debating and it is making a lot of people angry that an "unelected official" thinks she can determine whether or not the choice of a major party is on the ballot or not.
This has, ironically, created a surge for Trump which is more significant than any slow decline in Biden's numbers but Biden is particularly struggling with black males and Hispanics, both essential parts of his 2016 coalition.
I feel like this kind of thing must make it hard to poll though. If you think your guy is being unfairly treated, and you're offered the chance to support him at no cost by naming him in an opinion poll, you'd probably take it. Does that same dynamic work in an actual caucus or primary? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, I have no idea.
And if your guy isn't able to legally be on the ballot in your state it means he gets zero delegates from there anyway
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
OK I might have an answer for this having had a similar experience with new Christmas lights which were rated 'E' even though they were LEDs.
The next thing I noticed was the Wattage figure given at 2kw. 2kw for a string of led bulbs?????
Then I noticed the small print 2kw/1000 hours so actually 2W and very efficient for 240 bulbs.
I looked on the internet and saw that there is a new way of expressing energy efficiency because of the confusion caused in the past by using wattage for brightness (which it isn't) which is then confusing when buying LEDs which are expressed in wattage with an equivalent wattage for brightness (which of course is bonkers but what we have been doing rather than using you know an actual brightness measure). Invariable someone somewhere has ordered a 60W led bulb and got a nice suntan.
The new scheme rather than simplifying things will probably cause more confusion and one obvious one appears to be a light bulb apparently, but incorrectly, rated at 2kw (when they are 2kw/1000h) with a response of 'F**k me, that will be an E rating then.
The E rating makes no sense.
Expressing kW in per hour terms makes no sense because it is a unit of power, ie energy per unit of time (hence kWh, power times time, is a unit of energy). Perhaps they meant it used 2kWh of energy in 1000 hours, ie was 2W?
Sajid Javed has been knighted. Sir The Saj. It is perhaps an acknowledgement that his career at the top of politics is over. In truth, it probably died when Dominic Cummings Boris Johnson sacked him for standing up for his SpAds. He has already announced he will not seek re-election next year.
Javed must wake up every day thinking 'I could have been PM if I hadn't flounced on a point of principle'.
Having principles is why he got on in politics, but came to grief when high in the modern Conservative Party.
Not quite. It's more general than the Tories. Starmer is likely to be the next PM. he has thrown principle out of the window and has played politics with brilliance. This includes a series of about turns done so well that several million Tories intend to vote for the man who not long ago was the key player in support of the 'friend of Hamas' and quite a few Brexit voters intend to vote for 'Ref2 man'.
Thus far it is genius. It is how, in politics, to get things done.
Compare his fate with principled people. Rory, Saj, Grieve, Gauke, and lots of others.
He has played it very well. We are at the stage where anyone pointing out that he has betrayed all of his principles is accused of sacrilege. The Emperor’s New Clothes
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
When will you guys realise it wasn’t about the economics?
You don’t value the philosophical freedoms and therefore the costs seem pointless. Someone who does value them thinks it makes sense.
Economics won’t sway people’s view
I guess if people value seeing two labels on a product with a union jack on one of them and like paying extra for that privilege then there's really no helping them.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
When will you guys realise it wasn’t about the economics?
You don’t value the philosophical freedoms and therefore the costs seem pointless. Someone who does value them thinks it makes sense.
Economics won’t sway people’s view
I guess if people value seeing two labels on a product with a union jack on one of them and like paying extra for that privilege then there's really no helping them.
Come on, we all need a bit of flag porn on our lightbulbs to get us through the dark winter.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Good morning everyone.
I don't think our standards are les stringent. The old A+++ went up to about
Is the extra delay not more likely to be:
a - The UK Govt huffing and puffing and footdragging and bawling about being in line with the EU, for the benefit of the mouth-breathing Love Brexit But Don't Get When Alignment Is Appropriate lobby?
or
b - Sheer UK Govt crass incompetence?
or
c - Rishi dithering then pretending that it is a "demonstration" ie lack of virtue signal.
PS I don't think our standards are less stringent (why?). The old system went up to A+++ (with each plus being iirc an extra 10% or so of efficiency).
A+++ to D is being replaced by A-G, with one fewer class. I assume is the lowest one being dropped off the bottom, or a redefinition.
I take the +++ and no change X years ago when clearly necessary as being EU sclerosis is getting new things agreed and done.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Good morning everyone.
I don't think our standards are les stringent. The old A+++ went up to about
Is the extra delay not more likely to be:
a - The UK Govt huffing and puffing and footdragging and bawling about being in line with the EU, for the benefit of the mouth-breathing Love Brexit But Don't Get When Alignment Is Appropriate lobby?
or
b - Sheer UK Govt crass incompetence?
or
c - Rishi dithering then pretending that it is a "demonstration" ie lack of virtue signal.
Probably. See also the metric consultation.
UKG: Should we do this thing with our Brexit freedoms?
One thing on which there seems to be a consensus is that rather than turning off supporters Trump is gaining from the various legal attacks on him. It is depriving everyone else on the GOP side of oxygen, it has allowed him to remain above the fray within the party rather than debating and it is making a lot of people angry that an "unelected official" thinks she can determine whether or not the choice of a major party is on the ballot or not.
This has, ironically, created a surge for Trump which is more significant than any slow decline in Biden's numbers but Biden is particularly struggling with black males and Hispanics, both essential parts of his 2016 coalition.
I feel like this kind of thing must make it hard to poll though. If you think your guy is being unfairly treated, and you're offered the chance to support him at no cost by naming him in an opinion poll, you'd probably take it. Does that same dynamic work in an actual caucus or primary? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, I have no idea.
And if your guy isn't able to legally be on the ballot in your state it means he gets zero delegates from there anyway
It is worth remembering that for procedural reasons the rulings in Maine and Colorado will not remove Trump from the primaries. He will still be able to enter those given the timeframes.
That will leave the Republicans with an extremely nasty problem if he wins in the primaries (as seems likely) and by some unexpected twist the Supreme Court toss him from the actual election.
We could see the first convention-imposed candidate since 1968 and the first serious contest since 1976.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
I suspect it is companies complying with the law (using the new, legally required version) and keeping the legacy ones to avoid confusion for people used to the old.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
It’s not the case that we are less stringent - see this…
It appears in my reply I might have been too cynical having come across the issue and finding a web site that confirmed my suspicions having bought light bulbs with what appeared to be a nonsense rating.
Not sure why they wanted to change power usage to kw/1000h though.
kW/1000h is not a unit. It is meaningless. You could have kWh/1000h - is that what they actually mean?
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
Senior car execs have been duped by the techies - could it be they are too used to being chauffeured around to appreciate the complexities of driving?
It’s a combination of a decade of cheap money, and the (utopian tech bro) idea that one company would end up dominating the space, where in future millions of automated taxis would replace traditional private transport. The likes of Google, Apple, and Tesla, had access to plenty of VC money, and GM felt they had to get either involved or miss out.
The most difficult bit, as we’ve discussed on here many times before, is where the technology can do most of the driving, but can and will disengage itself at short notice, meaning that the human needs to stay awake and alert at all times - something which humans find quite difficult, even the professional test drivers.
Meanwhile, that old favourite of new car technology, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, has what looks to be the best system deployed so far in the new 2024 model, with very little hype. It’s a “Level 3” system up to 40mph, meaning the car drives itself and Mercedes are insured for any damage it causes. https://carbuzz.com/news/mercedes-announces-first-level-3-self-driving-for-s-class-and-eqs-sedan You can’t use it to drop the kids at school or collect you from the pub yet though, which is what most people think a self-driving car should be able to do, a taxi without the human driver.
BIB: Mick Lynch just texted me to say that is why train drivers get paid so much. Their job is to maintain concentration through 99.999 per cent tedium so they can react instantly to obstructions.
Whereas bus drivers can be paid about half train drivers because all they do is collect the fares, act as the police force, do social care for the elderly and drive the bus, 100% attention all the time, on roads full of drunks, druggies, under age bikers, boys showing off and delivery drivers double parking.
Indeed. My bus driver mate always said that if they don't want to pay their fares, that's fine because he doesn't want to get stabbed over 50p.
That said, what car-driving PBers might not have noticed is there are lots of lady bus drivers nowadays, thanks mainly to power steering.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
It’s not the case that we are less stringent - see this…
It appears in my reply I might have been too cynical having come across the issue and finding a web site that confirmed my suspicions having bought light bulbs with what appeared to be a nonsense rating.
Not sure why they wanted to change power usage to kw/1000h though.
kW/1000h is not a unit. It is meaningless. You could have kWh/1000h - is that what they actually mean?
Is this thread pb’s answer to the fictional ‘lightbulb changing’ thread on Facebook?
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
OK I might have an answer for this having had a similar experience with new Christmas lights which were rated 'E' even though they were LEDs.
The next thing I noticed was the Wattage figure given at 2kw. 2kw for a string of led bulbs?????
Then I noticed the small print 2kw/1000 hours so actually 2W and very efficient for 240 bulbs.
I looked on the internet and saw that there is a new way of expressing energy efficiency because of the confusion caused in the past by using wattage for brightness (which it isn't) which is then confusing when buying LEDs which are expressed in wattage with an equivalent wattage for brightness (which of course is bonkers but what we have been doing rather than using you know an actual brightness measure). Invariable someone somewhere has ordered a 60W led bulb and got a nice suntan.
The new scheme rather than simplifying things will probably cause more confusion and one obvious one appears to be a light bulb apparently, but incorrectly, rated at 2kw (when they are 2kw/1000h) with a response of 'F**k me, that will be an E rating then.
The E rating makes no sense.
Expressing kW in per hour terms makes no sense because it is a unit of power, ie energy per unit of time (hence kWh, power times time, is a unit of energy). Perhaps they meant it used 2kWh of energy in 1000 hours, ie was 2W?
Yes sorry. Just looked at the label and it is 2kwh/1000h. Yes to be energy it needs the time in it. It would be a lot simpler if they could express it in Joules used per hour and give a separate unit for brightness for light bulbs (which they do, but few people look at and instead look at the 'equivalent wattage' figure which really is nonsense).
However my assumption, confirmed by a web page I looked up when I had a similar conundrum appears cynical and wrong and the other explanations given here make sense. I didn't even have the old chart to look at. I just had the new one on the package and immediately saw an E rating and 2kwh. My wife bought them and my first reaction was they weren't LEDs. Then I thought surely not and even so you wouldn't get up to 2kwh anyway. Then I saw the per 1000 hrs.
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
Senior car execs have been duped by the techies - could it be they are too used to being chauffeured around to appreciate the complexities of driving?
It’s a combination of a decade of cheap money, and the (utopian tech bro) idea that one company would end up dominating the space, where in future millions of automated taxis would replace traditional private transport. The likes of Google, Apple, and Tesla, had access to plenty of VC money, and GM felt they had to get either involved or miss out.
The most difficult bit, as we’ve discussed on here many times before, is where the technology can do most of the driving, but can and will disengage itself at short notice, meaning that the human needs to stay awake and alert at all times - something which humans find quite difficult, even the professional test drivers.
Meanwhile, that old favourite of new car technology, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, has what looks to be the best system deployed so far in the new 2024 model, with very little hype. It’s a “Level 3” system up to 40mph, meaning the car drives itself and Mercedes are insured for any damage it causes. https://carbuzz.com/news/mercedes-announces-first-level-3-self-driving-for-s-class-and-eqs-sedan You can’t use it to drop the kids at school or collect you from the pub yet though, which is what most people think a self-driving car should be able to do, a taxi without the human driver.
BIB: Mick Lynch just texted me to say that is why train drivers get paid so much. Their job is to maintain concentration through 99.999 per cent tedium so they can react instantly to obstructions.
Whereas bus drivers can be paid about half train drivers because all they do is collect the fares, act as the police force, do social care for the elderly and drive the bus, 100% attention all the time, on roads full of drunks, druggies, under age bikers, boys showing off and delivery drivers double parking.
Indeed. My bus driver mate always said that if they don't want to pay their fares, that's fine because he doesn't want to get stabbed over 50p.
That said, what car-driving PBers might not have noticed is there are lots of lady bus drivers nowadays, thanks mainly to power steering.
There are a few lady train drivers nowadays, too.
On steam locomotives too!
Really? Diesels I can understand, but steam train driving is a rather mucky job.
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
Not quite. Universal free education to age 18 is a developed world universal and has been around for decades. Child benefit for most merely gives back a small amount of the tax you pay, and if you pay a lot of tax you don't get it at all. Social services engagement with families and children involves a tiny percent of the total. That massive engagement should occur with complex needs and special cases is called being a civilized country.
Outside the urban world of movers, shakers, wealthy and nannies,parents and grandparents/other family do nearly all the heavy lifting of child care. In my small town existence it is quite moving to be around (doing my bit!) at the infant/junior school
I wasn’t particularly getting at Labour, because what they’re offering is only an extension of what is already on offer, but it just struck me how a reasonably uncontroversial and possibly popular policy nowadays can be pretty much lifted from a communist essay from a hundred years ago.
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
In short, the thrust of Cameron's Big Society. I agree that we have shifted from being community-based to placing greater burdens on the state, and although we can have a lively argument about the causes, that doesn't lead to a cure. I don't know what a Cameron II would have looked like sans Brexit - realistically, just more austerity? - but one hopes he would have realised this.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
It’s not the case that we are less stringent - see this…
It appears in my reply I might have been too cynical having come across the issue and finding a web site that confirmed my suspicions having bought light bulbs with what appeared to be a nonsense rating.
Not sure why they wanted to change power usage to kw/1000h though.
kW/1000h is not a unit. It is meaningless. You could have kWh/1000h - is that what they actually mean?
Yep, see my reply to @OnlyLivingBoy . That was my mistake and not a mistake on the label. It was kwh/1000h.
Would be better if they used Joules in my opinion.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
OK I might have an answer for this having had a similar experience with new Christmas lights which were rated 'E' even though they were LEDs.
The next thing I noticed was the Wattage figure given at 2kw. 2kw for a string of led bulbs?????
Then I noticed the small print 2kw/1000 hours so actually 2W and very efficient for 240 bulbs.
I looked on the internet and saw that there is a new way of expressing energy efficiency because of the confusion caused in the past by using wattage for brightness (which it isn't) which is then confusing when buying LEDs which are expressed in wattage with an equivalent wattage for brightness (which of course is bonkers but what we have been doing rather than using you know an actual brightness measure). Invariable someone somewhere has ordered a 60W led bulb and got a nice suntan.
The new scheme rather than simplifying things will probably cause more confusion and one obvious one appears to be a light bulb apparently, but incorrectly, rated at 2kw (when they are 2kw/1000h) with a response of 'F**k me, that will be an E rating then.
The E rating makes no sense.
Expressing kW in per hour terms makes no sense because it is a unit of power, ie energy per unit of time (hence kWh, power times time, is a unit of energy). Perhaps they meant it used 2kWh of energy in 1000 hours, ie was 2W?
It’s nearly as bad as using watts as an expression of brightness in the first place, hence LED bulbs saying “8W (60W equivalent)” on the packaging.
It was obvious Starmer was going to about turn when he was elected, as I said so here at the time!
You weren’t here at the time - you only joined two weeks ago.
That brilliant user CorrectHorseBattery said at the time, that Keir Starmer would about turn on all of the pledges after being elected.
Whatever happened to that great user? Along with Leon, they were one of the best users posting.
Certainly among the most prolific…
Not as prolific as you. But then you and CHB were always in a duel
Two types of prolific. I have been on PB, unbanned and no new identities for years. Other posters burn brightly with more frequent posts and rack that post count up! Sadly they often burn out, only for a new start to be born…
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
I suspect it is companies complying with the law (using the new, legally required version) and keeping the legacy ones to avoid confusion for people used to the old.
You don't think maybe having two labels is more confusing?
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
OK I might have an answer for this having had a similar experience with new Christmas lights which were rated 'E' even though they were LEDs.
The next thing I noticed was the Wattage figure given at 2kw. 2kw for a string of led bulbs?????
Then I noticed the small print 2kw/1000 hours so actually 2W and very efficient for 240 bulbs.
I looked on the internet and saw that there is a new way of expressing energy efficiency because of the confusion caused in the past by using wattage for brightness (which it isn't) which is then confusing when buying LEDs which are expressed in wattage with an equivalent wattage for brightness (which of course is bonkers but what we have been doing rather than using you know an actual brightness measure). Invariable someone somewhere has ordered a 60W led bulb and got a nice suntan.
The new scheme rather than simplifying things will probably cause more confusion and one obvious one appears to be a light bulb apparently, but incorrectly, rated at 2kw (when they are 2kw/1000h) with a response of 'F**k me, that will be an E rating then.
The E rating makes no sense.
Expressing kW in per hour terms makes no sense because it is a unit of power, ie energy per unit of time (hence kWh, power times time, is a unit of energy). Perhaps they meant it used 2kWh of energy in 1000 hours, ie was 2W?
It’s nearly as bad as using watts as an expression of brightness in the first place, hence LED bulbs saying “8W (60W equivalent)” on the packaging.
Maybe we need a better scale of light intensity? I’m all for candle equivalents. After all we use horse power for engine power!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
I suspect it is companies complying with the law (using the new, legally required version) and keeping the legacy ones to avoid confusion for people used to the old.
You don't think maybe having two labels is more confusing?
Yes, but ask yourself who is responsible for the confusion - it’s not, for once, the U.K. government, nor is it the EU.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
OK so the labelling of one as GB and the other as EU/NI is a red herring? But in future this product will continue to have two labels, showing the same information, with different flags on, at some additional cost borne by the consumer, and this is a benefit of Brexit? Got it.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
Yet De Santos is still polling second to Trump in Iowa and the closest to Trump still in the majority of other states polled
As I said at the start of the thread, if the polling is correct then DeSantis will go from a creditable second in Iowa straight onto a humiliating third or fourth in New Hampshire, in which case, his best tactic might be to withdraw immediately after Iowa and endorse Trump, in the hope Trump will destroy Haley and that he will inherit MAGA support for 2028.
Because if DeSantis really is running out of support and, more crucially, money, then he will have to pull out and he will not want to do that as a 4th-place loser.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
OK so the labelling of one as GB and the other as EU/NI is a red herring? But in future this product will continue to have two labels, showing the same information, with different flags on, at some additional cost borne by the consumer, and this is a benefit of Brexit? Got it.
It says for a short time. Besides, printing a label with two ratings should cost no more than printing one.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
I suspect it is companies complying with the law (using the new, legally required version) and keeping the legacy ones to avoid confusion for people used to the old.
Yep that makes sense, but still confusing. I didn't have the old label on my lights, only the new one and as can be seen here I was as confused as hell.
It needs some explanation on the label during the change. When both the rating changes dramatically because of increased efficiency (so an old A becomes a new G) and the reference on the box changes from '2W' to '2kwh/1000h' with the '/1000hrs' in small print as it was on my label.
It took me awhile to notice the '/1000hrs' and being used to seeing lights rated in 'W' jumped to the conclusion it was a cockup all around. Making two changes like this at the same time is very confusing the first time you see it.
It was obvious Starmer was going to about turn when he was elected, as I said so here at the time!
You weren’t here at the time - you only joined two weeks ago.
That brilliant user CorrectHorseBattery said at the time, that Keir Starmer would about turn on all of the pledges after being elected.
Whatever happened to that great user? Along with Leon, they were one of the best users posting.
Certainly among the most prolific…
Not as prolific as you. But then you and CHB were always in a duel
Two types of prolific. I have been on PB, unbanned and no new identities for years. Other posters burn brightly with more frequent posts and rack that post count up! Sadly they often burn out, only for a new start to be born…
It was obvious Starmer was going to about turn when he was elected, as I said so here at the time!
You weren’t here at the time - you only joined two weeks ago.
That brilliant user CorrectHorseBattery said at the time, that Keir Starmer would about turn on all of the pledges after being elected.
Whatever happened to that great user? Along with Leon, they were one of the best users posting.
Certainly among the most prolific…
Not as prolific as you. But then you and CHB were always in a duel
Two types of prolific. I have been on PB, unbanned and no new identities for years. Other posters burn brightly with more frequent posts and rack that post count up! Sadly they often burn out, only for a new start to be born…
Yeah but CHB was fun and entertaining, whilst you are a nice enough chap, you need a bit more of a turbo. I always thought you never really got his sense of humour.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
It’s not the case that we are less stringent - see this…
It appears in my reply I might have been too cynical having come across the issue and finding a web site that confirmed my suspicions having bought light bulbs with what appeared to be a nonsense rating.
Not sure why they wanted to change power usage to kw/1000h though.
kW/1000h is not a unit. It is meaningless. You could have kWh/1000h - is that what they actually mean?
Yep, see my reply to @OnlyLivingBoy . That was my mistake and not a mistake on the label. It was kwh/1000h.
Would be better if they used Joules in my opinion.
I think 30W/1000h reads as "30W for a lifetime of 1000h" ie an abbreviation for "and" or similar. I've seen that notation before.
As for "kwh" - that looks to be the same system as instructions written in Chinese English. See the instructions for Japanese Personal Computers circa 1983, which were legendary.
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
Senior car execs have been duped by the techies - could it be they are too used to being chauffeured around to appreciate the complexities of driving?
It’s a combination of a decade of cheap money, and the (utopian tech bro) idea that one company would end up dominating the space, where in future millions of automated taxis would replace traditional private transport. The likes of Google, Apple, and Tesla, had access to plenty of VC money, and GM felt they had to get either involved or miss out.
The most difficult bit, as we’ve discussed on here many times before, is where the technology can do most of the driving, but can and will disengage itself at short notice, meaning that the human needs to stay awake and alert at all times - something which humans find quite difficult, even the professional test drivers.
Meanwhile, that old favourite of new car technology, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, has what looks to be the best system deployed so far in the new 2024 model, with very little hype. It’s a “Level 3” system up to 40mph, meaning the car drives itself and Mercedes are insured for any damage it causes. https://carbuzz.com/news/mercedes-announces-first-level-3-self-driving-for-s-class-and-eqs-sedan You can’t use it to drop the kids at school or collect you from the pub yet though, which is what most people think a self-driving car should be able to do, a taxi without the human driver.
BIB: Mick Lynch just texted me to say that is why train drivers get paid so much. Their job is to maintain concentration through 99.999 per cent tedium so they can react instantly to obstructions.
Whereas bus drivers can be paid about half train drivers because all they do is collect the fares, act as the police force, do social care for the elderly and drive the bus, 100% attention all the time, on roads full of drunks, druggies, under age bikers, boys showing off and delivery drivers double parking.
Indeed. My bus driver mate always said that if they don't want to pay their fares, that's fine because he doesn't want to get stabbed over 50p.
That said, what car-driving PBers might not have noticed is there are lots of lady bus drivers nowadays, thanks mainly to power steering.
There are a few lady train drivers nowadays, too.
On steam locomotives too!
Really? Diesels I can understand, but steam train driving is a rather mucky job.
Yes. There are female drivers and firepersons* on the Keighley and Woorth Valley Railway.
*Female firemen doesn't sound right, but neither does firewomen or firepersons. Maybe "coal shovelers"?
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
Not quite. Universal free education to age 18 is a developed world universal and has been around for decades. Child benefit for most merely gives back a small amount of the tax you pay, and if you pay a lot of tax you don't get it at all. Social services engagement with families and children involves a tiny percent of the total. That massive engagement should occur with complex needs and special cases is called being a civilized country.
Outside the urban world of movers, shakers, wealthy and nannies,parents and grandparents/other family do nearly all the heavy lifting of child care. In my small town existence it is quite moving to be around (doing my bit!) at the infant/junior school
I wasn’t particularly getting at Labour, because what they’re offering is only an extension of what is already on offer, but it just struck me how a reasonably uncontroversial and possibly popular policy nowadays can be pretty much lifted from a communist essay from a hundred years ago.
Is this not merely that there is a shared belief in prosperous societies that we don't let hard cases die in the gutter, and especially children. This intuition, much of it of religious inspiration in the ancient world, is quite old. Wealthy societies should be able to do it better. Marxists, democrats, liberals, Burkeans and libertarians share all sorts of values. Which is why the real Overton window in domestic matters is quite small.
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
Not quite. Universal free education to age 18 is a developed world universal and has been around for decades. Child benefit for most merely gives back a small amount of the tax you pay, and if you pay a lot of tax you don't get it at all. Social services engagement with families and children involves a tiny percent of the total. That massive engagement should occur with complex needs and special cases is called being a civilized country.
Outside the urban world of movers, shakers, wealthy and nannies,parents and grandparents/other family do nearly all the heavy lifting of child care. In my small town existence it is quite moving to be around (doing my bit!) at the infant/junior school
I wasn’t particularly getting at Labour, because what they’re offering is only an extension of what is already on offer, but it just struck me how a reasonably uncontroversial and possibly popular policy nowadays can be pretty much lifted from a communist essay from a hundred years ago.
Is this not merely that there is a shared belief in prosperous societies that we don't let hard cases die in the gutter, and especially children. This intuition, much of it of religious inspiration in the ancient world, is quite old. Wealthy societies should be able to do it better. Marxists, democrats, liberals, Burkeans and libertarians share all sorts of values. Which is why the real Overton window in domestic matters is quite small.
Well my original question was ‘is it a communist idea or would it have happened anyway under capitalism?’ so it seems you are answering that
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
It’s not the case that we are less stringent - see this…
It appears in my reply I might have been too cynical having come across the issue and finding a web site that confirmed my suspicions having bought light bulbs with what appeared to be a nonsense rating.
Not sure why they wanted to change power usage to kw/1000h though.
kW/1000h is not a unit. It is meaningless. You could have kWh/1000h - is that what they actually mean?
Yep, see my reply to @OnlyLivingBoy . That was my mistake and not a mistake on the label. It was kwh/1000h.
Would be better if they used Joules in my opinion.
Watts. Like on old bulbs.
Getting slightly sidetracked, one thing that triggers me is when you get a news story saying that a new wind farm will generate enough electricity for X thousand homes. Just tell me how many MW, for goodness sake!
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
OK so the labelling of one as GB and the other as EU/NI is a red herring? But in future this product will continue to have two labels, showing the same information, with different flags on, at some additional cost borne by the consumer, and this is a benefit of Brexit? Got it.
It was obvious Starmer was going to about turn when he was elected, as I said so here at the time!
You weren’t here at the time - you only joined two weeks ago.
That brilliant user CorrectHorseBattery said at the time, that Keir Starmer would about turn on all of the pledges after being elected.
Whatever happened to that great user? Along with Leon, they were one of the best users posting.
Certainly among the most prolific…
Not as prolific as you. But then you and CHB were always in a duel
Two types of prolific. I have been on PB, unbanned and no new identities for years. Other posters burn brightly with more frequent posts and rack that post count up! Sadly they often burn out, only for a new start to be born…
And some “Horses” are even dafter than Shiskin. 🙄
MoonRabbit, are you cos-playing Tory or Labour this week?
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
Not quite. Universal free education to age 18 is a developed world universal and has been around for decades. Child benefit for most merely gives back a small amount of the tax you pay, and if you pay a lot of tax you don't get it at all. Social services engagement with families and children involves a tiny percent of the total. That massive engagement should occur with complex needs and special cases is called being a civilized country.
Outside the urban world of movers, shakers, wealthy and nannies,parents and grandparents/other family do nearly all the heavy lifting of child care. In my small town existence it is quite moving to be around (doing my bit!) at the infant/junior school
I wasn’t particularly getting at Labour, because what they’re offering is only an extension of what is already on offer, but it just struck me how a reasonably uncontroversial and possibly popular policy nowadays can be pretty much lifted from a communist essay from a hundred years ago.
Well, the communist essay is deliberately structuring its proposals as "this is a modest and natural extension of how society has been changing even in capitalist countries, not a radical departure imposed on people from the top down", so the convergence with modern capitalist political proposals is not so very strange. But the essay's central idea that "The family is ceasing to be necessary either to its members or to the nation as a whole", that "the family is doomed to disappear" and that "the worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers" -- these all are failed predictions in either communist or capitalist societies, and if Labour increases the state provision of nursery and childcare it doesn't seem very likely that this is going to be a step towards the dissolution of the nuclear family.
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
Not quite. Universal free education to age 18 is a developed world universal and has been around for decades. Child benefit for most merely gives back a small amount of the tax you pay, and if you pay a lot of tax you don't get it at all. Social services engagement with families and children involves a tiny percent of the total. That massive engagement should occur with complex needs and special cases is called being a civilized country.
Outside the urban world of movers, shakers, wealthy and nannies,parents and grandparents/other family do nearly all the heavy lifting of child care. In my small town existence it is quite moving to be around (doing my bit!) at the infant/junior school
I wasn’t particularly getting at Labour, because what they’re offering is only an extension of what is already on offer, but it just struck me how a reasonably uncontroversial and possibly popular policy nowadays can be pretty much lifted from a communist essay from a hundred years ago.
Well, the communist essay is deliberately structuring its proposals as "this is a modest and natural extension of how society has been changing even in capitalist countries, not a radical departure imposed on people from the top down", so the convergence with modern capitalist political proposals is not so very strange. But the essay's central idea that "The family is ceasing to be necessary either to its members or to the nation as a whole", that "the family is doomed to disappear" and that "the worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers" -- these all are failed predictions in either communist or capitalist societies, and if Labour increases the state provision of nursery and childcare it doesn't seem very likely that this is going to be a step towards the dissolution of the nuclear family.
Yes, although I think “the family is ceasing to be necessary…” is not as much of a failed prediction as the others.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
OK so the labelling of one as GB and the other as EU/NI is a red herring? But in future this product will continue to have two labels, showing the same information, with different flags on, at some additional cost borne by the consumer, and this is a benefit of Brexit? Got it.
As for autonomous driving, as a Tesla owner I am not interested in that. But *augmented* driving? Yes please. Inattention / Fatigue / Idiocy are the causes of so many crashes. We can remove most of that with augmented systems.
As an example, a traffic jam on the motorway. I let the car drive. It has more cameras facing in more directions than I have eyeballs, and an AI algorithm constantly reading traffic. It doesn't get tired or distracted or risks anything stupid. Much safer than having me drive.
Around town? To start off with the UNECE regulations need to be heavily amended. Cars in Europe are heavily restricted about what they can do - as an example the radius of steering input they can make.
American Teslas practically drive themselves through urban environments. Ours have the same capability but can't use it. I don't want the car driving itself, but again the safety improvements from augmented drive could be significant.
I think that the Rishi enthusiasm for self-driving cars is premature, and another Hail Mary Pass to pander to someone or other.
Here's a report from the Washington Post about 17 fatalities and 736 crashes caused by self-driving Teslas; I don't think those figures are even complete.
Musk's marketing is as reckless as his behaviour wrt twitter - "Autopilot" is a misleading label which appears to give drivers permission to zone out and stop paying attention. I think that many Usonian and British drivers are stupid enough to believe it - after all a large % are willing to use phone whilst driving.
It was obvious Starmer was going to about turn when he was elected, as I said so here at the time!
You weren’t here at the time - you only joined two weeks ago.
That brilliant user CorrectHorseBattery said at the time, that Keir Starmer would about turn on all of the pledges after being elected.
Whatever happened to that great user? Along with Leon, they were one of the best users posting.
Certainly among the most prolific…
Not as prolific as you. But then you and CHB were always in a duel
Two types of prolific. I have been on PB, unbanned and no new identities for years. Other posters burn brightly with more frequent posts and rack that post count up! Sadly they often burn out, only for a new start to be born…
And some “Horses” are even dafter than Shiskin. 🙄
MoonRabbit, are you cos-playing Tory or Labour this week?
This is a fairly nothing article (man doesn’t pay his road tax, van gets impounded).
But it did flag an interesting point. He is in his late 30s “establishing himself” on the comedy circuit.
He survives on £300 per month and feeds himself with food provided by food banks.
This is just an indication of why we need to be careful with statistics on food bank usage. He is clearly poor by any definition. However it’s a *lifestyle*choice - he is a trained electrician so could have a different job if he wanted.
You can certainly make the argument that society is better off because an individual can pursue the career he wants (no matter how realistic or not) but it does suggest it’s wrong to simply say “good bank usage up, everyone is starving, government bad”
Possibly, possibly not. It's thresholds again. Any given dataset will have errors and edge cases. The question is "how many compared to the others?"
Reading between the lines on that article, there’s more going on there
- Divorce - Heavy depression - etc
If he’s a trained sparky and *able to work*, he could trivially pick up work on a casual basis that would support a living-in-a-van lifestyle. And he won’t be working cash in hand - not paying the road tax on the van is a good way to get attention.
So, for some reason, he can’t work. What should we do with him?
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
In short, the thrust of Cameron's Big Society. I agree that we have shifted from being community-based to placing greater burdens on the state, and although we can have a lively argument about the causes, that doesn't lead to a cure. I don't know what a Cameron II would have looked like sans Brexit - realistically, just more austerity? - but one hopes he would have realised this.
Which burdens?
Education? Defence? State pension? Welfare safety net? Health?
These are the big ones and they are all now generations old.
The only newish one is elderly social care, where we are in a generations long process of delaying having a rational system.
The other big change is post 18 education, where the burden has shifted from the state to the individual.
Yet De Santos is still polling second to Trump in Iowa and the closest to Trump still in the majority of other states polled
As I said at the start of the thread, if the polling is correct then DeSantis will go from a creditable second in Iowa straight onto a humiliating third or fourth in New Hampshire, in which case, his best tactic might be to withdraw immediately after Iowa and endorse Trump, in the hope Trump will destroy Haley and that he will inherit MAGA support for 2028.
Because if DeSantis really is running out of support and, more crucially, money, then he will have to pull out and he will not want to do that as a 4th-place loser.
Why? Given he would still have got second in Iowa is still polling closer to Trump in most other states than Haley is and given Trump could still be blocked from the ballot in many states and even be sentenced to jail by the middle of next year
It was obvious Starmer was going to about turn when he was elected, as I said so here at the time!
You weren’t here at the time - you only joined two weeks ago.
That brilliant user CorrectHorseBattery said at the time, that Keir Starmer would about turn on all of the pledges after being elected.
Whatever happened to that great user? Along with Leon, they were one of the best users posting.
Certainly among the most prolific…
Not as prolific as you. But then you and CHB were always in a duel
Two types of prolific. I have been on PB, unbanned and no new identities for years. Other posters burn brightly with more frequent posts and rack that post count up! Sadly they often burn out, only for a new start to be born…
And some “Horses” are even dafter than Shiskin. 🙄
MoonRabbit, are you cos-playing Tory or Labour this week?
I’m playing critical parent to your misbehaving 😇
I am indeed wanking myself silly over CHB, would you not? Neigh!
Yet De Santos is still polling second to Trump in Iowa and the closest to Trump still in the majority of other states polled
As I said at the start of the thread, if the polling is correct then DeSantis will go from a creditable second in Iowa straight onto a humiliating third or fourth in New Hampshire, in which case, his best tactic might be to withdraw immediately after Iowa and endorse Trump, in the hope Trump will destroy Haley and that he will inherit MAGA support for 2028.
Because if DeSantis really is running out of support and, more crucially, money, then he will have to pull out and he will not want to do that as a 4th-place loser.
Why? Given he would still have got second in Iowa is still polling closer to Trump in most other states than Haley is and given Trump could still be blocked from the ballot in many states and even be sentenced to jail by the middle of next year
Trump won't be blocked and won't be in jail; and will be the next POTUS.
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
OK so the labelling of one as GB and the other as EU/NI is a red herring? But in future this product will continue to have two labels, showing the same information, with different flags on, at some additional cost borne by the consumer, and this is a benefit of Brexit? Got it.
It says for a short time. Besides, printing a label with two ratings should cost no more than printing one.
It is two seperate labels, one on either side of the box! I don't know whether there is a duplicated testing and certification regime, presumably that is where more serious costs would become involved, as is happening in the construction supplies sector.
It was obvious Starmer was going to about turn when he was elected, as I said so here at the time!
You weren’t here at the time - you only joined two weeks ago.
That brilliant user CorrectHorseBattery said at the time, that Keir Starmer would about turn on all of the pledges after being elected.
Whatever happened to that great user? Along with Leon, they were one of the best users posting.
Certainly among the most prolific…
Not as prolific as you. But then you and CHB were always in a duel
Two types of prolific. I have been on PB, unbanned and no new identities for years. Other posters burn brightly with more frequent posts and rack that post count up! Sadly they often burn out, only for a new start to be born…
Yeah but CHB was fun and entertaining, whilst you are a nice enough chap, you need a bit more of a turbo. I always thought you never really got his sense of humour.
Can somebody explain why Labour was able to meet the 4 hour A&E target in almost every case, along with the 48 hour GP target? And they did so for years and years including during 2008, 2009, 2010.
Why when the Tories came in, did all of these targets start to be missed?
One thing on which there seems to be a consensus is that rather than turning off supporters Trump is gaining from the various legal attacks on him. It is depriving everyone else on the GOP side of oxygen, it has allowed him to remain above the fray within the party rather than debating and it is making a lot of people angry that an "unelected official" thinks she can determine whether or not the choice of a major party is on the ballot or not.
This has, ironically, created a surge for Trump which is more significant than any slow decline in Biden's numbers but Biden is particularly struggling with black males and Hispanics, both essential parts of his 2016 coalition.
I feel like this kind of thing must make it hard to poll though. If you think your guy is being unfairly treated, and you're offered the chance to support him at no cost by naming him in an opinion poll, you'd probably take it. Does that same dynamic work in an actual caucus or primary? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, I have no idea.
And if your guy isn't able to legally be on the ballot in your state it means he gets zero delegates from there anyway
It is worth remembering that for procedural reasons the rulings in Maine and Colorado will not remove Trump from the primaries. He will still be able to enter those given the timeframes.
That will leave the Republicans with an extremely nasty problem if he wins in the primaries (as seems likely) and by some unexpected twist the Supreme Court toss him from the actual election.
We could see the first convention-imposed candidate since 1968 and the first serious contest since 1976.
Seems unlikely though.
Indeed.
The rulings don’t mean much and the people making them knew that because everyone knows this will have to be settled by the Supreme Court. Both rulings more or less say, “please, Supreme Court, rule on this as soon as possible”.
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
Not quite. Universal free education to age 18 is a developed world universal and has been around for decades. Child benefit for most merely gives back a small amount of the tax you pay, and if you pay a lot of tax you don't get it at all. Social services engagement with families and children involves a tiny percent of the total. That massive engagement should occur with complex needs and special cases is called being a civilized country.
Outside the urban world of movers, shakers, wealthy and nannies,parents and grandparents/other family do nearly all the heavy lifting of child care. In my small town existence it is quite moving to be around (doing my bit!) at the infant/junior school
I wasn’t particularly getting at Labour, because what they’re offering is only an extension of what is already on offer, but it just struck me how a reasonably uncontroversial and possibly popular policy nowadays can be pretty much lifted from a communist essay from a hundred years ago.
Well, the communist essay is deliberately structuring its proposals as "this is a modest and natural extension of how society has been changing even in capitalist countries, not a radical departure imposed on people from the top down", so the convergence with modern capitalist political proposals is not so very strange. But the essay's central idea that "The family is ceasing to be necessary either to its members or to the nation as a whole", that "the family is doomed to disappear" and that "the worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers" -- these all are failed predictions in either communist or capitalist societies, and if Labour increases the state provision of nursery and childcare it doesn't seem very likely that this is going to be a step towards the dissolution of the nuclear family.
Yes, although I think “the family is ceasing to be necessary…” is not as much of a failed prediction as the others.
Doesn’t it take a village to raise a child? In other words, reactions with relatives and neighbours are important.
Is the modern world how Alexandra Kollantai imagined because we have accepted a lot of communism’s ideas, or was it going to be like this anyway under capitalism?
Labours plans for childcare, announced this week, reminded me of ‘The state is responsible for the upbringing of children’ section.
“ Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.”
Except the Labour scheme is purely voluntary, for parents who actually desire that help.
The measures contemplated in that essay also seem to be voluntary: "communist not intending to take children away from their parents or to tear the baby from the breast of its mother, and neither is it planning to take, violent measures to destroy the family. No such thing!"
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
Not quite. Universal free education to age 18 is a developed world universal and has been around for decades. Child benefit for most merely gives back a small amount of the tax you pay, and if you pay a lot of tax you don't get it at all. Social services engagement with families and children involves a tiny percent of the total. That massive engagement should occur with complex needs and special cases is called being a civilized country.
Outside the urban world of movers, shakers, wealthy and nannies,parents and grandparents/other family do nearly all the heavy lifting of child care. In my small town existence it is quite moving to be around (doing my bit!) at the infant/junior school
I wasn’t particularly getting at Labour, because what they’re offering is only an extension of what is already on offer, but it just struck me how a reasonably uncontroversial and possibly popular policy nowadays can be pretty much lifted from a communist essay from a hundred years ago.
Well, the communist essay is deliberately structuring its proposals as "this is a modest and natural extension of how society has been changing even in capitalist countries, not a radical departure imposed on people from the top down", so the convergence with modern capitalist political proposals is not so very strange. But the essay's central idea that "The family is ceasing to be necessary either to its members or to the nation as a whole", that "the family is doomed to disappear" and that "the worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers" -- these all are failed predictions in either communist or capitalist societies, and if Labour increases the state provision of nursery and childcare it doesn't seem very likely that this is going to be a step towards the dissolution of the nuclear family.
Yes, although I think “the family is ceasing to be necessary…” is not as much of a failed prediction as the others.
On the contrary I don't think it was ever more important. For the majority, for whom it works rather well, there is a tendency not to trumpet it too loudly in order not to upset those on the margins.
BTW a remarkable number of families have someone whom they have adopted to some degree - varying from literally taking them into the unit to having a temporary or permanent interest in their welfare - who has somehow fallen through the family net.
Apparently over $100 billion has been spent on autonomous car development.
No wonder the companies are so keen to persuade the gullible they've developed some magic sauce.
It’s a classic example of something that turned out to be way more difficult than imagined, a “99% there” problem, where most of the money is yet to be spent.
The solution is now much more likely to involve reconstruction of the existing roads, or building new towns around autonomous transport with grade separations and traffic lights.
Senior car execs have been duped by the techies - could it be they are too used to being chauffeured around to appreciate the complexities of driving?
It’s a combination of a decade of cheap money, and the (utopian tech bro) idea that one company would end up dominating the space, where in future millions of automated taxis would replace traditional private transport. The likes of Google, Apple, and Tesla, had access to plenty of VC money, and GM felt they had to get either involved or miss out.
The most difficult bit, as we’ve discussed on here many times before, is where the technology can do most of the driving, but can and will disengage itself at short notice, meaning that the human needs to stay awake and alert at all times - something which humans find quite difficult, even the professional test drivers.
Meanwhile, that old favourite of new car technology, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, has what looks to be the best system deployed so far in the new 2024 model, with very little hype. It’s a “Level 3” system up to 40mph, meaning the car drives itself and Mercedes are insured for any damage it causes. https://carbuzz.com/news/mercedes-announces-first-level-3-self-driving-for-s-class-and-eqs-sedan You can’t use it to drop the kids at school or collect you from the pub yet though, which is what most people think a self-driving car should be able to do, a taxi without the human driver.
BIB: Mick Lynch just texted me to say that is why train drivers get paid so much. Their job is to maintain concentration through 99.999 per cent tedium so they can react instantly to obstructions.
Whereas bus drivers can be paid about half train drivers because all they do is collect the fares, act as the police force, do social care for the elderly and drive the bus, 100% attention all the time, on roads full of drunks, druggies, under age bikers, boys showing off and delivery drivers double parking.
Indeed. My bus driver mate always said that if they don't want to pay their fares, that's fine because he doesn't want to get stabbed over 50p.
That said, what car-driving PBers might not have noticed is there are lots of lady bus drivers nowadays, thanks mainly to power steering.
There are a few lady train drivers nowadays, too.
On steam locomotives too!
Really? Diesels I can understand, but steam train driving is a rather mucky job.
Yes. There are female drivers and firepersons* on the Keighley and Woorth Valley Railway.
*Female firemen doesn't sound right, but neither does firewomen or firepersons. Maybe "coal shovelers"?
In my limited experience, female firemen liked to be called 'firemen' and not 'fireperson'. They tended to be much more bothered about the lack of facilities for women at many railways.
The following is a good talk given by Joanne Crompton on these sorts of issues, which ruffled some feathers (it should not have done): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z-fbYrNVD0
Just changed a light bulb and noticed that the packet had two seperate energy efficiency ratings on it - one for GB only rating it A++ and one for the EU and NI rating it E. I wonder what I'm supposed to deduce from this, other than (a) we have obviously already diverged from the EU on these standards, and ours are - what a surprise - less stringent; and (b) the seperate GB rating (whose sole purpose is to mislead me about the product's environmental credentials) will have imposed an extra cost that I will have paid. Another Brexit dividend!
I am not an expert on this but I think (from looking at the information from various organisations working on energy saving) that you have this the wrong way round.
The A++ system is the old system that existed in both the UK and EU for many years. The A to G system is the new system that is being introduced both in the UK and the EU.
So are we giving them more time to change the labelling than the EU is? Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to put seperate energy ratings on unless they have to or felt there was some advantage in showing A++ still here. Although I note that even when the rules are harmonised again they will apparently still have to print two labels, showing the same thing, one with a UK flag and one with the EU flag. Presumably tested twice too? What a colossal waste of time and money.
Keep on digging!
Nobody has really explained why there are two labels!
OK so the labelling of one as GB and the other as EU/NI is a red herring? But in future this product will continue to have two labels, showing the same information, with different flags on, at some additional cost borne by the consumer, and this is a benefit of Brexit? Got it.
It says for a short time. Besides, printing a label with two ratings should cost no more than printing one.
It is two seperate labels, one on either side of the box! I don't know whether there is a duplicated testing and certification regime, presumably that is where more serious costs would become involved, as is happening in the construction supplies sector.
It says on the photo I posted that there will be two labels for a while. I’d expect that’s the same in the EU & the UK as we seem to have jointly changed ratings (Why on earth am I getting involved in this???)
“ Q: Why are there two different energy labels with my product?
A: Over the last 20 years, the energy efficiency of products has improved. This means the information on the energy label needs to change to ensure it can continue to help you find the best products. As the new information is phased in, there will be a short time when products may feature both the old and new labels.”
Comments
And its that focus which might be detrimental to public support.
Because there's a lot more people who want governments to hand them another subsidy than there are who want governments to incentivise new industrial investments in a place where they don't live.
Turns out the Remoaner has their facts wrong and is just taking a fact-free swipe at something he doesn’t like.
Brexit has been underwhelming, but our light bulbs haven't become suddenly less efficient because of it.
https://theledspecialist.co.uk/blog/post/understanding-the-new-energy-efficiency-rating-in-lighting/
There’s no chance of me voting Conservative though.
the problem that autonomous cars will have are the scenarios where their programming fails to deal with them safely. if all cars were autonomous then it'd take out one of the main causes of risk in driving (the other drivers) but it'd not remove all of the risk (eg poor road maintenance, poor car maintenance, pedestrians)
That said, what car-driving PBers might not have noticed is there are lots of lady bus drivers nowadays, thanks mainly to power steering.
The next thing I noticed was the Wattage figure given at 2kw. 2kw for a string of led bulbs?????
Then I noticed the small print 2kw/1000 hours so actually 2W and very efficient for 240 bulbs.
I looked on the internet and saw that there is a new way of expressing energy efficiency because of the confusion caused in the past by using wattage for brightness (which it isn't) which is then confusing when buying LEDs which are expressed in wattage with an equivalent wattage for brightness (which of course is bonkers but what we have been doing rather than using you know an actual brightness measure). Invariable someone somewhere has ordered a 60W led bulb and got a nice suntan.
The new scheme rather than simplifying things will probably cause more confusion and one obvious one appears to be a light bulb apparently, but incorrectly, rated at 2kw (when they are 2kw/1000h) with a response of 'F**k me, that will be an E rating then.
The E rating makes no sense.
And UK society today does feel a shared responsibility for children that we want the state to bear -- education, child benefits, social services looking out for vulnerable children, etc. Like many other aspects of felt shared responsibility this has shifted from being something informally handled in local communities and by individual charity to being something we expect the state to resource and facilitate. That seems to me generally of a piece with the expanding role of the state over the last century plus.
Currently at the lower end of polling the Tory vote has nearly halved - from 43.6% to about 22%.
Having said that I still think that NOM but Labour led government is the most likely result.
People vote according to the economy they think they deserve.
So its what they think they're entitled to versus the reality of what they're getting.
A problem being is that what people think they're entitled to tends to continually increase whereas what people think they should be contributing does not.
https://thelightbulb.co.uk/resources/understanding-the-new-2021-eu-energy-labels
Not sure why they wanted to change power usage to kw/1000h though.
Outside the urban world of movers, shakers, wealthy and nannies,parents and grandparents/other family do nearly all the heavy lifting of child care. In my small town existence it is quite moving to be around (doing my bit!) at the infant/junior school
You don’t value the philosophical freedoms and therefore the costs seem pointless. Someone who does value them thinks it makes sense.
Economics won’t sway people’s view
I don't think our standards are les stringent. The old A+++ went up to about
Is the extra delay not more likely to be:
a - The UK Govt huffing and puffing and footdragging and bawling about being in line with the EU, for the benefit of the mouth-breathing Love Brexit But Don't Get When Alignment Is Appropriate lobby?
or
b - Sheer UK Govt crass incompetence?
or
c - Rishi dithering then pretending that it is a "demonstration" ie lack of virtue signal.
I don't think our standards are less stringent (why?). The old system went up to A+++ (with each plus being iirc an extra 10% or so of efficiency).
A+++ to D is being replaced by A-G, with one fewer class. I assume is the lowest one being dropped off the bottom, or a redefinition.
I take the +++ and no change X years ago when clearly necessary as being EU sclerosis is getting new things agreed and done.
UKG: Should we do this thing with our Brexit freedoms?
Consultees: No, that's mental.
That will leave the Republicans with an extremely nasty problem if he wins in the primaries (as seems likely) and by some unexpected twist the Supreme Court toss him from the actual election.
We could see the first convention-imposed candidate since 1968 and the first serious contest since 1976.
Seems unlikely though.
Santos have just been relegated from Brazil's Serie A for the first time ever.
Whatever happened to that great user? Along with Leon, they were one of the best users posting.
However my assumption, confirmed by a web page I looked up when I had a similar conundrum appears cynical and wrong and the other explanations given here make sense. I didn't even have the old chart to look at. I just had the new one on the package and immediately saw an E rating and 2kwh. My wife bought them and my first reaction was they weren't LEDs. Then I thought surely not and even so you wouldn't get up to 2kwh anyway. Then I saw the per 1000 hrs.
Would be better if they used Joules in my opinion.
https://www.sparksdirect.co.uk/blog/new-energy-label-led-lamps-you-need-to-know
A Betting Post 🐎
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3.35 Newbury - Passing Well
Happy Holidays ⭐️
That's a Brexit virtue signal - possibly unnecessary.
But then the EU does similar, so it's not worth the excitement.
More important is that some scrote defined light bulb performance in terms of SI Units that do not exist - w .
On to be in German where all the symbols are capitals. Look, they don't totally standardise either
Because if DeSantis really is running out of support and, more crucially, money, then he will have to pull out and he will not want to do that as a 4th-place loser.
It needs some explanation on the label during the change. When both the rating changes dramatically because of increased efficiency (so an old A becomes a new G) and the reference on the box changes from '2W' to '2kwh/1000h' with the '/1000hrs' in small print as it was on my label.
It took me awhile to notice the '/1000hrs' and being used to seeing lights rated in 'W' jumped to the conclusion it was a cockup all around. Making two changes like this at the same time is very confusing the first time you see it.
As for "kwh" - that looks to be the same system as instructions written in Chinese English. See the instructions for Japanese Personal Computers circa 1983, which were legendary.
*Female firemen doesn't sound right, but neither does firewomen or firepersons. Maybe "coal shovelers"?
Getting slightly sidetracked, one thing that triggers me is when you get a news story saying that a new wind farm will generate enough electricity for X thousand homes. Just tell me how many MW, for goodness sake!
Here's a report from the Washington Post about 17 fatalities and 736 crashes caused by self-driving Teslas; I don't think those figures are even complete.
Musk's marketing is as reckless as his behaviour wrt twitter - "Autopilot" is a misleading label which appears to give drivers permission to zone out and stop paying attention. I think that many Usonian and British drivers are stupid enough to believe it - after all a large % are willing to use phone whilst driving.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/
- Divorce
- Heavy depression
- etc
If he’s a trained sparky and *able to work*, he could trivially pick up work on a casual basis that would support a living-in-a-van lifestyle. And he won’t be working cash in hand - not paying the road tax on the van is a good way to get attention.
So, for some reason, he can’t work. What should we do with him?
Education?
Defence?
State pension?
Welfare safety net?
Health?
These are the big ones and they are all now generations old.
The only newish one is elderly social care, where we are in a generations long process of delaying having a rational system.
The other big change is post 18 education, where the burden has shifted from the state to the individual.
Why when the Tories came in, did all of these targets start to be missed?
The rulings don’t mean much and the people making them knew that because everyone knows this will have to be settled by the Supreme Court. Both rulings more or less say, “please, Supreme Court, rule on this as soon as possible”.
BTW a remarkable number of families have someone whom they have adopted to some degree - varying from literally taking them into the unit to having a temporary or permanent interest in their welfare - who has somehow fallen through the family net.
The following is a good talk given by Joanne Crompton on these sorts of issues, which ruffled some feathers (it should not have done):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z-fbYrNVD0
“ Q: Why are there two different energy labels with my product?
A: Over the last 20 years, the energy efficiency of products has improved. This means the information on the energy label needs to change to ensure it can continue to help you find the best products. As the new information is phased in, there will be a short time when products may feature both the old and new labels.”
https://www.sparksdirect.co.uk/blog/new-energy-label-led-lamps-you-need-to-know