I’m literally having one of the best meals of my life. Reviewing a restaurant for the Gazette. Fine dining Khmer cuisine on Sisowath Quay, from an all female team, as well
Anywhere else this would be 2 star, or 3, or who cares about fucking Michelin stars. Incroyable
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I've argued that for quite some time.
I'd argue the opposite. Our modern entitled society has been brainwashed into thinking that compromise for the sake of the environment is out of question. There won't be any blood, sweat and tears from us to save the day; if we can't save the world without inconveniencing ourselves then future generations can go fry.
The compromise is that it's going to mean a lot of investment. That's the inconvenience.
Believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy and that will solve the problem is delusional.
That's a very transparent strawman. I'd have expected better of you.
I don't think so. The extra investment needed will be painful - properly insulating homes, for example, massively so. And those of us in our sixties and above won't see much of the benefit of taking it seriously (and we're the ones who will have to pay a lot of the upfront).
But the returns a couple of decades down the road are very large.
Nobody is believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy, least of all me.
I was thinking more about, for example, the current media campaign against electric vehicles. The implication is that people would be stupid to buy them because they cannot (yet) do all that petrol/diesel cars can and for the same or lower cost. The idea that people should perhaps be prepared to endure any slight hardship, such as a 20 minute wait to recharge, in order to lessen their impact on the environment is, apparently, laughable. It seems that altruism is for idiots.
Because that is an abstract thought. 20mins (assuming that is the charge time and the charger is the right type and there is no one in the queue in front of you).
That is a big ask "for the greater good" whatever tf that is.
Why don't you turn off your computer (let's round it up to an hour, say) and do nothing - you can imagine yourself at a BP garage on the A3 for example.
It will be for the greater good.
Let us know how you get on when you turn the laptop back on.
QED
Go on then. Turn your laptop off for 20 mins. Do your bit you selfish git.
I'm already doing my bit. Six times a year I use my EV to ferry my lad and his stuff back and forth to uni. This is slightly less convenient then using my old petrol car because I have to stop for 20 minutes or so on the way back to recharge. It's not a great hardship, but apparently more than most are prepared to suffer.
Conservative MPs given the latest polling are you now going to wake-up & put your vote of no confidence letters in too? Nothing to lose we have a GE this year anyway. Time to get our party back & be real Conservatives. And save our country from the commies who backed Corbyn!
MAGA - Make Andrea Great Again
(Some may be skeptical that "Again" is applicable here...)
Lower Thames Crossing tunnel - £800m spent so far on the planning applicaition, 359,000 pages which, if laid end-to-end, would be four times longer than the 14-mile tunnel they’re trying to build.
It’s all very well saying Starmer is crap but he’s heading up a party on course to win over a 100 seat majority, so really he’s done everything right and has been the best leader Labour may have ever had, if they win?
Starmer wants to run the next election as a referendum on the Conservatives.
That might get him a very big majority, but it risks being built on sand.
He's relying on the Tories to hand his first re-election to him on a plate too. I don't think that's beyond the Tories, but it sort of indicates that Starmer is not going to be a PM who is the master of his own destiny.
There's something reminiscent of François Hollande about Starmer.
Charisma free politicians like Sir Keir usually become PM by means of a handover (Brown, May, Sunak) rather than having to charm the public (Cameron, Boris). It’s not as if he has any firm policies he’s selling either, just complains about the other lot constantly. I am certain he will struggle during the campaign during interviews and debates. I’ve said that a lot, will be interesting to see if I was right or wrong
How big an outright majority do you think he'll struggle to? Above or below 3 digits?
It looks like he has been gifted a majority by the Tories benching their best player then scoring a couple of own goals, but I’d say below 100, because when the usually uninterested public see lots of him in the campaign they’ll think “I can’t vote for this berk”
Let’s see. The last time the favourite to win the GE was such a wet blanket was 2017, and Theresa May was much shorter in the betting to win a majority, so anything’s possible
Oh behave.
Johnson wasn't benched. He had previously been on a yellow for unsporting conduct and was already in the tunnel before the ref could show him a straight red for a studs up, two footed lunge.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
But also, where the houses are, relative to where people want to live and where employers want to locate themselves.
Part of the lament of the Red Wall towns is that opportunities have moved away from them. Which is true, sad, but probably inevitable. Larger cities (which doesn't have to mean just London) are where it's at.
In the South (both East and West) there is enough prosperity to support small (especially quaint) towns and villages. Barring one or two exceptions, this just doesn't seem to be the case in the North. I'm guessing its because private enterprise is simply far more heavily skewed in the South.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I've argued that for quite some time.
I'd argue the opposite. Our modern entitled society has been brainwashed into thinking that compromise for the sake of the environment is out of question. There won't be any blood, sweat and tears from us to save the day; if we can't save the world without inconveniencing ourselves then future generations can go fry.
The compromise is that it's going to mean a lot of investment. That's the inconvenience.
Believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy and that will solve the problem is delusional.
That's a very transparent strawman. I'd have expected better of you.
I don't think so. The extra investment needed will be painful - properly insulating homes, for example, massively so. And those of us in our sixties and above won't see much of the benefit of taking it seriously (and we're the ones who will have to pay a lot of the upfront).
But the returns a couple of decades down the road are very large.
Nobody is believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy, least of all me.
I was thinking more about, for example, the current media campaign against electric vehicles. The implication is that people would be stupid to buy them because they cannot (yet) do all that petrol/diesel cars can and for the same or lower cost. The idea that people might perhaps be prepared to endure any slight hardship, such as a 20 minute wait to recharge, in order to lessen their impact on the environment is, apparently, laughable. It seems that altruism is for idiots.
Fair enough. I think the bigger problem with EVs is that there aren't really any cheap models with limited capabilities, and as yet production capacity is very limited. That ought not to be all that far off, though.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I've argued that for quite some time.
I'd argue the opposite. Our modern entitled society has been brainwashed into thinking that compromise for the sake of the environment is out of question. There won't be any blood, sweat and tears from us to save the day; if we can't save the world without inconveniencing ourselves then future generations can go fry.
The compromise is that it's going to mean a lot of investment. That's the inconvenience.
Believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy and that will solve the problem is delusional.
That's a very transparent strawman. I'd have expected better of you.
I don't think so. The extra investment needed will be painful - properly insulating homes, for example, massively so. And those of us in our sixties and above won't see much of the benefit of taking it seriously (and we're the ones who will have to pay a lot of the upfront).
But the returns a couple of decades down the road are very large.
Nobody is believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy, least of all me.
I was thinking more about, for example, the current media campaign against electric vehicles. The implication is that people would be stupid to buy them because they cannot (yet) do all that petrol/diesel cars can and for the same or lower cost. The idea that people should perhaps be prepared to endure any slight hardship, such as a 20 minute wait to recharge, in order to lessen their impact on the environment is, apparently, laughable. It seems that altruism is for idiots.
Because that is an abstract thought. 20mins (assuming that is the charge time and the charger is the right type and there is no one in the queue in front of you).
That is a big ask "for the greater good" whatever tf that is.
Why don't you turn off your computer (let's round it up to an hour, say) and do nothing - you can imagine yourself at a BP garage on the A3 for example.
It will be for the greater good.
Let us know how you get on when you turn the laptop back on.
I have the unpopular opinion that we just need fewer cars, electric or otherwise. We don't have the resources to get all the lithium and such to replace every fuel burning car on the road with an electric one, and the method of mining will have its own environmental issues - as will the changes to infrastructure to support them. The personal car is atomising and destructive for social cohesion - every driver believes they have a right to the road and every other driver or pedestrian is in their way. Our infrastructure is so lopsidedly in favour of drivers that local and regional public transport is godawful outside London and (arguably) Manchester, and if we just switch to electric cars we'll still see arguments for widening roads and so on and so on.
(to indulge in some anecdata) I saw someone online bemoaned how a tram was only half full, and how much space it took up on the road, taking a video from their car that had to stop for the tram to pass by. The driver was alone in the car. Most journeys in cars are done by single occupants. Public transport is so much more space efficient than car journeys - it just needs government investment to make it functional for people and they'll use it. Instead we've had decades of slashing apart our societal infrastructure, and a focus on the individual vehicle - and it has warped everything. People will shop a 20 minute drive away rather than walk to shops (which no longer exist because the superduper market can only exist when cars are supreme). People live 45mins - 1 hour driving commutes away (if they're lucky) meaning that their entire livelihoods is dependent on their car to get them there (which means jobs can be centralised in urban areas, whilst rural areas are ignored and are underinvested in).
I could be wrong, but I think this is the first Guardian article to take the whole UFO thing so seriously it actually says Yeah, there may be something here and Yeah, it may be non human intelligence
And if it is - as the article says - what will that do to us? And how will we react to the revelation that - allegedly - we have been lied to for decades?
Are we on the edge of Disclosure or has the guardian simply joined the weird group madness?
Bloke who makes a living writing books about space writes an article in the Guardian wanting readers to get interested in space shocker.
No, it’s bit more than that - in different ways
For a start, the writer is not afraid of making himself look a fool - openly speculating on the possibility of “alien” intelligence
That’s a step change
And all this is part of an overall mood shift, which gathers pace. Members of Congress were given another secret UFO briefing the other day. They did NOT emerge looking more skeptical
So, again, WTF is going on?
We've done this. You will spout your 5 theories, and I will say its the same old same old of some credulous fools being taken in by either a mistaken true believer (Grusch, genuinely coming to the wrong conclusions about what 'recovery of alien craft' means - hint alien might just mean not US) and grifters who have worked out there is money to be made spinning yarns about Project Sign, Grudge, Bluebook, etc etc etc.
Mate. You still believe in the Wet Market just because you find lab leak “upsetting”. The time when you were worth listening to on anything scientific is long gone
I’m literally having one of the best meals of my life. Reviewing a restaurant for the Gazette. Fine dining Khmer cuisine on Sisowath Quay, from an all female team, as well
Anywhere else this would be 2 star, or 3, or who cares about fucking Michelin stars. Incroyable
I’m literally having one of the best meals of my life. Reviewing a restaurant for the Gazette. Fine dining Khmer cuisine on Sisowath Quay, from an all female team, as well
Anywhere else this would be 2 star, or 3, or who cares about fucking Michelin stars. Incroyable
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I've argued that for quite some time.
I'd argue the opposite. Our modern entitled society has been brainwashed into thinking that compromise for the sake of the environment is out of question. There won't be any blood, sweat and tears from us to save the day; if we can't save the world without inconveniencing ourselves then future generations can go fry.
The compromise is that it's going to mean a lot of investment. That's the inconvenience.
Believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy and that will solve the problem is delusional.
That's a very transparent strawman. I'd have expected better of you.
I don't think so. The extra investment needed will be painful - properly insulating homes, for example, massively so. And those of us in our sixties and above won't see much of the benefit of taking it seriously (and we're the ones who will have to pay a lot of the upfront).
But the returns a couple of decades down the road are very large.
Nobody is believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy, least of all me.
I was thinking more about, for example, the current media campaign against electric vehicles. The implication is that people would be stupid to buy them because they cannot (yet) do all that petrol/diesel cars can and for the same or lower cost. The idea that people should perhaps be prepared to endure any slight hardship, such as a 20 minute wait to recharge, in order to lessen their impact on the environment is, apparently, laughable. It seems that altruism is for idiots.
Because that is an abstract thought. 20mins (assuming that is the charge time and the charger is the right type and there is no one in the queue in front of you).
That is a big ask "for the greater good" whatever tf that is.
Why don't you turn off your computer (let's round it up to an hour, say) and do nothing - you can imagine yourself at a BP garage on the A3 for example.
It will be for the greater good.
Let us know how you get on when you turn the laptop back on.
QED
Go on then. Turn your laptop off for 20 mins. Do your bit you selfish git.
I would take you up on that, but I'm worried that whoever gets the additional excess* solar power will just waste it on something silly like commenting on PB. Far better to keep it here and put it to good use
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
"Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one."
No.
Simply no.
You have got your own political bugbears, and are desperately trying to put the 'reasons' onto those. Instead of looking at the reality (or realty...) as I did with the figures below.
As ever, the situation is complex, but to say immigration is not a significant factor in the housing crisis is ridiculous.
(And before anyone pipes up, I am not anti-immigration for rather obvious reasons...)
Would "dealing" with immigration solve the housing crisis? No. Getting immigration down to net zero, or even slightly net negative would not deal with the issue of housing. That's why I say it is not a significant factor - you cannot "fix" this issue via immigration based solutions.
Any show of strength for Ms. Haley could be significant ahead of New Hampshire. She had already pulled to within striking distance of Mr. Trump there before Chris Christie withdrew from the race. Historically, primary polling is extremely volatile, and the candidates who surge late often keep surging. Ms. Haley might still need just about everything to go right, and a burst of favorable media coverage after Iowa would only help. If so — and no Iowan will want to hear this — the biggest consequence of Iowa might just be in New Hampshire.
Years ago, I was struck by parallel results in two polls in the UK and the US. Respondents were asked whether they considered their nation basically good with some faults, or basically bad, with some redeeming features.
In the US, then, almost all Republicans chose the first, and about half of Democrats chose the second. The results were similar in the UK, with almost all Conservatives choosing the first, and about half of Labour members choosing the second.
This helps explain many things, including the religious beliefs of many Greens. If, they think, our nations have sinned against Mother Nature, we deserve some punishment.
(For the record: I would choose the first, for both nations, and think much data supports me. If anyone is interested in the specifics, I may be able to find descriptions of the polls, but won't promise to even look until at least next weekend.)
I would tactically vote Labour to block the Greens.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I've argued that for quite some time.
I'd argue the opposite. Our modern entitled society has been brainwashed into thinking that compromise for the sake of the environment is out of question. There won't be any blood, sweat and tears from us to save the day; if we can't save the world without inconveniencing ourselves then future generations can go fry.
The compromise is that it's going to mean a lot of investment. That's the inconvenience.
Believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy and that will solve the problem is delusional.
That's a very transparent strawman. I'd have expected better of you.
I don't think so. The extra investment needed will be painful - properly insulating homes, for example, massively so. And those of us in our sixties and above won't see much of the benefit of taking it seriously (and we're the ones who will have to pay a lot of the upfront).
But the returns a couple of decades down the road are very large.
Nobody is believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy, least of all me.
I was thinking more about, for example, the current media campaign against electric vehicles. The implication is that people would be stupid to buy them because they cannot (yet) do all that petrol/diesel cars can and for the same or lower cost. The idea that people should perhaps be prepared to endure any slight hardship, such as a 20 minute wait to recharge, in order to lessen their impact on the environment is, apparently, laughable. It seems that altruism is for idiots.
Because that is an abstract thought. 20mins (assuming that is the charge time and the charger is the right type and there is no one in the queue in front of you).
That is a big ask "for the greater good" whatever tf that is.
Why don't you turn off your computer (let's round it up to an hour, say) and do nothing - you can imagine yourself at a BP garage on the A3 for example.
It will be for the greater good.
Let us know how you get on when you turn the laptop back on.
QED
Go on then. Turn your laptop off for 20 mins. Do your bit you selfish git.
I'm already doing my bit. Six times a year I use my EV to ferry my lad and his stuff back and forth to uni. This is slightly less convenient then using my old petrol car because I have to stop for 20 minutes or so on the way back to recharge. It's not a great hardship, but apparently more than most are prepared to suffer.
Well done you. But it is not (imo) for people to mandate what is and what isn't a hardship for others. Asking others to make a lifestyle change which you believe is trivial is assuming a lot.
I mean you have (at least) two cars for no doubt very good reasons but it shows that you might be neither cash poor nor time poor. Maybe you are both in which case there's me assuming things.
As @Casino_Royale pointed out, the way things are going to change is if/when there is an incentive to do so. The incentive of "saving the planet" I'm afraid, and perhaps disappointingly, is too nebulous for most people.
I don't agree with this lazy assumption that this means SKS is guaranteed "at least" a decade in office; the same was being said about Boris in early 2020 and look what's happened/happening to Jacinda, Biden, Scholz and Hollande, and even Albanese. Left/centre-left governments can go off the boil in the West at the moment quickly.
I'd say Starmer has between 18-36 months before he gets into trouble. I've seen no evidence of this secret strategic thinking to solve all our problems. I have seen him stay pretty quiet and react through triangulation to where public opinion is moving, with a bit of quiet management competence behind it. The most likely way he performs in office is to deliver just that which isnt that different to Rishi.
The only thing that could save him clearly for a second term is if the Conservatives completely and totally self-destruct in opposition, which they are absolutely capable of doing.
This is bang on in my view. As you say, wind back to early 2020 and our current situation was inconceivable.
In my view, what happens hangs on your 'secret strategic thinking' point. If he pulls something (even quite modest) out of the hat to make the country feel more positive and less poor, I think he'll be safe for a decade.
But if he doesn't change much, I agree with you.
Though its not just the leader. The team around him will come in with energy and ideas which may prove a welcome contrast to the dregs of a long Tory administration that currently seems bereft of either.
Admittedly, depending on your politics the ideas and energy might be a turn off, but my point is that even if Starmer is a mirror of Sunak, the government will probably feel quite different.
I remain hopeful that Starmer has a very well camouflaged rabbit hiding in a hat we haven't noticed yet, but freely admit that I don't have much evidence for this view.
I think the big thing is investment.
The Tories really don't seem to get this - in infrastructure, education or defence - and they have expanded the state to suite their client base, so confusing a form of social democracy with a desire for tax cuts at all costs, which is illogical and out of date.
Starmer needs to be investing £80-100bn a year (not £28bn) and in a mix of infrastructure, education, housing and defence with taxation, including some modest wealth taxes, if required to pay for it.
I've laid out a Tory approach to deliver this in the past, which is based on reigning in the triple lock, and bringing in some social insurance contributions for healthcare to fund it, but tbf their current voting coalition would probably totally collapse if they tried it.
Again, agree almost entirely. I'd add green infrastructure (with the caveat of the danger of trying to pick winners, it is clearly going to be a growth area. Encouraging more innovation along the lines of Octopus energy's use of smart meters to smooth demand curves would be sensible - we are now exporting this globally). I'd probably remove defence from your list; whilst vital for strategic reasons it doesn't really feel like investment in the same way education, housing, infrastructure does.
Thanks. Investment in defence is necessary to protect and secure everything else, including our economy and way of life.
We've got to move on from thinking we can just have it on the cheap, hiding under the skirts of the US, with our fingers in our ears.
Sadly, the world has changed.
The reliance on the US is not just military. What percentage of UK household and pension assets are directly held in the US? What percentage is indirectly reliant on US asset valuations and global hegemony?
Whilst things have been bad for a while now, there is certainly scope for them getting much worse, fairly quickly in the event of a Trump win.
The US pins up the whole West. If it goes, we go, and then it's everyone in the West for themselves, each of whom will very quickly make their peace with Russia and China and ask them to name their price.
That price will be very heavy.
Indeed, which is why I believe we need to build an alternate pillar to the US with our friends and allies in Europe. Maybe some sort of united states of Europe.
No, we need a much stronger Western defensive alliance where everyone pulls their weight - not a political union, which is unnecessary.
Yes to a defensive alliance, but it’s not just about military spending. It’s about economic hegemony, which requires a significant free trade zone with common regulation, which requires some sort of transnational political arrangement.
I don't buy that. It's not necessary for Canada, Australia or New Zealand and, to the extent it is true, its delivered through the WTO, World Bank, IMF and other international treaties.
The European Union goes way beyond - beyond what's "needed" - because its driven by an idealistic and cultural vision of a fully united Europe, which is viewed to be a brilliant dream for its own sake.
I don't say there isn't a market for that. But I do say it's very far from essential for our security.
Canada, Australia and New Zealand are not pinning up the whole West. They are enjoying the benefits of a West being pinned up by the US. If one wants an alternative to the US (a federal system with an integrated economy and common currency) as that linchpin, then loose alliances aren't going to deliver it.
I don't want an alternative to the US. I want the West to arm and ally.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
"Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one."
No.
Simply no.
You have got your own political bugbears, and are desperately trying to put the 'reasons' onto those. Instead of looking at the reality (or realty...) as I did with the figures below.
As ever, the situation is complex, but to say immigration is not a significant factor in the housing crisis is ridiculous.
(And before anyone pipes up, I am not anti-immigration for rather obvious reasons...)
Would "dealing" with immigration solve the housing crisis? No. Getting immigration down to net zero, or even slightly net negative would not deal with the issue of housing. That's why I say it is not a significant factor - you cannot "fix" this issue via immigration based solutions.
No single measure would magically 'deal' with the issue, as it is multi-factorial. But the idea that immigration isn't one of the significant pressures on housing, if not the most significant factor, is ridiculous.
Any show of strength for Ms. Haley could be significant ahead of New Hampshire. She had already pulled to within striking distance of Mr. Trump there before Chris Christie withdrew from the race. Historically, primary polling is extremely volatile, and the candidates who surge late often keep surging. Ms. Haley might still need just about everything to go right, and a burst of favorable media coverage after Iowa would only help. If so — and no Iowan will want to hear this — the biggest consequence of Iowa might just be in New Hampshire.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Housing crisis is significantly down to immigration. But without immigration we would have other different crises. The answer, of course, is to plan for immigration and build appropriate amounts, of not just housing, but also wider infrastructure.
And though I'm hesitant to say it, the 'right' sort of immigration. Allow people in with skills we need, and not just anyone who pays people smugglers to get in.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I've argued that for quite some time.
I'd argue the opposite. Our modern entitled society has been brainwashed into thinking that compromise for the sake of the environment is out of question. There won't be any blood, sweat and tears from us to save the day; if we can't save the world without inconveniencing ourselves then future generations can go fry.
The compromise is that it's going to mean a lot of investment. That's the inconvenience.
Believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy and that will solve the problem is delusional.
That's a very transparent strawman. I'd have expected better of you.
I don't think so. The extra investment needed will be painful - properly insulating homes, for example, massively so. And those of us in our sixties and above won't see much of the benefit of taking it seriously (and we're the ones who will have to pay a lot of the upfront).
But the returns a couple of decades down the road are very large.
Nobody is believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy, least of all me.
I was thinking more about, for example, the current media campaign against electric vehicles. The implication is that people would be stupid to buy them because they cannot (yet) do all that petrol/diesel cars can and for the same or lower cost. The idea that people should perhaps be prepared to endure any slight hardship, such as a 20 minute wait to recharge, in order to lessen their impact on the environment is, apparently, laughable. It seems that altruism is for idiots.
Because that is an abstract thought. 20mins (assuming that is the charge time and the charger is the right type and there is no one in the queue in front of you).
That is a big ask "for the greater good" whatever tf that is.
Why don't you turn off your computer (let's round it up to an hour, say) and do nothing - you can imagine yourself at a BP garage on the A3 for example.
It will be for the greater good.
Let us know how you get on when you turn the laptop back on.
QED
Go on then. Turn your laptop off for 20 mins. Do your bit you selfish git.
I would take you up on that, but I'm worried that whoever gets the additional excess* solar power will just waste it on something silly like commenting on PB. Far better to keep it here and put it to good use
*exporting at the moment
Wait, you are able to install solar panels on your 18th floor council flat? That's brilliant.
Lower Thames Crossing tunnel - £800m spent so far on the planning applicaition, 359,000 pages which, if laid end-to-end, would be four times longer than the 14-mile tunnel they’re trying to build.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I've argued that for quite some time.
I'd argue the opposite. Our modern entitled society has been brainwashed into thinking that compromise for the sake of the environment is out of question. There won't be any blood, sweat and tears from us to save the day; if we can't save the world without inconveniencing ourselves then future generations can go fry.
The compromise is that it's going to mean a lot of investment. That's the inconvenience.
Believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy and that will solve the problem is delusional.
That's a very transparent strawman. I'd have expected better of you.
I don't think so. The extra investment needed will be painful - properly insulating homes, for example, massively so. And those of us in our sixties and above won't see much of the benefit of taking it seriously (and we're the ones who will have to pay a lot of the upfront).
But the returns a couple of decades down the road are very large.
Nobody is believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy, least of all me.
I was thinking more about, for example, the current media campaign against electric vehicles. The implication is that people would be stupid to buy them because they cannot (yet) do all that petrol/diesel cars can and for the same or lower cost. The idea that people should perhaps be prepared to endure any slight hardship, such as a 20 minute wait to recharge, in order to lessen their impact on the environment is, apparently, laughable. It seems that altruism is for idiots.
Because that is an abstract thought. 20mins (assuming that is the charge time and the charger is the right type and there is no one in the queue in front of you).
That is a big ask "for the greater good" whatever tf that is.
Why don't you turn off your computer (let's round it up to an hour, say) and do nothing - you can imagine yourself at a BP garage on the A3 for example.
It will be for the greater good.
Let us know how you get on when you turn the laptop back on.
QED
Go on then. Turn your laptop off for 20 mins. Do your bit you selfish git.
I'm already doing my bit. Six times a year I use my EV to ferry my lad and his stuff back and forth to uni. This is slightly less convenient then using my old petrol car because I have to stop for 20 minutes or so on the way back to recharge. It's not a great hardship, but apparently more than most are prepared to suffer.
Well done you. But it is not (imo) for people to mandate what is and what isn't a hardship for others. Asking others to make a lifestyle change which you believe is trivial is assuming a lot.
I mean you have (at least) two cars for no doubt very good reasons but it shows that you might be neither cash poor nor time poor. Maybe you are both in which case there's me assuming things.
As @Casino_Royale pointed out, the way things are going to change is if/when there is an incentive to do so. The incentive of "saving the planet" I'm afraid, and perhaps disappointingly, is too nebulous for most people.
I'm pretty sure that by 2030 my home will be completely decarbonised, it will not have negatively affected my lifestyle at all, and it will have saved me money. That's how fast the tech and supply chain is moving.
Aviation and maritime fuels are interesting challenges, as is sustainable farming, but I bet you my mortgage technical and scientific solutions to those are found too.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
"Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one."
No.
Simply no.
You have got your own political bugbears, and are desperately trying to put the 'reasons' onto those. Instead of looking at the reality (or realty...) as I did with the figures below.
As ever, the situation is complex, but to say immigration is not a significant factor in the housing crisis is ridiculous.
(And before anyone pipes up, I am not anti-immigration for rather obvious reasons...)
Would "dealing" with immigration solve the housing crisis? No. Getting immigration down to net zero, or even slightly net negative would not deal with the issue of housing. That's why I say it is not a significant factor - you cannot "fix" this issue via immigration based solutions.
No single measure would magically 'deal' with the issue, as it is multi-factorial. But the idea that immigration isn't one of the significant pressures on housing, if not the most significant factor, is ridiculous.
But it's nonsensical to say so. Any factor is an issue. Why not only get families to have one child or ban divorce. Immigration may be a factor but as we realise so acutely right now, it is essential to the functioning of our society.
The issue is that we don't have enough houses. We should build more but, despite the fact that every single election manifesto has included a promise to do so, we don't seem to be able to do this. cf ironically cutting immigration.
As reported last night, someone shot down a Russian A50 early warning aircraft, and damaged an IL-22. Both Ukrainians and !Russians! claiming credit...
That Coot is FUCKED. I doff my ushanka to the crew that got that on the ground and walked away.
That and the Mainstay shootdown happened a long way to the east so a blue-on-blue is the more likely event.
The A-50 was always the target in the Shar sim. I think they paid BAE to model that then ran out of money and couldn’t get any DLC with other aircraft. I must have virtually shot down hundreds of them.
About a billion a pop, aren't they ? Are the Coots really fifty years old ?
Any show of strength for Ms. Haley could be significant ahead of New Hampshire. She had already pulled to within striking distance of Mr. Trump there before Chris Christie withdrew from the race. Historically, primary polling is extremely volatile, and the candidates who surge late often keep surging. Ms. Haley might still need just about everything to go right, and a burst of favorable media coverage after Iowa would only help. If so — and no Iowan will want to hear this — the biggest consequence of Iowa might just be in New Hampshire.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I don't think it's the pseudo-Christian culture as much as those with interests in oil and gas spending a lot of money to make people think a net zero world will be doom and gloom when, after the initial investment costs for renewables are put in, the upkeep and running costs for sustainable energy is much cheaper than oil and gas. It doesn't help that, under current law, the energy price is link to the dirtiest production method (so each unit is charged based on the cost of coal) so that renewable energy sees more profit (which was supposed to incentivise companies to go renewable to make more money). What it has done instead is force providers who could undercut the competition and therefore get more customers to charge the same and therefore not give consumers any incentive to go to those energy providers that do more heavily rely on renewable sources.
ie we the consumers.
No - fossil fuel companies that have known about the negative impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere for around 100 years. More CO2 has been emitted since 2008 combined than before 2008 - it is the capitalist mode of production and consumption that is leading to the crisis we are in; it isn't some inevitable externality of progress to have to deal with the negative consequences of CO2. We're already seeing record breaking temperatures and the extreme weather that comes with that - as well as the negative impacts on a whole host of issues that are key to continued societal reproduction. The war in Ukraine hit wheat prices, yes, but so did the droughts in China's and Canada's main wheat producing areas alongside massive flooding in the US's main wheat producing areas - which is also hitting people in the pocket when food prices increase. We cannot argue that we don't have the money to go to Net Zero and even beyond - we don't have the money not to.
The big oil companies and the people they bought - politicians, lobbyists, alternative 'experts' - lied for decades about the climate impact in order to keep the profits flowing.
Was your flight back from Tenerife powered by sugar and spice and all things nice?
I doubt it. Looked like a normal plane to me.
Any other irrelevant questions?
Those beastly oil companies "Big Oil" made you fuck off to Tenerife on your holibobs. Bastards.
My 1st flight for 12 years as it happens. Although even if I were a frequent flier it wouldn't mean that the oil companies didn't systematically lie for decades about the climate impact of their product.
The search for relevance in your comments on this goes on.
As reported last night, someone shot down a Russian A50 early warning aircraft, and damaged an IL-22. Both Ukrainians and !Russians! claiming credit...
That Coot is FUCKED. I doff my ushanka to the crew that got that on the ground and walked away.
That and the Mainstay shootdown happened a long way to the east so a blue-on-blue is the more likely event.
The A-50 was always the target in the Shar sim. I think they paid BAE to model that then ran out of money and couldn’t get any DLC with other aircraft. I must have virtually shot down hundreds of them.
About a billion a pop, aren't they ? Are the Coots really fifty years old ?
I could be wrong, but I think this is the first Guardian article to take the whole UFO thing so seriously it actually says Yeah, there may be something here and Yeah, it may be non human intelligence
And if it is - as the article says - what will that do to us? And how will we react to the revelation that - allegedly - we have been lied to for decades?
Are we on the edge of Disclosure or has the guardian simply joined the weird group madness?
Bloke who makes a living writing books about space writes an article in the Guardian wanting readers to get interested in space shocker.
No, it’s bit more than that - in different ways
For a start, the writer is not afraid of making himself look a fool - openly speculating on the possibility of “alien” intelligence
That’s a step change
And all this is part of an overall mood shift, which gathers pace. Members of Congress were given another secret UFO briefing the other day. They did NOT emerge looking more skeptical
So, again, WTF is going on?
We've done this. You will spout your 5 theories, and I will say its the same old same old of some credulous fools being taken in by either a mistaken true believer (Grusch, genuinely coming to the wrong conclusions about what 'recovery of alien craft' means - hint alien might just mean not US) and grifters who have worked out there is money to be made spinning yarns about Project Sign, Grudge, Bluebook, etc etc etc.
Mate. You still believe in the Wet Market just because you find lab leak “upsetting”. The time when you were worth listening to on anything scientific is long gone
As reported last night, someone shot down a Russian A50 early warning aircraft, and damaged an IL-22. Both Ukrainians and !Russians! claiming credit...
That Coot is FUCKED. I doff my ushanka to the crew that got that on the ground and walked away.
That and the Mainstay shootdown happened a long way to the east so a blue-on-blue is the more likely event.
The A-50 was always the target in the Shar sim. I think they paid BAE to model that then ran out of money and couldn’t get any DLC with other aircraft. I must have virtually shot down hundreds of them.
On EVs, power and charging I think the big barrier is this: Most cars spend most of their time parked. Which means that for most users most of the time there is no need to think about charging if you can charge when parked. Which for millions means parked at home as we sleep.
A car that refuels as you sleep is just something people struggle with as they are so used to filling stations...
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
"Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one."
No.
Simply no.
You have got your own political bugbears, and are desperately trying to put the 'reasons' onto those. Instead of looking at the reality (or realty...) as I did with the figures below.
As ever, the situation is complex, but to say immigration is not a significant factor in the housing crisis is ridiculous.
(And before anyone pipes up, I am not anti-immigration for rather obvious reasons...)
Would "dealing" with immigration solve the housing crisis? No. Getting immigration down to net zero, or even slightly net negative would not deal with the issue of housing. That's why I say it is not a significant factor - you cannot "fix" this issue via immigration based solutions.
No single measure would magically 'deal' with the issue, as it is multi-factorial. But the idea that immigration isn't one of the significant pressures on housing, if not the most significant factor, is ridiculous.
But it's nonsensical to say so. Any factor is an issue. Why not only get families to have one child or ban divorce. Immigration may be a factor but as we realise so acutely right now, it is essential to the functioning of our society.
The issue is that we don't have enough houses. We should build more but, despite the fact that every single election manifesto has included a promise to do so, we don't seem to be able to do this. cf ironically cutting immigration.
But the answer has to be more specific than just build more - build more actually affordable housing where it is needed and for the people who need it and make sure it isn't just sold off to private landlords or investment companies. And that means popping, or deflating, the housing market. And that will be a big big problem. It's a rather awful Catch22 - you can't get young people on the housing ladder (and therefore more willing to embrace Thatcherism) without dealing with the consequences of Thatcherism (stagnating wages made up by treating houses as an ever inflating asset that can be leveraged later in life to make up for all the savings you don't have due to your stagnant wages).
YouGov have published their own write up of their MRP.
They also provide some notes of the Telegraph commentary.
The Daily Telegraph wrote that “In constituencies across England and Wales, the Labour vote is up by an average of just four per cent compared to 2019”. This is somewhat of a red herring. There is a sum using certain notional results whereby the estimated Labour share looks like a mean of a four point rise on their 2019 performance. However, this is not the correct way to look at either implied national changes nor what is happening at the constituency level.
If we aggregate up all our constituency level figures and then weight them according to likely voter population, the headline vote intention figures come out at the following:
Labour 39.5%, Conservatives 26%, Lib Dems 12.5%, Reform 9%, Greens 7.5%, SNP 3%, Plaid 0.5%, Others 2%.
A separate note by the Daily Telegraph suggested that the presence of Reform UK is the difference between Labour securing a majority and not. This is their own calculation using our data, and appears to be based simply on adding the Conservative and Reform UK vote shares together in each constituency, which is not a reliable way of measuring their impact.
Were Reform UK not to contest the election, it is extremely unlikely that all, or even a majority, of their voters would transfer to the Conservatives. Some would go to UKIP and splinter parties, some to Labour and other established parties, and some would simply stay at home – YouGov polling in October found only 31% of Reform UK voters would be willing to vote Conservative if Reform UK were not standing in their constituency.
Finally, the Daily Telegraph also said that the YouGov MRP model does not account for tactical voting in its estimated shares. This is not the case – our model does provision for tactical voting in its design, including by estimating constituency competition effects as part of the model equation. It does not, however, apply any post-hoc readjustments to vote share estimates based on any assumed model of tactical voting beyond what we already have in the data.
Thanks for sharing that. I did comment at the start of the thread to the effect that what the Telegraph had said in its write up implied some rather strange national vote shares and as such raised doubts in my mind about the methodology of the vote estimates used by the MRP. As it turns out, I was right to have doubts but the doubts should instead have questioned the ability of the Telegraph to accurately report the facts, for the vote shares were not as implied by the Telegraph.
I think that the weakest part of the MRP analysis could still be the ability to predict the direction of swingback of undecided voters based on demographic characteristics. However, as the only reference I have seen to that happening was in the Telegraph, and YouGov are silent on that in their own write up, maybe the Telegraph have also got their facts wrong on that too. Or have not. Who knows?
Anyway, in a poll that (probably) allowed for swingback of undecided voters, Labour still have a 13.5% lead in national vote share and with the Greens and Lib Dems together standing on a combined 20% there is plenty of scope for further tactical voting to make things worse for the Conservatives.
On EVs, power and charging I think the big barrier is this: Most cars spend most of their time parked. Which means that for most users most of the time there is no need to think about charging if you can charge when parked. Which for millions means parked at home as we sleep.
A car that refuels as you sleep is just something people struggle with as they are so used to filling stations...
If you’re lucky enough to have a house with a driveway, absolutely.
If you’re not that lucky, on the other hand, the race to EVs is all sticks and no carrots at the moment.
So, crunched Dylan Difford's vote switcher charts to get some numbers (no graphics) on how the polling swing to Labour is made up.
His chart shows Labour 44.1, Con 25.0 predicted vote share, which is a 15.5% GB swing to Labour (about 15.0% UK).
That 15.5% is made of:
Death of voters: +1.15% swing First time young voters: +0.65% swing Newly allowed to vote: est+0.4% swing (his total voter base is about 800k higher than existed in 2019, allowing NI, so this is 20% of his DNV-> will vote switchers) TOTAL DEMOGRAPHIC SWING: +2.2%
Switching to/from LD/SNP/Green: +1% (Labour makes good losses to Green by LD/SNP gains. Con doesn't make good losses to LD) Switching to/from Ref/other: +2.65% Direct Con to/from Lab switching: +5% TOTAL SWITCHING SWING: +8.65%
2019 votes saying will not vote: +0.5% (Con don't lose that many more than Lab) 2019 DNVs saying they will vote: +1.5% (see newly allowed note too) Exclude don't knows (post-Opinium swing): +2.65% TOTAL TURNOUT SWING: 4.65%
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I don't think it's the pseudo-Christian culture as much as those with interests in oil and gas spending a lot of money to make people think a net zero world will be doom and gloom when, after the initial investment costs for renewables are put in, the upkeep and running costs for sustainable energy is much cheaper than oil and gas. It doesn't help that, under current law, the energy price is link to the dirtiest production method (so each unit is charged based on the cost of coal) so that renewable energy sees more profit (which was supposed to incentivise companies to go renewable to make more money). What it has done instead is force providers who could undercut the competition and therefore get more customers to charge the same and therefore not give consumers any incentive to go to those energy providers that do more heavily rely on renewable sources.
ie we the consumers.
No - fossil fuel companies that have known about the negative impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere for around 100 years. More CO2 has been emitted since 2008 combined than before 2008 - it is the capitalist mode of production and consumption that is leading to the crisis we are in; it isn't some inevitable externality of progress to have to deal with the negative consequences of CO2. We're already seeing record breaking temperatures and the extreme weather that comes with that - as well as the negative impacts on a whole host of issues that are key to continued societal reproduction. The war in Ukraine hit wheat prices, yes, but so did the droughts in China's and Canada's main wheat producing areas alongside massive flooding in the US's main wheat producing areas - which is also hitting people in the pocket when food prices increase. We cannot argue that we don't have the money to go to Net Zero and even beyond - we don't have the money not to.
The big oil companies and the people they bought - politicians, lobbyists, alternative 'experts' - lied for decades about the climate impact in order to keep the profits flowing.
Was your flight back from Tenerife powered by sugar and spice and all things nice?
I doubt it. Looked like a normal plane to me.
Any other irrelevant questions?
Those beastly oil companies "Big Oil" made you fuck off to Tenerife on your holibobs. Bastards.
My 1st flight for 12 years as it happens. Although even if I were a frequent flier it wouldn't mean that the oil companies didn't systematically lie for decades about the climate impact of their product.
The search for relevance in your comments on this goes on.
Oh. Sozza. So the oil companies told you that there was no climate impact of their product and up until this morning you believed them. And you're a smoker IIRC. I have some bad news for you on that front.
The relevance of my comment is that you spout off bollocks about Big Oil Made Us Do It but you ignore it. Last week you flew to Tenerife and this is post-exposure of the deadly climate impacts of Big Oil.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I've argued that for quite some time.
I'd argue the opposite. Our modern entitled society has been brainwashed into thinking that compromise for the sake of the environment is out of question. There won't be any blood, sweat and tears from us to save the day; if we can't save the world without inconveniencing ourselves then future generations can go fry.
The compromise is that it's going to mean a lot of investment. That's the inconvenience.
Believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy and that will solve the problem is delusional.
That's a very transparent strawman. I'd have expected better of you.
I don't think so. The extra investment needed will be painful - properly insulating homes, for example, massively so. And those of us in our sixties and above won't see much of the benefit of taking it seriously (and we're the ones who will have to pay a lot of the upfront).
But the returns a couple of decades down the road are very large.
Nobody is believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy, least of all me.
I was thinking more about, for example, the current media campaign against electric vehicles. The implication is that people would be stupid to buy them because they cannot (yet) do all that petrol/diesel cars can and for the same or lower cost. The idea that people should perhaps be prepared to endure any slight hardship, such as a 20 minute wait to recharge, in order to lessen their impact on the environment is, apparently, laughable. It seems that altruism is for idiots.
Because that is an abstract thought. 20mins (assuming that is the charge time and the charger is the right type and there is no one in the queue in front of you).
That is a big ask "for the greater good" whatever tf that is.
Why don't you turn off your computer (let's round it up to an hour, say) and do nothing - you can imagine yourself at a BP garage on the A3 for example.
It will be for the greater good.
Let us know how you get on when you turn the laptop back on.
QED
Go on then. Turn your laptop off for 20 mins. Do your bit you selfish git.
I would take you up on that, but I'm worried that whoever gets the additional excess* solar power will just waste it on something silly like commenting on PB. Far better to keep it here and put it to good use
*exporting at the moment
Wait, you are able to install solar panels on your 18th floor council flat? That's brilliant.
18 floors? Luxury! Round here we're lucky to get two!
Nearest 18 storey building must be in that there Leeds, I should think. Went there once, lots of cars and people and noise
It’s all very well saying Starmer is crap but he’s heading up a party on course to win over a 100 seat majority, so really he’s done everything right and has been the best leader Labour may have ever had, if they win?
Starmer wants to run the next election as a referendum on the Conservatives.
That might get him a very big majority, but it risks being built on sand.
He's relying on the Tories to hand his first re-election to him on a plate too. I don't think that's beyond the Tories, but it sort of indicates that Starmer is not going to be a PM who is the master of his own destiny.
There's something reminiscent of François Hollande about Starmer.
Charisma free politicians like Sir Keir usually become PM by means of a handover (Brown, May, Sunak) rather than having to charm the public (Cameron, Boris). It’s not as if he has any firm policies he’s selling either, just complains about the other lot constantly. I am certain he will struggle during the campaign during interviews and debates. I’ve said that a lot, will be interesting to see if I was right or wrong
How big an outright majority do you think he'll struggle to? Above or below 3 digits?
It looks like he has been gifted a majority by the Tories benching their best player then scoring a couple of own goals, but I’d say below 100, because when the usually uninterested public see lots of him in the campaign they’ll think “I can’t vote for this berk”
Let’s see. The last time the favourite to win the GE was such a wet blanket was 2017, and Theresa May was much shorter in the betting to win a majority, so anything’s possible
We have seen some shocks in recent years, haven't we. But here I really would be - shocked. I think the Lab majority will be 3 digits.
Just thinking, now you're well and truly back on PB we can do a bet if you like to supplement our current one.
We 'cash out' the £300/£100 'Starmer PM post GE' bet at say £250 to me. I think that's slightly in your favour at current prices.
But we don't settle. Instead we do a 'double or quits' on Labour outright majority at the GE.
If it's 100 or above I win £500 If it's below 100 we are Flat
How does that sound?
Sounds like you’ve forgotten that bet is either void or you’ve got it with @rcs1000
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I've argued that for quite some time.
I'd argue the opposite. Our modern entitled society has been brainwashed into thinking that compromise for the sake of the environment is out of question. There won't be any blood, sweat and tears from us to save the day; if we can't save the world without inconveniencing ourselves then future generations can go fry.
The compromise is that it's going to mean a lot of investment. That's the inconvenience.
Believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy and that will solve the problem is delusional.
That's a very transparent strawman. I'd have expected better of you.
I don't think so. The extra investment needed will be painful - properly insulating homes, for example, massively so. And those of us in our sixties and above won't see much of the benefit of taking it seriously (and we're the ones who will have to pay a lot of the upfront).
But the returns a couple of decades down the road are very large.
Nobody is believing that everyone is just going to stop using energy, least of all me.
I was thinking more about, for example, the current media campaign against electric vehicles. The implication is that people would be stupid to buy them because they cannot (yet) do all that petrol/diesel cars can and for the same or lower cost. The idea that people should perhaps be prepared to endure any slight hardship, such as a 20 minute wait to recharge, in order to lessen their impact on the environment is, apparently, laughable. It seems that altruism is for idiots.
Because that is an abstract thought. 20mins (assuming that is the charge time and the charger is the right type and there is no one in the queue in front of you).
That is a big ask "for the greater good" whatever tf that is.
Why don't you turn off your computer (let's round it up to an hour, say) and do nothing - you can imagine yourself at a BP garage on the A3 for example.
It will be for the greater good.
Let us know how you get on when you turn the laptop back on.
QED
Go on then. Turn your laptop off for 20 mins. Do your bit you selfish git.
I would take you up on that, but I'm worried that whoever gets the additional excess* solar power will just waste it on something silly like commenting on PB. Far better to keep it here and put it to good use
*exporting at the moment
Wait, you are able to install solar panels on your 18th floor council flat? That's brilliant.
18 floors? Luxury! Round here we're lucky to get two!
Nearest 18 storey building must be in that there Leeds, I should think. Went there once, lots of cars and people and noise
Might be best to avoid Yemeni waters for commercial vessels for now tbh.
That means avoiding the Suez Canal. Just not possible.
Every Western navy is on the way there, to make sure the ships have safe passage. That’s why you have a navy in the first place.
And the Hamas-supporters screech about our attacks against Yemen...
(I'm not arguing that our attacks are effective; they may or may not be. Just that the Houthi's actions need to be quashed.)
Countries have a duty to stop genocides - if Yemen believe (like many other nations do) that Israel's actions are tantamount to genocide, they have duty to attempt to blockade Israel and prevent armaments getting in. Blockades seem to be good when the West does it, but not when anyone else does... Of course, the next move would be for a coalition of nations in southern Africa to start monitoring the Cape of Good Hope in a similar way, slowing down shipping even further. I'm sure we'd quickly see the US and UK bombing South Africa. Because this has nothing to do with a "rules based international order" and everything to do with making money and Western interests.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
"Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one."
No.
Simply no.
You have got your own political bugbears, and are desperately trying to put the 'reasons' onto those. Instead of looking at the reality (or realty...) as I did with the figures below.
As ever, the situation is complex, but to say immigration is not a significant factor in the housing crisis is ridiculous.
(And before anyone pipes up, I am not anti-immigration for rather obvious reasons...)
Would "dealing" with immigration solve the housing crisis? No. Getting immigration down to net zero, or even slightly net negative would not deal with the issue of housing. That's why I say it is not a significant factor - you cannot "fix" this issue via immigration based solutions.
No single measure would magically 'deal' with the issue, as it is multi-factorial. But the idea that immigration isn't one of the significant pressures on housing, if not the most significant factor, is ridiculous.
But it's nonsensical to say so. Any factor is an issue. Why not only get families to have one child or ban divorce. Immigration may be a factor but as we realise so acutely right now, it is essential to the functioning of our society.
The issue is that we don't have enough houses. We should build more but, despite the fact that every single election manifesto has included a promise to do so, we don't seem to be able to do this. cf ironically cutting immigration.
But the answer has to be more specific than just build more - build more actually affordable housing where it is needed and for the people who need it and make sure it isn't just sold off to private landlords or investment companies. And that means popping, or deflating, the housing market. And that will be a big big problem. It's a rather awful Catch22 - you can't get young people on the housing ladder (and therefore more willing to embrace Thatcherism) without dealing with the consequences of Thatcherism (stagnating wages made up by treating houses as an ever inflating asset that can be leveraged later in life to make up for all the savings you don't have due to your stagnant wages).
Oh bloody hell it's Fatcha's fault now, is it?
Governments of all stripes, and with plenty of time to do it, have promised more housing (presumably using taxpayers' money) so the only conclusion we can draw is that we don't actually want to do it.
But immigration is neither here nor there wrt the level of or pressure on housebuilding.
On EVs, power and charging I think the big barrier is this: Most cars spend most of their time parked. Which means that for most users most of the time there is no need to think about charging if you can charge when parked. Which for millions means parked at home as we sleep.
A car that refuels as you sleep is just something people struggle with as they are so used to filling stations...
If you’re lucky enough to have a house with a driveway, absolutely.
If you’re not that lucky, on the other hand, the race to EVs is all sticks and no carrots at the moment.
And that sizeable gap in the plan allows in all kinds of guff. What I don't understand is why the clickbait the morons merchants don't get them to ask "how do I charge it at my terraced house" - a valid point - instead of telling them it will explode / the battery will need to be replaced and costs £50k / "they" will remotely immobilise your car to trap you in your 15 minute city" etc.
There is a desperation from many people to pull EVs apart that they cling onto any straw being offered.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I don't think it's the pseudo-Christian culture as much as those with interests in oil and gas spending a lot of money to make people think a net zero world will be doom and gloom when, after the initial investment costs for renewables are put in, the upkeep and running costs for sustainable energy is much cheaper than oil and gas. It doesn't help that, under current law, the energy price is link to the dirtiest production method (so each unit is charged based on the cost of coal) so that renewable energy sees more profit (which was supposed to incentivise companies to go renewable to make more money). What it has done instead is force providers who could undercut the competition and therefore get more customers to charge the same and therefore not give consumers any incentive to go to those energy providers that do more heavily rely on renewable sources.
ie we the consumers.
No - fossil fuel companies that have known about the negative impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere for around 100 years. More CO2 has been emitted since 2008 combined than before 2008 - it is the capitalist mode of production and consumption that is leading to the crisis we are in; it isn't some inevitable externality of progress to have to deal with the negative consequences of CO2. We're already seeing record breaking temperatures and the extreme weather that comes with that - as well as the negative impacts on a whole host of issues that are key to continued societal reproduction. The war in Ukraine hit wheat prices, yes, but so did the droughts in China's and Canada's main wheat producing areas alongside massive flooding in the US's main wheat producing areas - which is also hitting people in the pocket when food prices increase. We cannot argue that we don't have the money to go to Net Zero and even beyond - we don't have the money not to.
The big oil companies and the people they bought - politicians, lobbyists, alternative 'experts' - lied for decades about the climate impact in order to keep the profits flowing.
Was your flight back from Tenerife powered by sugar and spice and all things nice?
I doubt it. Looked like a normal plane to me.
Any other irrelevant questions?
Those beastly oil companies "Big Oil" made you fuck off to Tenerife on your holibobs. Bastards.
My 1st flight for 12 years as it happens. Although even if I were a frequent flier it wouldn't mean that the oil companies didn't systematically lie for decades about the climate impact of their product.
The search for relevance in your comments on this goes on.
Oh. Sozza. So the oil companies told you that there was no climate impact of their product and up until this morning you believed them. And you're a smoker IIRC. I have some bad news for you on that front.
The relevance of my comment is that you spout off bollocks about Big Oil Made Us Do It but you ignore it. Last week you flew to Tenerife and this is post-exposure of the deadly climate impacts of Big Oil.
You hypocritical fucker.
15% of people who fly frequently take 70% of all UK flights, while more than half the UK population don't fly at all in any given year. As always the issue is structural and not really about individual choices. Those frequent fliers tend to be wealthier and tend to fly for pleasure or work for multinational corporations. You're literally doing the comic meme.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
"Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one."
No.
Simply no.
You have got your own political bugbears, and are desperately trying to put the 'reasons' onto those. Instead of looking at the reality (or realty...) as I did with the figures below.
As ever, the situation is complex, but to say immigration is not a significant factor in the housing crisis is ridiculous.
(And before anyone pipes up, I am not anti-immigration for rather obvious reasons...)
Would "dealing" with immigration solve the housing crisis? No. Getting immigration down to net zero, or even slightly net negative would not deal with the issue of housing. That's why I say it is not a significant factor - you cannot "fix" this issue via immigration based solutions.
No single measure would magically 'deal' with the issue, as it is multi-factorial. But the idea that immigration isn't one of the significant pressures on housing, if not the most significant factor, is ridiculous.
But it's nonsensical to say so. Any factor is an issue. Why not only get families to have one child or ban divorce. Immigration may be a factor but as we realise so acutely right now, it is essential to the functioning of our society.
The issue is that we don't have enough houses. We should build more but, despite the fact that every single election manifesto has included a promise to do so, we don't seem to be able to do this. cf ironically cutting immigration.
But the answer has to be more specific than just build more - build more actually affordable housing where it is needed and for the people who need it and make sure it isn't just sold off to private landlords or investment companies. And that means popping, or deflating, the housing market. And that will be a big big problem. It's a rather awful Catch22 - you can't get young people on the housing ladder (and therefore more willing to embrace Thatcherism) without dealing with the consequences of Thatcherism (stagnating wages made up by treating houses as an ever inflating asset that can be leveraged later in life to make up for all the savings you don't have due to your stagnant wages).
Oh bloody hell it's Fatcha's fault now, is it?
Governments of all stripes, and with plenty of time to do it, have promised more housing (presumably using taxpayers' money) so the only conclusion we can draw is that we don't actually want to do it.
But immigration is neither here nor there wrt the level of or pressure on housebuilding.
Thatcherism is more than just Thatcher - indeed Blair "the heir to Thatcher" and Cameron "the heir to Blair" perpetuated Thatcherism.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
"Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one."
No.
Simply no.
You have got your own political bugbears, and are desperately trying to put the 'reasons' onto those. Instead of looking at the reality (or realty...) as I did with the figures below.
As ever, the situation is complex, but to say immigration is not a significant factor in the housing crisis is ridiculous.
(And before anyone pipes up, I am not anti-immigration for rather obvious reasons...)
Would "dealing" with immigration solve the housing crisis? No. Getting immigration down to net zero, or even slightly net negative would not deal with the issue of housing. That's why I say it is not a significant factor - you cannot "fix" this issue via immigration based solutions.
No single measure would magically 'deal' with the issue, as it is multi-factorial. But the idea that immigration isn't one of the significant pressures on housing, if not the most significant factor, is ridiculous.
But it's nonsensical to say so. Any factor is an issue. Why not only get families to have one child or ban divorce. Immigration may be a factor but as we realise so acutely right now, it is essential to the functioning of our society.
The issue is that we don't have enough houses. We should build more but, despite the fact that every single election manifesto has included a promise to do so, we don't seem to be able to do this. cf ironically cutting immigration.
But the answer has to be more specific than just build more - build more actually affordable housing where it is needed and for the people who need it and make sure it isn't just sold off to private landlords or investment companies. And that means popping, or deflating, the housing market. And that will be a big big problem. It's a rather awful Catch22 - you can't get young people on the housing ladder (and therefore more willing to embrace Thatcherism) without dealing with the consequences of Thatcherism (stagnating wages made up by treating houses as an ever inflating asset that can be leveraged later in life to make up for all the savings you don't have due to your stagnant wages).
Oh bloody hell it's Fatcha's fault now, is it?
Governments of all stripes, and with plenty of time to do it, have promised more housing (presumably using taxpayers' money) so the only conclusion we can draw is that we don't actually want to do it.
But immigration is neither here nor there wrt the level of or pressure on housebuilding.
Thatcherism is more than just Thatcher - indeed Blair "the heir to Thatcher" and Cameron "the heir to Blair" perpetuated Thatcherism.
This is too simplistic to be illuminating. The Blairite constitutional revolution and embrace of mass immigration was not Thatcherism.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I don't think it's the pseudo-Christian culture as much as those with interests in oil and gas spending a lot of money to make people think a net zero world will be doom and gloom when, after the initial investment costs for renewables are put in, the upkeep and running costs for sustainable energy is much cheaper than oil and gas. It doesn't help that, under current law, the energy price is link to the dirtiest production method (so each unit is charged based on the cost of coal) so that renewable energy sees more profit (which was supposed to incentivise companies to go renewable to make more money). What it has done instead is force providers who could undercut the competition and therefore get more customers to charge the same and therefore not give consumers any incentive to go to those energy providers that do more heavily rely on renewable sources.
ie we the consumers.
No - fossil fuel companies that have known about the negative impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere for around 100 years. More CO2 has been emitted since 2008 combined than before 2008 - it is the capitalist mode of production and consumption that is leading to the crisis we are in; it isn't some inevitable externality of progress to have to deal with the negative consequences of CO2. We're already seeing record breaking temperatures and the extreme weather that comes with that - as well as the negative impacts on a whole host of issues that are key to continued societal reproduction. The war in Ukraine hit wheat prices, yes, but so did the droughts in China's and Canada's main wheat producing areas alongside massive flooding in the US's main wheat producing areas - which is also hitting people in the pocket when food prices increase. We cannot argue that we don't have the money to go to Net Zero and even beyond - we don't have the money not to.
The big oil companies and the people they bought - politicians, lobbyists, alternative 'experts' - lied for decades about the climate impact in order to keep the profits flowing.
Was your flight back from Tenerife powered by sugar and spice and all things nice?
I doubt it. Looked like a normal plane to me.
Any other irrelevant questions?
Those beastly oil companies "Big Oil" made you fuck off to Tenerife on your holibobs. Bastards.
My 1st flight for 12 years as it happens. Although even if I were a frequent flier it wouldn't mean that the oil companies didn't systematically lie for decades about the climate impact of their product.
The search for relevance in your comments on this goes on.
Oh. Sozza. So the oil companies told you that there was no climate impact of their product and up until this morning you believed them. And you're a smoker IIRC. I have some bad news for you on that front.
The relevance of my comment is that you spout off bollocks about Big Oil Made Us Do It but you ignore it. Last week you flew to Tenerife and this is post-exposure of the deadly climate impacts of Big Oil.
You hypocritical fucker.
15% of people who fly frequently take 70% of all UK flights, while more than half the UK population don't fly at all in any given year. As always the issue is structural and not really about individual choices. Those frequent fliers tend to be wealthier and tend to fly for pleasure or work for multinational corporations. You're literally doing the comic meme.
Cliches are cliches for a reason. @kini was shouting the odds about beastly Big Oil yet fucked off on holiday using flights that are killing the planet. He says that they lied to us but whether they did or not I would put it in the tobacco companies are lying to us bucket. He was aware of the Big Lie when he booked the tickets.
So put your money where your mouth is. Or rather, don't put your money where your mouth is.
So yes hypocrite is exactly right. Believe there is a climate crisis? Don't fly to Tenerife.
But it's only every 12 years everyone cries. But that is exactly what you criticise when people, analogously say "but the UK is a tiny part of world emissions".
It’s all very well saying Starmer is crap but he’s heading up a party on course to win over a 100 seat majority, so really he’s done everything right and has been the best leader Labour may have ever had, if they win?
Starmer wants to run the next election as a referendum on the Conservatives.
That might get him a very big majority, but it risks being built on sand.
He's relying on the Tories to hand his first re-election to him on a plate too. I don't think that's beyond the Tories, but it sort of indicates that Starmer is not going to be a PM who is the master of his own destiny.
There's something reminiscent of François Hollande about Starmer.
Charisma free politicians like Sir Keir usually become PM by means of a handover (Brown, May, Sunak) rather than having to charm the public (Cameron, Boris). It’s not as if he has any firm policies he’s selling either, just complains about the other lot constantly. I am certain he will struggle during the campaign during interviews and debates. I’ve said that a lot, will be interesting to see if I was right or wrong
How big an outright majority do you think he'll struggle to? Above or below 3 digits?
It looks like he has been gifted a majority by the Tories benching their best player then scoring a couple of own goals, but I’d say below 100, because when the usually uninterested public see lots of him in the campaign they’ll think “I can’t vote for this berk”
Let’s see. The last time the favourite to win the GE was such a wet blanket was 2017, and Theresa May was much shorter in the betting to win a majority, so anything’s possible
We have seen some shocks in recent years, haven't we. But here I really would be - shocked. I think the Lab majority will be 3 digits.
Just thinking, now you're well and truly back on PB we can do a bet if you like to supplement our current one.
We 'cash out' the £300/£100 'Starmer PM post GE' bet at say £250 to me. I think that's slightly in your favour at current prices.
But we don't settle. Instead we do a 'double or quits' on Labour outright majority at the GE.
If it's 100 or above I win £500 If it's below 100 we are Flat
How does that sound?
Sounds like you’ve forgotten that bet is either void or you’ve got it with @rcs1000
Come off it. Why would it be void? It's between me and you.
RCS hasn't agreed to take it. If he does, fine by me, but he hasn't.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
"Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one."
No.
Simply no.
You have got your own political bugbears, and are desperately trying to put the 'reasons' onto those. Instead of looking at the reality (or realty...) as I did with the figures below.
As ever, the situation is complex, but to say immigration is not a significant factor in the housing crisis is ridiculous.
(And before anyone pipes up, I am not anti-immigration for rather obvious reasons...)
Would "dealing" with immigration solve the housing crisis? No. Getting immigration down to net zero, or even slightly net negative would not deal with the issue of housing. That's why I say it is not a significant factor - you cannot "fix" this issue via immigration based solutions.
No single measure would magically 'deal' with the issue, as it is multi-factorial. But the idea that immigration isn't one of the significant pressures on housing, if not the most significant factor, is ridiculous.
But it's nonsensical to say so. Any factor is an issue. Why not only get families to have one child or ban divorce. Immigration may be a factor but as we realise so acutely right now, it is essential to the functioning of our society.
The issue is that we don't have enough houses. We should build more but, despite the fact that every single election manifesto has included a promise to do so, we don't seem to be able to do this. cf ironically cutting immigration.
But the answer has to be more specific than just build more - build more actually affordable housing where it is needed and for the people who need it and make sure it isn't just sold off to private landlords or investment companies. And that means popping, or deflating, the housing market. And that will be a big big problem. It's a rather awful Catch22 - you can't get young people on the housing ladder (and therefore more willing to embrace Thatcherism) without dealing with the consequences of Thatcherism (stagnating wages made up by treating houses as an ever inflating asset that can be leveraged later in life to make up for all the savings you don't have due to your stagnant wages).
Oh bloody hell it's Fatcha's fault now, is it?
Governments of all stripes, and with plenty of time to do it, have promised more housing (presumably using taxpayers' money) so the only conclusion we can draw is that we don't actually want to do it.
But immigration is neither here nor there wrt the level of or pressure on housebuilding.
Thatcherism is more than just Thatcher - indeed Blair "the heir to Thatcher" and Cameron "the heir to Blair" perpetuated Thatcherism.
So you are railing against a political system that the overwhelming majority of your fellow citizens voted for.
Fair enough. I know that you have a particular political philosophy and I respect it, much as I disagree with it. But you should also be aware of the limitations and weaknesses of attempting such a wholesale restructuring of our society which, experience has shown, most people simply don't want.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
"Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one."
No.
Simply no.
You have got your own political bugbears, and are desperately trying to put the 'reasons' onto those. Instead of looking at the reality (or realty...) as I did with the figures below.
As ever, the situation is complex, but to say immigration is not a significant factor in the housing crisis is ridiculous.
(And before anyone pipes up, I am not anti-immigration for rather obvious reasons...)
Would "dealing" with immigration solve the housing crisis? No. Getting immigration down to net zero, or even slightly net negative would not deal with the issue of housing. That's why I say it is not a significant factor - you cannot "fix" this issue via immigration based solutions.
No single measure would magically 'deal' with the issue, as it is multi-factorial. But the idea that immigration isn't one of the significant pressures on housing, if not the most significant factor, is ridiculous.
But it's nonsensical to say so. Any factor is an issue. Why not only get families to have one child or ban divorce. Immigration may be a factor but as we realise so acutely right now, it is essential to the functioning of our society.
The issue is that we don't have enough houses. We should build more but, despite the fact that every single election manifesto has included a promise to do so, we don't seem to be able to do this. cf ironically cutting immigration.
But the answer has to be more specific than just build more - build more actually affordable housing where it is needed and for the people who need it and make sure it isn't just sold off to private landlords or investment companies. And that means popping, or deflating, the housing market. And that will be a big big problem. It's a rather awful Catch22 - you can't get young people on the housing ladder (and therefore more willing to embrace Thatcherism) without dealing with the consequences of Thatcherism (stagnating wages made up by treating houses as an ever inflating asset that can be leveraged later in life to make up for all the savings you don't have due to your stagnant wages).
Oh bloody hell it's Fatcha's fault now, is it?
Governments of all stripes, and with plenty of time to do it, have promised more housing (presumably using taxpayers' money) so the only conclusion we can draw is that we don't actually want to do it.
But immigration is neither here nor there wrt the level of or pressure on housebuilding.
Thatcherism is more than just Thatcher - indeed Blair "the heir to Thatcher" and Cameron "the heir to Blair" perpetuated Thatcherism.
This is too simplistic to be illuminating. The Blairite constitutional revolution and embrace of mass immigration was not Thatcherism.
It’s all very well saying Starmer is crap but he’s heading up a party on course to win over a 100 seat majority, so really he’s done everything right and has been the best leader Labour may have ever had, if they win?
Starmer wants to run the next election as a referendum on the Conservatives.
That might get him a very big majority, but it risks being built on sand.
He's relying on the Tories to hand his first re-election to him on a plate too. I don't think that's beyond the Tories, but it sort of indicates that Starmer is not going to be a PM who is the master of his own destiny.
There's something reminiscent of François Hollande about Starmer.
Charisma free politicians like Sir Keir usually become PM by means of a handover (Brown, May, Sunak) rather than having to charm the public (Cameron, Boris). It’s not as if he has any firm policies he’s selling either, just complains about the other lot constantly. I am certain he will struggle during the campaign during interviews and debates. I’ve said that a lot, will be interesting to see if I was right or wrong
How big an outright majority do you think he'll struggle to? Above or below 3 digits?
It looks like he has been gifted a majority by the Tories benching their best player then scoring a couple of own goals, but I’d say below 100, because when the usually uninterested public see lots of him in the campaign they’ll think “I can’t vote for this berk”
Let’s see. The last time the favourite to win the GE was such a wet blanket was 2017, and Theresa May was much shorter in the betting to win a majority, so anything’s possible
We have seen some shocks in recent years, haven't we. But here I really would be - shocked. I think the Lab majority will be 3 digits.
Just thinking, now you're well and truly back on PB we can do a bet if you like to supplement our current one.
We 'cash out' the £300/£100 'Starmer PM post GE' bet at say £250 to me. I think that's slightly in your favour at current prices.
But we don't settle. Instead we do a 'double or quits' on Labour outright majority at the GE.
If it's 100 or above I win £500 If it's below 100 we are Flat
How does that sound?
Sounds like you’ve forgotten that bet is either void or you’ve got it with @rcs1000
Come off it. Why would it be void? It's between me and you.
RCS hasn't agreed to take it. If he does, fine by me, but he hasn't.
You agreed it was either void or you had it with Robert
In a logistics meeting. UK government giving a 3 month grace period on new paperwork restrictions imposed on 31/1 because if they don't there would be chaos at the border. French authorities giving no such leeway.
Stock up anything that includes non UK meat / dairy. Which is an awful lot of products...
What about non-dairy perishables such as tomatoes, etc.? Or am I missing something?
I could be wrong, but I think this is the first Guardian article to take the whole UFO thing so seriously it actually says Yeah, there may be something here and Yeah, it may be non human intelligence
And if it is - as the article says - what will that do to us? And how will we react to the revelation that - allegedly - we have been lied to for decades?
Are we on the edge of Disclosure or has the guardian simply joined the weird group madness?
Bloke who makes a living writing books about space writes an article in the Guardian wanting readers to get interested in space shocker.
No, it’s bit more than that - in different ways
For a start, the writer is not afraid of making himself look a fool - openly speculating on the possibility of “alien” intelligence
That’s a step change
And all this is part of an overall mood shift, which gathers pace. Members of Congress were given another secret UFO briefing the other day. They did NOT emerge looking more skeptical
So, again, WTF is going on?
We've done this. You will spout your 5 theories, and I will say its the same old same old of some credulous fools being taken in by either a mistaken true believer (Grusch, genuinely coming to the wrong conclusions about what 'recovery of alien craft' means - hint alien might just mean not US) and grifters who have worked out there is money to be made spinning yarns about Project Sign, Grudge, Bluebook, etc etc etc.
Mate. You still believe in the Wet Market just because you find lab leak “upsetting”. The time when you were worth listening to on anything scientific is long gone
You do love to try to wind people up. I'm very happy with my scientific credential, thanks. And I don't find the lab leak theory upsetting - I just haven't seen convincing evidence that confirms it or denies it. There's a big difference.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I don't think it's the pseudo-Christian culture as much as those with interests in oil and gas spending a lot of money to make people think a net zero world will be doom and gloom when, after the initial investment costs for renewables are put in, the upkeep and running costs for sustainable energy is much cheaper than oil and gas. It doesn't help that, under current law, the energy price is link to the dirtiest production method (so each unit is charged based on the cost of coal) so that renewable energy sees more profit (which was supposed to incentivise companies to go renewable to make more money). What it has done instead is force providers who could undercut the competition and therefore get more customers to charge the same and therefore not give consumers any incentive to go to those energy providers that do more heavily rely on renewable sources.
ie we the consumers.
No - fossil fuel companies that have known about the negative impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere for around 100 years. More CO2 has been emitted since 2008 combined than before 2008 - it is the capitalist mode of production and consumption that is leading to the crisis we are in; it isn't some inevitable externality of progress to have to deal with the negative consequences of CO2. We're already seeing record breaking temperatures and the extreme weather that comes with that - as well as the negative impacts on a whole host of issues that are key to continued societal reproduction. The war in Ukraine hit wheat prices, yes, but so did the droughts in China's and Canada's main wheat producing areas alongside massive flooding in the US's main wheat producing areas - which is also hitting people in the pocket when food prices increase. We cannot argue that we don't have the money to go to Net Zero and even beyond - we don't have the money not to.
The big oil companies and the people they bought - politicians, lobbyists, alternative 'experts' - lied for decades about the climate impact in order to keep the profits flowing.
Was your flight back from Tenerife powered by sugar and spice and all things nice?
I doubt it. Looked like a normal plane to me.
Any other irrelevant questions?
Those beastly oil companies "Big Oil" made you fuck off to Tenerife on your holibobs. Bastards.
My 1st flight for 12 years as it happens. Although even if I were a frequent flier it wouldn't mean that the oil companies didn't systematically lie for decades about the climate impact of their product.
The search for relevance in your comments on this goes on.
Oh. Sozza. So the oil companies told you that there was no climate impact of their product and up until this morning you believed them. And you're a smoker IIRC. I have some bad news for you on that front.
The relevance of my comment is that you spout off bollocks about Big Oil Made Us Do It but you ignore it. Last week you flew to Tenerife and this is post-exposure of the deadly climate impacts of Big Oil.
You hypocritical fucker.
15% of people who fly frequently take 70% of all UK flights, while more than half the UK population don't fly at all in any given year. As always the issue is structural and not really about individual choices. Those frequent fliers tend to be wealthier and tend to fly for pleasure or work for multinational corporations. You're literally doing the comic meme.
Cliches are cliches for a reason. @kini was shouting the odds about beastly Big Oil yet fucked off on holiday using flights that are killing the planet. He says that they lied to us but whether they did or not I would put it in the tobacco companies are lying to us bucket. He was aware of the Big Lie when he booked the tickets.
So put your money where your mouth is. Or rather, don't put your money where your mouth is.
So yes hypocrite is exactly right. Believe there is a climate crisis? Don't fly to Tenerife.
But it's only every 12 years everyone cries. But that is exactly what you criticise when people, analogously say "but the UK is a tiny part of world emissions".
A person flying once in a dozen years is not comparable to the argument "the UK is a tiny part of world emissions" because what the UK does is offshore its emissions in other countries and is a huge part of world consumption per capita. You can point the finger at China or India, but the factories powered by fossil fuels are not making products for a primarily domestic consumer base, but a Western one.
The only way to make your individual carbon footprint good is to be wealthy enough to buy carbon credits (which we haven't materially made work yet, so are a lie) or to go hide in a cave. Is flying to Tenerife a luxury, yes, but if we lived in a sensible world it would be a sustainable luxury if only we regulated those who take the most flights and developed methods to offset that.
It's like animal products; there is a whole spectrum between being a vegan and eating the average daily meat of a US citizen. If those who did it the most were willing to reduce, everyone could have a little bit and it still be okay (from an environmental standpoint, ignoring any arguments from animal welfare). But because they predominantly don't, those who advocate for veganism from an environmental perspective have to do be full (pardon the pun) cold turkey on the issue.
Might be best to avoid Yemeni waters for commercial vessels for now tbh.
That means avoiding the Suez Canal. Just not possible.
Every Western navy is on the way there, to make sure the ships have safe passage. That’s why you have a navy in the first place.
And the Hamas-supporters screech about our attacks against Yemen...
(I'm not arguing that our attacks are effective; they may or may not be. Just that the Houthi's actions need to be quashed.)
Countries have a duty to stop genocides - if Yemen believe (like many other nations do) that Israel's actions are tantamount to genocide, they have duty to attempt to blockade Israel and prevent armaments getting in. Blockades seem to be good when the West does it, but not when anyone else does... Of course, the next move would be for a coalition of nations in southern Africa to start monitoring the Cape of Good Hope in a similar way, slowing down shipping even further. I'm sure we'd quickly see the US and UK bombing South Africa. Because this has nothing to do with a "rules based international order" and everything to do with making money and Western interests.
What the Houthis are doing is f-all to do with Israel - it's to do with Iran and Russia's war with the west.
I'm amazed at how easily people on the left back those whose views are utterly counter to leftist, or even socialist, values.
On EVs, power and charging I think the big barrier is this: Most cars spend most of their time parked. Which means that for most users most of the time there is no need to think about charging if you can charge when parked. Which for millions means parked at home as we sleep.
A car that refuels as you sleep is just something people struggle with as they are so used to filling stations...
Fine for those with drives. less good for those who park on the street (currently - I am sure solutions can be found for that). A friend hates his work Tesla for just that reason - he lives in a flat and has to make a specific journey to charge. No overnight charge for him.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I don't think it's the pseudo-Christian culture as much as those with interests in oil and gas spending a lot of money to make people think a net zero world will be doom and gloom when, after the initial investment costs for renewables are put in, the upkeep and running costs for sustainable energy is much cheaper than oil and gas. It doesn't help that, under current law, the energy price is link to the dirtiest production method (so each unit is charged based on the cost of coal) so that renewable energy sees more profit (which was supposed to incentivise companies to go renewable to make more money). What it has done instead is force providers who could undercut the competition and therefore get more customers to charge the same and therefore not give consumers any incentive to go to those energy providers that do more heavily rely on renewable sources.
ie we the consumers.
No - fossil fuel companies that have known about the negative impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere for around 100 years. More CO2 has been emitted since 2008 combined than before 2008 - it is the capitalist mode of production and consumption that is leading to the crisis we are in; it isn't some inevitable externality of progress to have to deal with the negative consequences of CO2. We're already seeing record breaking temperatures and the extreme weather that comes with that - as well as the negative impacts on a whole host of issues that are key to continued societal reproduction. The war in Ukraine hit wheat prices, yes, but so did the droughts in China's and Canada's main wheat producing areas alongside massive flooding in the US's main wheat producing areas - which is also hitting people in the pocket when food prices increase. We cannot argue that we don't have the money to go to Net Zero and even beyond - we don't have the money not to.
The big oil companies and the people they bought - politicians, lobbyists, alternative 'experts' - lied for decades about the climate impact in order to keep the profits flowing.
Was your flight back from Tenerife powered by sugar and spice and all things nice?
I doubt it. Looked like a normal plane to me.
Any other irrelevant questions?
Those beastly oil companies "Big Oil" made you fuck off to Tenerife on your holibobs. Bastards.
My 1st flight for 12 years as it happens. Although even if I were a frequent flier it wouldn't mean that the oil companies didn't systematically lie for decades about the climate impact of their product.
The search for relevance in your comments on this goes on.
Oh. Sozza. So the oil companies told you that there was no climate impact of their product and up until this morning you believed them. And you're a smoker IIRC. I have some bad news for you on that front.
The relevance of my comment is that you spout off bollocks about Big Oil Made Us Do It but you ignore it. Last week you flew to Tenerife and this is post-exposure of the deadly climate impacts of Big Oil.
You hypocritical fucker.
15% of people who fly frequently take 70% of all UK flights, while more than half the UK population don't fly at all in any given year. As always the issue is structural and not really about individual choices. Those frequent fliers tend to be wealthier and tend to fly for pleasure or work for multinational corporations. You're literally doing the comic meme.
Cliches are cliches for a reason. @kini was shouting the odds about beastly Big Oil yet fucked off on holiday using flights that are killing the planet. He says that they lied to us but whether they did or not I would put it in the tobacco companies are lying to us bucket. He was aware of the Big Lie when he booked the tickets.
So put your money where your mouth is. Or rather, don't put your money where your mouth is.
So yes hypocrite is exactly right. Believe there is a climate crisis? Don't fly to Tenerife.
But it's only every 12 years everyone cries. But that is exactly what you criticise when people, analogously say "but the UK is a tiny part of world emissions".
A person flying once in a dozen years is not comparable to the argument "the UK is a tiny part of world emissions"
It is exactly analogous. The excuse is it's only once what harm does it do in the greater scheme of things. The analogous excuse is it's only the UK which accounts for X.XX% of global emissions.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one. It's the increasing commodification of the housing market - that a house is now a person's pension plan rather than an actual decent pension plan topped up with savings. It's the increasing rent that landlords put on properties which they'd rather leave empty then fill at lower costs. It's the failure of housing associations and the inability for councils to actually force affordable housing to be built (and the ridiculous definition of "affordable" meaning 80% of average house prices in a given area). Do we need more houses, yes, but if we suddenly had a glut of supply that still wouldn't lower the prices because if it did the economy would be fucked because most peoples' wealth is entirely based on the inflated housing market. Like negative equity would screw with 10,000s of families, and prices falling would hurt pensioners (and their children) who planned to leverage their housing to pay for care, or to be sold after death to mean their kids get anything. Even with less immigration we would still have all of the above issues.
"Immigration is a factor, but not a significant one."
No.
Simply no.
You have got your own political bugbears, and are desperately trying to put the 'reasons' onto those. Instead of looking at the reality (or realty...) as I did with the figures below.
As ever, the situation is complex, but to say immigration is not a significant factor in the housing crisis is ridiculous.
(And before anyone pipes up, I am not anti-immigration for rather obvious reasons...)
Would "dealing" with immigration solve the housing crisis? No. Getting immigration down to net zero, or even slightly net negative would not deal with the issue of housing. That's why I say it is not a significant factor - you cannot "fix" this issue via immigration based solutions.
No single measure would magically 'deal' with the issue, as it is multi-factorial. But the idea that immigration isn't one of the significant pressures on housing, if not the most significant factor, is ridiculous.
But it's nonsensical to say so. Any factor is an issue. Why not only get families to have one child or ban divorce. Immigration may be a factor but as we realise so acutely right now, it is essential to the functioning of our society.
The issue is that we don't have enough houses. We should build more but, despite the fact that every single election manifesto has included a promise to do so, we don't seem to be able to do this. cf ironically cutting immigration.
But the answer has to be more specific than just build more - build more actually affordable housing where it is needed and for the people who need it and make sure it isn't just sold off to private landlords or investment companies. And that means popping, or deflating, the housing market. And that will be a big big problem. It's a rather awful Catch22 - you can't get young people on the housing ladder (and therefore more willing to embrace Thatcherism) without dealing with the consequences of Thatcherism (stagnating wages made up by treating houses as an ever inflating asset that can be leveraged later in life to make up for all the savings you don't have due to your stagnant wages).
Oh bloody hell it's Fatcha's fault now, is it?
Governments of all stripes, and with plenty of time to do it, have promised more housing (presumably using taxpayers' money) so the only conclusion we can draw is that we don't actually want to do it.
But immigration is neither here nor there wrt the level of or pressure on housebuilding.
Thatcherism is more than just Thatcher - indeed Blair "the heir to Thatcher" and Cameron "the heir to Blair" perpetuated Thatcherism.
This is too simplistic to be illuminating. The Blairite constitutional revolution and embrace of mass immigration was not Thatcherism.
The housing policy pretty well was, though.
Except that Thatcher/Lawson/Major allowed the housing market to correct after it overheated, whereas Blair/Brown/Cameron/Osborne kept on propping it up however they could.
The YOPers at CCHQ have got hold of photoshop again...
Thats ok. Their next poster is him jailing sub-postmasters. The one after that is him opening the door to a girls hospital ward for Jimmy Saville. The one after that is him letting the bat out of the Wuhan lab...
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I don't think it's the pseudo-Christian culture as much as those with interests in oil and gas spending a lot of money to make people think a net zero world will be doom and gloom when, after the initial investment costs for renewables are put in, the upkeep and running costs for sustainable energy is much cheaper than oil and gas. It doesn't help that, under current law, the energy price is link to the dirtiest production method (so each unit is charged based on the cost of coal) so that renewable energy sees more profit (which was supposed to incentivise companies to go renewable to make more money). What it has done instead is force providers who could undercut the competition and therefore get more customers to charge the same and therefore not give consumers any incentive to go to those energy providers that do more heavily rely on renewable sources.
ie we the consumers.
No - fossil fuel companies that have known about the negative impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere for around 100 years. More CO2 has been emitted since 2008 combined than before 2008 - it is the capitalist mode of production and consumption that is leading to the crisis we are in; it isn't some inevitable externality of progress to have to deal with the negative consequences of CO2. We're already seeing record breaking temperatures and the extreme weather that comes with that - as well as the negative impacts on a whole host of issues that are key to continued societal reproduction. The war in Ukraine hit wheat prices, yes, but so did the droughts in China's and Canada's main wheat producing areas alongside massive flooding in the US's main wheat producing areas - which is also hitting people in the pocket when food prices increase. We cannot argue that we don't have the money to go to Net Zero and even beyond - we don't have the money not to.
The big oil companies and the people they bought - politicians, lobbyists, alternative 'experts' - lied for decades about the climate impact in order to keep the profits flowing.
Was your flight back from Tenerife powered by sugar and spice and all things nice?
I doubt it. Looked like a normal plane to me.
Any other irrelevant questions?
Those beastly oil companies "Big Oil" made you fuck off to Tenerife on your holibobs. Bastards.
My 1st flight for 12 years as it happens. Although even if I were a frequent flier it wouldn't mean that the oil companies didn't systematically lie for decades about the climate impact of their product.
The search for relevance in your comments on this goes on.
Oh. Sozza. So the oil companies told you that there was no climate impact of their product and up until this morning you believed them. And you're a smoker IIRC. I have some bad news for you on that front.
The relevance of my comment is that you spout off bollocks about Big Oil Made Us Do It but you ignore it. Last week you flew to Tenerife and this is post-exposure of the deadly climate impacts of Big Oil.
You hypocritical fucker.
I merely pointed out that the oil companies lied for decades about the climate impact of their product. Surprised such a bland recital of historical fact should get you in such a tizz. Maybe you need a holiday. If so I can definitely recommend Tenerife. Lovely it was.
On the US elections, a Trump-Haley ticket might be Biden's worst nightmare.
It might be but I suspect it won't happen as Haley would infuriate much of the base (there is a good chance Haley would become President in the next few years) and his comments about her would be easy fodder for the Democrats to use. If he wants a female VP pick, then probably Joni Ernst or (probably more maybe) Elise Stefanik.
The YOPers at CCHQ have got hold of photoshop again...
Thats ok. Their next poster is him jailing sub-postmasters. The one after that is him opening the door to a girls hospital ward for Jimmy Saville. The one after that is him letting the bat out of the Wuhan lab...
Black Death? Starmer that one too. I don't know he gets away with it. Not to mention he had a korma once. At least go for a tikka masala even if you can't handle a phal or vindaloo.
I'm sure this has been mentioned given the numerous reporting of Trump's court cases on here but, just in case it hasn't, the Georgia case looks to be imploding in spectacular fashion as Fani Willis has refused to deny she had an affair with her prosecutor on the Trump case.
Might be best to avoid Yemeni waters for commercial vessels for now tbh.
That means avoiding the Suez Canal. Just not possible.
Every Western navy is on the way there, to make sure the ships have safe passage. That’s why you have a navy in the first place.
And the Hamas-supporters screech about our attacks against Yemen...
(I'm not arguing that our attacks are effective; they may or may not be. Just that the Houthi's actions need to be quashed.)
Countries have a duty to stop genocides - if Yemen believe (like many other nations do) that Israel's actions are tantamount to genocide, they have duty to attempt to blockade Israel and prevent armaments getting in. Blockades seem to be good when the West does it, but not when anyone else does... Of course, the next move would be for a coalition of nations in southern Africa to start monitoring the Cape of Good Hope in a similar way, slowing down shipping even further. I'm sure we'd quickly see the US and UK bombing South Africa. Because this has nothing to do with a "rules based international order" and everything to do with making money and Western interests.
What the Houthis are doing is f-all to do with Israel - it's to do with Iran and Russia's war with the west.
I'm amazed at how easily people on the left back those whose views are utterly counter to leftist, or even socialist, values.
The Houthis are, indeed, mostly bad. Mostly bad actors can sometimes do good things for good reasons; just as mostly good actors can sometimes do bad things for bad reasons. Maybe the Houthis are doing a good thing for a bad reason - I can't read the mind of a collection of people half the world away, only read the public statements they make.
The YOPers at CCHQ have got hold of photoshop again...
Thats ok. Their next poster is him jailing sub-postmasters. The one after that is him opening the door to a girls hospital ward for Jimmy Saville. The one after that is him letting the bat out of the Wuhan lab...
On the US elections, a Trump-Haley ticket might be Biden's worst nightmare.
It might be but I suspect it won't happen as Haley would infuriate much of the base (there is a good chance Haley would become President in the next few years) and his comments about her would be easy fodder for the Democrats to use. If he wants a female VP pick, then probably Joni Ernst or (probably more maybe) Elise Stefanik.
Trump will not pick Haley, and I doubt Haley would accept. And I don't think it will be either of those - I think it will be Arizonas failed governor candidate for the GOP Kari Lake.
I don't agree with this lazy assumption that this means SKS is guaranteed "at least" a decade in office; the same was being said about Boris in early 2020 and look what's happened/happening to Jacinda, Biden, Scholz and Hollande, and even Albanese. Left/centre-left governments can go off the boil in the West at the moment quickly.
I'd say Starmer has between 18-36 months before he gets into trouble. I've seen no evidence of this secret strategic thinking to solve all our problems. I have seen him stay pretty quiet and react through triangulation to where public opinion is moving, with a bit of quiet management competence behind it. The most likely way he performs in office is to deliver just that which isnt that different to Rishi.
The only thing that could save him clearly for a second term is if the Conservatives completely and totally self-destruct in opposition, which they are absolutely capable of doing.
This is bang on in my view. As you say, wind back to early 2020 and our current situation was inconceivable.
In my view, what happens hangs on your 'secret strategic thinking' point. If he pulls something (even quite modest) out of the hat to make the country feel more positive and less poor, I think he'll be safe for a decade.
But if he doesn't change much, I agree with you.
Though its not just the leader. The team around him will come in with energy and ideas which may prove a welcome contrast to the dregs of a long Tory administration that currently seems bereft of either.
Admittedly, depending on your politics the ideas and energy might be a turn off, but my point is that even if Starmer is a mirror of Sunak, the government will probably feel quite different.
I remain hopeful that Starmer has a very well camouflaged rabbit hiding in a hat we haven't noticed yet, but freely admit that I don't have much evidence for this view.
I think the big thing is investment.
The Tories really don't seem to get this - in infrastructure, education or defence - and they have expanded the state to suite their client base, so confusing a form of social democracy with a desire for tax cuts at all costs, which is illogical and out of date.
Starmer needs to be investing £80-100bn a year (not £28bn) and in a mix of infrastructure, education, housing and defence with taxation, including some modest wealth taxes, if required to pay for it.
I've laid out a Tory approach to deliver this in the past, which is based on reigning in the triple lock, and bringing in some social insurance contributions for healthcare to fund it, but tbf their current voting coalition would probably totally collapse if they tried it.
Again, agree almost entirely. I'd add green infrastructure (with the caveat of the danger of trying to pick winners, it is clearly going to be a growth area. Encouraging more innovation along the lines of Octopus energy's use of smart meters to smooth demand curves would be sensible - we are now exporting this globally). I'd probably remove defence from your list; whilst vital for strategic reasons it doesn't really feel like investment in the same way education, housing, infrastructure does.
Thanks. Investment in defence is necessary to protect and secure everything else, including our economy and way of life.
We've got to move on from thinking we can just have it on the cheap, hiding under the skirts of the US, with our fingers in our ears.
Sadly, the world has changed.
The reliance on the US is not just military. What percentage of UK household and pension assets are directly held in the US? What percentage is indirectly reliant on US asset valuations and global hegemony?
Whilst things have been bad for a while now, there is certainly scope for them getting much worse, fairly quickly in the event of a Trump win.
The US pins up the whole West. If it goes, we go, and then it's everyone in the West for themselves, each of whom will very quickly make their peace with Russia and China and ask them to name their price.
That price will be very heavy.
Indeed, which is why I believe we need to build an alternate pillar to the US with our friends and allies in Europe. Maybe some sort of united states of Europe.
No, we need a much stronger Western defensive alliance where everyone pulls their weight - not a political union, which is unnecessary.
Yes to a defensive alliance, but it’s not just about military spending. It’s about economic hegemony, which requires a significant free trade zone with common regulation, which requires some sort of transnational political arrangement.
I don't buy that. It's not necessary for Canada, Australia or New Zealand and, to the extent it is true, its delivered through the WTO, World Bank, IMF and other international treaties.
The European Union goes way beyond - beyond what's "needed" - because its driven by an idealistic and cultural vision of a fully united Europe, which is viewed to be a brilliant dream for its own sake.
I don't say there isn't a market for that. But I do say it's very far from essential for our security.
Canada, Australia and New Zealand are not pinning up the whole West. They are enjoying the benefits of a West being pinned up by the US. If one wants an alternative to the US (a federal system with an integrated economy and common currency) as that linchpin, then loose alliances aren't going to deliver it.
I don't want an alternative to the US. I want the West to arm and ally.
You introduced the topic by talking about how the "US pins up the whole West". Do you think the West is viable without that pin? If we don't have the US, is a looser "arm and ally" strategy going to be to uphold the West in the same way?
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is the reason we have a housing crisis. (Denying this is like saying the earth is flat imo).
Immigration is not the reason we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis because a) we don't build government subsidised housing in the form of council houses any more b) home ownership became the main method of accruing wealth into old age in an economy where wages stayed stagnant c) housing developers have their profits ringfenced by statutory regulation, meaning they can put forward a proposal and get approval based on one set of costings, then say something unexpected happened in the market and so all the 2 beds or one bed flats they promised now have to become 3, 4 and 5 bed houses or luxury apartments and d) because more and more properties are gobbled up by people to rent out and increasing rents on some properties whilst leaving others empty is as profitable as trying to get a tenant in even if you have to lower the rent.
We need to build real affordable housing, preferably publicly owned so that they are allowed to make a loss for some time, and reform of landlording. We should look into tax incentives against owning second, third and fourth properties that you only use in the summer, or spring, or to rent out. We should look into sustainable housing, retirement villages that are designed for use primarily by the elderly, and making sure when new communities are built the infrastructure will be funded to match. Since the coalition made infrastructure spending linked to allowing development, meaning that you cannot get a new doctor or school unless you already accept private development, you have seen services become worse and people increasingly using those worse services and infrastructure as the reason they don't want an influx of more people in the area via development or immigration.
Immigration barely scratches the surface on this issue - if people come here on work visas they're renting the same overpriced flats as the rest of us, and if not they're being crammed into people's sheds 30 at a time so slum landlords can make fat cash. They're as much a victim of this as the younger generation.
Is the country's population increasing? How much of this increase is down to immigration?
I fear you are ignoring the obvious.
There are other pressures on housing that means that even a stable population would require more homes to be built: for instance, fewer people in each home over time (AIUI), or old housing stock being replaced; but blaming second home owners when the obvious issue is immigration is ridiculous.
If you think immigration hasn't put pressure on housing, I might suggest you visit my town. Now, the immigrants in my town are generally nice people (especially the Turks and Poles...), but the idea that immigration has no effect is stupid.
If total net migration to the UK is 300,000, and the average family has three people in a house, then that is 100,000 houses having to be built each year. That's a half to a third of all the new houses in the UK.
Housing crisis is significantly down to immigration. But without immigration we would have other different crises. The answer, of course, is to plan for immigration and build appropriate amounts, of not just housing, but also wider infrastructure.
And though I'm hesitant to say it, the 'right' sort of immigration. Allow people in with skills we need, and not just anyone who pays people smugglers to get in.
The number of people let in based on their skills has been much, much higher than the number of people getting in via people smugglers in every year since WWII.
I missed all the chat about date of next general election and heard Rishi about when the next likely date is.
THAT SAID.
With the Cons looking like they are going to get a shellacking to end all shellackings, why on earth wouldn't they wait until the last possible moment and go for 2025. At the margin things may get worse but as far as the current govt is concerned who cares. Losing a few more seats is neither here nor there if you are facing a huge defeat. Meanwhile Rishi is PM and is trying to build his legacy where duration is a key factor.
Rishi (1yr, 82 days) is currently nestled under the Duke of Grafton in 48th place. He can bump that up 10 places by waiting for another 375 days or so.
2025 next GE is currently 26s (bf) and I have had a modest stake to this end.
Tory 2019 voters are dying at a 4:1 ratio vs Labour voters. Thats about another 200k vote swing to Labour for waiting a full year.
What an idiotic post. According to this logic a 20yr old Labour voter will remain voting Labour until they die at 90yrs old. At some point that Lab voter (by your own logic) will become a Cons voter. So for every Cons voter that rolls off this mortal coil, a new one will emerge, blinking into the sunlight out of their cocoon of voting Lab.
You say "idiotic", but John Burn-Murdoch, who is by no means an idiot and almost certainly smarter than you or me, says this is broadly what is happening:
Similar patterns are evident in Britain, where millennials are more economically leftwing than Gen-Xers and boomers were at the same age, and Brexit has alienated a higher share of former Tory backers among this generation than any other. Even before Truss, two-thirds of millennials who had backed the Conservatives before the EU referendum were no longer planning to vote for the party again, and one in four said they now strongly disliked the Tories.
The data is clear that millennials are not simply going to age into conservatism. To reverse a cohort effect, you have to do something for that cohort. Home ownership continues to prove more elusive for millennials than for earlier generations at the same age in both countries. With houses increasingly difficult to afford, a good place to start would be to help more millennials get on to the housing ladder. Serious proposals for reforming two of the world’s most expensive childcare systems would be another.
I think they're turning but the national average baseline is simply 10 points off where it needs to be.
So imagine the Conservative black line moves shift down 10 points to the left and you're there.
Not sure I really understand your point. The "Conservative black line" is where it is because that is the average Conservative vote. If you shift the line down 10 points, that's a world in which the Conservatives are doing much worse in elections.
The point indicated by that graph is that Millennials hitting 40 (terrifying in itself that many Millennials are in their 40s but still) are not only less Conservative inclined than other generations were at that age, but are also less Conservative inclined than their own generation was at the age of about 20.
that Millennials hitting 40 (terrifying in itself that many Millennials are in their 40s but still
Millennial is often used as a synonym for young person. Whilst it was true once, it's not really now and will be increasingly wrong in the future. (Sauce myself, a 1981 baby)
Mortgage, (or whole house rental) & kids age. Gen Z is 'da yoof'.
Are you technically a Millennial if you were born in 1981? I know these things are fuzzy at the edges, but the definition of the start of the Millennial generation is pretty clear - hit 18 during or after 2000. Which you didn't. You're (late) Gen X.
Nah, Gen Xers had more fun in the 90s tbh.
I’m a Boomer and I had a ton of fun in the 1990s. Also in the 2010s
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I don't think it's the pseudo-Christian culture as much as those with interests in oil and gas spending a lot of money to make people think a net zero world will be doom and gloom when, after the initial investment costs for renewables are put in, the upkeep and running costs for sustainable energy is much cheaper than oil and gas. It doesn't help that, under current law, the energy price is link to the dirtiest production method (so each unit is charged based on the cost of coal) so that renewable energy sees more profit (which was supposed to incentivise companies to go renewable to make more money). What it has done instead is force providers who could undercut the competition and therefore get more customers to charge the same and therefore not give consumers any incentive to go to those energy providers that do more heavily rely on renewable sources.
ie we the consumers.
No - fossil fuel companies that have known about the negative impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere for around 100 years. More CO2 has been emitted since 2008 combined than before 2008 - it is the capitalist mode of production and consumption that is leading to the crisis we are in; it isn't some inevitable externality of progress to have to deal with the negative consequences of CO2. We're already seeing record breaking temperatures and the extreme weather that comes with that - as well as the negative impacts on a whole host of issues that are key to continued societal reproduction. The war in Ukraine hit wheat prices, yes, but so did the droughts in China's and Canada's main wheat producing areas alongside massive flooding in the US's main wheat producing areas - which is also hitting people in the pocket when food prices increase. We cannot argue that we don't have the money to go to Net Zero and even beyond - we don't have the money not to.
The big oil companies and the people they bought - politicians, lobbyists, alternative 'experts' - lied for decades about the climate impact in order to keep the profits flowing.
Was your flight back from Tenerife powered by sugar and spice and all things nice?
I doubt it. Looked like a normal plane to me.
Any other irrelevant questions?
Those beastly oil companies "Big Oil" made you fuck off to Tenerife on your holibobs. Bastards.
My 1st flight for 12 years as it happens. Although even if I were a frequent flier it wouldn't mean that the oil companies didn't systematically lie for decades about the climate impact of their product.
The search for relevance in your comments on this goes on.
Oh. Sozza. So the oil companies told you that there was no climate impact of their product and up until this morning you believed them. And you're a smoker IIRC. I have some bad news for you on that front.
The relevance of my comment is that you spout off bollocks about Big Oil Made Us Do It but you ignore it. Last week you flew to Tenerife and this is post-exposure of the deadly climate impacts of Big Oil.
You hypocritical fucker.
15% of people who fly frequently take 70% of all UK flights, while more than half the UK population don't fly at all in any given year. As always the issue is structural and not really about individual choices. Those frequent fliers tend to be wealthier and tend to fly for pleasure or work for multinational corporations. You're literally doing the comic meme.
Cliches are cliches for a reason. @kini was shouting the odds about beastly Big Oil yet fucked off on holiday using flights that are killing the planet. He says that they lied to us but whether they did or not I would put it in the tobacco companies are lying to us bucket. He was aware of the Big Lie when he booked the tickets.
So put your money where your mouth is. Or rather, don't put your money where your mouth is.
So yes hypocrite is exactly right. Believe there is a climate crisis? Don't fly to Tenerife.
But it's only every 12 years everyone cries. But that is exactly what you criticise when people, analogously say "but the UK is a tiny part of world emissions".
A person flying once in a dozen years is not comparable to the argument "the UK is a tiny part of world emissions"
It is exactly analogous. The excuse is it's only once what harm does it do in the greater scheme of things. The analogous excuse is it's only the UK which accounts for X.XX% of global emissions.
Actually, if CO2 emissions were a "once in a while" thing, it would be fine. That they are not is the major problem. That they are not is, mostly, due to the consumption of the West. If every person on the planet Earth lived like the average person in the UK you would need the resources of more than 3 Earths; if every person on the planet Earth lived like the average person in China or India that hovers around 1 Earths worth of resources. This is massively off kilter not only because the average persons consumption is much greater in the UK (and the West in general) but also because of the acceptance of lifestyles of extreme consumption beyond normal persons ken. Again, CO2 emissions in China and India, for example, are mainly for the benefit of consumption that takes place outside of their own countries - due to colonial and post colonial organisations of economies, offshoring and the ever hungry profit motive that needs to see infinite growth to be considered successful. It doesn't matter if we no longer emit the CO2 from factories within our borders if our populace is still incentivised and prioritised when it comes to consuming the goods that come from those emissions.
The Tories seem to be obsessed with 1) immigration and small boats 2) tax cuts and 3) rolling back on net zero
I’ve not seen anything that remotely suggests they get what’s going on in the country at the moment. Stopping the boats won’t impact the person desperately struggling with the cost of living crisis. Tax cuts won’t help with the utterly poor state of public services at the moment. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that environmental policies aren’t popular with the electorate.
So what are they talking about? Idiots like Frost harping on about what needs to be done should be a massive alarm bell for the party
Immigration is an issue, to be fair. I'm not sure rolling back Net Zero is especially popular.
People do want cost of living addressed and best way is through low interest rates, inflation and higher growth.
Don’t call it “rolling back Net Zero”, call it “Rolling back the escalator on your electricity bills that have been running miles above inflation for more than a decade”.
“The costs of Net Zero ambitions, especially on the working classes” is almost certainly going to be a key issue at the election. Expect Labour to do something for those on benefits, but nothing to those just above, making that latter group even poorer as a result.
Here's the thing: it saves you money.
I challenge the propaganda (on vegan stuff and heat pumps) but solar panels basically give you free power and you're in profit after you've repaid the capital cost in 8-10 years.
Also, free fuel for your electric car too.
We are wired to talk about doom and sacrifice with Net Zero. And people can't seem to help themselves, probably because that's what is valued in our pseudo-Christian culture.
It's such BS. We'd move much faster if we leveraged hope and self-interest.
I don't think it's the pseudo-Christian culture as much as those with interests in oil and gas spending a lot of money to make people think a net zero world will be doom and gloom when, after the initial investment costs for renewables are put in, the upkeep and running costs for sustainable energy is much cheaper than oil and gas. It doesn't help that, under current law, the energy price is link to the dirtiest production method (so each unit is charged based on the cost of coal) so that renewable energy sees more profit (which was supposed to incentivise companies to go renewable to make more money). What it has done instead is force providers who could undercut the competition and therefore get more customers to charge the same and therefore not give consumers any incentive to go to those energy providers that do more heavily rely on renewable sources.
ie we the consumers.
No - fossil fuel companies that have known about the negative impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere for around 100 years. More CO2 has been emitted since 2008 combined than before 2008 - it is the capitalist mode of production and consumption that is leading to the crisis we are in; it isn't some inevitable externality of progress to have to deal with the negative consequences of CO2. We're already seeing record breaking temperatures and the extreme weather that comes with that - as well as the negative impacts on a whole host of issues that are key to continued societal reproduction. The war in Ukraine hit wheat prices, yes, but so did the droughts in China's and Canada's main wheat producing areas alongside massive flooding in the US's main wheat producing areas - which is also hitting people in the pocket when food prices increase. We cannot argue that we don't have the money to go to Net Zero and even beyond - we don't have the money not to.
The big oil companies and the people they bought - politicians, lobbyists, alternative 'experts' - lied for decades about the climate impact in order to keep the profits flowing.
Was your flight back from Tenerife powered by sugar and spice and all things nice?
I doubt it. Looked like a normal plane to me.
Any other irrelevant questions?
Those beastly oil companies "Big Oil" made you fuck off to Tenerife on your holibobs. Bastards.
My 1st flight for 12 years as it happens. Although even if I were a frequent flier it wouldn't mean that the oil companies didn't systematically lie for decades about the climate impact of their product.
The search for relevance in your comments on this goes on.
Oh. Sozza. So the oil companies told you that there was no climate impact of their product and up until this morning you believed them. And you're a smoker IIRC. I have some bad news for you on that front.
The relevance of my comment is that you spout off bollocks about Big Oil Made Us Do It but you ignore it. Last week you flew to Tenerife and this is post-exposure of the deadly climate impacts of Big Oil.
You hypocritical fucker.
I merely pointed out that the oil companies lied for decades about the climate impact of their product. Surprised such a bland recital of historical fact should get you in such a tizz. Maybe you need a holiday. If so I can definitely recommend Tenerife. Lovely it was.
Might be best to avoid Yemeni waters for commercial vessels for now tbh.
That means avoiding the Suez Canal. Just not possible.
Every Western navy is on the way there, to make sure the ships have safe passage. That’s why you have a navy in the first place.
And the Hamas-supporters screech about our attacks against Yemen...
(I'm not arguing that our attacks are effective; they may or may not be. Just that the Houthi's actions need to be quashed.)
Countries have a duty to stop genocides - if Yemen believe (like many other nations do) that Israel's actions are tantamount to genocide, they have duty to attempt to blockade Israel and prevent armaments getting in. Blockades seem to be good when the West does it, but not when anyone else does... Of course, the next move would be for a coalition of nations in southern Africa to start monitoring the Cape of Good Hope in a similar way, slowing down shipping even further. I'm sure we'd quickly see the US and UK bombing South Africa. Because this has nothing to do with a "rules based international order" and everything to do with making money and Western interests.
What the Houthis are doing is f-all to do with Israel - it's to do with Iran and Russia's war with the west.
I'm amazed at how easily people on the left back those whose views are utterly counter to leftist, or even socialist, values.
The Houthis are, indeed, mostly bad. Mostly bad actors can sometimes do good things for good reasons; just as mostly good actors can sometimes do bad things for bad reasons. Maybe the Houthis are doing a good thing for a bad reason - I can't read the mind of a collection of people half the world away, only read the public statements they make.
If you're saying firing missiles at civilian ships is a 'good thing' then you've disappeared down a moral black hole.
Might be best to avoid Yemeni waters for commercial vessels for now tbh.
That means avoiding the Suez Canal. Just not possible.
Every Western navy is on the way there, to make sure the ships have safe passage. That’s why you have a navy in the first place.
And the Hamas-supporters screech about our attacks against Yemen...
(I'm not arguing that our attacks are effective; they may or may not be. Just that the Houthi's actions need to be quashed.)
Countries have a duty to stop genocides - if Yemen believe (like many other nations do) that Israel's actions are tantamount to genocide, they have duty to attempt to blockade Israel and prevent armaments getting in. Blockades seem to be good when the West does it, but not when anyone else does... Of course, the next move would be for a coalition of nations in southern Africa to start monitoring the Cape of Good Hope in a similar way, slowing down shipping even further. I'm sure we'd quickly see the US and UK bombing South Africa. Because this has nothing to do with a "rules based international order" and everything to do with making money and Western interests.
I don't know what the Houthis believes they are doing, but they are attacking ships that aren't going to/from Israel. Their actions are not a blockade of Israel, or if they are, they are a very incompetent and ineffective blockade of Israel.
In this area, I have been seeing a partial solution to the charging problem for electric cars that might -- I repeat might, since I don't know enough about Britain to be sure -- be a partial solution you can use, too. A large regional chain, selling mostly food, but a little bit of almost everything else, Fred Meyer, is installing charging stations in its parking lots. Here's an example, near me: https://chargehub.com/en/stations/wa/bellevue/fred-meyer-023-bellevue.html?locId=36451 (Seattle is just off the map, to the west.)
They have had these stations for several years now, and jsut recently added Tesla charging stations to the one I visit, from time to time.
It’s all very well saying Starmer is crap but he’s heading up a party on course to win over a 100 seat majority, so really he’s done everything right and has been the best leader Labour may have ever had, if they win?
Starmer wants to run the next election as a referendum on the Conservatives.
That might get him a very big majority, but it risks being built on sand.
He's relying on the Tories to hand his first re-election to him on a plate too. I don't think that's beyond the Tories, but it sort of indicates that Starmer is not going to be a PM who is the master of his own destiny.
There's something reminiscent of François Hollande about Starmer.
Charisma free politicians like Sir Keir usually become PM by means of a handover (Brown, May, Sunak) rather than having to charm the public (Cameron, Boris). It’s not as if he has any firm policies he’s selling either, just complains about the other lot constantly. I am certain he will struggle during the campaign during interviews and debates. I’ve said that a lot, will be interesting to see if I was right or wrong
How big an outright majority do you think he'll struggle to? Above or below 3 digits?
It looks like he has been gifted a majority by the Tories benching their best player then scoring a couple of own goals, but I’d say below 100, because when the usually uninterested public see lots of him in the campaign they’ll think “I can’t vote for this berk”
Let’s see. The last time the favourite to win the GE was such a wet blanket was 2017, and Theresa May was much shorter in the betting to win a majority, so anything’s possible
We have seen some shocks in recent years, haven't we. But here I really would be - shocked. I think the Lab majority will be 3 digits.
Just thinking, now you're well and truly back on PB we can do a bet if you like to supplement our current one.
We 'cash out' the £300/£100 'Starmer PM post GE' bet at say £250 to me. I think that's slightly in your favour at current prices.
But we don't settle. Instead we do a 'double or quits' on Labour outright majority at the GE.
If it's 100 or above I win £500 If it's below 100 we are Flat
How does that sound?
Sounds like you’ve forgotten that bet is either void or you’ve got it with @rcs1000
Come off it. Why would it be void? It's between me and you.
RCS hasn't agreed to take it. If he does, fine by me, but he hasn't.
You agreed it was either void or you had it with Robert
RCS never replied to that 'netting' proposition of yours. It was left unresolved. If he is happy to take it then fine, but he hasn't said so. So I'm assuming he isn't.
£100 at 3/1 Starmer to be PM after the GE. That's our bet.
Let no man lower you so low as to hate him - Martin Luther King, Jr
Plenty of stuff - and guff - in media this MLK Day re: tonight's Iowa Republican precinct caucuses; best wait for tonight's results & etc.
In the meantime . . .
New York Times ($) - In Race to Replace George Santos, Financial Questions Re-emerge Mazi Pilip, the Republican candidate running in New York’s Third District, drew scrutiny after her initial financial disclosure was missing required information.
The Republican nominee in a special House election to replace George Santos in New York provided a hazy glimpse into her personal finances this week, submitting a sworn financial statement to Congress that prompted questions and led her to amend the filing.
The little-known candidate, Mazi Pilip, reported between $1 million and $5.2 million in assets, largely comprising her husband’s medical practice and Bitcoin investments. In an unusual disclosure, she said the couple owed and later repaid as much as $250,000 to the I.R.S. last year.
But the initial financial report Ms. Pilip filed with the House Ethics Committee on Wednesday appeared to be missing other important required information, including whether the assets were owned solely by herself or her husband, Dr. Adalbert Pilip, or whether they were owned jointly.
And despite making past statements that she stopped working there in 2021 when she ran for the Nassau County Legislature, Ms. Pilip reported receiving a $50,000 salary from the family medical practice in 2022 and 2023.
The inconsistencies seemed nowhere near the level of Mr. Santos’s widespread misstatements, which prompted federal prosecutors to charge him with falsifying congressional records before he was expelled. But after inquiries from The New York Times, Ms. Pilip materially amended the statement on Friday.
The updated paperwork disclosed for the first time that she had a legislative pension; identified her husband as the sole owner of the medical practice, New York Comprehensive Medical Care; and disclosed previously unreported investments and liabilities, including at least $50,000 in medical school loans for Dr. Pilip.
Ms. Pilip also revised her earned income, reporting that she had earned far less from the medical practice: $13,472 in 2022 and nothing in 2023. (She earned $80,000 as a local lawmaker.)
Her campaign played down the initial omissions as innocent mistakes by a team working on an abbreviated schedule before next month’s special election. . . .
Ethics experts said the changes warranted further study. All House candidates must file disclosure forms annually, attesting that the information is “true, complete and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief” at risk of prosecution.
“The canary in the mine can be discrepancies on their financial disclosure statements,” said Kedric Payne, the senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. . . .
It’s all very well saying Starmer is crap but he’s heading up a party on course to win over a 100 seat majority, so really he’s done everything right and has been the best leader Labour may have ever had, if they win?
Starmer wants to run the next election as a referendum on the Conservatives.
That might get him a very big majority, but it risks being built on sand.
He's relying on the Tories to hand his first re-election to him on a plate too. I don't think that's beyond the Tories, but it sort of indicates that Starmer is not going to be a PM who is the master of his own destiny.
There's something reminiscent of François Hollande about Starmer.
Charisma free politicians like Sir Keir usually become PM by means of a handover (Brown, May, Sunak) rather than having to charm the public (Cameron, Boris). It’s not as if he has any firm policies he’s selling either, just complains about the other lot constantly. I am certain he will struggle during the campaign during interviews and debates. I’ve said that a lot, will be interesting to see if I was right or wrong
How big an outright majority do you think he'll struggle to? Above or below 3 digits?
It looks like he has been gifted a majority by the Tories benching their best player then scoring a couple of own goals, but I’d say below 100, because when the usually uninterested public see lots of him in the campaign they’ll think “I can’t vote for this berk”
Let’s see. The last time the favourite to win the GE was such a wet blanket was 2017, and Theresa May was much shorter in the betting to win a majority, so anything’s possible
We have seen some shocks in recent years, haven't we. But here I really would be - shocked. I think the Lab majority will be 3 digits.
Just thinking, now you're well and truly back on PB we can do a bet if you like to supplement our current one.
We 'cash out' the £300/£100 'Starmer PM post GE' bet at say £250 to me. I think that's slightly in your favour at current prices.
But we don't settle. Instead we do a 'double or quits' on Labour outright majority at the GE.
If it's 100 or above I win £500 If it's below 100 we are Flat
How does that sound?
Sounds like you’ve forgotten that bet is either void or you’ve got it with @rcs1000
Come off it. Why would it be void? It's between me and you.
RCS hasn't agreed to take it. If he does, fine by me, but he hasn't.
You agreed it was either void or you had it with Robert
RCS never replied to that 'netting' proposition of yours. It was left unresolved. If he is happy to take it then fine, but he hasn't said so. So I'm assuming he isn't.
£100 at 3/1 Starmer to be PM after the GE. That's our bet.
No it isn’t. I suggested voiding it or Robert paying you. There was no option to keep it, and you replied
“ Happy whatever, I mean. We can keep it or we can void it. Your suggestion is also fine by me if it's fine by rcs.”
Largest Conservative majority is 16% (37% Vs 21% Lab) in Christchurch.
Looking at that spreadsheet you can see the path between the 120 majority forecast and 180 as Blair got in 1997. Too many seats with the Tories just about clinging on as Lab/LD split the vote. In reality so many of those will go to the closest challenger...
DuraAce - You certainly know far more about about Britain's ability to build good warships than I do, but I figure that what you have done in the past, you can do again.
(Incidentally, locating new shipyards and factories in distressed areas might make political sense, as well as economic sense.)
I'm sure this has been mentioned given the numerous reporting of Trump's court cases on here but, just in case it hasn't, the Georgia case looks to be imploding in spectacular fashion as Fani Willis has refused to deny she had an affair with her prosecutor on the Trump case.
Whether she did or did not have an affair with her prosecutor is not a cause why the case would fail, however.
Might be best to avoid Yemeni waters for commercial vessels for now tbh.
That means avoiding the Suez Canal. Just not possible.
Every Western navy is on the way there, to make sure the ships have safe passage. That’s why you have a navy in the first place.
And the Hamas-supporters screech about our attacks against Yemen...
(I'm not arguing that our attacks are effective; they may or may not be. Just that the Houthi's actions need to be quashed.)
Countries have a duty to stop genocides - if Yemen believe (like many other nations do) that Israel's actions are tantamount to genocide, they have duty to attempt to blockade Israel and prevent armaments getting in. Blockades seem to be good when the West does it, but not when anyone else does... Of course, the next move would be for a coalition of nations in southern Africa to start monitoring the Cape of Good Hope in a similar way, slowing down shipping even further. I'm sure we'd quickly see the US and UK bombing South Africa. Because this has nothing to do with a "rules based international order" and everything to do with making money and Western interests.
Only thing the Houthis need is a good thrashing , bomb them back to the stone age for their stupidity.
Might be best to avoid Yemeni waters for commercial vessels for now tbh.
That means avoiding the Suez Canal. Just not possible.
Every Western navy is on the way there, to make sure the ships have safe passage. That’s why you have a navy in the first place.
And the Hamas-supporters screech about our attacks against Yemen...
(I'm not arguing that our attacks are effective; they may or may not be. Just that the Houthi's actions need to be quashed.)
Countries have a duty to stop genocides - if Yemen believe (like many other nations do) that Israel's actions are tantamount to genocide, they have duty to attempt to blockade Israel and prevent armaments getting in. Blockades seem to be good when the West does it, but not when anyone else does... Of course, the next move would be for a coalition of nations in southern Africa to start monitoring the Cape of Good Hope in a similar way, slowing down shipping even further. I'm sure we'd quickly see the US and UK bombing South Africa. Because this has nothing to do with a "rules based international order" and everything to do with making money and Western interests.
What the Houthis are doing is f-all to do with Israel - it's to do with Iran and Russia's war with the west.
I'm amazed at how easily people on the left back those whose views are utterly counter to leftist, or even socialist, values.
The Houthis are, indeed, mostly bad. Mostly bad actors can sometimes do good things for good reasons; just as mostly good actors can sometimes do bad things for bad reasons. Maybe the Houthis are doing a good thing for a bad reason - I can't read the mind of a collection of people half the world away, only read the public statements they make.
If you're saying firing missiles at civilian ships is a 'good thing' then you've disappeared down a moral black hole.
Israel is bombing hundreds of thousands of civilians and people are saying just that. Indeed, the UK and the US have started bombing Yemen, I'm sure there will be civilians killed in those strikes. How many civilians do we kill with our blockades, our sanctions? No one cares that civilians are dying - they care that Western interests are being threatened, that the free flow of goods is being slowed. The evidence put forward by South Africa the other day has seriously doomer pilled me - the reaction (and, indeed, lack of it) from Western media and powers is telling. At the end of the day, to the West, the non-West is where it's fine if people die violent deaths at the hands of whoever. It's only when a country in the club is threatened that anyone cares. And I no longer care about keeping up the pretence that that is fine to believe. If it doesn't matter that tens of thousands of Palestinian children are being slaughtered, why should I care if some civilian ships are fired on? It's a moral mole hill next to a mountain of corpses.
Comments
Anywhere else this would be 2 star, or 3, or who cares about fucking Michelin stars. Incroyable
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g293940-d23332170-Reviews-Sombok_Restaurant-Phnom_Penh.html
I just had the beef with prahok
It’s $12!!!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/15/thames-crossing-plan-uk-biggest-planning-application/
Everything currently wrong with the UK, summed up in one article.
Just F****** Do It.
Johnson wasn't benched. He had previously been on a yellow for unsporting conduct and was already in the tunnel before the ref could show him a straight red for a studs up, two footed lunge.
I think the bigger problem with EVs is that there aren't really any cheap models with limited capabilities, and as yet production capacity is very limited. That ought not to be all that far off, though.
I'd quite happily run something along the lines of the Kia Ray* EV.
It would probably induce cerebral convulsions in DuraAce, but it would meet about 90% of my driving requirements.
https://electrek.co/2023/09/21/kias-ray-ev-6000-pre-orders-korea-starting-20k/
*I was overtaken by one of the petrol models doing around 90 mph on a Korean motorway. Strange sight.
(to indulge in some anecdata) I saw someone online bemoaned how a tram was only half full, and how much space it took up on the road, taking a video from their car that had to stop for the tram to pass by. The driver was alone in the car. Most journeys in cars are done by single occupants. Public transport is so much more space efficient than car journeys - it just needs government investment to make it functional for people and they'll use it. Instead we've had decades of slashing apart our societal infrastructure, and a focus on the individual vehicle - and it has warped everything. People will shop a 20 minute drive away rather than walk to shops (which no longer exist because the superduper market can only exist when cars are supreme). People live 45mins - 1 hour driving commutes away (if they're lucky) meaning that their entire livelihoods is dependent on their car to get them there (which means jobs can be centralised in urban areas, whilst rural areas are ignored and are underinvested in).
Doesn't seem to have affected your enjoyment of food...
*exporting at the moment
The are the most dangerous party, if you ask me.
I mean you have (at least) two cars for no doubt very good reasons but it shows that you might be neither cash poor nor time poor. Maybe you are both in which case there's me assuming things.
As @Casino_Royale pointed out, the way things are going to change is if/when there is an incentive to do so. The incentive of "saving the planet" I'm afraid, and perhaps disappointingly, is too nebulous for most people.
What they all do know though, is that hating on Trump generates views and clicks, so he’s good for business even if they hate his guts.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-middle-east-67978584
Aviation and maritime fuels are interesting challenges, as is sustainable farming, but I bet you my mortgage technical and scientific solutions to those are found too.
The issue is that we don't have enough houses. We should build more but, despite the fact that every single election manifesto has included a promise to do so, we don't seem to be able to do this. cf ironically cutting immigration.
Are the Coots really fifty years old ?
They quote him verbatim in the headlines. Always. Which is a favour they don't often extend to his opponents.
Nothing else really matters.
And no, most of the press report politics as 'both sides'.
Every Western navy is on the way there, to make sure the ships have safe passage. That’s why you have a navy in the first place.
The search for relevance in your comments on this goes on.
An absolute stand out meal where everything is simultaneously surprising, and healthy AND utterly delicious is so rare. I can’t recall the last time
Sombok. Go there!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-18
(I'm not arguing that our attacks are effective; they may or may not be. Just that the Houthi's actions need to be quashed.)
Most cars spend most of their time parked. Which means that for most users most of the time there is no need to think about charging if you can charge when parked. Which for millions means parked at home as we sleep.
A car that refuels as you sleep is just something people struggle with as they are so used to filling stations...
I think that the weakest part of the MRP analysis could still be the ability to predict the direction of swingback of undecided voters based on demographic characteristics. However, as the only reference I have seen to that happening was in the Telegraph, and YouGov are silent on that in their own write up, maybe the Telegraph have also got their facts wrong on that too. Or have not. Who knows?
Anyway, in a poll that (probably) allowed for swingback of undecided voters, Labour still have a 13.5% lead in national vote share and with the Greens and Lib Dems together standing on a combined 20% there is plenty of scope for further tactical voting to make things worse for the Conservatives.
If you’re not that lucky, on the other hand, the race to EVs is all sticks and no carrots at the moment.
His chart shows Labour 44.1, Con 25.0 predicted vote share, which is a 15.5% GB swing to Labour (about 15.0% UK).
That 15.5% is made of:
Death of voters: +1.15% swing
First time young voters: +0.65% swing
Newly allowed to vote: est+0.4% swing
(his total voter base is about 800k higher than existed in 2019, allowing NI, so this is 20% of his DNV-> will vote switchers)
TOTAL DEMOGRAPHIC SWING: +2.2%
Switching to/from LD/SNP/Green: +1%
(Labour makes good losses to Green by LD/SNP gains. Con doesn't make good losses to LD)
Switching to/from Ref/other: +2.65%
Direct Con to/from Lab switching: +5%
TOTAL SWITCHING SWING: +8.65%
2019 votes saying will not vote: +0.5%
(Con don't lose that many more than Lab)
2019 DNVs saying they will vote: +1.5%
(see newly allowed note too)
Exclude don't knows (post-Opinium swing): +2.65%
TOTAL TURNOUT SWING: 4.65%
The relevance of my comment is that you spout off bollocks about Big Oil Made Us Do It but you ignore it. Last week you flew to Tenerife and this is post-exposure of the deadly climate impacts of Big Oil.
You hypocritical fucker.
Nearest 18 storey building must be in that there Leeds, I should think. Went there once, lots of cars and people and noise
Governments of all stripes, and with plenty of time to do it, have promised more housing (presumably using taxpayers' money) so the only conclusion we can draw is that we don't actually want to do it.
But immigration is neither here nor there wrt the level of or pressure on housebuilding.
There is a desperation from many people to pull EVs apart that they cling onto any straw being offered.
So put your money where your mouth is. Or rather, don't put your money where your mouth is.
So yes hypocrite is exactly right. Believe there is a climate crisis? Don't fly to Tenerife.
But it's only every 12 years everyone cries. But that is exactly what you criticise when people, analogously say "but the UK is a tiny part of world emissions".
RCS hasn't agreed to take it. If he does, fine by me, but he hasn't.
Fair enough. I know that you have a particular political philosophy and I respect it, much as I disagree with it. But you should also be aware of the limitations and weaknesses of attempting such a wholesale restructuring of our society which, experience has shown, most people simply don't want.
The median age in Cambodia is 27. Just 27! And it feels like it. The whole country bursts with youthful vigour and optimism
Meanwhile the fertility rate is still well above replacement - 2.4 - and life expectancy has now surged to 76 (not far behind America, incredibly)
If I knew how to turn personal foreign investment into money (I don’t) I would invest in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
They all have remarkably bright futures (technology and war permitting). Lands of bright promise
The only way to make your individual carbon footprint good is to be wealthy enough to buy carbon credits (which we haven't materially made work yet, so are a lie) or to go hide in a cave. Is flying to Tenerife a luxury, yes, but if we lived in a sensible world it would be a sustainable luxury if only we regulated those who take the most flights and developed methods to offset that.
It's like animal products; there is a whole spectrum between being a vegan and eating the average daily meat of a US citizen. If those who did it the most were willing to reduce, everyone could have a little bit and it still be okay (from an environmental standpoint, ignoring any arguments from animal welfare). But because they predominantly don't, those who advocate for veganism from an environmental perspective have to do be full (pardon the pun) cold turkey on the issue.
https://www.beatthebucketlist.com/blog/cambodian-street-food
I'm amazed at how easily people on the left back those whose views are utterly counter to leftist, or even socialist, values.
Median age of Niger is 15.
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/YouGov_MRP_January_2024_results.csv
Largest Conservative majority is 16% (37% Vs 21% Lab) in Christchurch.
NEW THREAD
They have had these stations for several years now, and jsut recently added Tesla charging stations to the one I visit, from time to time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Meyer
£100 at 3/1 Starmer to be PM after the GE. That's our bet.
Plenty of stuff - and guff - in media this MLK Day re: tonight's Iowa Republican precinct caucuses; best wait for tonight's results & etc.
In the meantime . . .
New York Times ($) - In Race to Replace George Santos, Financial Questions Re-emerge
Mazi Pilip, the Republican candidate running in New York’s Third District, drew scrutiny after her initial financial disclosure was missing required information.
The Republican nominee in a special House election to replace George Santos in New York provided a hazy glimpse into her personal finances this week, submitting a sworn financial statement to Congress that prompted questions and led her to amend the filing.
The little-known candidate, Mazi Pilip, reported between $1 million and $5.2 million in assets, largely comprising her husband’s medical practice and Bitcoin investments. In an unusual disclosure, she said the couple owed and later repaid as much as $250,000 to the I.R.S. last year.
But the initial financial report Ms. Pilip filed with the House Ethics Committee on Wednesday appeared to be missing other important required information, including whether the assets were owned solely by herself or her husband, Dr. Adalbert Pilip, or whether they were owned jointly.
And despite making past statements that she stopped working there in 2021 when she ran for the Nassau County Legislature, Ms. Pilip reported receiving a $50,000 salary from the family medical practice in 2022 and 2023.
The inconsistencies seemed nowhere near the level of Mr. Santos’s widespread misstatements, which prompted federal prosecutors to charge him with falsifying congressional records before he was expelled. But after inquiries from The New York Times, Ms. Pilip materially amended the statement on Friday.
The updated paperwork disclosed for the first time that she had a legislative pension; identified her husband as the sole owner of the medical practice, New York Comprehensive Medical Care; and disclosed previously unreported investments and liabilities, including at least $50,000 in medical school loans for Dr. Pilip.
Ms. Pilip also revised her earned income, reporting that she had earned far less from the medical practice: $13,472 in 2022 and nothing in 2023. (She earned $80,000 as a local lawmaker.)
Her campaign played down the initial omissions as innocent mistakes by a team working on an abbreviated schedule before next month’s special election. . . .
Ethics experts said the changes warranted further study. All House candidates must file disclosure forms annually, attesting that the information is “true, complete and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief” at risk of prosecution.
“The canary in the mine can be discrepancies on their financial disclosure statements,” said Kedric Payne, the senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. . . .
“ Happy whatever, I mean. We can keep it or we can void it. Your suggestion is also fine by me if it's fine by rcs.”
So you’re happy to void it, or Robert pays you
(Incidentally, locating new shipyards and factories in distressed areas might make political sense, as well as economic sense.)