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Why it’s not the economy, stupid – politicalbetting.com
Why it’s not the economy, stupid – politicalbetting.com
There’s a poll by YouGov for The Times which shows that even an improving economy will not help the Tories avoid an electoral armageddon which was Sunak’s hope.
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Up with the pace on a thread for a change.
Climate change policy which has been policy of successive governments of all colours from Thatcher onwards.
Climate change was something I was learning about in secondary school, and was already government policy to tackle, in the 1990s. Before the likes of Thunberg were born, let alone famous.
Tesla made their money jumping onto the bandwagon of existing policy. JSO/Thunberg etc are bystanders also jumping on the same bandwagon to get attention for themselves, not to enact any change.
The indirect benefit is to the coffers of TFL. I never mentioned a personal benefit.
Ulez will net £300mn in its first year apparently. I'm not sure what to tell you if you're failing to understand that that money then being absent from the pockets of consumers and businesses is, self-evidently, a burden for the economy to bear.
Tesla was about realising that the car modding outfits in LA could custom convert a car to EV for $250k and could get serious performance.
Scale it up and each time the costs go down. Then attack battery costs by mass production.
The US government was already offering tax credits for ZEVs - that the big companies weren’t using. There was a demand for EVs that no one was bothering with.
Previously, there had been various pushes for ZEVs - including hydrogen. At one point, around 2000, Shell was planning on helping Iceland become the first
zero emission country. That plan fell through, due to the non appearance of the hydrogen fuel cells required.
The same goes for heat pump manufacturers. You need these kinds of activists to slice through the lethargy and conservatism (small c). The "just too difficult" crowd are numerous and noisy - Mail Online is huge and riddled with articles about range anxiety, wrong type of pipes etc.
First of all, there will be a huge relief the Conservatives have been consigned to the outer darkness (except among some Conservatives though by no means all) and new people and a new tone will help.
The lack of expectation will also help - no one is expecting great things so they won't be disappointed. Is there a radical edge to Starmer? Many would say not but often radicalism isn't ideologically driven but the willingness (and a 200 seat majority would help) to consider different solutions to old problems. Labour will be able to be not Labour with such a majority - if 50 backbench MPs rebel, who cares? Many of the new intake will be beholden to Starmer and will be quiescent if new ideas are pushed forward.
There's a nuance between being true to yourself and being open to new ideas - the reinvention of One Nation Conservatism was (and will be) a classic example of practicality and reality supporting principle. It may be Owenite social democracy can also move with the times and the circumstances.
I'll offer an example - local Government finance. I suspect Starmer and his advisers could have radical solutions to social care costs and to the whole financing of councils - land value taxation perhaps? It's 50 years since a fundamental reorganisation of local Government - perhaps it's time for another (abolition of two tier authorities as well?).
Yet first the modern iteration of conservatism has to be buried and a stake driven through its beating heart (possibly too vampire for a Monday afternoon). That's where we are and that will be enormously cathartic for many not least the Conservatives and it will be an exciting time albeit in the irrelevance of Opposition to design a new form of conservatism for the 2030s and beyond.
Politics becomes more surreal every day
12% is more than 13%?
Those activists are counterproductive to the cause.
For a plethora of reasons.
Its not the economy, its time for a change. That is all.
As climate changes, our politics will change with it. Should we spend vast sums of money on sea defences for our important coastal towns and cities - London is especially vulnerable but far from the only example. Changes to westher patterns (wetter winters) will impact agricultural policy and policy across a vast range of areas.
We already see coastal erosion for example in Norfolk and other places on the east coast - we saw how much replacing the rail line at Dawlish cost when it was destroyed by winter storms. What about other coastal transport infrastructure?
OTOH, what about hotter summers? London above 40c for 10 days isn't a question of if but when. The human cost of prolonged heat especially on the elderly and those with respiratory conditions needs to be considered. We can't afford to be as ill-prepared for the next big heat wave as we were for the smog in the early 1950s when thousands died in London. What about water supply and transport impacts to name but two other issues?
I’ve seen some installs which were criminal, pretty much.
The newer pumps are more efficient, and you don’t necessarily have to change over to underfloor heating as much as you did.
But reputational damage was done.
Incidently, something that should be pushed more is air source heating/cooling. I’ve got that for my loft conversion, along with solar panels. Don’t need radiators in the loft conversion - between modern insulation and heat rising, went through the winter without doing anything.
The other thing to think about is an opening skylight at the top of the stairwell. Passive ventilation is free to use….
The question is whether that noise and subsidies would have existed without climate "activists" - from Thatcher to Thunberg.
Assuming that the paradigm of "human emissions = global climate changing for the worse" is accepted as fact, I still don't see how her campaigns can be said to have 'saved' anything, given that the non-Western world seems strangely immune to her sententious chastisements.
She is certainly part of the movement toward the Western world surrendering its global economic leadership, and therefore its leadership full stop, in favour of BRICs. Most here don't seem to want that to happen, but there's a peculiar failure to join the dots. Perhaps it's all the PB shrewdies wanting to prove how clever they are by being so moderate, see OnlyLivingBoy.
It looks more like Nige on the scrounge again.
Offering his services to Labour? It seems he's happy to dance with any devil who might give him the attention he craves.
Talking about a growing economy during a cost-of-living crisis just comes across as tactless. I think that is possibly part of the reason why the link has been broken to polling, though there are deeper underlying reasons too.
The livelihoods of many people are now almost completely disconnected from the economy, including pensioners and people on Universal Credit, even those who were on furlough during COVID. And for those where there is a connection, a growing economy means nothing if productivity/real wages are not growing. That's why GDP per capita is more important for politics. Or GDP per worker.
On tax - it's not a surprise that the Conservatives have developed a reputation for raising taxes when they have raised taxes.
In full: Lunch Hour with Nigel Farage | Exclusive Interview
I blame multitasking.
NASA simply found that buying from SpaceX was cheaper.
Plus they were prepared to put skin in the game.
Which is why you got angry shouts of “stay in your lane”
The classic Old Space subsidy story was one of the attempts by the US Airforce to get a cheap launch capacity. Boeing bid a spaceplane powered by RS-25 for air-launch. Despite people pointing out that this was insane, Boeing was given the contract. Apparently it wasn’t fair that they weren’t getting development contracts in this area.
They took several hundred million dollars. Delivered nothing - said it was too hard. *Boring* literally terminated the program.
Farage notes that Grant Shapps is the only Tory on TikTok, where young voters live, though he talks about Gen-Zee.
I see it very differently. There are great potential economic opportunities in going green. Whether we grasp those opportunities is another matter.
But I have to point out: your comment about BRICS is downright weird, and one I'd expect from someone who reads rather anti-western stuff.
(IMV BRICS might well end up like the CTSO...)
Musk was having a terrible year in 2007 / 8, as he has frequently admitted. He nearly lost both Tesla and SpaceX. The money he got from the US government helped save those companies.
Which was pretty tiny compared to the tidal wave of cash needed to save the big car makers. Which was largely given to them. And they point blank refused to invest in ZEVs in return.
SpaceX was saved by a NASA contract to provide services. Which were actually provided. Instead of doing a Kistler.
Rather than fiddle whilst Rome burns, we plot whilst Britain crumbles. We are far too self-indulgent; we gossip, rather than govern.
Sunak will not be happy with it. Worth a read, IMO.
https://conservativehome.com/2024/04/08/its-not-just-the-economy-stupid/
Do people pay for this insight?
Truly The End Times are upon us.
If ULEZ nets £300m, that is £300m removed from consumers and businesses, but that £300m goes back into TfL, into, for example, keeping fares lower, which is money back to consumers and businesses. It's moving money around, not making it disappear.
Despite that, I see zero objection here when (for example) we surrender our ability to make virgin steel (the only steel that can be used for armaments production) and all that happens is a load of massive blast furnaces open in India. I see a shade more, but still fairly minimal support for the idea of getting more of our own gas out of the sea (and none for fracking it out of the ground), so as to make us less dependent on the whims of Putin or the Saudis.
Whilst most here will happily jump down my throat and call me 'comrade' for daring to diminish 'PB morale', they are actually the ones who are materially anti-Western, for insisting that the UK must be the poster-child for Net Zero despite its manifold and growingly obvious economic and security downsides. I am more pro-Western in the logical outworkings of my ideas than most of the 'smart moderates' in this corner of the internet.
And the NASA thing was more complex than that. AIUI he did not actually get most of the money immediately (it was money given on completion of certain milestones), but the promise of the money in the future allowed him to unlock a lot more income from investors immediately.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001y1yg
Everyone’s talking about Tesla, but as far as the introduction of EVs is concerned, China means that’s largely out of of western hands - unless we want to impose massive trade barriers, which will only end up dooming iur industry anyway.
They already control pretty well all the world’s solar module production. We’ve only a few years to decide whether that going to be true for much of the global vehicle industry too.
Anyway- don't call it "breaking maths". Describe it as "creative economics to boost Britain's future".
Without Tesla, the US owned car industry would be far smaller than it will be in a decade’s time. (Also true of Biden’s massive industrial subsidy.)
But SpaceX is a massive return in capability for a relatively small government investment - and the large majority of the huge amount of cash it still requires will come from the private sector.
Let us take one example: we are using much less gas to generate power than we were, thanks to the increased amounts of wind and solar. This has been costly. But I saw some figures a while back showing how much money had been saved in generation in 2022/3 because of our consequent smaller reliance on gas when the prices spiked. And it was a lot. (I shall try to find it somewhere...)
As another example, we have moved to a large amount of 'green' power in the UK without too much pain. I am staggered that this has happened and remains generally unremarked.
I quite like the modern world we live in. True, it has problems, but I'd rather live now than (say) in 1900 - especially as I'm not a baby, and am getting towards an older age. And one of the reasons there has been a myriad of improvements is technological and social change.
If there are economic opportunities in going green - and I think there are, and so do other countries (including China), then we need to grasp them - even if it causes slight temporary pain.
@RedfieldWilton
Tied lowest % for Conservatives under Sunak.
Highest ever % for Reform.
Westminster Voting Intention (7 April):
Labour 44% (-2)
Conservative 21% (-1)
Reform 15% (+1)
Liberal Democrat 10% (–)
Green 6% (+1)
SNP 2% (-1)
Other 1% (-1)
Changes +/- 31 March
And he doesn't think the American election was stolen but Biden won because of "legal" corrupt postal votes
Switching imports from the Middle East to tapping our own natural resources like wind etc is not just environmentally sound, it's economically helpful too.
Sadly a lot of people take his bullshit seriously.
The spectacle of him brown nosing Trump is pretty repulsive.
Who becomes official opposition if both Con and LDs are on 55? Must be the LDs turn, surely?
Washington Post (via Seattle Times) - Speaker Johnson’s job is on the line as the House returns
House Republicans are dreading their return to Washington on Tuesday [they are NOT alone!] anticipating their deep divisions will jeopardize high-stakes legislation in a way that may end in the ouster of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and further throw the chamber into dysfunction.
Whether Johnson remains speaker hinges on if the Republican decides to satisfy demands from his furthest right flank — or turns to Democrats, who could ultimately save his speakership, in a bid to pass his priorities.
“He’s gotten himself down to a Catch-22,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), who chairs the largest ideological faction of conservatives, the Republican Study Committee.
The next two weeks are the most critical of Johnson’s nearly six–month tenure atop a very wobbly House with a majority that continues to narrow. His chief priority is passing a bill funding Ukraine that also sends aid to Israel and Indo-Pacific allies. Unlike a national security package that passed the Senate, House Republicans across the ideological spectrum insist that any foreign aid deal must also include measures that strengthen U.S. borders.
But the shape of that package will be fiercely debated and a route to passage is unpredictable and murky. With just a two-vote majority, Republicans have been unable to achieve consensus on such divisive issues, angering a far-right desperate for ideological purity. Choosing a bipartisan route is also complicated: getting lawmakers to agree on anything related to Ukraine and Israel, especially with outrage mounting about civilian casualties in Gaza, is an almost impossible task, given the partisanship and anger in today’s House. . . .
The NASA contract was key, as you say, for SpaceX. And unlike a whole barrage of projects since Shuttle became operational, involved paying only for delivered work.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
Seeing that we will have only 20% partial eclipse . . . with about 0% chance of seeing the sun, eclipsed or not.
In Wales it is under a labour government with a worse performance of all the UK
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/21/pupils-wales-disadvantaged-children-england-ifs-study-vaughan-gething?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Nigel Farage ‘can’t remember’ if Donald Trump has offered him a job
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-nigel-farage-cant-remember-us-donald-trump-job-offer/
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
Is it her time? Is the time NOW?
TRUSS.
Would give TSE chance to finally earn the (un)massive retainer yours truly (mis)remembers (not) paying him!
(At 80, I am old enough to think I don't have time to get much information from slow and inefficient human speech -- however entertaining. Including podcasts.)