Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
Interesting. IMHO this affects only a tiny number of seats, and if you do the maths, the more marginal the seat, the more Starmer needs the votes of those who usually vote Tory so I doubt if there is anything in this.
BTW, on Gaza etc, Labour is going to stand more or less where the UK and the USA governments stand. There is no other place to go. It would be nice to be able to point to an alternative, morally sound policy with assured decent outcomes for good people on all sides but there isn't one to be had.
The seats they are losing the votes in, like two mentioned in the article, are low turnout very safe seats anyway. I Think they are right not to be complacent. But my feeling is this is not 1992. It is also not 1997. There is no wave of fervour for labour. But there is a tiredness with the current lot and a feeling it is time they were put out to pasture.
Such fervour as there is for a Labour government this time comes, I think, from the One Nation centre/centre right who recognise in Starmer a Buttskellite tendency. This group, whose votes will swing the election, don't really do fervour. They are currently in the shed looking for paint brushes and garden tools and wondering about the seed potatoes what with all this rain.
We cancelled Netflix. Tempted to get it back now, This reeks of "contractual obligation"
"The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are to be the executive producers of two new nonfiction Netflix series focusing on lifestyle and polo.
One show will explore “the joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining and friendship”, while the other will give “unprecedented access to the world of professional polo” and the US Open Polo Championship in Florida, Netflix said."
"Archewell Productions, formed by the couple in 2020, is “dedicated to illuminating thought-provoking and diverse narratives that underscore our common humanity and celebrate community”, according to the company’s website."
It's time someone in the media took elephant polo with the seriousness it merits. Step forward Harry....
It’s also nice that finally there is going to be a programme about cooking and gardening. And even better that the cooking and gardening programme will be hosted by two experts in the field.
I don’t know why tv execs haven’t thought of this before. Cooking. On tv.
Cant wait for Harry’s documentary on Monkey Tennis.
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
I think the events in Ukraine have pretty much demolished the arguments for unilateral disarmament. Not just the practical ones, but many of the moral ones as well.
I would say the opposite. The 2022-present war in Ukraine demonstrates that there is a need for flexible, well equipped conventional forces, not nuclear ones.
Ukraine has no nuclear weapons, Russia probably has some that still work, but this has been an entirely conventional war.
If Ukraine had had nuclear weapons, Russia would not have invaded.
Sampson Option and all that.
When the US was looking at installing an ABN system in Poland, Russia became extremely upset.
The reason is interesting. Due to orbital mechanics, the installation in Poland *wouldn’t* be able to stop Russian missiles hitting nearly anywhere.
The purpose of the interceptors was to stop an attack on the US by a future Iranian ballistic missile capability.
But, by the nature of the systems, they would defend a portion of Poland against Russian missiles.
To Russia, being a great power is important. Nukes are big part of it. As is holding all Russia’s neighbours at risk. A Poland that can’t be nuked means a Russia, in the context of Poland, that isn’t a great power. A Russia without Respect.
As the great philosopher Jean Vilain said - “Respect is everything. Without respect, we are just people. Common, shitty people.”
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
What do you expect when the Shadow Health Secretary slags off "Middle Class Lefties" in the press?
What did he say ? I have not seen any comment from him to that effect, not doubting your word though.
The reality is it is either labour or a coalition. I suspect enough people will vote labour and the seats they seem to be falling back in are safe.
I did say here, when the Gaza thing kicked off, the muslim vote could end up costing labour in some seats. This was, of course, derided by some here however Labour people are also now waking up to it.
Difficult for labour. After purging the party of anti semitism what do they do. Take a fair stance on Gaza, calling out both Hamas for its evil crimes and Israel for its conduct of the war and its murder of civilians or do they adopt the Blair era policy of just giving Israel unwavering support.
Especially important as public opinion keeps moving in response to what they see.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change.
Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
What do you expect when the Shadow Health Secretary slags off "Middle Class Lefties" in the press?
What did he say ? I have not seen any comment from him to that effect, not doubting your word though.
The reality is it is either labour or a coalition. I suspect enough people will vote labour and the seats they seem to be falling back in are safe.
I did say here, when the Gaza thing kicked off, the muslim vote could end up costing labour in some seats. This was, of course, derided by some here however Labour people are also now waking up to it.
Difficult for labour. After purging the party of anti semitism what do they do. Take a fair stance on Gaza, calling out both Hamas for its evil crimes and Israel for its conduct of the war and its murder of civilians or do they adopt the Blair era policy of just giving Israel unwavering support.
Especially important as public opinion keeps moving in response to what they see.
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
I think the events in Ukraine have pretty much demolished the arguments for unilateral disarmament. Not just the practical ones, but many of the moral ones as well.
I would say the opposite. The 2022-present war in Ukraine demonstrates that there is a need for flexible, well equipped conventional forces, not nuclear ones.
Ukraine has no nuclear weapons, Russia probably has some that still work, but this has been an entirely conventional war.
If Ukraine had had nuclear weapons, Russia would not have invaded.
Sampson Option and all that.
When the US was looking at installing an ABN system in Poland, Russia became extremely upset.
The reason is interesting. Due to orbital mechanics, the installation in Poland *wouldn’t* be able to stop Russian missiles hitting nearly anywhere.
The purpose of the interceptors was to stop an attack on the US by a future Iranian ballistic missile capability.
But, by the nature of the systems, they would defend a portion of Poland against Russian missiles.
To Russia, being a great power is important. Nukes are big part of it. As is holding all Russia’s neighbours at risk. A Poland that can’t be nuked means a Russia, in the context of Poland, that isn’t a great power. A Russia without Respect.
As the great philosopher Jean Vilain said - “Respect is everything. Without respect, we are just people. Common, shitty people.”
Russia needs to get over itself. If it wants respect it needs to earn it. All it's earning at the moment is derision and hate. Russia could be a great country - it has (or at least had) everything it needed. Putin chose to take it below Canada.
I thoroughly despise the Russian state now - and all those, including some on here, who spread Russian lies and propaganda, whilst pretending to be interested in democracy.
For those (including me most of the time) that say nothing in this country works anymore. I ordered a new passport last Monday and it arrived yesterday. Brilliant service.
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
What do you expect when the Shadow Health Secretary slags off "Middle Class Lefties" in the press?
What did he say ? I have not seen any comment from him to that effect, not doubting your word though.
The reality is it is either labour or a coalition. I suspect enough people will vote labour and the seats they seem to be falling back in are safe.
I did say here, when the Gaza thing kicked off, the muslim vote could end up costing labour in some seats. This was, of course, derided by some here however Labour people are also now waking up to it.
Difficult for labour. After purging the party of anti semitism what do they do. Take a fair stance on Gaza, calling out both Hamas for its evil crimes and Israel for its conduct of the war and its murder of civilians or do they adopt the Blair era policy of just giving Israel unwavering support.
Especially important as public opinion keeps moving in response to what they see.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change.
Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
And the Tories for everywhere outside the UK. The new emigrant voting system.
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so.
I drafted a short story where we got usable fusion power - but it was only useful in certain circumstances, e.g. space travel - because its cost and inconveniences were far greater than the vastly improved renewables.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change. Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
It would be nice for you nonetheless if 5 million younger voters were turned away and the Conservatives squeezed a majority out on their older client vote.
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
I think the events in Ukraine have pretty much demolished the arguments for unilateral disarmament. Not just the practical ones, but many of the moral ones as well.
I would say the opposite. The 2022-present war in Ukraine demonstrates that there is a need for flexible, well equipped conventional forces, not nuclear ones.
Ukraine has no nuclear weapons, Russia probably has some that still work, but this has been an entirely conventional war.
If Ukraine had had nuclear weapons, Russia would not have invaded.
Sampson Option and all that.
When the US was looking at installing an ABN system in Poland, Russia became extremely upset.
The reason is interesting. Due to orbital mechanics, the installation in Poland *wouldn’t* be able to stop Russian missiles hitting nearly anywhere.
The purpose of the interceptors was to stop an attack on the US by a future Iranian ballistic missile capability.
But, by the nature of the systems, they would defend a portion of Poland against Russian missiles.
To Russia, being a great power is important. Nukes are big part of it. As is holding all Russia’s neighbours at risk. A Poland that can’t be nuked means a Russia, in the context of Poland, that isn’t a great power. A Russia without Respect.
As the great philosopher Jean Vilain said - “Respect is everything. Without respect, we are just people. Common, shitty people.”
As the great philosopher Jarvis Cocker said - "But still you'll never get it right, when you're laying in bed at night, watching roaches climb the wall".
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Aptera and Lightyear are two cars that get some of their range directly from solar power.
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
I hope Conservative Central Office have the common decency to send you a thank you card.
If they lose my seat the Conservatives will be below 100 seats and suspect they will have other things on what's left of their minds!
Is there a real practical issue between a Lab majority of 200 and one of 250?
In terms of ability to pass legislation in term of the coming Parliament, no. In terms of how long it will take the Conservatives to return to office (or whether they will return at all), yes.
I will reconsider my choice if that circumstance arises.
Generally 3rd terms are not a success, and further one's are worse. This government is on its 4th.
It'd probably be too late to reconsider your choice at that time, as the seat is pretty likely to be Conservative again by then.
The point is that, with a large landslide that takes out apparently very safe seats, parties need to pour a lot of resources into clawing them back before they can even really think about getting the seats they need for a majority.
It wasn't really until 2005 (after a bit of a false start in 2001) that the Conservatives had regained enough of the seats that really ought to be in their column (places like Wellingborough, Kettering, Bexleyheath etc) enabling them to focus resources on the "real" swing seats needed to form a Government.
The sorts of places I mentioned weren't really in play by 2010 (as your seat probably won't be in 2037). But the fact that they went Labour in 1997 had bought the Tories extra years in the wilderness.
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
What do you expect when the Shadow Health Secretary slags off "Middle Class Lefties" in the press?
What did he say ? I have not seen any comment from him to that effect, not doubting your word though.
The reality is it is either labour or a coalition. I suspect enough people will vote labour and the seats they seem to be falling back in are safe.
I did say here, when the Gaza thing kicked off, the muslim vote could end up costing labour in some seats. This was, of course, derided by some here however Labour people are also now waking up to it.
Difficult for labour. After purging the party of anti semitism what do they do. Take a fair stance on Gaza, calling out both Hamas for its evil crimes and Israel for its conduct of the war and its murder of civilians or do they adopt the Blair era policy of just giving Israel unwavering support.
Especially important as public opinion keeps moving in response to what they see.
I'm not sure what the problem is with that policy, apart from where middle class lefties may have their heads.
I suggest that you listen to this podcast from Private Eye. Basically the problem is that private providers are parasites that take staff and resources from the NHS and result in a dependency on the private sector rather than an expansion of NHS providers. It's like staving off the DTs by giving an alcoholic a bottle of Vodka.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change.
Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
And the Tories for everywhere outside the UK. The new emigrant voting system.
I'd forgotten about the 2 to 3 million ex-pat Tory voters who can pitch up (metaphorically speaking) at a marginal of their choice. I bet the opinion polls don't include them.
Not quite down to the standards of the post office but this story beggars belief. A man was prosecuted by the DWP for overclaiming benefits. A total of £20,000 over many years. However the DWP now accept he made an innocent mistake.
Start with the assumption that benefit claimants, like subpostmasters, are out to deliberately defraud "us", and everything follows.
The paradox of cracking down on benefit fraud or tax dodging is that it is far easier for those doing it to meet their targets by going for these sort of people than the more egregious frauds done by organised gangs.
There is also the institutional effect that the people going after this 30p overpayment will probably not have been allowed near the £50 million benefit fraud in the news this week. Many years ago a police officer explained the demarcation with drugs (well out of date owing to inflation and organisational changes) but as the amount increased it went something like local CID, area drug squad, Met drug squad, Regional crime squad, and for the really big boys, police would pass the case over to Customs & Excise. It will no doubt be the same with benefit fraud.
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
Interesting. IMHO this affects only a tiny number of seats, and if you do the maths, the more marginal the seat, the more Starmer needs the votes of those who usually vote Tory so I doubt if there is anything in this.
BTW, on Gaza etc, Labour is going to stand more or less where the UK and the USA governments stand. There is no other place to go. It would be nice to be able to point to an alternative, morally sound policy with assured decent outcomes for good people on all sides but there isn't one to be had.
The seats they are losing the votes in, like two mentioned in the article, are low turnout very safe seats anyway. I Think they are right not to be complacent. But my feeling is this is not 1992. It is also not 1997. There is no wave of fervour for labour. But there is a tiredness with the current lot and a feeling it is time they were put out to pasture.
Such fervour as there is for a Labour government this time comes, I think, from the One Nation centre/centre right who recognise in Starmer a Buttskellite tendency. This group, whose votes will swing the election, don't really do fervour. They are currently in the shed looking for paint brushes and garden tools and wondering about the seed potatoes what with all this rain.
The thing that Starmer has got right and Corbyn got wrong is that there's no "enthusiastic votes count double" rule.
Johnsonites got that wrong in a slightly different way. They tended to assume that millions voting against Corbyn and Brexit Stasis were a sign of enthusiasm for them.
Question. Recent reporting - Guardian etc - is on how some urban Labour seats are at risk because Labour are losing the votes of the younger and the more progressive voter - this on account of their policy on the Middle East, nuclear deterrence and so on.
Can this be true? Are there significant numbers of seats (eg more than 5) where another party (and if so which) can win instead?
The article mentions Bristol Central (vulnerable to Greens) and Sheffield Hallam (Lib Dems might win) and Brighton Pavillion. But I doubt there are many more than that. And as things stand, that's swamped by all the seats the Conservatives are on track to lose.
Brighton Pavilion isn't Labour now - it's Caroline Lucas's seat. Labour's stance on green issues and Gaza may help the Greens keep it, but it will be close. The other two Brighton seats are safe Labour, and the worst that could happen would be reduced Labour majorities. The Green vote in both was derisory in 2019.
Can anyone point me at an inflation indicator from July 2023 to now?
The circs are that a new tenant and myself agreed a modestly below market rent which would then increase with CPI, and I need a part year CPI number to bring me back into line with my normal annual review date - although that would usually be April so I am a little late.
One alternative method would be to take a proportion of the Govt's annual benefit review month, which was Sept 2023. That is my normal process, but that was peak inflation so may be a little higher than I am are comfortable to use with a T who did not get the corresponding smaller-than-inflation-increase benefit when inflation was going up; normally they balance out.
I don’t know whether there is anything in Landlord and Tenant law prohibiting this, but you could use the latter figure with a “or such lower figure that the parties may agree” so it operates as a maximum increase, rather than a fixed increase.
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
What do you expect when the Shadow Health Secretary slags off "Middle Class Lefties" in the press?
What did he say ? I have not seen any comment from him to that effect, not doubting your word though.
The reality is it is either labour or a coalition. I suspect enough people will vote labour and the seats they seem to be falling back in are safe.
I did say here, when the Gaza thing kicked off, the muslim vote could end up costing labour in some seats. This was, of course, derided by some here however Labour people are also now waking up to it.
Difficult for labour. After purging the party of anti semitism what do they do. Take a fair stance on Gaza, calling out both Hamas for its evil crimes and Israel for its conduct of the war and its murder of civilians or do they adopt the Blair era policy of just giving Israel unwavering support.
Especially important as public opinion keeps moving in response to what they see.
I'm not sure what the problem is with that policy, apart from where middle class lefties may have their heads.
Isn’t the point about Streeting using that kind of rhetoric rather than the value or otherwise of the policy?
After all I hear ad tedium on here that it”s dreadful for pols to disparage groups of voters.
I'm not sure. I think that those who view themselves as "middle class lefties" are perhaps highly privileged wealthy lefties with not-that-much connection to ordinary people. A similar category error to the Daily Wail's "Middle England"?
On a quick look at the article, I'd say it highlights that politicisation of "clinical" bodies (eg BMA) is a real problem, and the growth of explicitly political groups.
I'm not sure that commentary on the current NHS comes best from "Tony O’Sullivan, a retired NHS consultant paediatrician".
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
Interesting. IMHO this affects only a tiny number of seats, and if you do the maths, the more marginal the seat, the more Starmer needs the votes of those who usually vote Tory so I doubt if there is anything in this.
BTW, on Gaza etc, Labour is going to stand more or less where the UK and the USA governments stand. There is no other place to go. It would be nice to be able to point to an alternative, morally sound policy with assured decent outcomes for good people on all sides but there isn't one to be had.
The seats they are losing the votes in, like two mentioned in the article, are low turnout very safe seats anyway. I Think they are right not to be complacent. But my feeling is this is not 1992. It is also not 1997. There is no wave of fervour for labour. But there is a tiredness with the current lot and a feeling it is time they were put out to pasture.
Such fervour as there is for a Labour government this time comes, I think, from the One Nation centre/centre right who recognise in Starmer a Buttskellite tendency. This group, whose votes will swing the election, don't really do fervour. They are currently in the shed looking for paint brushes and garden tools and wondering about the seed potatoes what with all this rain.
The thing that Starmer has got right and Corbyn got wrong is that there's no "enthusiastic votes count double" rule.
Johnsonites got that wrong in a slightly different way. They tended to assume that millions voting against Corbyn and Brexit Stasis were a sign of enthusiasm for them.
The same with the Lib Dems before 2010/5; they gained lots of 'soft' voters from Labour, who were appalled by Iraq. But those voters were then appalled by the disgusting treachery of the Lib Dems doing what they always said they wanted and forming a coalition - just with the 'wrong' party....
Many Conservative 2019 voters were also 'soft' voters. I think Starmer's going to get many 'soft' voters in the next GE as well.
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
Its a perfectly respectable position.
Rowling, Stock, Cyclefree etc are real women, they were born women, they are women.
A man who transitions to "become" a woman may be a transwoman but they're not a real woman. They'll never be.
That's not dehumanising. They're a real human. For all intents and purposes, unless it violates safeguarding, they can be treated as women, but the distinction still needs to exist.
Competitive female sport for example should belong to real women. A transwoman should never be entitled to play in
I am not persuaded that voter ID is going to be anything like the issue that is being claimed but, of course, we should not be making it more difficult for people entitled to vote to vote.
We can have a look after the local elections but my guess is that this will prove a damp squib.
Question. Recent reporting - Guardian etc - is on how some urban Labour seats are at risk because Labour are losing the votes of the younger and the more progressive voter - this on account of their policy on the Middle East, nuclear deterrence and so on.
Can this be true? Are there significant numbers of seats (eg more than 5) where another party (and if so which) can win instead?
The article mentions Bristol Central (vulnerable to Greens) and Sheffield Hallam (Lib Dems might win) and Brighton Pavillion. But I doubt there are many more than that. And as things stand, that's swamped by all the seats the Conservatives are on track to lose.
Brighton Pavilion isn't Labour now - it's Caroline Lucas's seat. Labour's stance on green issues and Gaza may help the Greens keep it, but it will be close. The other two Brighton seats are safe Labour, and the worst that could happen would be reduced Labour majorities. The Green vote in both was derisory in 2019.
Haven’t the Greens parachuted in a London Assembly member as candidate.
Is this likely to give some pushback or will she be welcomed as she is a well known name in Green circles. Eddie Izzard failed to get the labour candidacy in favour of a local candidate.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change. Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
It would be nice for you nonetheless if 5 million younger voters were turned away and the Conservatives squeezed a majority out on their older client vote.
In practice it is more likely to be 50,000-70,000 across all ages who forget their ID.
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
Are Labour trying in your seat? In South Leicestershire Labour members are directed to Rugby or Leicester City to help. Liberal Democrats have the chance based on latest locals but possibly best chance of getting rid of Tory MP -Alberto Costa - is that he is on the list of 10 Conservative MPs that they want to deselect.
There's a little-understood discrepancy between the Labour national strategy and what local parties are doing. The national strategy is to relentlessly focus on getting a comfortable majority, so the central Labour websites always urge supporters to help in seats which Labour could win with, say, an 8% national lead. Local parties see an opportunity with the current 20% leads to reset the local position, giving them not only a possible MP but a much better starting point for local elections. So people active enough to be willing in principle to go and help somewhere else are generally active enough to be keen to change the weather in their local constituency, especially as the likelihood of Sunak actually winning nationally seems very small.
If Labour's national lead collapsed to say 5%, that would change and nearly all the activists would rush off to the super-marginals. But at present it's not happening, and Labour is fighting hard in traditionally weak seats. A lot of those had artificially depressed Labour votes because activists went elsewhere and the LibDems mopped up the tactical vote. I'd therefore expect to see unexpected Labour gains in seats we've not won recently, and below-average swings in seats (e.g. in inner London) where we've got a traditional majority already.
Down here in Sidmouth and Honiton, all local resources and members are totally focused on the Exeter and Plymouth seats. Labour is leaving fighting against the Tories in this constituency to the LibDems. But Labour doesn't even bother fielding candidates in Sidmouth for the locals.
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
And going back to @eek's point upthread, the panels themselves are fairly cheap nowadays. A lot of the expense is installing them. (Which is why putting them in fields is more viable than retrofitting them to roofs.) Wonder what the viability of putting them in cars is, even if you also need mains charging?
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
What do you expect when the Shadow Health Secretary slags off "Middle Class Lefties" in the press?
What did he say ? I have not seen any comment from him to that effect, not doubting your word though.
The reality is it is either labour or a coalition. I suspect enough people will vote labour and the seats they seem to be falling back in are safe.
I did say here, when the Gaza thing kicked off, the muslim vote could end up costing labour in some seats. This was, of course, derided by some here however Labour people are also now waking up to it.
Difficult for labour. After purging the party of anti semitism what do they do. Take a fair stance on Gaza, calling out both Hamas for its evil crimes and Israel for its conduct of the war and its murder of civilians or do they adopt the Blair era policy of just giving Israel unwavering support.
Especially important as public opinion keeps moving in response to what they see.
I'm not sure what the problem is with that policy, apart from where middle class lefties may have their heads.
Isn’t the point about Streeting using that kind of rhetoric rather than the value or otherwise of the policy?
After all I hear ad tedium on here that it”s dreadful for pols to disparage groups of voters.
I'm not sure. I think that those who view themselves as "middle class lefties" are perhaps highly privileged wealthy lefties with not-that-much connection to ordinary people. A similar category error to the Daily Wail's "Middle England"?
On a quick look at the article, I'd say it highlights that politicisation of "clinical" bodies (eg BMA) is a real problem, and the growth of explicitly political groups.
I'm not sure that commentary on the current NHS comes best from "Tony O’Sullivan, a retired NHS consultant paediatrician".
TBF he may be more able to comment freely than his colleagues still in work.
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
They’re correct and they have been vindicated by Cass.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change. Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
It would be nice for you nonetheless if 5 million younger voters were turned away and the Conservatives squeezed a majority out on their older client vote.
In practice it is more likely to be 50,000-70,000 across all ages who forget their ID.
I was being flippant. That is nonetheless a significant number, enough ( on paper) to turn a Conservative rout into a majority.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change.
Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
And the Tories for everywhere outside the UK. The new emigrant voting system.
I'd forgotten about the 2 to 3 million ex-pat Tory voters who can pitch up (metaphorically speaking) at a marginal of their choice. I bet the opinion polls don't include them.
I'd forgotten they could choose their marginal - it seemed so improbable. Obvs somehow different from Tower Hamlets in our right-wingers' minds. Wrong sort of immigrant?
Question. Recent reporting - Guardian etc - is on how some urban Labour seats are at risk because Labour are losing the votes of the younger and the more progressive voter - this on account of their policy on the Middle East, nuclear deterrence and so on.
Can this be true? Are there significant numbers of seats (eg more than 5) where another party (and if so which) can win instead?
The article mentions Bristol Central (vulnerable to Greens) and Sheffield Hallam (Lib Dems might win) and Brighton Pavillion. But I doubt there are many more than that. And as things stand, that's swamped by all the seats the Conservatives are on track to lose.
Brighton Pavilion isn't Labour now - it's Caroline Lucas's seat. Labour's stance on green issues and Gaza may help the Greens keep it, but it will be close. The other two Brighton seats are safe Labour, and the worst that could happen would be reduced Labour majorities. The Green vote in both was derisory in 2019.
Haven’t the Greens parachuted in a London Assembly member as candidate.
Is this likely to give some pushback or will she be welcomed as she is a well known name in Green circles. Eddie Izzard failed to get the labour candidacy in favour of a local candidate.
Yes - Sian Berry is the Green candidate, London Assembly member and ex-joint leader of the Greens. Labour wisely rejected Izzard in favour of a local chap, Tom Gray. I know the constituency intimately - like I said, it will be close. Lucas was held in great affection by constituents, and many of her fans won't transfer to Berry.
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
The amount of energy you can get with a practical solar panel on a car - an existing idea is a film on the sunroof - is not very useful for charging the car.
The issue is that a reasonable car needs 100KWh of battery. That is, you could run a 1KW heater for 100 hours from it. That'a a lot of lecy.
What you can do with such a panel i run the car's ac system at low level. This stops the interior cooking up in ultra hot weather - which can even damage the interior. It also makes it safe to leave a pet in the car.
On muon catalysed fusion - after expending vast amounts of energy creating muons, they decay before you can get them to do anything. Not exactly cold fusion.
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
Are Labour trying in your seat? In South Leicestershire Labour members are directed to Rugby or Leicester City to help. Liberal Democrats have the chance based on latest locals but possibly best chance of getting rid of Tory MP -Alberto Costa - is that he is on the list of 10 Conservative MPs that they want to deselect.
There's a little-understood discrepancy between the Labour national strategy and what local parties are doing. The national strategy is to relentlessly focus on getting a comfortable majority, so the central Labour websites always urge supporters to help in seats which Labour could win with, say, an 8% national lead. Local parties see an opportunity with the current 20% leads to reset the local position, giving them not only a possible MP but a much better starting point for local elections. So people active enough to be willing in principle to go and help somewhere else are generally active enough to be keen to change the weather in their local constituency, especially as the likelihood of Sunak actually winning nationally seems very small.
If Labour's national lead collapsed to say 5%, that would change and nearly all the activists would rush off to the super-marginals. But at present it's not happening, and Labour is fighting hard in traditionally weak seats. A lot of those had artificially depressed Labour votes because activists went elsewhere and the LibDems mopped up the tactical vote. I'd therefore expect to see unexpected Labour gains in seats we've not won recently, and below-average swings in seats (e.g. in inner London) where we've got a traditional majority already.
I’m in the same camp as you Nick and that is exactly what I expect too. I’d expect some traditional safe,labour inner city seats to have low swings to labour and a fall in turnout as well. I expect labour to do well, as i said elsewhere, in seats they would not normally be expected to win.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change.
Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
I agree in terms of "vote farming" operations.
But there is also a low level, insidious issue with postal vote fraud associated with a patriarch (normally) in the family enjoying several votes. His family might, in fact, choose to vote the same way themselves - but the point is that they aren't given the choice. That kind of thing might well not swing elections on the macro level, but that doesn't mean it isn't important.
I remember my grandparents always used to vote different ways (he Labour, she Tory). Rather sweetly, when she developed Alzheimers, he'd complete her postal vote for the Conservatives, his for Labour, and send them in cancelling each other out (other parties weren't a factor in their area). But a different character might well have cast two Labour votes, and the fact is she probably just shouldn't have been voting towards the end as she'd lost the ability to understand what voting was, let alone form any sort of view on who to vote for.
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
They’re correct and they have been vindicated by Cass.
I do not believe Cass made a comment on what a "woman" is in their report. But in terms of the substance of the report itself, I agree with it. Certainly my view I think is that people should not be able to transition in any medical way until over the age of 18 and that is where my mind has changed and happy to say so.
In terms of pronouns etc I am more split on that as that is reversible. I am still at odds with people like Graham Linehan who says that should also not be allowed until you are over the age of eighteen.
In terms of your point, if a woman (sex) over the age of eighteen has surgery to become a man what are they? A trans man? What do you refer to them in real life as? He? She? They? What?
I’m sorry, but that is deeply, incredibly offensive
To say that someone is not a “real” man/woman is to dehumanise them.
It’s fine to say that they are a man/woman until a certain point is reached (and I thin self ID is ridiculous) but to say that they have transitioned but are not “real” is not on:
(StillWaters' original post, just so I am not putting words in their mouth unintentionally)
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
And going back to @eek's point upthread, the panels themselves are fairly cheap nowadays. A lot of the expense is installing them. (Which is why putting them in fields is more viable than retrofitting them to roofs.) Wonder what the viability of putting them in cars is, even if you also need mains charging?
On fusion - I recently watched the Duncan Jones sci-fi film 'Moon'. A great film - well plotted, shot, scored, acted - but what I found most interesting was the concept of cheap abundant energy from fusion from Helium 3 mined on the moon. (In all honesty, where the film fell down slightly was the economics - without giving away any spoilers, a company who were operating a moon-mining operation and providing the majority of the world's electricity would be turning over so much that they could crew their lunar operation with one hundred humans, rather than just one, and it would make little difference to the bottom line.)
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
Interesting. IMHO this affects only a tiny number of seats, and if you do the maths, the more marginal the seat, the more Starmer needs the votes of those who usually vote Tory so I doubt if there is anything in this.
BTW, on Gaza etc, Labour is going to stand more or less where the UK and the USA governments stand. There is no other place to go. It would be nice to be able to point to an alternative, morally sound policy with assured decent outcomes for good people on all sides but there isn't one to be had.
The seats they are losing the votes in, like two mentioned in the article, are low turnout very safe seats anyway. I Think they are right not to be complacent. But my feeling is this is not 1992. It is also not 1997. There is no wave of fervour for labour. But there is a tiredness with the current lot and a feeling it is time they were put out to pasture.
Such fervour as there is for a Labour government this time comes, I think, from the One Nation centre/centre right who recognise in Starmer a Buttskellite tendency. This group, whose votes will swing the election, don't really do fervour. They are currently in the shed looking for paint brushes and garden tools and wondering about the seed potatoes what with all this rain.
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
They’re correct and they have been vindicated by Cass.
They are neither correct nor incorrect. What words we use to reference which item is decided, over time and altered, over time, by use. Where this is contested then unavoidably what is going on is a conflict involving power within a society.
There is nothing, for example, intrinsic about 'people of colour' which differentiates it, in meaning or morally, from 'coloured people' except use.
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
They’re correct and they have been vindicated by Cass.
I do not believe Cass made a comment on what a "woman" is in their report. But in terms of the substance of the report itself, I agree with it. Certainly my view I think is that people should not be able to transition in any medical way until over the age of 18 and that is where my mind has changed and happy to say so.
In terms of pronouns etc I am more split on that as that is reversible. I am still at odds with people like Graham Linehan who says that should also not be allowed until you are over the age of eighteen.
In terms of your point, if a woman (sex) over the age of eighteen has surgery to become a man what are they? A trans man? What do you refer to them in real life as? He? She? They? What?
I would, out of common courtesy, refer to the however they wanted to be referred to. Irrespective of my view on the matter because I like to be nice to people.
What they are, well I believe Bart has already answered that.
I will move on from the trans issue I promise but just one more question.
If a trans woman is not a "real" woman, whilst I think it is true biologically, I am not sure myself how making this a massive pillar is that useful, I mean if you went up to a trans person and insisted they aren't a real "something" then I am not sure it's going to enamour them to your cause. This is the issue I've taken with how Graham Linehan has gone about it, I just don't see how making this specifically a massive issue is that helpful - and he's not talking about sex.
I think on sex there's no question about it - but on gender my personal view is that I tend to keep those opinions to myself in public or air them anonymously here. But that's just me.
Thanks for the discussion, for once I actually feel it's been very productive and I've actually slightly changed my mind.
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
And going back to @eek's point upthread, the panels themselves are fairly cheap nowadays. A lot of the expense is installing them. (Which is why putting them in fields is more viable than retrofitting them to roofs.) Wonder what the viability of putting them in cars is, even if you also need mains charging?
You can't get enough power to do much charging, even if you covered the entire surface in solar cells.
Let's say you get a breakthrough and get 40% efficiency (you can't, yet). That 400 watts per m2.
A car has a 100KWh battery (say). So 2.5 hours to charge 1%, per m2. How many m2 on your car?
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
They’re correct and they have been vindicated by Cass.
They are neither correct nor incorrect. What words we use to reference which item is decided, over time and altered, over time, by use. Where this is contested then unavoidably what is going on is a conflict involving power within a society.
There is nothing, for example, intrinsic about 'people of colour' which differentiates it, in meaning or morally, from 'coloured people' except use.
Thank goodness for a sensible comment.
Indeed. It's not so [edit] many generations ago that people could remember, within living memory, a society where a significant number of people denied that the noun 'man' included, for legal and political purposes, people with a black skin.
Question. Recent reporting - Guardian etc - is on how some urban Labour seats are at risk because Labour are losing the votes of the younger and the more progressive voter - this on account of their policy on the Middle East, nuclear deterrence and so on.
Can this be true? Are there significant numbers of seats (eg more than 5) where another party (and if so which) can win instead?
The article mentions Bristol Central (vulnerable to Greens) and Sheffield Hallam (Lib Dems might win) and Brighton Pavillion. But I doubt there are many more than that. And as things stand, that's swamped by all the seats the Conservatives are on track to lose.
Brighton Pavilion isn't Labour now - it's Caroline Lucas's seat. Labour's stance on green issues and Gaza may help the Greens keep it, but it will be close. The other two Brighton seats are safe Labour, and the worst that could happen would be reduced Labour majorities. The Green vote in both was derisory in 2019.
Haven’t the Greens parachuted in a London Assembly member as candidate.
Is this likely to give some pushback or will she be welcomed as she is a well known name in Green circles. Eddie Izzard failed to get the labour candidacy in favour of a local candidate.
Yes - Sian Berry is the Green candidate, London Assembly member and ex-joint leader of the Greens. Labour wisely rejected Izzard in favour of a local chap, Tom Gray. I know the constituency intimately - like I said, it will be close. Lucas was held in great affection by constituents, and many of her fans won't transfer to Berry.
Berry is standing for re-election to the London Assembly too, giving an address in Camden (and is top of the Green list so essentially certain of being elected).
Whilst Brighton Pavilion isn't exactly a long way from London and a fair number of people commute, it feels like quite a major error, and no doubt Gray will hammer it pretty hard. It suggests a lack of confidence she will be an MP in a few months, and a lack of interest in Brighton.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change.
Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
I agree in terms of "vote farming" operations.
But there is also a low level, insidious issue with postal vote fraud associated with a patriarch (normally) in the family enjoying several votes. His family might, in fact, choose to vote the same way themselves - but the point is that they aren't given the choice. That kind of thing might well not swing elections on the macro level, but that doesn't mean it isn't important.
I remember my grandparents always used to vote different ways (he Labour, she Tory). Rather sweetly, when she developed Alzheimers, he'd complete her postal vote for the Conservatives, his for Labour, and send them in cancelling each other out (other parties weren't a factor in their area). But a different character might well have cast two Labour votes, and the fact is she probably just shouldn't have been voting towards the end as she'd lost the ability to understand what voting was, let alone form any sort of view on who to vote for.
Turnout would be much lower if voters were expected to understand what they are voting for.....
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
The amount of energy you can get with a practical solar panel on a car - an existing idea is a film on the sunroof - is not very useful for charging the car.
The issue is that a reasonable car needs 100KWh of battery. That is, you could run a 1KW heater for 100 hours from it. That'a a lot of lecy.
What you can do with such a panel i run the car's ac system at low level. This stops the interior cooking up in ultra hot weather - which can even damage the interior. It also makes it safe to leave a pet in the car.
On muon catalysed fusion - after expending vast amounts of energy creating muons, they decay before you can get them to do anything. Not exactly cold fusion.
My Leaf has a battery capacity of 40 kWh and a roof surface area of around 2 m^2. A square metre of solar panel can produce around 250 W of power (during the day). So that's about 80 hours to fully charge the battery. For a car that isn't used very frequently, that would substantially reduce the need to connect to a charging point.
I mention muon catalysed fusion only in passing, just to point out that there are ways of achieving fusion that don't require massive heating. Muon catalysed fusion has been done in the lab, but of course cannot be commercially viable due to the energy needed to create the muons.
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
And going back to @eek's point upthread, the panels themselves are fairly cheap nowadays. A lot of the expense is installing them. (Which is why putting them in fields is more viable than retrofitting them to roofs.) Wonder what the viability of putting them in cars is, even if you also need mains charging?
On fusion - I recently watched the Duncan Jones sci-fi film 'Moon'. A great film - well plotted, shot, scored, acted - but what I found most interesting was the concept of cheap abundant energy from fusion from Helium 3 mined on the moon. (In all honesty, where the film fell down slightly was the economics - without giving away any spoilers, a company who were operating a moon-mining operation and providing the majority of the world's electricity would be turning over so much that they could crew their lunar operation with one hundred humans, rather than just one, and it would make little difference to the bottom line.)
Aside from the fact that no-one has ever demonstrated Helium-3 fusion beyond a handful of atoms in a big machine.... The physics of it means that it would be much harder than D-T fusion. Which hasn't been made to work to break even, yet.
The claimed benefit is "no neutrons". Aside from this not being entirely true, the question is whether the gain (a lot less neutrons) is worth then problems.
Helium-3 fusion wouldn't be cheaper than D-T, almost certainly.
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
Are Labour trying in your seat? In South Leicestershire Labour members are directed to Rugby or Leicester City to help. Liberal Democrats have the chance based on latest locals but possibly best chance of getting rid of Tory MP -Alberto Costa - is that he is on the list of 10 Conservative MPs that they want to deselect.
There's a little-understood discrepancy between the Labour national strategy and what local parties are doing. The national strategy is to relentlessly focus on getting a comfortable majority, so the central Labour websites always urge supporters to help in seats which Labour could win with, say, an 8% national lead. Local parties see an opportunity with the current 20% leads to reset the local position, giving them not only a possible MP but a much better starting point for local elections. So people active enough to be willing in principle to go and help somewhere else are generally active enough to be keen to change the weather in their local constituency, especially as the likelihood of Sunak actually winning nationally seems very small.
If Labour's national lead collapsed to say 5%, that would change and nearly all the activists would rush off to the super-marginals. But at present it's not happening, and Labour is fighting hard in traditionally weak seats. A lot of those had artificially depressed Labour votes because activists went elsewhere and the LibDems mopped up the tactical vote. I'd therefore expect to see unexpected Labour gains in seats we've not won recently, and below-average swings in seats (e.g. in inner London) where we've got a traditional majority already.
Down here in Sidmouth and Honiton, all local resources and members are totally focused on the Exeter and Plymouth seats. Labour is leaving fighting against the Tories in this constituency to the LibDems. But Labour doesn't even bother fielding candidates in Sidmouth for the locals.
I can confirm they are active here in Ashfield. Keir Starmer keeps popping up. It perhaps helps that we are on the way to places.
So presumably we are seen as a target.
It *should* be a shoo-in, because the other serious candidates have either kneecapped themselves (Zadrozny) or kneecapped each other (Leeanderthal and whoever the Tory will be).
I've realised what was missing from the Starmer photo on the Guardian piece - he needs sleeve garters to complete the 1920s-1950s look. See Peaky Blinders.
Question. Recent reporting - Guardian etc - is on how some urban Labour seats are at risk because Labour are losing the votes of the younger and the more progressive voter - this on account of their policy on the Middle East, nuclear deterrence and so on.
Can this be true? Are there significant numbers of seats (eg more than 5) where another party (and if so which) can win instead?
The article mentions Bristol Central (vulnerable to Greens) and Sheffield Hallam (Lib Dems might win) and Brighton Pavillion. But I doubt there are many more than that. And as things stand, that's swamped by all the seats the Conservatives are on track to lose.
Brighton Pavilion isn't Labour now - it's Caroline Lucas's seat. Labour's stance on green issues and Gaza may help the Greens keep it, but it will be close. The other two Brighton seats are safe Labour, and the worst that could happen would be reduced Labour majorities. The Green vote in both was derisory in 2019.
Haven’t the Greens parachuted in a London Assembly member as candidate.
Is this likely to give some pushback or will she be welcomed as she is a well known name in Green circles. Eddie Izzard failed to get the labour candidacy in favour of a local candidate.
Yes - Sian Berry is the Green candidate, London Assembly member and ex-joint leader of the Greens. Labour wisely rejected Izzard in favour of a local chap, Tom Gray. I know the constituency intimately - like I said, it will be close. Lucas was held in great affection by constituents, and many of her fans won't transfer to Berry.
Berry is standing for re-election to the London Assembly too, giving an address in Camden (and is top of the Green list so essentially certain of being elected).
Whilst Brighton Pavilion isn't exactly a long way from London and a fair number of people commute, it feels like quite a major error, and no doubt Gray will hammer it pretty hard. It suggests a lack of confidence she will be an MP in a few months, and a lack of interest in Brighton.
Good point. Despite it's moniker of London-on-Sea, we are awash with proud Brightonians down here. As for commuting, I don't have the data but I suspect that daily commuting has declined over the last five years due to the egregious shambles of the train service combined with the WFH trend - most people I know who nominally work in London just pop up once or twice a week.
One man's voter suppression is another man's stopping voter fraud.
Some years ago, I actually heard someone say out loud, on the radio, that group filling in of postal votes was good. Because it spoke towards "traditional collaborative tribal decision making" that would make people from various culture feel comfortable.
I felt like suggesting a return to non-secret ballot voting. Where you rock up at the table, and the Squire's agent (who is acting as returning officer) takes your vote.
"So, Tomkins, do you vote for the Squire's choice? Or shall I tear up your lease on the farm right now?"
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
Are Labour trying in your seat? In South Leicestershire Labour members are directed to Rugby or Leicester City to help. Liberal Democrats have the chance based on latest locals but possibly best chance of getting rid of Tory MP -Alberto Costa - is that he is on the list of 10 Conservative MPs that they want to deselect.
There's a little-understood discrepancy between the Labour national strategy and what local parties are doing. The national strategy is to relentlessly focus on getting a comfortable majority, so the central Labour websites always urge supporters to help in seats which Labour could win with, say, an 8% national lead. Local parties see an opportunity with the current 20% leads to reset the local position, giving them not only a possible MP but a much better starting point for local elections. So people active enough to be willing in principle to go and help somewhere else are generally active enough to be keen to change the weather in their local constituency, especially as the likelihood of Sunak actually winning nationally seems very small.
If Labour's national lead collapsed to say 5%, that would change and nearly all the activists would rush off to the super-marginals. But at present it's not happening, and Labour is fighting hard in traditionally weak seats. A lot of those had artificially depressed Labour votes because activists went elsewhere and the LibDems mopped up the tactical vote. I'd therefore expect to see unexpected Labour gains in seats we've not won recently, and below-average swings in seats (e.g. in inner London) where we've got a traditional majority already.
I’m in the same camp as you Nick and that is exactly what I expect too. I’d expect some traditional safe,labour inner city seats to have low swings to labour and a fall in turnout as well. I expect labour to do well, as i said elsewhere, in seats they would not normally be expected to win.
Is it Labour's promise to increase military spending, the party's strong support for Israeli genocide, or its idiotic original and inspiring slogan "Let's Get Britain's Future Back" that will win votes? Or is it the notion that the reason that living standards have dropped is that the Tories are guilty of incompetent management, which Labour doesn't even have the guts to call corruption?
"Labour’s missions are built on fulfilling our first duty: to protect our country – through economic stability, secure borders and strong defence."
The above analysis doesn't pay attention to what the opponent may or will do. All it says is that the Labour groundgame is very well organised for a terrain in which it's headed for victory by a large margin, i.e. when any fool could win the election.
Presumably the final paragraph of TSE's essay is irony? The Labour Party is now much better than the Conservatives at farming postal votes - there's no way they would restrict a vote-garnering method which they know how to use so well.
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
The amount of energy you can get with a practical solar panel on a car - an existing idea is a film on the sunroof - is not very useful for charging the car.
The issue is that a reasonable car needs 100KWh of battery. That is, you could run a 1KW heater for 100 hours from it. That'a a lot of lecy.
What you can do with such a panel i run the car's ac system at low level. This stops the interior cooking up in ultra hot weather - which can even damage the interior. It also makes it safe to leave a pet in the car.
On muon catalysed fusion - after expending vast amounts of energy creating muons, they decay before you can get them to do anything. Not exactly cold fusion.
My Leaf has a battery capacity of 40 kWh and a roof surface area of around 2 m^2. A square metre of solar panel can produce around 250 W of power (during the day). So that's about 80 hours to fully charge the battery. For a car that isn't used very frequently, that would substantially reduce the need to connect to a charging point.
I mention muon catalysed fusion only in passing, just to point out that there are ways of achieving fusion that don't require massive heating. Muon catalysed fusion has been done in the lab, but of course cannot be commercially viable due to the energy needed to create the muons.
One option on the VW Buzz is a solar panel, so depending on mileage and how sunny your parking place is it is already possible to have a solar EV. Perfect for the Post apocalypse world, Mad Max got it wrong with its supercharged gas-guzzlers.
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
Are Labour trying in your seat? In South Leicestershire Labour members are directed to Rugby or Leicester City to help. Liberal Democrats have the chance based on latest locals but possibly best chance of getting rid of Tory MP -Alberto Costa - is that he is on the list of 10 Conservative MPs that they want to deselect.
There's a little-understood discrepancy between the Labour national strategy and what local parties are doing. The national strategy is to relentlessly focus on getting a comfortable majority, so the central Labour websites always urge supporters to help in seats which Labour could win with, say, an 8% national lead. Local parties see an opportunity with the current 20% leads to reset the local position, giving them not only a possible MP but a much better starting point for local elections. So people active enough to be willing in principle to go and help somewhere else are generally active enough to be keen to change the weather in their local constituency, especially as the likelihood of Sunak actually winning nationally seems very small.
If Labour's national lead collapsed to say 5%, that would change and nearly all the activists would rush off to the super-marginals. But at present it's not happening, and Labour is fighting hard in traditionally weak seats. A lot of those had artificially depressed Labour votes because activists went elsewhere and the LibDems mopped up the tactical vote. I'd therefore expect to see unexpected Labour gains in seats we've not won recently, and below-average swings in seats (e.g. in inner London) where we've got a traditional majority already.
Down here in Sidmouth and Honiton, all local resources and members are totally focused on the Exeter and Plymouth seats. Labour is leaving fighting against the Tories in this constituency to the LibDems. But Labour doesn't even bother fielding candidates in Sidmouth for the locals.
I can confirm they are active here in Ashfield. Keir Starmer keeps popping up. It perhaps helps that we are on the way to places.
So presumably we are seen as a target.
It *should* be a shoo-in, because the other serious candidates have either kneecapped themselves (Zadrozny) or kneecapped each other (Leeanderthal and whoever the Tory will be).
I've realised what was missing from the Starmer photo on the Guardian piece - he needs sleeve garters to complete the 1920s-1950s look. See Peaky Blinders.
Er. That's a picture of a man in a suit who's taken his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves.
Bit like saying that wearing jeans means you are trying to be in a John Wayne horse opera.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change.
Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
I agree in terms of "vote farming" operations.
But there is also a low level, insidious issue with postal vote fraud associated with a patriarch (normally) in the family enjoying several votes. His family might, in fact, choose to vote the same way themselves - but the point is that they aren't given the choice. That kind of thing might well not swing elections on the macro level, but that doesn't mean it isn't important.
I remember my grandparents always used to vote different ways (he Labour, she Tory). Rather sweetly, when she developed Alzheimers, he'd complete her postal vote for the Conservatives, his for Labour, and send them in cancelling each other out (other parties weren't a factor in their area). But a different character might well have cast two Labour votes, and the fact is she probably just shouldn't have been voting towards the end as she'd lost the ability to understand what voting was, let alone form any sort of view on who to vote for.
Turnout would be much lower if voters were expected to understand what they are voting for.....
In a democracy government and parliament have the job of understanding the people because they are voters. It is the other way round in other systems.
Lab 45 (+2) Con 19 (-1) Libdem 8 (=) Reform 15 (-1) Green 7 (-1)
Is Truss back leading the Tories?
When Truss fell, there was a big poll bounce for the Tories - even under a new leader who was crap at talking to voters and had never carried a ceremonial sword. He hadn't even repeatedly said "cock" in a panelled chamber for some populist counterpoint. Soon there will be an even bigger poll bounce.
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
And going back to @eek's point upthread, the panels themselves are fairly cheap nowadays. A lot of the expense is installing them. (Which is why putting them in fields is more viable than retrofitting them to roofs.) Wonder what the viability of putting them in cars is, even if you also need mains charging?
You can't get enough power to do much charging, even if you covered the entire surface in solar cells.
Let's say you get a breakthrough and get 40% efficiency (you can't, yet). That 400 watts per m2.
A car has a 100KWh battery (say). So 2.5 hours to charge 1%, per m2. How many m2 on your car?
Look at it this way. Two square meters of solar panel will produce around 500 W of power during the day. So 10 hours of daylight will give you 5 kWh of energy. An efficient EV will do about 5 miles per kWh. So solar panels on your car will give you enough charge for about 25 miles of driving per day. For many people, this will completely suffice for a lot of the time, and it would certainly reduce the charging frequency for others.
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
Are Labour trying in your seat? In South Leicestershire Labour members are directed to Rugby or Leicester City to help. Liberal Democrats have the chance based on latest locals but possibly best chance of getting rid of Tory MP -Alberto Costa - is that he is on the list of 10 Conservative MPs that they want to deselect.
There's a little-understood discrepancy between the Labour national strategy and what local parties are doing. The national strategy is to relentlessly focus on getting a comfortable majority, so the central Labour websites always urge supporters to help in seats which Labour could win with, say, an 8% national lead. Local parties see an opportunity with the current 20% leads to reset the local position, giving them not only a possible MP but a much better starting point for local elections. So people active enough to be willing in principle to go and help somewhere else are generally active enough to be keen to change the weather in their local constituency, especially as the likelihood of Sunak actually winning nationally seems very small.
If Labour's national lead collapsed to say 5%, that would change and nearly all the activists would rush off to the super-marginals. But at present it's not happening, and Labour is fighting hard in traditionally weak seats. A lot of those had artificially depressed Labour votes because activists went elsewhere and the LibDems mopped up the tactical vote. I'd therefore expect to see unexpected Labour gains in seats we've not won recently, and below-average swings in seats (e.g. in inner London) where we've got a traditional majority already.
Down here in Sidmouth and Honiton, all local resources and members are totally focused on the Exeter and Plymouth seats. Labour is leaving fighting against the Tories in this constituency to the LibDems. But Labour doesn't even bother fielding candidates in Sidmouth for the locals.
I can confirm they are active here in Ashfield. Keir Starmer keeps popping up. It perhaps helps that we are on the way to places.
So presumably we are seen as a target.
It *should* be a shoo-in, because the other serious candidates have either kneecapped themselves (Zadrozny) or kneecapped each other (Leeanderthal and whoever the Tory will be).
I've realised what was missing from the Starmer photo on the Guardian piece - he needs sleeve garters to complete the 1920s-1950s look. See Peaky Blinders.
Er. That's a picture of a man in a suit who's taken his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves.
Bit like saying that wearing jeans means you are trying to be in a John Wayne horse opera.
Sleeve rings will add a certain style.
Anyhoo, around here some people want to be in the 1950s.
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
Interesting. IMHO this affects only a tiny number of seats, and if you do the maths, the more marginal the seat, the more Starmer needs the votes of those who usually vote Tory so I doubt if there is anything in this.
BTW, on Gaza etc, Labour is going to stand more or less where the UK and the USA governments stand. There is no other place to go. It would be nice to be able to point to an alternative, morally sound policy with assured decent outcomes for good people on all sides but there isn't one to be had.
The seats they are losing the votes in, like two mentioned in the article, are low turnout very safe seats anyway. I Think they are right not to be complacent. But my feeling is this is not 1992. It is also not 1997. There is no wave of fervour for labour. But there is a tiredness with the current lot and a feeling it is time they were put out to pasture.
Such fervour as there is for a Labour government this time comes, I think, from the One Nation centre/centre right who recognise in Starmer a Buttskellite tendency. This group, whose votes will swing the election, don't really do fervour. They are currently in the shed looking for paint brushes and garden tools and wondering about the seed potatoes what with all this rain.
There was indeed more 'fervour' for Labour in 97. The sunny spring summer day, the RFH, Things Can Only Get Bedder, Can Only Get BEDDER, a handsome bopping Mandy, and Tony of course, so young so young, "a new dawn has broken, has it not". Oh god, feels like yesterday. Tears in my eyes as I type.
We won't see any of that on October 25th even if the size of the win is similar. This is not - or not mainly - because of SKS's lack of razzmatazz. The "Starmer is no Blair" saying, whilst true, is not the point. The big difference between now and then isn't in the Labour leader it's in the British people. We've been through the ringer since 2008, crash, austerity, Brexit, Boris, rivers of bullshit, Truss, pandemic, return of inflation and proper interest rates, and we're thoroughly jaded by it. So we're not about to wet our knickers about a change of government.
What there will be, however, is a wide sense of relief and guarded optimism. Which will be nice.
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
And going back to @eek's point upthread, the panels themselves are fairly cheap nowadays. A lot of the expense is installing them. (Which is why putting them in fields is more viable than retrofitting them to roofs.) Wonder what the viability of putting them in cars is, even if you also need mains charging?
On fusion - I recently watched the Duncan Jones sci-fi film 'Moon'. A great film - well plotted, shot, scored, acted - but what I found most interesting was the concept of cheap abundant energy from fusion from Helium 3 mined on the moon. (In all honesty, where the film fell down slightly was the economics - without giving away any spoilers, a company who were operating a moon-mining operation and providing the majority of the world's electricity would be turning over so much that they could crew their lunar operation with one hundred humans, rather than just one, and it would make little difference to the bottom line.)
It probably wouldn't be economic anyway.
The current preferred fuel is deuterium/tritium. There's more than enough deuterium on earth, and more tritium than would be needed for a sustainable fuel supply could be generated using the fast neutrons from the fusion reaction to transmute lithium.
The Helium 3 thing relates back to a NASA study from decades ago.
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
And going back to @eek's point upthread, the panels themselves are fairly cheap nowadays. A lot of the expense is installing them. (Which is why putting them in fields is more viable than retrofitting them to roofs.) Wonder what the viability of putting them in cars is, even if you also need mains charging?
On fusion - I recently watched the Duncan Jones sci-fi film 'Moon'. A great film - well plotted, shot, scored, acted - but what I found most interesting was the concept of cheap abundant energy from fusion from Helium 3 mined on the moon. (In all honesty, where the film fell down slightly was the economics - without giving away any spoilers, a company who were operating a moon-mining operation and providing the majority of the world's electricity would be turning over so much that they could crew their lunar operation with one hundred humans, rather than just one, and it would make little difference to the bottom line.)
Aside from the fact that no-one has ever demonstrated Helium-3 fusion beyond a handful of atoms in a big machine.... The physics of it means that it would be much harder than D-T fusion. Which hasn't been made to work to break even, yet.
The claimed benefit is "no neutrons". Aside from this not being entirely true, the question is whether the gain (a lot less neutrons) is worth then problems.
Helium-3 fusion wouldn't be cheaper than D-T, almost certainly.
Also, extracting the He-3 from regolith would be a pain in the ass.
I doubt if the photo ID requirements will make much difference, though if more young people voted in local elections like older people do they would already be aware of the change.
Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
And the Tories for everywhere outside the UK. The new emigrant voting system.
I'd forgotten about the 2 to 3 million ex-pat Tory voters who can pitch up (metaphorically speaking) at a marginal of their choice. I bet the opinion polls don't include them.
I'd forgotten they could choose their marginal - it seemed so improbable. Obvs somehow different from Tower Hamlets in our right-wingers' minds. Wrong sort of immigrant?
Overseas voters have to register to vote at their last UK address where they appeared on the electoral role . So they can’t just pick a marginal .
Lab 45 (+2) Con 19 (-1) Libdem 8 (=) Reform 15 (-1) Green 7 (-1)
Is that the first below 20%?
No you also have to believe Reform on 15%
I don't believe Reform are going to get 15% at the next election, but the Tories are below 20% in that poll, its an objective matter of fact regardless of what you believe.
Many of those saying Reform probably won't vote at the next election, so that may inflate all other parties by a point or two as the denominator becomes smaller. But the poll remains what it is.
Well, Rishi was promising us lift off and every journey begins with a single step and all that. Not sure this is going to move the dial though.
Per capita is that a single step or are we still going backwards?
That's what really matters.
We don't know. The data on migration numbers is slow and uncertain. I guess the Labour Force Survey numbers are a bit more timely and somewhat better quality, so you could get a GDP per worker figure a bit more easily.
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
They’re correct and they have been vindicated by Cass.
Lab 45 (+2) Con 19 (-1) Libdem 8 (=) Reform 15 (-1) Green 7 (-1)
Unreal that the backbenchers will accept that.
Taxi for Rishi on May 3rd....
At some point you have to recognise that the wisest thing you can do is huddle in the lifeboat and pray. Keep thinking that hurling yourself into the sea in search of a more comfortable mode of rescue won’t result in you drowning in the attempt is foolhardy in extremis.
Lab 45 (+2) Con 19 (-1) Libdem 8 (=) Reform 15 (-1) Green 7 (-1)
Is that the first below 20%?
No you also have to believe Reform on 15%
YouGov have had the Conservatives wobbling either side of 20% for a couple of months now. It's crazy, but it is consistently crazy.
And even if you take 10 percentage points off Reform and transfer them to the Conservatives (really big if), that still has Sunak doing a bit worse than Major '97.
However, what polling there has been doesn't show anyone else doing meaningfully better, and quite a few doing worse. The Conservatives can either invent a time machine (when should they go back to? 2014 or so?) or start drafting their concession speeches.
Lab 45 (+2) Con 19 (-1) Libdem 8 (=) Reform 15 (-1) Green 7 (-1)
Unreal that the backbenchers will accept that.
Taxi for Rishi on May 3rd....
At some point you have to recognise that the wisest thing you can do is huddle in the lifeboat and pray. Keep thinking that hurling yourself into the sea in search of a more comfortable mode of rescue won’t result in you drowning in the attempt is foolhardy in extremis.
More that setting fire to the lifeboat is unlikely to improve the situation.
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
Are Labour trying in your seat? In South Leicestershire Labour members are directed to Rugby or Leicester City to help. Liberal Democrats have the chance based on latest locals but possibly best chance of getting rid of Tory MP -Alberto Costa - is that he is on the list of 10 Conservative MPs that they want to deselect.
There's a little-understood discrepancy between the Labour national strategy and what local parties are doing. The national strategy is to relentlessly focus on getting a comfortable majority, so the central Labour websites always urge supporters to help in seats which Labour could win with, say, an 8% national lead. Local parties see an opportunity with the current 20% leads to reset the local position, giving them not only a possible MP but a much better starting point for local elections. So people active enough to be willing in principle to go and help somewhere else are generally active enough to be keen to change the weather in their local constituency, especially as the likelihood of Sunak actually winning nationally seems very small.
If Labour's national lead collapsed to say 5%, that would change and nearly all the activists would rush off to the super-marginals. But at present it's not happening, and Labour is fighting hard in traditionally weak seats. A lot of those had artificially depressed Labour votes because activists went elsewhere and the LibDems mopped up the tactical vote. I'd therefore expect to see unexpected Labour gains in seats we've not won recently, and below-average swings in seats (e.g. in inner London) where we've got a traditional majority already.
I’m in the same camp as you Nick and that is exactly what I expect too. I’d expect some traditional safe,labour inner city seats to have low swings to labour and a fall in turnout as well. I expect labour to do well, as i said elsewhere, in seats they would not normally be expected to win.
Is it Labour's promise to increase military spending, the party's strong support for Israeli genocide, or its idiotic original and inspiring slogan "Let's Get Britain's Future Back" that will win votes? Or is it the notion that the reason that living standards have dropped is that the Tories are guilty of incompetent management, which Labour doesn't even have the guts to call corruption?
"Labour’s missions are built on fulfilling our first duty: to protect our country – through economic stability, secure borders and strong defence."
The above analysis doesn't pay attention to what the opponent may or will do. All it says is that the Labour groundgame is very well organised for a terrain in which it's headed for victory by a large margin, i.e. when any fool could win the election.
I don't run the national campaign, but there is a substantial body of voters who like the general idea of Labour - more focus on community and solidarity, less on getting rich quick - but either (a) think we might be dangerously reckless or (b) habitually vote LibDem because Labour doesn't bother locally. That group will mostly vote Labour if they think the party is trying hard to win locally AND we're not scary. They aren't necessarily interested in the nuances of policy positions.
People like you and me who are really interested in politics are different - we scrutinise exactly what's being said about Gaza or water nationalisation or oil drilling and are encouraged or discouraged accordingly. But lots of people, perhaps the majority, are not really like that. I wish everyone was as interested as us, but we need to go with the grain of real life.
As you say, opponents may adopt strategies which counter the above. But so far the Tories are barely doing anything beyond the "Our MP is a good guy and works hard" line, which doesn't work well because most people have little direct experience of what their MP is like, while the LibDems are addicted to the bar chart/"Labour isn't serious here" tactical voting strategy, which doesn't work when Labour is visibly active. I do think they need a distinctive strategy. I had a chat yesterday with someone very close to the LD leadership, who said they'd seriously considered going all out for a "Rejoin" strategy to give themselves a real USP, but they have too many seats in the SW where Brexit sentiment is still a thing, so they're a bit stuck with the tactical voting pitch.
One man's voter suppression is another man's stopping voter fraud.
Some years ago, I actually heard someone say out loud, on the radio, that group filling in of postal votes was good. Because it spoke towards "traditional collaborative tribal decision making" that would make people from various culture feel comfortable.
I felt like suggesting a return to non-secret ballot voting. Where you rock up at the table, and the Squire's agent (who is acting as returning officer) takes your vote.
"So, Tomkins, do you vote for the Squire's choice? Or shall I tear up your lease on the farm right now?"
Ah, the Goode Olde Days....
I was recently reading the proceedings after a dodgy election in the 1840s. The way the lawyuers for each side would focus on the other side's voters and try to knock them out. "So, before you voted at Snottown, Mr X gave you expenses to move to Snottown and a free house to stay in, as well as a job in the Post Office?"
Meanwhile, you can see the way the wind is blowing when the Daily Mail does this:
It's pretty clear that I should vote Labour as the best Tactical Vote to get rid of my smug Tory MP in their supposedly safe seat, which is now marginal on some polling.
Starmer is doing everything he can to stop me, and I cannot stand Streeting. I may well vote Green.
Are Labour trying in your seat? In South Leicestershire Labour members are directed to Rugby or Leicester City to help. Liberal Democrats have the chance based on latest locals but possibly best chance of getting rid of Tory MP -Alberto Costa - is that he is on the list of 10 Conservative MPs that they want to deselect.
There's a little-understood discrepancy between the Labour national strategy and what local parties are doing. The national strategy is to relentlessly focus on getting a comfortable majority, so the central Labour websites always urge supporters to help in seats which Labour could win with, say, an 8% national lead. Local parties see an opportunity with the current 20% leads to reset the local position, giving them not only a possible MP but a much better starting point for local elections. So people active enough to be willing in principle to go and help somewhere else are generally active enough to be keen to change the weather in their local constituency, especially as the likelihood of Sunak actually winning nationally seems very small.
If Labour's national lead collapsed to say 5%, that would change and nearly all the activists would rush off to the super-marginals. But at present it's not happening, and Labour is fighting hard in traditionally weak seats. A lot of those had artificially depressed Labour votes because activists went elsewhere and the LibDems mopped up the tactical vote. I'd therefore expect to see unexpected Labour gains in seats we've not won recently, and below-average swings in seats (e.g. in inner London) where we've got a traditional majority already.
I’m in the same camp as you Nick and that is exactly what I expect too. I’d expect some traditional safe,labour inner city seats to have low swings to labour and a fall in turnout as well. I expect labour to do well, as i said elsewhere, in seats they would not normally be expected to win.
Is it Labour's promise to increase military spending, the party's strong support for Israeli genocide, or its idiotic original and inspiring slogan "Let's Get Britain's Future Back" that will win votes? Or is it the notion that the reason that living standards have dropped is that the Tories are guilty of incompetent management, which Labour doesn't even have the guts to call corruption?
"Labour’s missions are built on fulfilling our first duty: to protect our country – through economic stability, secure borders and strong defence."
The above analysis doesn't pay attention to what the opponent may or will do. All it says is that the Labour groundgame is very well organised for a terrain in which it's headed for victory by a large margin, i.e. when any fool could win the election.
I don't run the national campaign, but there is a substantial body of voters who like the general idea of Labour - more focus on community and solidarity, less on getting rich quick - but either (a) think we might be dangerously reckless or (b) habitually vote LibDem because Labour doesn't bother locally. That group will mostly vote Labour if they think the party is trying hard to win locally AND we're not scary. They aren't necessarily interested in the nuances of policy positions.
People like you and me who are really interested in politics are different - we scrutinise exactly what's being said about Gaza or water nationalisation or oil drilling and are encouraged or discouraged accordingly. But lots of people, perhaps the majority, are not really like that. I wish everyone was as interested as us, but we need to go with the grain of real life.
As you say, opponents may adopt strategies which counter the above. But so far the Tories are barely doing anything beyond the "Our MP is a good guy and works hard" line, which doesn't work well because most people have little direct experience of what their MP is like, while the LibDems are addicted to the bar chart/"Labour isn't serious here" tactical voting strategy, which doesn't work when Labour is visibly active. I do think they need a distinctive strategy. I had a chat yesterday with someone very close to the LD leadership, who said they'd seriously considered going all out for a "Rejoin" strategy to give themselves a real USP, but they have too many seats in the SW where Brexit sentiment is still a thing, so they're a bit stuck with the tactical voting pitch.
I had my first ever doorstep political canvasser yesterday - a Labour chap pitching for the mayoral candidate. I outed myself as a wobbling Lib Dem who may well vote for the Labour candidate, but then Andy Street hasn't done a bad job (while frantically trying to distance himself from the Conservatives). But I was doing the cooking, so I couldn't chat for long.
Lab 45 (+2) Con 19 (-1) Libdem 8 (=) Reform 15 (-1) Green 7 (-1)
Unreal that the backbenchers will accept that.
Taxi for Rishi on May 3rd....
At some point you have to recognise that the wisest thing you can do is huddle in the lifeboat and pray. Keep thinking that hurling yourself into the sea in search of a more comfortable mode of rescue won’t result in you drowning in the attempt is foolhardy in extremis.
More that setting fire to the lifeboat is unlikely to improve the situation.
Some Tories seem to be under a naïve straw grasping assumption that you can add Reform voters to their share, but mathematically more Reform voters will probably be added to the Labour share than the Tory share.
As a mathematical exercise, if we take that YouGov poll and assume that two-thirds (10%) of the 15% who say Reform stay at home instead then the figures become.
Lab 45 -> 50 Con 19 -> 21 LD 8 -> 9 Reform 15 -> 6 Green 7 -> 8
When I said I thought that one day we will have solar powered cars someone on here dismissed it as scientifically impossible. Which is what they said about landing on the moon and just about every great scientific breakthrough.
Huge if true but many breakthroughs never make it from university press release to the real world.
agreed, look at cold fusion..and Nuclear Fusion reactors for that matter.
It’s only a matter of time.
Every great scientific advance has always been presaged by the words ‘it can’t be done’
It will be. Perhaps not in your lifetimes. But it will be.
Yes, I mean has anyone ever told you about AI ?
As someone who worked at Culham told me, over fifty years ago, 'Fusion is the energy of the future. Always has been, always will be.'
Until First Light Fusion came along with a very different technique that does seem to be slowly getting there.
Solar powered cars won’t happen because the amount of energy from the sun hitting the surface of the car is less than in needed to propel it. Even assuming 100% efficiency.
You *can* build a weird kind of 4 wheel bicycle that can make slow progress in the Australian desert at noon.
Improving the efficiency of solar cells is perfectly possible, but won’t be enough to make solar powered cars work.
Cold fusion doesn’t work because the energy required to push atoms together is substantial.
Regular fusion is progressing slowly, because of the difficulty of modelling ultra high intensity magnetic fields. And fusion reactions. Which means you have to build a succession of giant machines and feel your way to the result. That being said, it is fairly likely that ITER will get more energy out than goes in.
First Light is one of dozens of attempts to do fusion differently. A number of them can neither be proved or disproved as to being viable, because of the modelling problem.
Yes, I think the engineering challenges of fusion are so great that is is unlikely to become a commercial source of energy for a long time yet. Those who envisage them feeding power to the grid within the next couple of decades are, IMO, deluded.
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
And going back to @eek's point upthread, the panels themselves are fairly cheap nowadays. A lot of the expense is installing them. (Which is why putting them in fields is more viable than retrofitting them to roofs.) Wonder what the viability of putting them in cars is, even if you also need mains charging?
You can't get enough power to do much charging, even if you covered the entire surface in solar cells.
Let's say you get a breakthrough and get 40% efficiency (you can't, yet). That 400 watts per m2.
A car has a 100KWh battery (say). So 2.5 hours to charge 1%, per m2. How many m2 on your car?
Look at it this way. Two square meters of solar panel will produce around 500 W of power during the day. So 10 hours of daylight will give you 5 kWh of energy. An efficient EV will do about 5 miles per kWh. So solar panels on your car will give you enough charge for about 25 miles of driving per day. For many people, this will completely suffice for a lot of the time, and it would certainly reduce the charging frequency for others.
Genesis G80 and Prius have rooftop solar so it's starting to happen. It only really makes sense if it can directly charge the 12V system (like the G80).
Well, Rishi was promising us lift off and every journey begins with a single step and all that. Not sure this is going to move the dial though.
Per capita is that a single step or are we still going backwards?
That's what really matters.
Well, a 0.1% population growth is roughly 69k. Given the current level of net immigration was 672k last year or roughly 57k a month there may well have been an infinitesimal uplift, depending on deaths and births. Would we settle for a lean forward rather than a step?
Interesting Guardian article, briefed by Labour people, about the issues labour faces in trying to win back one set of voters possibly alienating the younger Gaza and Climate obsessed brigade.
It is not just the Tories trying to straddle different voting blocks. Personally I am glad to see Labour standing up for working class communities and wanting to make their lives better and not just taking them for granted and if it means alienating younger people with their "student politics" approach to things, like those melts who attacked the MOD this week with paint, so be it.
"The decision by Starmer, the Labour leader, to tack to the right on issues such as the economy, immigration and the environment has helped win over older white voters who backed Brexit at the referendum.
But those decisions have also upset many traditional Labour voters in urban areas in particular. Among those voters’ chief concerns is the party’s decision to abandon its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green projects and Starmer’s defence of Israel’s military actions in Gaza."
Interesting. IMHO this affects only a tiny number of seats, and if you do the maths, the more marginal the seat, the more Starmer needs the votes of those who usually vote Tory so I doubt if there is anything in this.
BTW, on Gaza etc, Labour is going to stand more or less where the UK and the USA governments stand. There is no other place to go. It would be nice to be able to point to an alternative, morally sound policy with assured decent outcomes for good people on all sides but there isn't one to be had.
The seats they are losing the votes in, like two mentioned in the article, are low turnout very safe seats anyway. I Think they are right not to be complacent. But my feeling is this is not 1992. It is also not 1997. There is no wave of fervour for labour. But there is a tiredness with the current lot and a feeling it is time they were put out to pasture.
Such fervour as there is for a Labour government this time comes, I think, from the One Nation centre/centre right who recognise in Starmer a Buttskellite tendency. This group, whose votes will swing the election, don't really do fervour. They are currently in the shed looking for paint brushes and garden tools and wondering about the seed potatoes what with all this rain.
The thing that Starmer has got right and Corbyn got wrong is that there's no "enthusiastic votes count double" rule.
Johnsonites got that wrong in a slightly different way. They tended to assume that millions voting against Corbyn and Brexit Stasis were a sign of enthusiasm for them.
The same with the Lib Dems before 2010/5; they gained lots of 'soft' voters from Labour, who were appalled by Iraq. But those voters were then appalled by the disgusting treachery of the Lib Dems doing what they always said they wanted and forming a coalition - just with the 'wrong' party....
Many Conservative 2019 voters were also 'soft' voters. I think Starmer's going to get many 'soft' voters in the next GE as well.
Boris did acknowledge that a lot of his 2019 vote was ‘soft’, he made a speech outside No10 the day after the election saying a lot of the votes were ‘on loan’ and it was up to him to make them permanent, or words to that effect. The pandemic got in the way and we will never know, but I don’t think he thought of them as particularly enthusiastic Tory voters. I was one of them and not enthusiastic at all, but it was the only choice for people who wanted the Leave win enacted
Comments
I don’t know why tv execs haven’t thought of this before. Cooking. On tv.
Cant wait for Harry’s documentary on Monkey Tennis.
Sampson Option and all that.
When the US was looking at installing an ABN system in Poland, Russia became extremely upset.
The reason is interesting. Due to orbital mechanics, the installation in Poland *wouldn’t* be able to stop Russian missiles hitting nearly anywhere.
The purpose of the interceptors was to stop an attack on the US by a future Iranian ballistic missile capability.
But, by the nature of the systems, they would defend a portion of Poland against Russian missiles.
To Russia, being a great power is important. Nukes are big part of it. As is holding all Russia’s neighbours at risk. A Poland that can’t be nuked means a Russia, in the context of Poland, that isn’t a great power. A Russia without Respect.
As the great philosopher Jean Vilain said - “Respect is everything. Without respect, we are just people. Common, shitty people.”
Cracking down on postal vote fraud is mainly to avoid situations like Tower Hamlets
Solar powered cars may not be viable, but autonomous solar charged cars, that is, cars with built-in solar panels that charge the battery, may well become a thing. After all, most cars spend most of their time simply sitting on the drive. They may as well be charging themselves from the sun while doing so. This would make them much more viable for those who can't easily install a charging point.
P.S. There is a form of cold fusion - muon catalysed fusion - that is actually a thing. There are, however, other reasons why that also cannot be commercially viable.
I thoroughly despise the Russian state now - and all those, including some on here, who spread Russian lies and propaganda, whilst pretending to be interested in democracy.
After all I hear ad tedium on here that it”s dreadful for pols to disparage groups of voters.
That's a world I'd like to live in.
Actually that might describe Putin afterall.
CON 19 (-1)
LAB 45 (+2)
LIB DEM 8 (=)
REF UK 15 (-1)
GRN 7 (-1)
Fieldwork 10 - 11 April
https://x.com/lara_spirit/status/1778692180200067250
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
The point is that, with a large landslide that takes out apparently very safe seats, parties need to pour a lot of resources into clawing them back before they can even really think about getting the seats they need for a majority.
It wasn't really until 2005 (after a bit of a false start in 2001) that the Conservatives had regained enough of the seats that really ought to be in their column (places like Wellingborough, Kettering, Bexleyheath etc) enabling them to focus resources on the "real" swing seats needed to form a Government.
The sorts of places I mentioned weren't really in play by 2010 (as your seat probably won't be in 2037). But the fact that they went Labour in 1997 had bought the Tories extra years in the wilderness.
https://twitter.com/PrivateEyeNews/status/1770469582643343694?t=eJ3SBn-Wt8Mo5NUe0IjrRg&s=19
Fraud gang that falsely claimed record £50m of taxpayers’ cash convicted
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/fraud-gang-that-falsely-claimed-record-50m-of-taxpayers-cash-convicted/ar-BB1lowol
Good luck finding a minister from either party with the balls or nous to say this prosecution was absurd, let alone to act on it.
Johnsonites got that wrong in a slightly different way. They tended to assume that millions voting against Corbyn and Brexit Stasis were a sign of enthusiasm for them.
LDEM 🔶: 1094, 43.8%
CON 🔵: 768, 30.8%
GRN 🟢: 376, 15.1%
REF ➡️: 141, 5.7%
LAB 🔴: 116, 4.6%
On a quick look at the article, I'd say it highlights that politicisation of "clinical" bodies (eg BMA) is a real problem, and the growth of explicitly political groups.
I'm not sure that commentary on the current NHS comes best from "Tony O’Sullivan, a retired NHS consultant paediatrician".
Many Conservative 2019 voters were also 'soft' voters. I think Starmer's going to get many 'soft' voters in the next GE as well.
Rowling, Stock, Cyclefree etc are real women, they were born women, they are women.
A man who transitions to "become" a woman may be a transwoman but they're not a real woman. They'll never be.
That's not dehumanising. They're a real human. For all intents and purposes, unless it violates safeguarding, they can be treated as women, but the distinction still needs to exist.
Competitive female sport for example should belong to real women. A transwoman should never be entitled to play in
We can have a look after the local elections but my guess is that this will prove a damp squib.
Is this likely to give some pushback or will she be welcomed as she is a well known name in Green circles. Eddie Izzard failed to get the labour candidacy in favour of a local candidate.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/breaking-fernando-alonso-signs-new-deal-with-aston-martin-to-end-speculation-over-f1.14YlqBvQcJlYUwtV61LsEH
The issue is that a reasonable car needs 100KWh of battery. That is, you could run a 1KW heater for 100 hours from it. That'a a lot of lecy.
What you can do with such a panel i run the car's ac system at low level. This stops the interior cooking up in ultra hot weather - which can even damage the interior. It also makes it safe to leave a pet in the car.
On muon catalysed fusion - after expending vast amounts of energy creating muons, they decay before you can get them to do anything. Not exactly cold fusion.
But there is also a low level, insidious issue with postal vote fraud associated with a patriarch (normally) in the family enjoying several votes. His family might, in fact, choose to vote the same way themselves - but the point is that they aren't given the choice. That kind of thing might well not swing elections on the macro level, but that doesn't mean it isn't important.
I remember my grandparents always used to vote different ways (he Labour, she Tory). Rather sweetly, when she developed Alzheimers, he'd complete her postal vote for the Conservatives, his for Labour, and send them in cancelling each other out (other parties weren't a factor in their area). But a different character might well have cast two Labour votes, and the fact is she probably just shouldn't have been voting towards the end as she'd lost the ability to understand what voting was, let alone form any sort of view on who to vote for.
In terms of pronouns etc I am more split on that as that is reversible. I am still at odds with people like Graham Linehan who says that should also not be allowed until you are over the age of eighteen.
In terms of your point, if a woman (sex) over the age of eighteen has surgery to become a man what are they? A trans man? What do you refer to them in real life as? He? She? They? What?
Well, Rishi was promising us lift off and every journey begins with a single step and all that. Not sure this is going to move the dial though.
Lab 45 (+2)
Con 19 (-1)
Libdem 8 (=)
Reform 15 (-1)
Green 7 (-1)
(In all honesty, where the film fell down slightly was the economics - without giving away any spoilers, a company who were operating a moon-mining operation and providing the majority of the world's electricity would be turning over so much that they could crew their lunar operation with one hundred humans, rather than just one, and it would make little difference to the bottom line.)
There is nothing, for example, intrinsic about 'people of colour' which differentiates it, in meaning or morally, from 'coloured people' except use.
What they are, well I believe Bart has already answered that.
If a trans woman is not a "real" woman, whilst I think it is true biologically, I am not sure myself how making this a massive pillar is that useful, I mean if you went up to a trans person and insisted they aren't a real "something" then I am not sure it's going to enamour them to your cause. This is the issue I've taken with how Graham Linehan has gone about it, I just don't see how making this specifically a massive issue is that helpful - and he's not talking about sex.
I think on sex there's no question about it - but on gender my personal view is that I tend to keep those opinions to myself in public or air them anonymously here. But that's just me.
Thanks for the discussion, for once I actually feel it's been very productive and I've actually slightly changed my mind.
(I am done now
Let's say you get a breakthrough and get 40% efficiency (you can't, yet). That 400 watts per m2.
A car has a 100KWh battery (say). So 2.5 hours to charge 1%, per m2. How many m2 on your car?
Indeed. It's not so [edit] many generations ago that people could remember, within living memory, a society where a significant number of people denied that the noun 'man' included, for legal and political purposes, people with a black skin.
Whilst Brighton Pavilion isn't exactly a long way from London and a fair number of people commute, it feels like quite a major error, and no doubt Gray will hammer it pretty hard. It suggests a lack of confidence she will be an MP in a few months, and a lack of interest in Brighton.
I mention muon catalysed fusion only in passing, just to point out that there are ways of achieving fusion that don't require massive heating. Muon catalysed fusion has been done in the lab, but of course cannot be commercially viable due to the energy needed to create the muons.
The claimed benefit is "no neutrons". Aside from this not being entirely true, the question is whether the gain (a lot less neutrons) is worth then problems.
Helium-3 fusion wouldn't be cheaper than D-T, almost certainly.
So presumably we are seen as a target.
It *should* be a shoo-in, because the other serious candidates have either kneecapped themselves (Zadrozny) or kneecapped each other (Leeanderthal and whoever the Tory will be).
I've realised what was missing from the Starmer photo on the Guardian piece - he needs sleeve garters to complete the 1920s-1950s look. See Peaky Blinders.
I felt like suggesting a return to non-secret ballot voting. Where you rock up at the table, and the Squire's agent (who is acting as returning officer) takes your vote.
"So, Tomkins, do you vote for the Squire's choice? Or shall I tear up your lease on the farm right now?"
Ah, the Goode Olde Days....
https://labour.org.uk/missions/
"Labour’s missions are built on fulfilling our first duty: to protect our country – through economic stability, secure borders and strong defence."
The above analysis doesn't pay attention to what the opponent may or will do. All it says is that the Labour groundgame is very well organised for a terrain in which it's headed for victory by a large margin, i.e. when any fool could win the election.
Bit like saying that wearing jeans means you are trying to be in a John Wayne horse opera.
That's what really matters.
Taxi for Rishi on May 3rd....
Anyhoo, around here some people want to be in the 1950s.
We won't see any of that on October 25th even if the size of the win is similar. This is not - or not mainly - because of SKS's lack of razzmatazz. The "Starmer is no Blair" saying, whilst true, is not the point. The big difference between now and then isn't in the Labour leader it's in the British people. We've been through the ringer since 2008, crash, austerity, Brexit, Boris, rivers of bullshit, Truss, pandemic, return of inflation and proper interest rates, and we're thoroughly jaded by it. So we're not about to wet our knickers about a change of government.
What there will be, however, is a wide sense of relief and guarded optimism. Which will be nice.
The current preferred fuel is deuterium/tritium. There's more than enough deuterium on earth, and more tritium than would be needed for a sustainable fuel supply could be generated using the fast neutrons from the fusion reaction to transmute lithium.
The Helium 3 thing relates back to a NASA study from decades ago.
Many of those saying Reform probably won't vote at the next election, so that may inflate all other parties by a point or two as the denominator becomes smaller. But the poll remains what it is.
If so, in what way ?
Labour 520
LD 47
Con 32.
Only 5 letters needed for leadership ballot.
What joy!
And even if you take 10 percentage points off Reform and transfer them to the Conservatives (really big if), that still has Sunak doing a bit worse than Major '97.
However, what polling there has been doesn't show anyone else doing meaningfully better, and quite a few doing worse. The Conservatives can either invent a time machine (when should they go back to? 2014 or so?) or start drafting their concession speeches.
People like you and me who are really interested in politics are different - we scrutinise exactly what's being said about Gaza or water nationalisation or oil drilling and are encouraged or discouraged accordingly. But lots of people, perhaps the majority, are not really like that. I wish everyone was as interested as us, but we need to go with the grain of real life.
As you say, opponents may adopt strategies which counter the above. But so far the Tories are barely doing anything beyond the "Our MP is a good guy and works hard" line, which doesn't work well because most people have little direct experience of what their MP is like, while the LibDems are addicted to the bar chart/"Labour isn't serious here" tactical voting strategy, which doesn't work when Labour is visibly active. I do think they need a distinctive strategy. I had a chat yesterday with someone very close to the LD leadership, who said they'd seriously considered going all out for a "Rejoin" strategy to give themselves a real USP, but they have too many seats in the SW where Brexit sentiment is still a thing, so they're a bit stuck with the tactical voting pitch.
Average over the last month (5 polls) of YouGov polls has:
CON 19.8%
LAB 43.2%
LDM 8.8%
GRN 7.6%
RFM 15.2%
The YouGov polls seem pretty static at the moment, with the Tories mired in an awful position.
As a mathematical exercise, if we take that YouGov poll and assume that two-thirds (10%) of the 15% who say Reform stay at home instead then the figures become.
Lab 45 -> 50
Con 19 -> 21
LD 8 -> 9
Reform 15 -> 6
Green 7 -> 8