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.
Well indeed
I mean, it *might* attract the attention of the luxury yacht which might otherwise have not seen you. Or mad whalers.
But 99% of the time you just die in a different way.
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.
It's going to be a lot less than that in the UK, and most of Europe, for a lot of the year. Particularly as the panel will essentially be laid flat; not on a south facing pitched roof. And the car parked in the shade, as often as not.
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
Hilariously that leaves a majority of 434 with the Tories on 18 seats.
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
Its why the government's total lack of interest in levelling up (and HS2) since Boris's departure is so perplexing. Or, to put it another way, its why Boris is good at winning elections and the current incumbent isn't.
@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
While the substance of what you say is correct, I would use the term "sex" rather than "real woman" because that could be used by some in a way which is insulting. And, having seen the insults hurled at women (including me - and by some on this forum) I think it best to try and avoid this.
A man can never - even with surgery - become a member of the female sex. And since sex is relevant in so many situations - sport, safeguarding etc - a transitioned man has to be regarded as a member of the male sex. But for social purposes - like @Leon's friend, Julia - there is no reason why he can't live, dress, call himself however he wants etc. How his friends and family respond is up to them but it is not a matter of compulsion. You cannot force others to share your own views about yourself and it is the height of narcissism to think that you can or should.
Gender to me is no different to a soul. It is some undefinable essence that some people believe in and others don't. Far too much of what people call "gender" seems to me to be no more than stereotypes and it is bizarre to me that so many on the gender side seem so intent on reinforcing very old-fashioned stereotypes.
But I do not believe in gender. I am of the female sex. Discrimination has happened to me because of my sex. Sexual assault has happened to me because of my sex. It happens to every woman because of her sex. My health, how my body develops and ages is affected by my sex.There is no getting away from that. Women cannot identify out of their sex. If we could we'd all be earning 40% more and having our bullshit treated with undeserved respect.
Men are of the male sex - and since sex matters in so many situations - there are very good reasons why separation on the basis of sex has to happen in those situations. And why clear language about sex matters. It is absurd that anyone thinks otherwise.
And - let me absolutely blunt here - any man who seeks to breach a woman's boundaries against her consent, whatever his reasons, is a predator, has the mentality of a predator. It is a giant red flag. "No means no" and, no, women do not have to justify this.
The vast majority of men claiming to be women do not make surgical or hormonal changes. They are men - whatever they wear - because - and does this really need saying again? - womanhood is a reality not a costume.
As for Rowling she has put her money where her mouth is and financed a female only rape refuge in Edinburgh - Beira Place - after the utterly disgraceful behaviour by Rape Crisis and its cheating boss.
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 can't see Keir Shelby. Starmer has made the mistake of removing his tie. Rookie mistake. Boris in a similar NHS photo-op would roll his sleeves up and tuck his tie into the shirt. This meant he looked as if he'd just rushed in from delivering a baby in the car park. Starmer looks more like a celebrity chef, especially leaning forwards with muscular forearms from lifting heavy frying pans.
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.
As a rule of thumb, with the amount of sunlight available over the year and brightness in the UK, you can estimate on the order of 100kWh over the year per 100W quoted from the panel. An average of 0.25-0.5kWh per day, but this will vary hugely over the year and with weather.
Very loose numbers, but I'd expect a 2m car-roof to produce between 0.1kWh over a gloomy winter's day to 4kWh on a clear and sunny summer's day, and average around 1kWh per day or so over the year.
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.
As a rule of thumb, with the amount of sunlight available over the year and brightness in the UK, you can estimate on the order of 100kWh over the year per 100W quoted from the panel. An average of 0.25-0.5kWh per day, but this will vary hugely over the year and with weather.
Very loose numbers, but I'd expect a 2m car-roof to produce between 0.1kWh over a gloomy winter's day to 4kWh on a clear and sunny summer's day, and average around 1kWh per day or so over the year.
Boris in a similar NHS photo-op would roll his sleeves up and tuck his tie into the shirt. This meant he looked as if he'd just rushed in from delivering a baby in the car park.
BoZo would look like he had just rushed in from the car park, having been dragged through a hedge backwards, and slept in his suit.
@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
While the substance of what you say is correct, I would use the term "sex" rather than "real woman" because that could be used by some in a way which is insulting. And, having seen the insults hurled at women (including me - and by some on this forum) I think it best to try and avoid this.
A man can never - even with surgery - become a member of the female sex. And since sex is relevant in so many situations - sport, safeguarding etc - a transitioned man has to be regarded as a member of the male sex. But for social purposes - like @Leon's friend, Julia - there is no reason why he can't live, dress, call himself however he wants etc. How his friends and family respond is up to them but it is not a matter of compulsion. You cannot force others to share your own views about yourself and it is the height of narcissism to think that you can or should.
Gender to me is no different to a soul. It is some undefinable essence that some people believe in and others don't. Far too much of what people call "gender" seems to me to be no more than stereotypes and it is bizarre to me that so many on the gender side seem so intent on reinforcing very old-fashioned stereotypes.
But I do not believe in gender. I am of the female sex. Discrimination has happened to me because of my sex. Sexual assault has happened to me because of my sex. It happens to every woman because of her sex. My health, how my body develops and ages is affected by my sex.There is no getting away from that. Women cannot identify out of their sex. If we could we'd all be earning 40% more and having our bullshit treated with undeserved respect.
Men are of the male sex - and since sex matters in so many situations - there are very good reasons why separation on the basis of sex has to happen in those situations. And why clear language about sex matters. It is absurd that anyone thinks otherwise.
And - let me absolutely blunt here - any man who seeks to breach a woman's boundaries against her consent, whatever his reasons, is a predator, has the mentality of a predator. It is a giant red flag. "No means no" and, no, women do not have to justify this.
The vast majority of men claiming to be women do not make surgical or hormonal changes. They are men - whatever they wear - because - and does this really need saying again? - womanhood is a reality not a costume.
As for Rowling she has put her money where her mouth is and financed a female only rape refuge in Edinburgh - Beira Place - after the utterly disgraceful behaviour by Rape Crisis and its cheating boss.
I very broadly agree with this.
My one quibble would be that if a man who thinks of himself as a woman goes through the extremely onerous task of meeting the requirements of the Gender Reform Act 2004 and obtains a certificate then it does not seem unreasonable that we treat her as a woman, whatever the biological reality, if it makes her life a bit easier. This is a legal fiction but it seems to me that it is an acceptable one provided those safeguards are in place and not diluted in any way. These safeguards must ensure that the person with the certificate is not a risk to women. The problem with the Scottish bill was that it removed all of those safeguards creating completely unacceptable risks.
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.
As a rule of thumb, with the amount of sunlight available over the year and brightness in the UK, you can estimate on the order of 100kWh over the year per 100W quoted from the panel. An average of 0.25-0.5kWh per day, but this will vary hugely over the year and with weather.
Very loose numbers, but I'd expect a 2m car-roof to produce between 0.1kWh over a gloomy winter's day to 4kWh on a clear and sunny summer's day, and average around 1kWh per day or so over the year.
4kWh?? - 2kWh per m2 is more than 1 sun!
That'd be an average of 200W per square metre over 10 hours (assuming the Sun's too low effectively for the rest of the summer's day). 200W x 2m x 10hrs = 4kWh.
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.
As a rule of thumb, with the amount of sunlight available over the year and brightness in the UK, you can estimate on the order of 100kWh over the year per 100W quoted from the panel. An average of 0.25-0.5kWh per day, but this will vary hugely over the year and with weather.
Very loose numbers, but I'd expect a 2m car-roof to produce between 0.1kWh over a gloomy winter's day to 4kWh on a clear and sunny summer's day, and average around 1kWh per day or so over the year.
Fair enough. I was pretty close for a summer's day though :-)
Cass Review Delivers Controversial Verdict on NHS Trans Healthcare
Quite possibly the worst episode they've ever had, the comments are rightfully taking the piss.
Novara Media are an embarrassment, I am not sure if they or Stats For Communists are worse - but I note they are now allied.
Before 2019 Novara and Owen Jones hadn't jumped off the deep end and provided some level of left/far left perspective but now they've gone total insanity. Sad.
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
Its why the government's total lack of interest in levelling up (and HS2) since Boris's departure is so perplexing. Or, to put it another way, its why Boris is good at winning elections and the current incumbent isn't.
Truss & Sunak have acted as though the huge majority Boris won was borne of people desperate for right wing politics; Boris knew that it was a one off, more like Blue Labour, and had to be managed carefully.
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
Its why the government's total lack of interest in levelling up (and HS2) since Boris's departure is so perplexing. Or, to put it another way, its why Boris is good at winning elections and the current incumbent isn't.
Truss & Sunak have acted as though the huge majority Boris won was borne of people desperate for right wing politics; Boris knew that it was a one off, more like Blue Labour, and had to be managed carefully.
Yes, he managed things so carefully it ended in a cake-fuelled clusterfuck.
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?"
I’m not sure that offering a job in the Post Office would be a vote winner.
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.
As a rule of thumb, with the amount of sunlight available over the year and brightness in the UK, you can estimate on the order of 100kWh over the year per 100W quoted from the panel. An average of 0.25-0.5kWh per day, but this will vary hugely over the year and with weather.
Very loose numbers, but I'd expect a 2m car-roof to produce between 0.1kWh over a gloomy winter's day to 4kWh on a clear and sunny summer's day, and average around 1kWh per day or so over the year.
4kWh?? - 2kWh per m2 is more than 1 sun!
That'd be an average of 200W per square metre over 10 hours (assuming the Sun's too low effectively for the rest of the summer's day). 200W x 2m x 10hrs = 4kWh.
10 hours of sun. In a single day. Have you ever visited Scotland? We've certainly not had that in April to date.
Truss & Sunak have acted as though the huge majority Boris won was borne of people desperate for right wing politics; Boris knew that it was a one off, more like Blue Labour, and had to be managed carefully.
Johnson won by carefully studying the 2017 Labour manifesto. The Tories have failed to understand this in any large way, so in this particular case I totally agree with you and him.
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
33% of 2019 Conservative voters are now voting Reform according to Yougov, just 2% of 2019 Labour voters and 3% of 2019 LDs back Reform
@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
While the substance of what you say is correct, I would use the term "sex" rather than "real woman" because that could be used by some in a way which is insulting. And, having seen the insults hurled at women (including me - and by some on this forum) I think it best to try and avoid this.
A man can never - even with surgery - become a member of the female sex. And since sex is relevant in so many situations - sport, safeguarding etc - a transitioned man has to be regarded as a member of the male sex. But for social purposes - like @Leon's friend, Julia - there is no reason why he can't live, dress, call himself however he wants etc. How his friends and family respond is up to them but it is not a matter of compulsion. You cannot force others to share your own views about yourself and it is the height of narcissism to think that you can or should.
Gender to me is no different to a soul. It is some undefinable essence that some people believe in and others don't. Far too much of what people call "gender" seems to me to be no more than stereotypes and it is bizarre to me that so many on the gender side seem so intent on reinforcing very old-fashioned stereotypes.
But I do not believe in gender. I am of the female sex. Discrimination has happened to me because of my sex. Sexual assault has happened to me because of my sex. It happens to every woman because of her sex. My health, how my body develops and ages is affected by my sex.There is no getting away from that. Women cannot identify out of their sex. If we could we'd all be earning 40% more and having our bullshit treated with undeserved respect.
Men are of the male sex - and since sex matters in so many situations - there are very good reasons why separation on the basis of sex has to happen in those situations. And why clear language about sex matters. It is absurd that anyone thinks otherwise.
And - let me absolutely blunt here - any man who seeks to breach a woman's boundaries against her consent, whatever his reasons, is a predator, has the mentality of a predator. It is a giant red flag. "No means no" and, no, women do not have to justify this.
The vast majority of men claiming to be women do not make surgical or hormonal changes. They are men - whatever they wear - because - and does this really need saying again? - womanhood is a reality not a costume.
As for Rowling she has put her money where her mouth is and financed a female only rape refuge in Edinburgh - Beira Place - after the utterly disgraceful behaviour by Rape Crisis and its cheating boss.
I very broadly agree with this.
My one quibble would be that if a man who thinks of himself as a woman goes through the extremely onerous task of meeting the requirements of the Gender Reform Act 2004 and obtains a certificate then it does not seem unreasonable that we treat her as a woman, whatever the biological reality, if it makes her life a bit easier. This is a legal fiction but it seems to me that it is an acceptable one provided those safeguards are in place and not diluted in any way. These safeguards must ensure that the person with the certificate is not a risk to women. The problem with the Scottish bill was that it removed all of those safeguards creating completely unacceptable risks.
Yes - provided the safeguards remain in place because whatever the legal fiction the reality about sex remains the same. Remember there is no requirement for hormonal or surgical treatment to get a GRC. And this is very important - it is not just about risk, it is also about fairness - in sport, jobs, anti-discrimination law etc - and about dignity and privacy (as set out in the EHRC Greenwood case).
The GRC changes the description of a person's status as between them and the state. It does not regulate how private citizens should behave. And as the Equality Act makes clear it is legitimate to discriminate against someone on the basis of their sex in certain circumstances. That should remain the case IMO regardless of a GRC precisely because a legal fiction does not change material reality and the reasons for legitimate discrimination are - and should be - based on that material reality.
Believing legal fictions is dangerous. See the UK's financial sector at any point this century.
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.
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.
Yes, my sister used to work for DSS fraud. They had two teams: the big, organised crime fraud; and the individual cases of someone claiming their cheque had gone astray when it hadn't, etc.
@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
While the substance of what you say is correct, I would use the term "sex" rather than "real woman" because that could be used by some in a way which is insulting. And, having seen the insults hurled at women (including me - and by some on this forum) I think it best to try and avoid this.
A man can never - even with surgery - become a member of the female sex. And since sex is relevant in so many situations - sport, safeguarding etc - a transitioned man has to be regarded as a member of the male sex. But for social purposes - like @Leon's friend, Julia - there is no reason why he can't live, dress, call himself however he wants etc. How his friends and family respond is up to them but it is not a matter of compulsion. You cannot force others to share your own views about yourself and it is the height of narcissism to think that you can or should.
Gender to me is no different to a soul. It is some undefinable essence that some people believe in and others don't. Far too much of what people call "gender" seems to me to be no more than stereotypes and it is bizarre to me that so many on the gender side seem so intent on reinforcing very old-fashioned stereotypes.
But I do not believe in gender. I am of the female sex. Discrimination has happened to me because of my sex. Sexual assault has happened to me because of my sex. It happens to every woman because of her sex. My health, how my body develops and ages is affected by my sex.There is no getting away from that. Women cannot identify out of their sex. If we could we'd all be earning 40% more and having our bullshit treated with undeserved respect.
Men are of the male sex - and since sex matters in so many situations - there are very good reasons why separation on the basis of sex has to happen in those situations. And why clear language about sex matters. It is absurd that anyone thinks otherwise.
And - let me absolutely blunt here - any man who seeks to breach a woman's boundaries against her consent, whatever his reasons, is a predator, has the mentality of a predator. It is a giant red flag. "No means no" and, no, women do not have to justify this.
The vast majority of men claiming to be women do not make surgical or hormonal changes. They are men - whatever they wear - because - and does this really need saying again? - womanhood is a reality not a costume.
As for Rowling she has put her money where her mouth is and financed a female only rape refuge in Edinburgh - Beira Place - after the utterly disgraceful behaviour by Rape Crisis and its cheating boss.
You should meet Mrs. F. She could have written your post word for word.
@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.
Have they ? If so, in what way ?
I'm sure PB commenters possessed of the most certitude on the issue have read it end to end rather than going on soundbites etc.
Anyway Istr at least one PBer fulminating about the trans cult. Just for a bit of balance..
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?"
I’m not sure that offering a job in the Post Office would be a vote winner.
Talking of which, yesterday's witness was Dave Smith, Post Office CEO for ca 10 months. A man who oozed mediocrity and arrogance and whose evidence was that he had no idea what was going on. Managing the rota for car park attendants would have been beyond him.
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
Its why the government's total lack of interest in levelling up (and HS2) since Boris's departure is so perplexing. Or, to put it another way, its why Boris is good at winning elections and the current incumbent isn't.
Truss & Sunak have acted as though the huge majority Boris won was borne of people desperate for right wing politics; Boris knew that it was a one off, more like Blue Labour, and had to be managed carefully.
Good point. This combined with the fact that Boris - despite his inherent poshness - just seemed an amiable and accessible character with good intentions. Truss and Sunak are just a bit weird. And weird, cold-hearted Tories to boot. A repellent mix.
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Greater Manchester police's investigation is separate and it will look into whether she registered the wrong property on the electoral roll.
Also, not a great look for a politician if they have broken electoral law.
Actually, that's worse! So I am surprised they didn't go in with this from the start.
They did, but tax dodging is easier to understand. I get the sense that any electoral law indiscretion might have been under the misapprehension that where you are registered to vote made any difference to your principal primary residence.
Boris in a similar NHS photo-op would roll his sleeves up and tuck his tie into the shirt. This meant he looked as if he'd just rushed in from delivering a baby in the car park.
BoZo would look like he had just rushed in from the car park, having been dragged through a hedge backwards, and slept in his suit.
Always. It’s his gimmick. Like a WWE wrestler. A poster version of Bastion Booger.
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. Siân Berry. She was a local councillor in Camden until she was shamed into standing down here. (The Greens held the seat at the subsequent by-election.) She is still in the London Assembly and top of the Green list for the London Assembly in the elections next month, so sure to be re-elected.
But the London Assembly doesn't do by-elections, so if she's elected in Brighton, she can can stand down from the Assembly and the next unelected person on the Green list will fill her position.
It's interesting how parties handle the mayoral and Assembly elections. Susan Hall is the Tory mayoral candidate and top of their Assembly list, so sure to get re-elected. The SDP have done the same. Yet the LibDem mayoral candidate, Blackie, is second on their Assembly list (so touch and go whether he'll be elected, but probably). Reform UK have done the same: their mayoral candidate is second on their Assembly list.
The Green mayoral candidate is 4th on their Assembly list. They currently have 3 Assembly members* and they take up the top 3 slots.
* including Zack Polanski, the man who can make your breasts bigger through hypnotherapy
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
Its why the government's total lack of interest in levelling up (and HS2) since Boris's departure is so perplexing. Or, to put it another way, its why Boris is good at winning elections and the current incumbent isn't.
Truss & Sunak have acted as though the huge majority Boris won was borne of people desperate for right wing politics; Boris knew that it was a one off, more like Blue Labour, and had to be managed carefully.
Yes, he managed things so carefully it ended in a cake-fuelled clusterfuck.
Yes, but I think most people would accept the pandemic was a black swan. Black swans scupper what look like certain successes and that’s what happened here
I meant the coalition of voters had to be managed carefully
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
Its why the government's total lack of interest in levelling up (and HS2) since Boris's departure is so perplexing. Or, to put it another way, its why Boris is good at winning elections and the current incumbent isn't.
Truss & Sunak have acted as though the huge majority Boris won was borne of people desperate for right wing politics; Boris knew that it was a one off, more like Blue Labour, and had to be managed carefully.
Yes, he managed things so carefully it ended in a cake-fuelled clusterfuck.
Yes, but I think most people would accept the pandemic was a black swan. Black swans scupper what look like certain successes and that’s what happened here
I meant the coalition of voters had to be managed carefully
Hmm I rather think the pandemic exposed to general view what discerning people had already noticed; that Boris was temperamentally unsuited to the role of PM.
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
Its why the government's total lack of interest in levelling up (and HS2) since Boris's departure is so perplexing. Or, to put it another way, its why Boris is good at winning elections and the current incumbent isn't.
Truss & Sunak have acted as though the huge majority Boris won was borne of people desperate for right wing politics; Boris knew that it was a one off, more like Blue Labour, and had to be managed carefully.
Yes, he managed things so carefully it ended in a cake-fuelled clusterfuck.
It was going wrong whilst COVID was still a tear in a foreign bat's eye. If you believe in Blue Labour (expansive state, both economically and socially), you don't put Rishi in charge of the money.
BoJo's 2019 triumph depended on combining Blue Wall, Blue Labour and globetrotting squillionaires in one party. That only worked in the odd circumstances of 2019- it was always likely to ping apart otherwise.
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?"
I’m not sure that offering a job in the Post Office would be a vote winner.
Talking of which, yesterday's witness was Dave Smith, Post Office CEO for ca 10 months. A man who oozed mediocrity and arrogance and whose evidence was that he had no idea what was going on. Managing the rota for car park attendants would have been beyond him.
Another one for the Cyclefree Gulag.
Any future Post Office executives should be interviewed by Claude Littner before being appointed.
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
Its why the government's total lack of interest in levelling up (and HS2) since Boris's departure is so perplexing. Or, to put it another way, its why Boris is good at winning elections and the current incumbent isn't.
Truss & Sunak have acted as though the huge majority Boris won was borne of people desperate for right wing politics; Boris knew that it was a one off, more like Blue Labour, and had to be managed carefully.
Good point. This combined with the fact that Boris - despite his inherent poshness - just seemed an amiable and accessible character with good intentions. Truss and Sunak are just a bit weird. And weird, cold-hearted Tories to boot. A repellent mix.
Same with Farage. People who wouldn’t vote UKIP in a million years hated him & said that the party would be better off without him as leader. Look what happened when he stepped down - they had no impact on the 2017 GE, & they’ve practically folded since.
You could say Reform are polling well without him, but I think a lot of civvies think he is the leader (he owns the party in any case)
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Tax Avoidance is totally legal. The claims were not she had avoided tax but evaded it.
Actually, the claim was that she hadn't paid the tax some believe she owes. Ignorance of tax law unlike other forms of the law, is a defence. But that is not what they are investigating here.
If found to be true would be a resigning matter for me.
A big problem for Labour if Rayner has to stand down. Starmer will be furious that this is blowing up just before the local elections .
Is that likely though ?
As much as I think she has handled this ineptly she strikes me as being, worst case, a victim of an excessively complex tex regime.
Ineptly doesn’t wash in an election year . I’m a big fan of Rayner but she really needs to come clean to Starmer and even if there’s just been a minor transgression the Tories will make hay over this .
"It is impossible to overstate how extraordinary this morning's admission was.
The man who was in charge of the Post Office (Alan Cook) at the height of this scandal was unaware his own organisation had the power of prosecution."
BBC website just now.
One wonders why the GC did not think to mention this to him. Assuming that we believe what Cook is saying ......
He seems to have had a pretty hazy idea of how the courts work in general: "He said he was aware there were court cases, but assumed the police or public prosecutires were involved "
Regardless of who benefits or loses electorally from these rules, they are a crime against democracy that risk creating a deep well of anger among disenfranchised voters, further poisoning our politics and suppressing participation in the democratic process. The Tories should rot in hell for it.
Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I do not trust them to decide what my human rights should be. A party that deliberately seeks to restrict the right to vote is not one that should ever have control over something so fundamental.
Most other countries require identification to vote. It is entirely reasonable.
The anger is confected by the left because they believe that they benefit from the current set up.
Bollocks.
JRM admitted it was to bugger up Labour (see the link above) and if you were worried about election integrity you should focus on postal votes.
JRM is what I would call “too clever by half”
He thinks he’s make a point that makes him look smart and insightful.
The reality is he has zero f*cking clue about almost anything.
Generally you dismiss whatever he says as idiotic - until it serves your purposes and then he’s the fount of all wisdom
But yes, postal votes are abused as well.
We should spend time and effort and resources encouraging people to vote and boosting turnout. But that doesn’t mean not taking measures to ensure that it is people who are entitled to vote that are voting.
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Tax Avoidance is totally legal. The claims were not she had avoided tax but evaded it.
Actually, the claim was that she hadn't paid the tax some believe she owes. Ignorance of tax law unlike other forms of the law, is a defence. But that is not what they are investigating here.
If found to be true would be a resigning matter for me.
I really don't think you would need to resign, but I admire your principled stance.
Regardless of who benefits or loses electorally from these rules, they are a crime against democracy that risk creating a deep well of anger among disenfranchised voters, further poisoning our politics and suppressing participation in the democratic process. The Tories should rot in hell for it.
Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I do not trust them to decide what my human rights should be. A party that deliberately seeks to restrict the right to vote is not one that should ever have control over something so fundamental.
Most other countries require identification to vote. It is entirely reasonable.
The anger is confected by the left because they believe that they benefit from the current set up.
Most other countries have mandatory ID cards that everyone is required to hold.
We all benefit from not restricting the franchise for reasons that have no basis in reality and that were concocted entirely for party political purposes.
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
33% of 2019 Conservative voters are now voting Reform according to Yougov, just 2% of 2019 Labour voters and 3% of 2019 LDs back Reform
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Tax Avoidance is totally legal. The claims were not she had avoided tax but evaded it.
Actually, the claim was that she hadn't paid the tax some believe she owes. Ignorance of tax law unlike other forms of the law, is a defence. But that is not what they are investigating here.
If found to be true would be a resigning matter for me.
I really don't think you would need to resign, but I admire your principled stance.
Lol, I can reinvent myself as BatteryCorrectHorse2.
But I meant Rayner, if she's found guilty of either she's got to go. I don't think she will be however.
@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
While the substance of what you say is correct, I would use the term "sex" rather than "real woman" because that could be used by some in a way which is insulting. And, having seen the insults hurled at women (including me - and by some on this forum) I think it best to try and avoid this.
A man can never - even with surgery - become a member of the female sex. And since sex is relevant in so many situations - sport, safeguarding etc - a transitioned man has to be regarded as a member of the male sex. But for social purposes - like @Leon's friend, Julia - there is no reason why he can't live, dress, call himself however he wants etc. How his friends and family respond is up to them but it is not a matter of compulsion. You cannot force others to share your own views about yourself and it is the height of narcissism to think that you can or should.
Gender to me is no different to a soul. It is some undefinable essence that some people believe in and others don't. Far too much of what people call "gender" seems to me to be no more than stereotypes and it is bizarre to me that so many on the gender side seem so intent on reinforcing very old-fashioned stereotypes.
But I do not believe in gender. I am of the female sex. Discrimination has happened to me because of my sex. Sexual assault has happened to me because of my sex. It happens to every woman because of her sex. My health, how my body develops and ages is affected by my sex.There is no getting away from that. Women cannot identify out of their sex. If we could we'd all be earning 40% more and having our bullshit treated with undeserved respect.
Men are of the male sex - and since sex matters in so many situations - there are very good reasons why separation on the basis of sex has to happen in those situations. And why clear language about sex matters. It is absurd that anyone thinks otherwise.
And - let me absolutely blunt here - any man who seeks to breach a woman's boundaries against her consent, whatever his reasons, is a predator, has the mentality of a predator. It is a giant red flag. "No means no" and, no, women do not have to justify this.
The vast majority of men claiming to be women do not make surgical or hormonal changes. They are men - whatever they wear - because - and does this really need saying again? - womanhood is a reality not a costume.
As for Rowling she has put her money where her mouth is and financed a female only rape refuge in Edinburgh - Beira Place - after the utterly disgraceful behaviour by Rape Crisis and its cheating boss.
What's your source for the bolded bit ? I've had a search for statistics, but can't find anything on point.
Regardless of who benefits or loses electorally from these rules, they are a crime against democracy that risk creating a deep well of anger among disenfranchised voters, further poisoning our politics and suppressing participation in the democratic process. The Tories should rot in hell for it.
Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I do not trust them to decide what my human rights should be. A party that deliberately seeks to restrict the right to vote is not one that should ever have control over something so fundamental.
Most other countries require identification to vote. It is entirely reasonable.
The anger is confected by the left because they believe that they benefit from the current set up.
The countries that require identification to vote also have ID cards - name me one country that insists of ID for voting that doesn't have an ID card...
You are conflating two entirely separate things.
Protecting the integrity of the ballot is important. It is certainly more convenient if you have a national ID card, but not having one doesn’t undermine the importance of doing so
I remain of the view this is an entirely possible outcome, and if the crossover is sustained for a couple of months, there is potential that we see a realignment on the right in this election.
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 .
Yes that’s my understanding, and how it currently works. If you move abroad they use your last known address in UK. The only change is to remove the disenfranchisement after a decade abroad, which would have got me this year.
One thing I would like to see, although I doubt it will happen, is to allow expatriates to vote at the embassy on the day, rather than by post in advance. A lot of other countries do this, and it’s always a lovely sight to see a long queue forming outside an embassy here in Expatsville, when it’s their polling day.
@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
While the substance of what you say is correct, I would use the term "sex" rather than "real woman" because that could be used by some in a way which is insulting. And, having seen the insults hurled at women (including me - and by some on this forum) I think it best to try and avoid this.
A man can never - even with surgery - become a member of the female sex. And since sex is relevant in so many situations - sport, safeguarding etc - a transitioned man has to be regarded as a member of the male sex. But for social purposes - like @Leon's friend, Julia - there is no reason why he can't live, dress, call himself however he wants etc. How his friends and family respond is up to them but it is not a matter of compulsion. You cannot force others to share your own views about yourself and it is the height of narcissism to think that you can or should.
Gender to me is no different to a soul. It is some undefinable essence that some people believe in and others don't. Far too much of what people call "gender" seems to me to be no more than stereotypes and it is bizarre to me that so many on the gender side seem so intent on reinforcing very old-fashioned stereotypes.
But I do not believe in gender. I am of the female sex. Discrimination has happened to me because of my sex. Sexual assault has happened to me because of my sex. It happens to every woman because of her sex. My health, how my body develops and ages is affected by my sex.There is no getting away from that. Women cannot identify out of their sex. If we could we'd all be earning 40% more and having our bullshit treated with undeserved respect.
Men are of the male sex - and since sex matters in so many situations - there are very good reasons why separation on the basis of sex has to happen in those situations. And why clear language about sex matters. It is absurd that anyone thinks otherwise.
And - let me absolutely blunt here - any man who seeks to breach a woman's boundaries against her consent, whatever his reasons, is a predator, has the mentality of a predator. It is a giant red flag. "No means no" and, no, women do not have to justify this.
The vast majority of men claiming to be women do not make surgical or hormonal changes. They are men - whatever they wear - because - and does this really need saying again? - womanhood is a reality not a costume.
As for Rowling she has put her money where her mouth is and financed a female only rape refuge in Edinburgh - Beira Place - after the utterly disgraceful behaviour by Rape Crisis and its cheating boss.
What's your source for the bolded bit ? I've had a search for statistics, but can't find anything on point.
Quite a tricky thing to collect data on. I guess the number having surgery should exist - though I doubt it's publicly availably - but the denominator is tricky.
I remain of the view this is an entirely possible outcome, and if the crossover is sustained for a couple of months, there is potential that we see a realignment on the right in this election.
With Leavers it is already there, Yougov has 35% of Leavers backing Reform, 33% the Tories and 22% Labour.
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.
@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.
Have they ? If so, in what way ?
I'm sure PB commenters possessed of the most certitude on the issue have read it end to end rather than going on soundbites etc.
Anyway Istr at least one PBer fulminating about the trans cult. Just for a bit of balance..
It wasn't intended as a provocative question. I'm genuinely curious about the manner in which the Cass report is seen as "vindicating" any particular view.
It could be entirely fairly claimed as doing so for those who expressed scepticism about the adequacy of the manner in which medical care was delivered. On the more 'ideological' arguments, it doesn't seem to me to do any such thing.
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Greater Manchester police's investigation is separate and it will look into whether she registered the wrong property on the electoral roll.
Also, not a great look for a politician if they have broken electoral law.
Actually, that's worse! So I am surprised they didn't go in with this from the start.
Presumably it's a 'you can't have it both ways approach'. Everyone assumed that she was living in her husband's house, and I assume that's where she was listed for the purpose of the electoral roll, so nothing to investigate until her 'defence' for the tax thing was that she wasn't living where everyone assumed. Essentially, it's the cover-up / defensiveness when asked about it that seems to be doing for her - if when it had first come up she'd said 'Oh, that's a very good point, I should have paid tax - here you go and apologies - and what do we need to do as politicians to help people pay the right amount initially' - then I think that it would have been a small 2 day story. Personally, on the balance of probabilities given what is public, I think it likely that she should have paid tax, but I can totally see how she inadvertently missed it and don't have an issue with that - it's how she's handled it since that I have more issue with.
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Tax Avoidance is totally legal. The claims were not she had avoided tax but evaded it.
Actually, the claim was that she hadn't paid the tax some believe she owes. Ignorance of tax law unlike other forms of the law, is a defence. But that is not what they are investigating here.
If found to be true would be a resigning matter for me.
I really don't think you would need to resign, but I admire your principled stance.
Lol, I can reinvent myself as BatteryCorrectHorse2.
But I meant Rayner, if she's found guilty of either she's got to go. I don't think she will be however.
Even if she is cleared of all wrongdoing, a certain strand of PBer will continue to find her guilty.
Hence why many on here continue to bleat on about The Strange Case of Sir Keir and the Lamb Dopiaza.
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.
As a rule of thumb, with the amount of sunlight available over the year and brightness in the UK, you can estimate on the order of 100kWh over the year per 100W quoted from the panel. An average of 0.25-0.5kWh per day, but this will vary hugely over the year and with weather.
Very loose numbers, but I'd expect a 2m car-roof to produce between 0.1kWh over a gloomy winter's day to 4kWh on a clear and sunny summer's day, and average around 1kWh per day or so over the year.
4kWh?? - 2kWh per m2 is more than 1 sun!
That'd be an average of 200W per square metre over 10 hours (assuming the Sun's too low effectively for the rest of the summer's day). 200W x 2m x 10hrs = 4kWh.
10 hours of sun. In a single day. Have you ever visited Scotland? We've certainly not had that in April to date.
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Greater Manchester police's investigation is separate and it will look into whether she registered the wrong property on the electoral roll.
Also, not a great look for a politician if they have broken electoral law.
Correct. But anyone can trigger a police investigation against anyone else, so it means precisely nothing. I was investigated for joking about what an Al Quaeda-run BBC schedule would look like ("Xena Warrior Housewife"...) - a mischievous right-wing group alleged this was racist incitement (because Al Quaeda is foreign, innit), and it took two years for the police to get around to looking at it and deciding there was no case. During that time, the group was able to say I was "under police investigation". It's a tired old trick, and the correct response is to respond politely to the police and otherwise ignore it - don't give it oxygen.
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Tax Avoidance is totally legal. The claims were not she had avoided tax but evaded it.
Actually, the claim was that she hadn't paid the tax some believe she owes. Ignorance of tax law unlike other forms of the law, is a defence. But that is not what they are investigating here.
If found to be true would be a resigning matter for me.
I really don't think you would need to resign, but I admire your principled stance.
Lol, I can reinvent myself as BatteryCorrectHorse2.
But I meant Rayner, if she's found guilty of either she's got to go. I don't think she will be however.
Even if she is cleared of all wrongdoing, a certain strand of PBer will continue to find her guilty.
Hence why many on here continue to bleat on about The Strange Case of Sir Keir and the Lamb Dopiaza.
Cue spooky music.
There are two people who still care about SKS. One who hates Labour because they're Labour (to be fair there are a few Labour types here like that) and one who got completely obsessed with the issue and has found it hard to ever escape that. At one point they were posting hourly updates.
@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
While the substance of what you say is correct, I would use the term "sex" rather than "real woman" because that could be used by some in a way which is insulting. And, having seen the insults hurled at women (including me - and by some on this forum) I think it best to try and avoid this.
A man can never - even with surgery - become a member of the female sex. And since sex is relevant in so many situations - sport, safeguarding etc - a transitioned man has to be regarded as a member of the male sex. But for social purposes - like @Leon's friend, Julia - there is no reason why he can't live, dress, call himself however he wants etc. How his friends and family respond is up to them but it is not a matter of compulsion. You cannot force others to share your own views about yourself and it is the height of narcissism to think that you can or should.
Gender to me is no different to a soul. It is some undefinable essence that some people believe in and others don't. Far too much of what people call "gender" seems to me to be no more than stereotypes and it is bizarre to me that so many on the gender side seem so intent on reinforcing very old-fashioned stereotypes.
But I do not believe in gender. I am of the female sex. Discrimination has happened to me because of my sex. Sexual assault has happened to me because of my sex. It happens to every woman because of her sex. My health, how my body develops and ages is affected by my sex.There is no getting away from that. Women cannot identify out of their sex. If we could we'd all be earning 40% more and having our bullshit treated with undeserved respect.
Men are of the male sex - and since sex matters in so many situations - there are very good reasons why separation on the basis of sex has to happen in those situations. And why clear language about sex matters. It is absurd that anyone thinks otherwise.
And - let me absolutely blunt here - any man who seeks to breach a woman's boundaries against her consent, whatever his reasons, is a predator, has the mentality of a predator. It is a giant red flag. "No means no" and, no, women do not have to justify this.
The vast majority of men claiming to be women do not make surgical or hormonal changes. They are men - whatever they wear - because - and does this really need saying again? - womanhood is a reality not a costume.
As for Rowling she has put her money where her mouth is and financed a female only rape refuge in Edinburgh - Beira Place - after the utterly disgraceful behaviour by Rape Crisis and its cheating boss.
I honestly wish trans "debate" (i.e. people lining up on this site to agree with TERF talking points like nodding dogs) was banned along with AI photos and the tedious cash vs cards debate.
But this is just so wrong-headed I have to interject.
"I do not believe in gender". Ok then. Let's imagine Cyclefree wakes up tomorrow in the body of a man in a Gregor Samsa-style metamorphosis. Cyclefree still feels exactly as they did the previous day. Only now, like Samsa, they are trapped in a completely different body. Is Samsa a bug, or is he a human trapped in a bug's body? Likewise, is Cyclefree a man now, or a woman trapped in a man's body? I suspect Cyclefree, with her memories of growing up as a girl, the learned behaviour of becoming a woman, would argue that despite all appearances, they remain a woman - not a man or a bug. Cf. De Beauvoir - "one is not born, but becomes a woman", i.e. notions of femininity and womanhood are societally constructed. So while there is such a thing as biological sex, it can clearly be separated from the notion of which gender you identify with, as per the example I have just laid out. Sex and gender are demonstrably not the same. Unless Cyclefree is really saying if she woke up in a biologically male body tomorrow she would suddenly consider herself entirely 100% male?
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 had assumed that the police/DPP had been involved. I shouldn’t have presumed, but I did presume, sadly. And then “it had gone to court” was the expression they used. I had not encountered the notion of an organisation that could make that decision on its own. And I suppose I had too much assumed knowledge. And when you see the words that were written, I can see why that view still perpetuated in my mind, because it didn’t overtly say “We have taken the decision to prosecute.”
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.
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
Its why the government's total lack of interest in levelling up (and HS2) since Boris's departure is so perplexing. Or, to put it another way, its why Boris is good at winning elections and the current incumbent isn't.
Truss & Sunak have acted as though the huge majority Boris won was borne of people desperate for right wing politics; Boris knew that it was a one off, more like Blue Labour, and had to be managed carefully.
Yes, he managed things so carefully it ended in a cake-fuelled clusterfuck.
It was going wrong whilst COVID was still a tear in a foreign bat's eye. If you believe in Blue Labour (expansive state, both economically and socially), you don't put Rishi in charge of the money.
BoJo's 2019 triumph depended on combining Blue Wall, Blue Labour and globetrotting squillionaires in one party. That only worked in the odd circumstances of 2019- it was always likely to ping apart otherwise.
Rishi is a suck-up. He was prepared to take the Chancellor job that Javid had vacated, because Javid wasn't prepared to do it with Cummings running it behind the scenes.
As Chancellor Rishi was prepared to go along with NI increases, and an entirely new NI tax for the NHS, because he was willing to do anything he was told to do in return for the job.
He was the perfect Chancellor for a Boris Johnson drunk on the power of purging the Tories of internal opposition and winning a big majority.
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Greater Manchester police's investigation is separate and it will look into whether she registered the wrong property on the electoral roll.
Also, not a great look for a politician if they have broken electoral law.
Correct. But anyone can trigger a police investigation against anyone else, so it means precisely nothing. I was investigated for joking about what an Al Quaeda-run BBC schedule would look like ("Xena Warrior Housewife"...) - a mischievous right-wing group alleged this was racist incitement (because Al Quaeda is foreign, innit), and it took two years for the police to get around to looking at it and deciding there was no case. During that time, the group was able to say I was "under police investigation". It's a tired old trick, and the correct response is to respond politely to the police and otherwise ignore it - don't give it oxygen.
I probably shouldn't chuckle at that joke, Nick, but I did.
@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
Your four-category schema (cis woman, cis man, trans woman, trans man) is coherent. It just doesn't fit into the British two-category schema (woman, man). Trying to crowbar the one into the other is the cause of many of the problems.
(It occurs to me that this could be solved by a lookup table. Which is probably not the conclusion you were expecting )
Sir Keir Starmas was investigated because the Tories got annoyed and got the Police to open one. They thought they'd played a masterstroke until as usual, he took them to the cleaners with his "I will resign" speech. He outplayed and outgunned them at every turn.
Frankly if Rayner is that sure she is innocent, in hindsight she should have said "I am innocent, if I am found guilty I will resign" and put the issue to bed.
@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
Your four-category schema (cis woman, cis man, trans woman, trans man) is coherent. It just doesn't fit into the British two-category schema (woman, man). Trying to crowbar the one into the other is the cause of many of the problems.
(It occurs to me that this could be solved by a lookup table. Which is probably not the conclusion you were expecting )
It's not implausible that could happen - but have they got another Boris Johnson?
BJ would have been nothing without get Brexit done. There may not be another BJ but there definitely isn't another Brexit.
There are those on the right who dream of using ECHRxit to get the old band back together for one last gig. Two reasons why it's unlikely to work, though.
First is that it's way less popular a cause.
Second is the Labour position. In summer 2019, they were on about 30%, so uniting CON and BXP gave a winning score. Now, Labour are somewhere in the 40s%, and CON+REF still loses horribly.
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Tax Avoidance is totally legal. The claims were not she had avoided tax but evaded it.
Actually, the claim was that she hadn't paid the tax some believe she owes. Ignorance of tax law unlike other forms of the law, is a defence. But that is not what they are investigating here.
If found to be true would be a resigning matter for me.
I really don't think you would need to resign, but I admire your principled stance.
Lol, I can reinvent myself as BatteryCorrectHorse2.
But I meant Rayner, if she's found guilty of either she's got to go. I don't think she will be however.
I think the chance of a criminal prosecution (either for electoral or CGT matters) is virtually nil. The prospect of conviction would be insufficient to meet the usual test. The defences of confusion, misunderstanding, incorrect legal advice, ignorance, mistake, or indeed complete innocence are likely to succeed. It's the coverage that can do the damage.
I very much doubt if this will affect many votes. Rayner's natural support base has no-one else to vote for, and many of them will regard it as trivial at worst, and the extra votes Labour needs - those who usually vote Tory - will regard this as trivial compared with the behaviour of the Tory party and government as a whole. Compared with the mass corruptions there this is small stuff.
I had assumed that the police/DPP had been involved. I shouldn’t have presumed, but I did presume, sadly. And then “it had gone to court” was the expression they used. I had not encountered the notion of an organisation that could make that decision on its own. And I suppose I had too much assumed knowledge. And when you see the words that were written, I can see why that view still perpetuated in my mind, because it didn’t overtly say “We have taken the decision to prosecute.”
This is so mind-boggling that I'm inclined to think he's telling the truth. If you were looking for ways to justify your inertia, you'd surely reject the idea of fabricating that line, as it would just be too implausible.
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Greater Manchester police's investigation is separate and it will look into whether she registered the wrong property on the electoral roll.
Also, not a great look for a politician if they have broken electoral law.
Actually, that's worse! So I am surprised they didn't go in with this from the start.
Presumably it's a 'you can't have it both ways approach'. Everyone assumed that she was living in her husband's house, and I assume that's where she was listed for the purpose of the electoral roll, so nothing to investigate until her 'defence' for the tax thing was that she wasn't living where everyone assumed. Essentially, it's the cover-up / defensiveness when asked about it that seems to be doing for her - if when it had first come up she'd said 'Oh, that's a very good point, I should have paid tax - here you go and apologies - and what do we need to do as politicians to help people pay the right amount initially' - then I think that it would have been a small 2 day story. Personally, on the balance of probabilities given what is public, I think it likely that she should have paid tax, but I can totally see how she inadvertently missed it and don't have an issue with that - it's how she's handled it since that I have more issue with.
I agree. I can’t believe she was calculating in her avoidance of tax, if she did avoid it at all, but her need to be seen as whiter than white about it all has led to contortions that have naturally fanned the flames
Comments
But 99% of the time you just die in a different way.
Particularly as the panel will essentially be laid flat; not on a south facing pitched roof. And the car parked in the shade, as often as not.
A man can never - even with surgery - become a member of the female sex. And since sex is relevant in so many situations - sport, safeguarding etc - a transitioned man has to be regarded as a member of the male sex. But for social purposes - like @Leon's friend, Julia - there is no reason why he can't live, dress, call himself however he wants etc. How his friends and family respond is up to them but it is not a matter of compulsion. You cannot force others to share your own views about yourself and it is the height of narcissism to think that you can or should.
Gender to me is no different to a soul. It is some undefinable essence that some people believe in and others don't. Far too much of what people call "gender" seems to me to be no more than stereotypes and it is bizarre to me that so many on the gender side seem so intent on reinforcing very old-fashioned stereotypes.
But I do not believe in gender. I am of the female sex. Discrimination has happened to me because of my sex. Sexual assault has happened to me because of my sex. It happens to every woman because of her sex. My health, how my body develops and ages is affected by my sex.There is no getting away from that. Women cannot identify out of their sex. If we could we'd all be earning 40% more and having our bullshit treated with undeserved respect.
Men are of the male sex - and since sex matters in so many situations - there are very good reasons why separation on the basis of sex has to happen in those situations. And why clear language about sex matters. It is absurd that anyone thinks otherwise.
And - let me absolutely blunt here - any man who seeks to breach a woman's boundaries against her consent, whatever his reasons, is a predator, has the mentality of a predator. It is a giant red flag. "No means no" and, no, women do not have to justify this.
The vast majority of men claiming to be women do not make surgical or hormonal changes. They are men - whatever they wear - because - and does this really need saying again? - womanhood is a reality not a costume.
As for Rowling she has put her money where her mouth is and financed a female only rape refuge in Edinburgh - Beira Place - after the utterly disgraceful behaviour by Rape Crisis and its cheating boss.
Very loose numbers, but I'd expect a 2m car-roof to produce between 0.1kWh over a gloomy winter's day to 4kWh on a clear and sunny summer's day, and average around 1kWh per day or so over the year.
My one quibble would be that if a man who thinks of himself as a woman goes through the extremely onerous task of meeting the requirements of the Gender Reform Act 2004 and obtains a certificate then it does not seem unreasonable that we treat her as a woman, whatever the biological reality, if it makes her life a bit easier. This is a legal fiction but it seems to me that it is an acceptable one provided those safeguards are in place and not diluted in any way. These safeguards must ensure that the person with the certificate is not a risk to women. The problem with the Scottish bill was that it removed all of those safeguards creating completely unacceptable risks.
200W x 2m x 10hrs = 4kWh.
Cass Review Delivers Controversial Verdict on NHS Trans Healthcare
Quite possibly the worst episode they've ever had, the comments are rightfully taking the piss.
Novara Media are an embarrassment, I am not sure if they or Stats For Communists are worse - but I note they are now allied.
Before 2019 Novara and Owen Jones hadn't jumped off the deep end and provided some level of left/far left perspective but now they've gone total insanity. Sad.
https://x.com/martinabettt/status/1778716847153532977
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Also, not a great look for a politician if they have broken electoral law.
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/TheTimes_VI_240403_W.pdf
Of course the new tighter Visa rules for migrants came in this week too which should start to reduce immigration by the autumn
The GRC changes the description of a person's status as between them and the state. It does not regulate how private citizens should behave. And as the Equality Act makes clear it is legitimate to discriminate against someone on the basis of their sex in certain circumstances. That should remain the case IMO regardless of a GRC precisely because a legal fiction does not change material reality and the reasons for legitimate discrimination are - and should be - based on that material reality.
Believing legal fictions is dangerous. See the UK's financial sector at any point this century.
Anyway Istr at least one PBer fulminating about the trans cult. Just for a bit of balance..
https://x.com/miffythegamer/status/1778189301509202076
Another one for the Cyclefree Gulag.
Though to which address is yet to be confirmed.
The man who was in charge of the Post Office (Alan Cook) at the height of this scandal was unaware his own organisation had the power of prosecution."
BBC website just now.
But the London Assembly doesn't do by-elections, so if she's elected in Brighton, she can can stand down from the Assembly and the next unelected person on the Green list will fill her position.
It's interesting how parties handle the mayoral and Assembly elections. Susan Hall is the Tory mayoral candidate and top of their Assembly list, so sure to get re-elected. The SDP have done the same. Yet the LibDem mayoral candidate, Blackie, is second on their Assembly list (so touch and go whether he'll be elected, but probably). Reform UK have done the same: their mayoral candidate is second on their Assembly list.
The Green mayoral candidate is 4th on their Assembly list. They currently have 3 Assembly members* and they take up the top 3 slots.
* including Zack Polanski, the man who can make your breasts bigger through hypnotherapy
I meant the coalition of voters had to be managed carefully
As much as I think she has handled this ineptly she strikes me as being, worst case, a victim of an excessively complex tax regime.
BoJo's 2019 triumph depended on combining Blue Wall, Blue Labour and globetrotting squillionaires in one party. That only worked in the odd circumstances of 2019- it was always likely to ping apart otherwise.
practically folded since.
You could say Reform are polling well without him, but I think a lot of civvies think he is the leader (he owns the party in any case)
If found to be true would be a resigning matter for me.
"He said he was aware there were court cases, but assumed the police or public prosecutires were involved "
He thinks he’s make a point that makes him look smart and insightful.
The reality is he has zero f*cking clue about almost anything.
Generally you dismiss whatever he says as idiotic - until it serves your purposes and then he’s the fount of all wisdom
But yes, postal votes are abused as well.
We should spend time and effort and resources encouraging people to vote and boosting turnout. But that doesn’t mean not taking measures to ensure that it is people who are entitled to vote that are voting.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-appendix-immigration-salary-list
But I meant Rayner, if she's found guilty of either she's got to go. I don't think she will be however.
I've had a search for statistics, but can't find anything on point.
Protecting the integrity of the ballot is important. It is certainly more convenient if you have a national ID card, but not having one doesn’t undermine the importance of doing so
I remain of the view this is an entirely possible outcome, and if the crossover is sustained for a couple of months, there is potential that we see a realignment on the right in this election.
One thing I would like to see, although I doubt it will happen, is to allow expatriates to vote at the embassy on the day, rather than by post in advance. A lot of other countries do this, and it’s always a lovely sight to see a long queue forming outside an embassy here in Expatsville, when it’s their polling day.
Only 11% of Remainers backing the Tories to 3% for Reform keeps the Tories ahead of Reform with Yougov overall
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/TheTimes_VI_240403_W.pdf
If you go along you get inflation each month
I'm genuinely curious about the manner in which the Cass report is seen as "vindicating" any particular view.
It could be entirely fairly claimed as doing so for those who expressed scepticism about the adequacy of the manner in which medical care was delivered. On the more 'ideological' arguments, it doesn't seem to me to do any such thing.
Hence why many on here continue to bleat on about The Strange Case of Sir Keir and the Lamb Dopiaza.
Cue spooky music.
So I mostly disagree with you.
But this is just so wrong-headed I have to interject.
"I do not believe in gender". Ok then. Let's imagine Cyclefree wakes up tomorrow in the body of a man in a Gregor Samsa-style metamorphosis. Cyclefree still feels exactly as they did the previous day. Only now, like Samsa, they are trapped in a completely different body. Is Samsa a bug, or is he a human trapped in a bug's body? Likewise, is Cyclefree a man now, or a woman trapped in a man's body? I suspect Cyclefree, with her memories of growing up as a girl, the learned behaviour of becoming a woman, would argue that despite all appearances, they remain a woman - not a man or a bug. Cf. De Beauvoir - "one is not born, but becomes a woman", i.e. notions of femininity and womanhood are societally constructed. So while there is such a thing as biological sex, it can clearly be separated from the notion of which gender you identify with, as per the example I have just laid out. Sex and gender are demonstrably not the same. Unless Cyclefree is really saying if she woke up in a biologically male body tomorrow she would suddenly consider herself entirely 100% male?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/apr/12/post-office-horizon-crozier-cook-sunak-starmer-uk-politics-latest-updates
Alan Cook said he had not previously encountered an organisation that could initiate prosecutions itself, and he describes it as “one of my regrets” that he didn’t “pick up on that earlier”.
He told the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry:
I had assumed that the police/DPP had been involved. I shouldn’t have presumed, but I did presume, sadly. And then “it had gone to court” was the expression they used. I had not encountered the notion of an organisation that could make that decision on its own. And I suppose I had too much assumed knowledge. And when you see the words that were written, I can see why that view still perpetuated in my mind, because it didn’t overtly say “We have taken the decision to prosecute.”
As Chancellor Rishi was prepared to go along with NI increases, and an entirely new NI tax for the NHS, because he was willing to do anything he was told to do in return for the job.
He was the perfect Chancellor for a Boris Johnson drunk on the power of purging the Tories of internal opposition and winning a big majority.
(It occurs to me that this could be solved by a lookup table. Which is probably not the conclusion you were expecting
Frankly if Rayner is that sure she is innocent, in hindsight she should have said "I am innocent, if I am found guilty I will resign" and put the issue to bed.
NU10K
Sequence seems to be 47,44,40,43,45
So not sure if there is a trend but I think you are probably correct Lab are currently not as low as 40
What do you think about SKS's policy on the nuclear deterrent and 2.5% GDP target? What are the views of the Labour left?
First is that it's way less popular a cause.
Second is the Labour position. In summer 2019, they were on about 30%, so uniting CON and BXP gave a winning score. Now, Labour are somewhere in the 40s%, and CON+REF still loses horribly.
I very much doubt if this will affect many votes. Rayner's natural support base has no-one else to vote for, and many of them will regard it as trivial at worst, and the extra votes Labour needs - those who usually vote Tory - will regard this as trivial compared with the behaviour of the Tory party and government as a whole. Compared with the mass corruptions there this is small stuff.
He knew exactly what he was advocating. His political ability and judgment is appalling, actually probably the worst on recent record for a PM.