Does anyone know where I can get the full detailed results please? Lots of web sites claim they do, but don't. Invariably you have to enter a post code. I'm not doing that for every constituency (even if I were capable) I want a full list in full detail.
Even Wikipedia failed me as there are no vote numbers on their detailed list.
Honestly the internet sometimes takes us backwards. In the old days all the quality press would publish a full set of results.
Parliament will publish a research paper in due course
I saw that Ian, but I need it NOW. I have withdrawal symptoms. Thanks everyone else also.
How can you have, when the BBC, ITV, C4 and Sky through-the-night election coverage is all available to re-watch? If you have re-lived election night four times already, you really haven’t got much else going on.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
The thing is, there is money. The government just have to be willing to go and get it. Instead of waiting for the private sector to magically invest in things and only providing carrots - provide sticks as well. You have lots of profit just going to shareholders and less and less reinvestment into anything productive - tax. You have lots of capital just sloshing around growing because of computerised number crunching and no productive labour output - tax. You have properties / land sitting empty, accruing value due to speculating and taking debts out against this speculative value - tax. You don't have to balance the budget - you are a sovereign government, not a family; money gets printed in a way you have some influence over.
But no - only neoliberalism allowed. Red puppet or blue puppet - just don't question the man who operates them both...
Everything's allowed. Eg Labour put forward quite a radical offer in 2019.
Interesting chat with a ~60 wellish-off neighbour.
He expresses resentment about FPTP, and how Reform do not have 8- MPs. Key issues - more people will be invited in, and agricultural land and green belt will be built on.
So, there's an opportunity maybe for views to be changed if the Government prove competent.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
The thing is, there is money. The government just have to be willing to go and get it. Instead of waiting for the private sector to magically invest in things and only providing carrots - provide sticks as well. You have lots of profit just going to shareholders and less and less reinvestment into anything productive - tax. You have lots of capital just sloshing around growing because of computerised number crunching and no productive labour output - tax. You have properties / land sitting empty, accruing value due to speculating and taking debts out against this speculative value - tax. You don't have to balance the budget - you are a sovereign government, not a family; money gets printed in a way you have some influence over.
But no - only neoliberalism allowed. Red puppet or blue puppet - just don't question the man who operates them both...
It astonishes me that people think like this. "You don't have to balance the budget" implies a belief you can make money magically appear. You can't. If you try, you destroy the value of money which already exists.
Money is a representation of labour value - it isn't a finite resource that if you chop up into more pieces mean the pieces have to be smaller (less valuable). Money (at the level of governments) is not a thing in and of itself.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
Paul Johnson of the IFS rather amusing said this is what she will do and then in a few weeks will express shock and horror that things are far worse than anybody knew. He said its all play acting, all the information you need is available these days should you want to do your own assessment.
Both Tory and Labour were lying to us about tax and the public finances. The quicker the new government takes us back towards honesty, the better.
Interesting chat with a ~60 wellish-off neighbour.
He expresses resentment about FPTP, and how Reform do not have 8- MPs. Key issues - more people will be invited in, and agricultural land and green belt will be built on.
So, there's an opportunity maybe for views to be changed if the Government prove competent.
We shall see.
If the Government proves competent then agricultural land and green belt will be built on.
Interesting chat with a ~60 wellish-off neighbour.
He expresses resentment about FPTP, and how Reform do not have 8- MPs. Key issues - more people will be invited in, and agricultural land and green belt will be built on.
So, there's an opportunity maybe for views to be changed if the Government prove competent.
We shall see.
This is the route back for the Tories. Oppose "Labour's green belt housing for immigrants".
Kernel of truth if you consider the fertility rate.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
The thing is, there is money. The government just have to be willing to go and get it. Instead of waiting for the private sector to magically invest in things and only providing carrots - provide sticks as well. You have lots of profit just going to shareholders and less and less reinvestment into anything productive - tax. You have lots of capital just sloshing around growing because of computerised number crunching and no productive labour output - tax. You have properties / land sitting empty, accruing value due to speculating and taking debts out against this speculative value - tax. You don't have to balance the budget - you are a sovereign government, not a family; money gets printed in a way you have some influence over.
But no - only neoliberalism allowed. Red puppet or blue puppet - just don't question the man who operates them both...
Everything's allowed. Eg Labour put forward quite a radical offer in 2019.
And despite that manifesto being costed, this GE it was suddenly agreed that it wasn't and it was all a fairy tale. So yes, allowed. Because the political and media landscape put the restraints on what is politically "viable" even if the electorate disagree with their definition.
Rachel Reeves has announced an immediate end to the “absurd” ban on new onshore wind developments in England as she unveiled a series of reforms to the planning system.
On shore wind is the cheapest form of energy there is, its absolutely bonkers its not been maximised. Any NIMBYs need to be told to mind their own business.
Same with housing. Looks like a disappointing lack of reform to be announced today, just a return of the pre-Sunak mandatory housing targets. That's not enough, more needs to be done.
What happens if all the Dukes and Earls refuse to put turbines up?
Then other landowners will and will make the profit instead.
Onshore wind is profitable, reliable, clean and cheap. That's why planning regulations were needed to block it, not people not wanting to put it up.
So you'll pander to rich NIMBYs?
No.
Nobody has a monopoly on land ownership. What people want to do with their own land is up to them, NIMBYism is trying to forbid other people from building on their (not your own) land.
You're thinking of NIOPBYS. Not in other people's back yards.
Would you be happy if someone were to buy small strips of land all over the country to prevent new roads being built?
As a last resort I'm OK with compulsory purchase orders being used for significant infrastructure needs that go across the country, like roads and rails.
But we're not talking about that. There's no need for wind farms to traverse the country, any more than any other type of farm, they can be wherever they get sited.
Actually its pylons etc that are more relevant for needing to be sorted out than wind farms as again they do need to traverse the country.
Your problem is that at the end of the day, you'll tolerate NIMBYism as long as it is consistent with your personal views on how the country should work. In this case, property rights versus a very specific type of national energy infrastructure - wind turbines.
I don't see why any landowner should be allowed to stymie the progress of the country. OTOH, I also don't think you should sacrifice an area of outstanding beauty like the Lake District for turbines. We're both NIMBYs, like it or not.
Bullshit.
NIMBYism is telling people they can't build what they want to build. It is deeply illiberal.
People not wanting to build anything on their own land is their own free choice. It is completely liberal.
No landowner should be allowed to stymie the progress of the country, if any landowner wants their own land to stagnate in value then that's their own choice, let others make a profit instead.
However as I've said many times before, I would tax all land based on its undeveloped value, since land is a finite resource for this country and all landowners should pay their fair share of the upkeep of the country.
So someone who develops their land should be paying no more taxation than someone who does not - conversely not developing land still gets the same tax as if you do.
Which is why the 1948 Planning Act was seen as so extraordinarily radical at the time. It’s amazing they got to do it, really, what with creating our entire national health system and the welfare state on the side. If only we had such radical drive nowadays.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
The worst of it is it's also utterly believable.
Albeit clearly scheduled in weeks ago.
The Tories would respond only the CCHQ geniuses have deleted their Twitter.
Reform will be finding themselves the real opposition a bit quicker than expected if this carries on.
How on earth are the Tories supposed to respond? “Maybe we should have made all these obvious business friendly moves when we were in power?” Not sure how that’s going to endear them to the electorate.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Indeed and lowering the marginal costs of motoring is only a good thing, make it more affordable.
Over time the up-front costs of motoring should come down too, as battery manufacturing gets scaled up and more affordable.
Issac Levido just oversaw the worst Tory result I think ever.
Man is an over-promoted prat. This is the second election he has "been involved with" where the incumbent has lost.
Worst result for the modern Conservative Party yes.
Not worst result for a Tory Party though, in 1761 the Tories under the leadership of Lord Isham only got 112 MPs so 9 less than Rishi's Conservatives got at the 2024 general election and at the 1754 election only 106, so 15 less than the Conservatives this month.
In 1747 Sir Watkins William Wynn's Tories had done a bit better at 117 MPs but still worse than Rishi
Rachel Reeves has announced an immediate end to the “absurd” ban on new onshore wind developments in England as she unveiled a series of reforms to the planning system.
On shore wind is the cheapest form of energy there is, its absolutely bonkers its not been maximised. Any NIMBYs need to be told to mind their own business.
Same with housing. Looks like a disappointing lack of reform to be announced today, just a return of the pre-Sunak mandatory housing targets. That's not enough, more needs to be done.
What happens if all the Dukes and Earls refuse to put turbines up?
Then other landowners will and will make the profit instead.
Onshore wind is profitable, reliable, clean and cheap. That's why planning regulations were needed to block it, not people not wanting to put it up.
So you'll pander to rich NIMBYs?
No.
Nobody has a monopoly on land ownership. What people want to do with their own land is up to them, NIMBYism is trying to forbid other people from building on their (not your own) land.
You're thinking of NIOPBYS. Not in other people's back yards.
Would you be happy if someone were to buy small strips of land all over the country to prevent new roads being built?
As a last resort I'm OK with compulsory purchase orders being used for significant infrastructure needs that go across the country, like roads and rails.
But we're not talking about that. There's no need for wind farms to traverse the country, any more than any other type of farm, they can be wherever they get sited.
Actually its pylons etc that are more relevant for needing to be sorted out than wind farms as again they do need to traverse the country.
Your problem is that at the end of the day, you'll tolerate NIMBYism as long as it is consistent with your personal views on how the country should work. In this case, property rights versus a very specific type of national energy infrastructure - wind turbines.
I don't see why any landowner should be allowed to stymie the progress of the country. OTOH, I also don't think you should sacrifice an area of outstanding beauty like the Lake District for turbines. We're both NIMBYs, like it or not.
Bullshit.
NIMBYism is telling people they can't build what they want to build. It is deeply illiberal.
People not wanting to build anything on their own land is their own free choice. It is completely liberal.
No landowner should be allowed to stymie the progress of the country, if any landowner wants their own land to stagnate in value then that's their own choice, let others make a profit instead.
However as I've said many times before, I would tax all land based on its undeveloped value, since land is a finite resource for this country and all landowners should pay their fair share of the upkeep of the country.
So someone who develops their land should be paying no more taxation than someone who does not - conversely not developing land still gets the same tax as if you do.
Which is why the 1948 Planning Act was seen as so extraordinarily radical at the time. It’s amazing they got to do it, really, what with creating our entire national health system and the welfare state on the side. If only we had such radical drive nowadays.
The 1948 Planning Act was an utter disaster that should be repealed, its because of that we have generations of NIMBYism and nowhere near enough housing.
The Spectator will publish any old rubbish as clickbait nowadays. It’s sad to see, as most commentary moves online, how severely the standards of the print media have declined.
I guess we should be relieved that the author does at least appear to have visited France before scribbling off this nonsense, unlike his counterpart who published an article about life in lockdown London while holed up somewhere on the South Wales coast.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
Paul Johnson of the IFS rather amusing said this is what she will do and then in a few weeks will express shock and horror that things are far worse than anybody knew. He said its all play acting, all the information you need is available these days should you want to do your own assessment.
Both Tory and Labour were lying to us about tax and the public finances. The quicker the new government takes us back towards honesty, the better.
I'm not sure lying that the books have somehow turned out to be much worse than expected is a great move towards honesty.
Anyone who was so unaware of the scale of the mess they actually got appointed Chancellor before finding out is manifestly unsuitable for the job.
The new Health Secretary, Wes Streeting says “the NHS is broken”, but instead of bringing in builders, he has a brought in a demolition man - Alan Milburn.
How many hours to save the NHS?
How many hours to hand the NHS to Streeting's private health donors more like
Missing the Tories already?
Why would you be missing them.
SKS Lab have same aim hand the NHS to private Sector health donors
An aim that the Tories have apparently never manage to achieve, despite being in power from 1979 to 1997, and then 2010 until last Friday. Hardly seems to be their number one priority.
I'd be convinced to vote Labour if they were look at some form of NHS insurance model. In mad right wing failing states like France and Germany. I did a couple of days work experience during my German A-level in a health insurance office and was surprised to find out that everyone is entitled to free healthcare and the Government pays the insurance premium of those not in work. The big downside to this type of model is that healthcare outcomes are better and the whole system costs less money - sorry I meant upside. The downside is that we lose a national religion.
Nobody sane would copy the German system. It's a mess. Also, Germany spends more on health than the uk.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
The thing is, there is money. The government just have to be willing to go and get it. Instead of waiting for the private sector to magically invest in things and only providing carrots - provide sticks as well. You have lots of profit just going to shareholders and less and less reinvestment into anything productive - tax. You have lots of capital just sloshing around growing because of computerised number crunching and no productive labour output - tax. You have properties / land sitting empty, accruing value due to speculating and taking debts out against this speculative value - tax. You don't have to balance the budget - you are a sovereign government, not a family; money gets printed in a way you have some influence over.
But no - only neoliberalism allowed. Red puppet or blue puppet - just don't question the man who operates them both...
It astonishes me that people think like this. "You don't have to balance the budget" implies a belief you can make money magically appear. You can't. If you try, you destroy the value of money which already exists.
If you've ever taken out a loan it is likely that the money was magically created the instant before the digits appeared in your bank account.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
That's not a reason not to move to EVs.
So you welcome a future where EV per-mile costs of motoring are considerably cheaper than our exorbitantly high costs today?
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
The thing is, there is money. The government just have to be willing to go and get it. Instead of waiting for the private sector to magically invest in things and only providing carrots - provide sticks as well. You have lots of profit just going to shareholders and less and less reinvestment into anything productive - tax. You have lots of capital just sloshing around growing because of computerised number crunching and no productive labour output - tax. You have properties / land sitting empty, accruing value due to speculating and taking debts out against this speculative value - tax. You don't have to balance the budget - you are a sovereign government, not a family; money gets printed in a way you have some influence over.
But no - only neoliberalism allowed. Red puppet or blue puppet - just don't question the man who operates them both...
It astonishes me that people think like this. "You don't have to balance the budget" implies a belief you can make money magically appear. You can't. If you try, you destroy the value of money which already exists.
If you've ever taken out a loan it is likely that the money was magically created the instant before the digits appeared in your bank account.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
The thing is, there is money. The government just have to be willing to go and get it. Instead of waiting for the private sector to magically invest in things and only providing carrots - provide sticks as well. You have lots of profit just going to shareholders and less and less reinvestment into anything productive - tax. You have lots of capital just sloshing around growing because of computerised number crunching and no productive labour output - tax. You have properties / land sitting empty, accruing value due to speculating and taking debts out against this speculative value - tax. You don't have to balance the budget - you are a sovereign government, not a family; money gets printed in a way you have some influence over.
But no - only neoliberalism allowed. Red puppet or blue puppet - just don't question the man who operates them both...
It astonishes me that people think like this. "You don't have to balance the budget" implies a belief you can make money magically appear. You can't. If you try, you destroy the value of money which already exists.
If you've ever taken out a loan it is likely that the money was magically created the instant before the digits appeared in your bank account.
But also - it doesn't matter if governments have debt, it matters whether or not the global community trust that the labour force in that state will be put to profitable means. The US has a load of debt, China have a load of debt - it doesn't matter because their labour forces create enough profit to assuage the fears of that debt. The other thing is a state is much less likely to be unable to function than even a large bank - certain countries are, by definition, too big to fail. The UK, with control over its own currency and a reasonable labour market, could be included in that. We could tax more but spend even more and as long as there was trust that that spending would support growth (which investment in infrastructure and welfare does) then it's fine.
For the few on here who might shout "Ukrainian Nazis!!!!" whenever anything happens in Ukraine, here's something to show who the real fascists are:
"The oncology station of the Children Hospital, which Russians struck this morning, has been evacuated. The children need to receive their cancer treatment in the open. "
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
The thing is, there is money. The government just have to be willing to go and get it. Instead of waiting for the private sector to magically invest in things and only providing carrots - provide sticks as well. You have lots of profit just going to shareholders and less and less reinvestment into anything productive - tax. You have lots of capital just sloshing around growing because of computerised number crunching and no productive labour output - tax. You have properties / land sitting empty, accruing value due to speculating and taking debts out against this speculative value - tax. You don't have to balance the budget - you are a sovereign government, not a family; money gets printed in a way you have some influence over.
But no - only neoliberalism allowed. Red puppet or blue puppet - just don't question the man who operates them both...
It astonishes me that people think like this. "You don't have to balance the budget" implies a belief you can make money magically appear. You can't. If you try, you destroy the value of money which already exists.
If you've ever taken out a loan it is likely that the money was magically created the instant before the digits appeared in your bank account.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
(whips out calculator)
Diesel has a duty of £0.53 / litre, with VAT on top. So a £1.50 litre of diesel costs ~£0.72. 1 litre of diesel represents about 38MJ, which comes out at a third of that in kinetic energy at the wheel thanks to ICE thermal losses.
So 13MJ KE costs you 72p with diesel.
13MJ is ~ 3.6 kWh. An EV will have some (small) resistive losses & should probably scale by weight as well - an EV has to lug around all that battery compared to an ICE car. So equivalent for an EV is probably 5kWh ish?
If you can charge at home the EV will cost you half the untaxed diesel rate (Octopus EV rate: 7p / kWh). Charging elsewhere is going to be much more expensive, zapmap ways a mean charge on their network of 56p / kWh for “fast” chargers & 80p/kWh for the ultra-rapid chargers.
So for home charging the EV beats even untaxed diesel. If you have to charge elsewhere you’re going to find it’s much, much more expensive!
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
The thing is, there is money. The government just have to be willing to go and get it. Instead of waiting for the private sector to magically invest in things and only providing carrots - provide sticks as well. You have lots of profit just going to shareholders and less and less reinvestment into anything productive - tax. You have lots of capital just sloshing around growing because of computerised number crunching and no productive labour output - tax. You have properties / land sitting empty, accruing value due to speculating and taking debts out against this speculative value - tax. You don't have to balance the budget - you are a sovereign government, not a family; money gets printed in a way you have some influence over.
But no - only neoliberalism allowed. Red puppet or blue puppet - just don't question the man who operates them both...
It astonishes me that people think like this. "You don't have to balance the budget" implies a belief you can make money magically appear. You can't. If you try, you destroy the value of money which already exists.
If you've ever taken out a loan it is likely that the money was magically created the instant before the digits appeared in your bank account.
With a fractional reserve, a credit and a debit and to rules.
They don't just have a blank cheque to create money with no comeback.
For sure. But it is not immutable and is created by man and not magical finance wizards.
Yes, to sound rules.
There's nothing wrong with creating money to sound fractional rules, its when the rules go out the window and you do it for convenience that there's a problem.
Issac Levido just oversaw the worst Tory result I think ever.
Man is an over-promoted prat. This is the second election he has "been involved with" where the incumbent has lost.
Worst result for the modern Conservative Party yes.
Not worst result for a Tory Party though, in 1761 the Tories under the leadership of Lord Isham only got 112 MPs so 9 less than Rishi's Conservatives got at the 2024 general election and at the 1754 election only 106, so 15 less than the Conservatives this month.
In 1747 Sir Watkins William Wynn's Tories had done a bit better at 117 MPs but still worse than Rishi
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
The new Health Secretary, Wes Streeting says “the NHS is broken”, but instead of bringing in builders, he has a brought in a demolition man - Alan Milburn.
How many hours to save the NHS?
How many hours to hand the NHS to Streeting's private health donors more like
Missing the Tories already?
Why would you be missing them.
SKS Lab have same aim hand the NHS to private Sector health donors
An aim that the Tories have apparently never manage to achieve, despite being in power from 1979 to 1997, and then 2010 until last Friday. Hardly seems to be their number one priority.
I'd be convinced to vote Labour if they were look at some form of NHS insurance model. In mad right wing failing states like France and Germany. I did a couple of days work experience during my German A-level in a health insurance office and was surprised to find out that everyone is entitled to free healthcare and the Government pays the insurance premium of those not in work. The big downside to this type of model is that healthcare outcomes are better and the whole system costs less money - sorry I meant upside. The downside is that we lose a national religion.
The Germans spend more as a percent of GDP than we do. So is healthcare cheaper in Germany?
Well that higher GDP buys a range of better health outcomes in areas such as life expectancy.
The Kings Fund highlights that the UK system is particularly good at shielding people from cost at the time of illness, but it has worse outcomes - it shows significantly lower healthcare professionals than average info Germany, and it does highlight that changing the system holds risk - only Labour could get away with making the case for and instituting such a change.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
That's not a reason not to move to EVs.
So you welcome a future where EV per-mile costs of motoring are considerably cheaper than our exorbitantly high costs today?
So do I, glad we can finally agree on something.
Maybe. I think motoring is prohibitively expensive in rural areas and damages the economy relative to cities, which already have plenty of good public transport (and lately walking and cycling) provision. I think per mile pricing is wrong on that basis, so I'd make long journeys much cheaper.
To make up for it, I would make the costs of driving around our cities and town centres much more expensive, to take account of the costs to everyone else of doing so when other options exist. Congestion, wasted parking space and so on. Polluter pays (though not literally with EVs).
But my main concern is the entry costs of motoring, particularly for younger and poorer people. If you can transfer some of those costs to marginal costs then you increase accessibility. That might mean that overall marginal costs go up a bit to pay for funded driving lessons, tests, no VED etc. If you're a new driver in a rural area, driving will be way cheaper in Eabhal's Britain.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
That's not a reason not to move to EVs.
So you welcome a future where EV per-mile costs of motoring are considerably cheaper than our exorbitantly high costs today?
So do I, glad we can finally agree on something.
Vehicles are not standalone things. Road upkeep needs to be paid for, it's a fantasy that solar is free so motoring should be too. Private cars are resource intensive and real estate intensive and motoring should cost everything it actually costs plus a premium to discourage it.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
(whips out calculator)
Diesel has a duty of £0.53 / litre, with VAT on top. So a £1.50 litre of diesel costs ~£0.72. 1 litre of diesel represents about 38MJ, which comes out at a third of that in kinetic energy at the wheel thanks to ICE thermal losses.
So 13MJ KE costs you 72p with diesel.
13MJ is ~ 3.6 kWh. An EV will have some (small) resistive losses & should probably scale by weight as well - an EV has to lug around all that battery compared to an ICE car. So equivalent for an EV is probably 5kWh ish?
If you can charge at home the EV will cost you half the untaxed diesel rate (Octopus EV rate: 7p / kWh). Charging elsewhere is going to be much more expensive, zapmap ways a mean charge on their network of 56p / kWh for “fast” chargers & 80p/kWh for the ultra-rapid chargers.
So for home charging the EV beats even untaxed diesel. If you have to charge elsewhere you’re going to find it’s much, much more expensive!
Indeed, which is why all modern homes should ideally come with a driveway for 2 off-road parking spots as standard.
Switching to clean vehicles without at-home charging is going to be very problematic.
Near me a new petrol station has just opened which is the first I've seen that has the price per kwh for EVs on its display board, not just the price for unleaded/diesel.
A litre of unleaded costs £1.389 My self-charging hybrid gets an average (real, based on my own driving) of 9 miles per litre. So it costs 15.4p per mile.
A kwh of electricity costs 59p From what I've read 3-4 miles per kwh is fairly typical. So it costs 15-20p per mile, making EV more expensive than even unleaded just on running costs without the tax being taken into account.
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
So the Green party is a watermelon party.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
History repeats itself - the first time as farce; then as tragedy.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
That's not a reason not to move to EVs.
So you welcome a future where EV per-mile costs of motoring are considerably cheaper than our exorbitantly high costs today?
So do I, glad we can finally agree on something.
Vehicles are not standalone things. Road upkeep needs to be paid for, it's a fantasy that solar is free so motoring should be too. Private cars are resource intensive and real estate intensive and motoring should cost everything it actually costs plus a premium to discourage it.
Why discourage it?
They're not that resource intensive and as we switch to renewables they'll be even less resource intensive than they are today.
Motoring does cost much more than its operating costs, due to tax. As we switch to EVs that tax should be abolished and not replaced.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
The thing is, there is money. The government just have to be willing to go and get it. Instead of waiting for the private sector to magically invest in things and only providing carrots - provide sticks as well. You have lots of profit just going to shareholders and less and less reinvestment into anything productive - tax. You have lots of capital just sloshing around growing because of computerised number crunching and no productive labour output - tax. You have properties / land sitting empty, accruing value due to speculating and taking debts out against this speculative value - tax. You don't have to balance the budget - you are a sovereign government, not a family; money gets printed in a way you have some influence over.
But no - only neoliberalism allowed. Red puppet or blue puppet - just don't question the man who operates them both...
It astonishes me that people think like this. "You don't have to balance the budget" implies a belief you can make money magically appear. You can't. If you try, you destroy the value of money which already exists.
You can if the economy is growing sufficiently fast. But you certainly can't rely on that in advance of it being the case.
Poor areas vote Labour (or Sinn Fein or Reform UK). Rich areas vote LibDem or Tory.
Yes constituencies which have a LD or Tory MP still are more likely to have a Waitrose and an above average house price.
Constituencies which have a Labour MP now with a Tory second or a Labour MP with the SNP second are about average demographically.
Constituencies where Labour and Reform got the most and second most votes are likely to be the most deprived in the UK
I first came to this site in the late 2000s after reading a news article (Guardian I think) about every constituency with a Waitrose having a Tory MP - I thought that the Tories should strategically push JLP into an expansion of Waitrose to win the next election!!!!
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
So the Green party is a watermelon party.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
GPEW are an eco-socialist-libertarian party; if you want Climate Stalin or Climate Musk - that isn't us. We take the position that environmentalism must come hand in hand with democratic input and local autonomy; and also argue that even if you do do private led "solutions" it won't actually solve the problem because the voracious desire for profit is much of what got us here in the first place and is unlikely to be the solution as well.
Reeves getting her rebuttals in before any opposition attacks.
..I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war. What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that. Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked. Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest. A government that put party first and country second. We face the legacy of 14 years of chaos and economic irresponsibility. That is why over the weekend, I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the full scale of the challenge. And I will present this to parliament before the summer recess. This will be separate from a budget that will be held later this year...
In all fairness, she's not entirely wrong.
All together now...
"Now I've opened the books, I've discovered that the Tories left an even worse mess than I thought.."
Utterly predictable, but respect for saying it so well.
ie There's No Money.
Perhaps she found a jokey little note to that effect from Jeremy Hunt that Labour can keep referring to in every election for the next 20 years.
History repeats itself - the first time as farce; then as tragedy.
I would have hoped that they left the original note - someone must have it.
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
So the Green party is a watermelon party.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
GPEW are an eco-socialist-libertarian party; if you want Climate Stalin or Climate Musk - that isn't us. We take the position that environmentalism must come hand in hand with democratic input and local autonomy; and also argue that even if you do do private led "solutions" it won't actually solve the problem because the voracious desire for profit is much of what got us here in the first place and is unlikely to be the solution as well.
You don't know what the word libertarian means, clearly, given how illiberal you are being.
It is the desire for profit that fixes environmental issues, tax the externality (pollution) and give a profit motive for being clean.
That has happened and been shown to work time and again.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
That's not a reason not to move to EVs.
So you welcome a future where EV per-mile costs of motoring are considerably cheaper than our exorbitantly high costs today?
So do I, glad we can finally agree on something.
Vehicles are not standalone things. Road upkeep needs to be paid for, it's a fantasy that solar is free so motoring should be too. Private cars are resource intensive and real estate intensive and motoring should cost everything it actually costs plus a premium to discourage it.
Why discourage it?
They're not that resource intensive and as we switch to renewables they'll be even less resource intensive than they are today.
Motoring does cost much more than its operating costs, due to tax. As we switch to EVs that tax should be abolished and not replaced.
They cost land which would be available for stuff like houses
And this is where a libertarian approach to land use falls down. If you want cars you want roads including new roads meaning you want compulsory purchase. You are a communist in relation to the land of unwilling sellers on your new route. Which means you can't consistently put a blanket embargo on state prohibitions as to land use.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
That's not a reason not to move to EVs.
So you welcome a future where EV per-mile costs of motoring are considerably cheaper than our exorbitantly high costs today?
So do I, glad we can finally agree on something.
Vehicles are not standalone things. Road upkeep needs to be paid for, it's a fantasy that solar is free so motoring should be too. Private cars are resource intensive and real estate intensive and motoring should cost everything it actually costs plus a premium to discourage it.
Why discourage it?
They're not that resource intensive and as we switch to renewables they'll be even less resource intensive than they are today.
Motoring does cost much more than its operating costs, due to tax. As we switch to EVs that tax should be abolished and not replaced.
Because there are things to be paid for (like road upkeep) and externalities to address (like congestion, space taken by parked cars, environmental impacts of road construction, safety impacts). These are greater for cars than other modes. The move to EV doesn't take these away.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
(whips out calculator)
Diesel has a duty of £0.53 / litre, with VAT on top. So a £1.50 litre of diesel costs ~£0.72. 1 litre of diesel represents about 38MJ, which comes out at a third of that in kinetic energy at the wheel thanks to ICE thermal losses.
So 13MJ KE costs you 72p with diesel.
13MJ is ~ 3.6 kWh. An EV will have some (small) resistive losses & should probably scale by weight as well - an EV has to lug around all that battery compared to an ICE car. So equivalent for an EV is probably 5kWh ish?
If you can charge at home the EV will cost you half the untaxed diesel rate (Octopus EV rate: 7p / kWh). Charging elsewhere is going to be much more expensive, zapmap ways a mean charge on their network of 56p / kWh for “fast” chargers & 80p/kWh for the ultra-rapid chargers.
So for home charging the EV beats even untaxed diesel. If you have to charge elsewhere you’re going to find it’s much, much more expensive!
Indeed, which is why all modern homes should ideally come with a driveway for 2 off-road parking spots as standard.
Switching to clean vehicles without at-home charging is going to be very problematic.
Near me a new petrol station has just opened which is the first I've seen that has the price per kwh for EVs on its display board, not just the price for unleaded/diesel.
A litre of unleaded costs £1.389 My self-charging hybrid gets an average (real, based on my own driving) of 9 miles per litre. So it costs 15.4p per mile.
A kwh of electricity costs 59p From what I've read 3-4 miles per kwh is fairly typical. So it costs 15-20p per mile, making EV more expensive than even unleaded just on running costs without the tax being taken into account.
I don't see a good solution for this.
Tesla are opening up their Supercharging to third parties.
Given that they defeated the government backed charging consortia in the US - by offering lots of chargers that worked, and easy to use….
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Massively increased up front costs for now. That will rapidly change. How rapidly is a combination of the politics of industrial policy, and the speed of technological development, but the trend is inexorable.
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
So the Green party is a watermelon party.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
GPEW are an eco-socialist-libertarian party; if you want Climate Stalin or Climate Musk - that isn't us. We take the position that environmentalism must come hand in hand with democratic input and local autonomy; and also argue that even if you do do private led "solutions" it won't actually solve the problem because the voracious desire for profit is much of what got us here in the first place and is unlikely to be the solution as well.
You don't know what the word libertarian means, clearly, given how illiberal you are being.
It is the desire for profit that fixes environmental issues, tax the externality (pollution) and give a profit motive for being clean.
That has happened and been shown to work time and again.
The original libertarians were left wing anarchists whose desire has been for decision making to be made by the people that those decisions affect - not top down.
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
Poor areas vote Labour (or Sinn Fein or Reform UK). Rich areas vote LibDem or Tory.
Yes constituencies which have a LD or Tory MP still are more likely to have a Waitrose and an above average house price.
Constituencies which have a Labour MP now with a Tory second or a Labour MP with the SNP second are about average demographically.
Constituencies where Labour and Reform got the most and second most votes are likely to be the most deprived in the UK
I first came to this site in the late 2000s after reading a news article (Guardian I think) about every constituency with a Waitrose having a Tory MP - I thought that the Tories should strategically push JLP into an expansion of Waitrose to win the next election!!!!
Only problem is half the constituencies with a Waitrose now have a LD MP. Most of the Remain voting Tory bluewall fell to the LDs this month as much as the Leave voting Labour redwall largely fell to the Conservatives in 2019 (albeit the latter has now largely gone back to Labour with the odd seat going Reform)
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
So the Green party is a watermelon party.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
GPEW are an eco-socialist-libertarian party; if you want Climate Stalin or Climate Musk - that isn't us. We take the position that environmentalism must come hand in hand with democratic input and local autonomy; and also argue that even if you do do private led "solutions" it won't actually solve the problem because the voracious desire for profit is much of what got us here in the first place and is unlikely to be the solution as well.
You don't know what the word libertarian means, clearly, given how illiberal you are being.
It is the desire for profit that fixes environmental issues, tax the externality (pollution) and give a profit motive for being clean.
That has happened and been shown to work time and again.
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
So the Green party is a watermelon party.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
The Greens have an interesting challenge ahead. Two of their MPs come from left-leaning constituencies; two come from right-leaning ones. Their voters will have very different priorities and world views. The LDs managed to square this circle for many years, but can the Greens do it too - especially when they are so vocally backed now by Owen Jones and the party's ranks are filled by former Labour members who essentially see it as a platform for Corbynism.
Poor areas vote Labour (or Sinn Fein or Reform UK). Rich areas vote LibDem or Tory.
Yes constituencies which have a LD or Tory MP still are more likely to have a Waitrose and an above average house price.
Constituencies which have a Labour MP now with a Tory second or a Labour MP with the SNP second are about average demographically.
Constituencies where Labour and Reform got the most and second most votes are likely to be the most deprived in the UK
I first came to this site in the late 2000s after reading a news article (Guardian I think) about every constituency with a Waitrose having a Tory MP - I thought that the Tories should strategically push JLP into an expansion of Waitrose to win the next election!!!!
No longer true. Saltash has a Waitrose and, since Friday, a labour MP. And I am sure there's other exceptions.
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
If it's good for the environment why does it matter that someone makes a profit? That seems like a very trifling reason fir opposing something you're supposed to be in favour of.
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
That's not a reason not to move to EVs.
So you welcome a future where EV per-mile costs of motoring are considerably cheaper than our exorbitantly high costs today?
So do I, glad we can finally agree on something.
Maybe. I think motoring is prohibitively expensive in rural areas and damages the economy relative to cities, which already have plenty of good public transport (and lately walking and cycling) provision. I think per mile pricing is wrong on that basis, so I'd make long journeys much cheaper.
To make up for it, I would make the costs of driving around our cities and town centres much more expensive, to take account of the costs to everyone else of doing so when other options exist. Congestion, wasted parking space and so on. Polluter pays (though not literally with EVs).
But my main concern is the entry costs of motoring, particularly for younger and poorer people. If you can transfer some of those costs to marginal costs then you increase accessibility. That might mean that overall marginal costs go up a bit to pay for funded driving lessons, tests, no VED etc. If you're a new driver in a rural area, driving will be way cheaper in Eabhal's Britain.
The Wuhan Mini Ev costs about $5,000 in China. Clearly a car like that's not immediately transferable to the UK for that money, and there are all sort of regulatory and trade issues - but it shows that 'cheap motoring' is a solvable problem within the next few years,
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
(whips out calculator)
Diesel has a duty of £0.53 / litre, with VAT on top. So a £1.50 litre of diesel costs ~£0.72. 1 litre of diesel represents about 38MJ, which comes out at a third of that in kinetic energy at the wheel thanks to ICE thermal losses.
So 13MJ KE costs you 72p with diesel.
13MJ is ~ 3.6 kWh. An EV will have some (small) resistive losses & should probably scale by weight as well - an EV has to lug around all that battery compared to an ICE car. So equivalent for an EV is probably 5kWh ish?
If you can charge at home the EV will cost you half the untaxed diesel rate (Octopus EV rate: 7p / kWh). Charging elsewhere is going to be much more expensive, zapmap ways a mean charge on their network of 56p / kWh for “fast” chargers & 80p/kWh for the ultra-rapid chargers.
So for home charging the EV beats even untaxed diesel. If you have to charge elsewhere you’re going to find it’s much, much more expensive!
Indeed, which is why all modern homes should ideally come with a driveway for 2 off-road parking spots as standard.
Switching to clean vehicles without at-home charging is going to be very problematic.
Near me a new petrol station has just opened which is the first I've seen that has the price per kwh for EVs on its display board, not just the price for unleaded/diesel.
A litre of unleaded costs £1.389 My self-charging hybrid gets an average (real, based on my own driving) of 9 miles per litre. So it costs 15.4p per mile.
A kwh of electricity costs 59p From what I've read 3-4 miles per kwh is fairly typical. So it costs 15-20p per mile, making EV more expensive than even unleaded just on running costs without the tax being taken into account.
I don't see a good solution for this.
I am with Octopus and pay 15.22p daytime 7.86 p per kwh at night. I use a public charger less than once per year. So a fuel cost of 2.5 to 5p a mile.
Refueling at home is not an option with ICE vehicles.
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
So the Green party is a watermelon party.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
The Greens have an interesting challenge ahead. Two of their MPs come from left-leaning constituencies; two come from right-leaning ones. Their voters will have very different priorities and world views. The LDs managed to square this circle for many years, but can the Greens do it too - especially when they are so vocally backed now by Owen Jones and the party's ranks are filled by former Labour members who essentially see it as a platform for Corbynism.
It's not going to be particularly difficult to do with just four MPs to be honest. These problems really come home to roost should you ever be in Gov't, and I can't see them being in Gov't any time soon.
Still it is amusing to watch 148Grss excuse the NIMBYism.
Poor areas vote Labour (or Sinn Fein or Reform UK). Rich areas vote LibDem or Tory.
Yes constituencies which have a LD or Tory MP still are more likely to have a Waitrose and an above average house price.
Constituencies which have a Labour MP now with a Tory second or a Labour MP with the SNP second are about average demographically.
Constituencies where Labour and Reform got the most and second most votes are likely to be the most deprived in the UK
I first came to this site in the late 2000s after reading a news article (Guardian I think) about every constituency with a Waitrose having a Tory MP - I thought that the Tories should strategically push JLP into an expansion of Waitrose to win the next election!!!!
No longer true. Saltash has a Waitrose and, since Friday, a labour MP. And I am sure there's other exceptions.
Hart and Surrey Heath have Waitrose and now Lib Dem MPs
We had an interesting and balanced debate about road pricing earlier. I personally think per mile pricing is wrong, as it punishes the wrong kind of journey. It's the shorter, urban journeys where alternatives exist that you want to make relatively less attractive, while making journeys in rural areas much cheaper.
A general policy of reducing the fixed costs of motoring while increasing the marginal costs can only be a good thing though.
Pity that government policy to move everybody to EVs does the exact opposite then.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Ummm:
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
“The Home Secretary has also commissioned an investigation from the Home Office and the National Crime Agency into the tactics used by people smuggling gangs to inform a major law enforcement drive over the coming months”
Can’t believe the Home Office didn’t think of this before.
No need. There's a film they can watch, Io Capitano. From this they will learn that people smugglers appoint the most clued up looking clients as captain and have no presence on the boats and no need to be in the UK at all, it's not like they are waiting at this end with medals and goody bags for successful finishers. So how a Home Office op works is anyone's guess.
The fact that the BBC managed to get some people smugglers arrested following fairly simple investigation does rather point to the current Home Office not being up to the job.
Incidentally, no new small boats so far under the Starmer government.
Check out "Telegraph readers respond to Reeves’ first speech" further down. If that's representative and Telegraph readers have gone over to the red side then the Tories really are doomed.
Labour are delivering on the deregulation agenda. It's what we would have got if Truss hadn't been brought down.
UEFA - corrupt as fuck if England lose on Wednesday
Or inspired, if we win.
31 years ago it was a shit German referee whose performance cost England a place at 1994 World Cup when he gave a shit performance in our match against the Netherlands.
He failed to send off Ronald Koeman for a blatant red card offence and Koeman a few minutes later scored the winning goal.
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
So the Green party is a watermelon party.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
The Greens have an interesting challenge ahead. Two of their MPs come from left-leaning constituencies; two come from right-leaning ones. Their voters will have very different priorities and world views. The LDs managed to square this circle for many years, but can the Greens do it too - especially when they are so vocally backed now by Owen Jones and the party's ranks are filled by former Labour members who essentially see it as a platform for Corbynism.
It's not going to be particularly difficult to do with just four MPs to be honest. These problems really come home to roost should you ever be in Gov't, and I can't see them being in Gov't any time soon.
Still it is amusing to watch 148Grss excuse the NIMBYism.
I guess it depends on your definition of NIMBYism; and I'll give an example that I do know better because it's my local area - a proposal for a solar farm on a disused field (with a right of way). Local people disliked the plan because it would a) mean cutting down a lot of trees and such b) mean disruption of the local right of ways.
Now, personally, I was more than happy to take the solar farm even with those downsides, but lots of people wanted the ability to have their input - and why shouldn't they; they live there, their lives will be affected. So some people put together a response saying "look, in principle we don't mind this solar farm, but can you make these amendments to keep the right of way and do some things to reduce the trees cut down whilst still having a useful number of solar panels". The answer was no - because that would cost the company too much.
To which then my view is - well, why is the profit of the company more important than renewable energy that integrates with the local environment and the local community? And why is the profit motive rated higher than renewable energy when there is a way to get renewable energy that does integrate more with the locals and the surrounding environment? Because a straight up no - no negotiation, no mediation, nothing - meant that local people fought it even harder and campaigns led to lawyers and that slowed down building, etc etc.
Again, the Green view is not "not in my back yard" - it's "make it work in our back yard". Someone buying up a load of green space, fencing it off, and sticking something there is alienating - to people and to ecosystems. We want something that can work together with people.
Poor areas vote Labour (or Sinn Fein or Reform UK). Rich areas vote LibDem or Tory.
Yes constituencies which have a LD or Tory MP still are more likely to have a Waitrose and an above average house price.
Constituencies which have a Labour MP now with a Tory second or a Labour MP with the SNP second are about average demographically.
Constituencies where Labour and Reform got the most and second most votes are likely to be the most deprived in the UK
I first came to this site in the late 2000s after reading a news article (Guardian I think) about every constituency with a Waitrose having a Tory MP - I thought that the Tories should strategically push JLP into an expansion of Waitrose to win the next election!!!!
No longer true. Saltash has a Waitrose and, since Friday, a labour MP. And I am sure there's other exceptions.
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
If it's good for the environment why does it matter that someone makes a profit? That seems like a very trifling reason fir opposing something you're supposed to be in favour of.
Because to make profit, other things have to happen that lower costs - it's easier and cheaper to just flatten land then it is to integrate renewable energy with the local environment; it's easier and cheaper to just fence everything off rather than allow people to still have access to land they have had access to all their lives; it's more expensive to make sure that building work doesn't disrupt local ecology, doesn't have negative impact on water tables, etc etc.
Buying land, fencing it off, bulldozing everything within the fenced area and building something that makes renewable energy is a sure fire way to alienate local people, who you could negotiate with to make something that makes renewable energy and still meets the needs and desires of more of the local population, make more people sceptical about further renewable development, that we need, and to do harm to local ecosystems at the same time.
Poor areas vote Labour (or Sinn Fein or Reform UK). Rich areas vote LibDem or Tory.
Yes constituencies which have a LD or Tory MP still are more likely to have a Waitrose and an above average house price.
Constituencies which have a Labour MP now with a Tory second or a Labour MP with the SNP second are about average demographically.
Constituencies where Labour and Reform got the most and second most votes are likely to be the most deprived in the UK
I first came to this site in the late 2000s after reading a news article (Guardian I think) about every constituency with a Waitrose having a Tory MP - I thought that the Tories should strategically push JLP into an expansion of Waitrose to win the next election!!!!
No longer true. Saltash has a Waitrose and, since Friday, a labour MP. And I am sure there's other exceptions.
Hart and Surrey Heath have Waitrose and now Lib Dem MPs
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
So the Green party is a watermelon party.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
GPEW are an eco-socialist-libertarian party; if you want Climate Stalin or Climate Musk - that isn't us. We take the position that environmentalism must come hand in hand with democratic input and local autonomy; and also argue that even if you do do private led "solutions" it won't actually solve the problem because the voracious desire for profit is much of what got us here in the first place and is unlikely to be the solution as well.
Democratic input = cake and eat it
Everyone wants everything, just as long as it doesn't impact them (or their bank balance).
Only an eco-authoritarian approach can make everything happen that needs to happen to protect the planet from the gross excesses of humankind.
Poor areas vote Labour (or Sinn Fein or Reform UK). Rich areas vote LibDem or Tory.
Yes constituencies which have a LD or Tory MP still are more likely to have a Waitrose and an above average house price.
Constituencies which have a Labour MP now with a Tory second or a Labour MP with the SNP second are about average demographically.
Constituencies where Labour and Reform got the most and second most votes are likely to be the most deprived in the UK
I first came to this site in the late 2000s after reading a news article (Guardian I think) about every constituency with a Waitrose having a Tory MP - I thought that the Tories should strategically push JLP into an expansion of Waitrose to win the next election!!!!
No longer true. Saltash has a Waitrose and, since Friday, a labour MP. And I am sure there's other exceptions.
Otley. Waitrose. Leeds North West. Labour Gain.
Ilkley. Booths. Keighley. Conservative Hold.
Penrith. Booths. Labour. (Boundary changes - it's in with oiks from Maryport now).
Lol Reeves has the Green co-leader squealing about wind farm pylons in Waveney Valley.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
I suspect the Greens will go hard NIMBY on just about everything.
I don't know the specifics of this example (although plan to find out) but I do know that most of our disagreement with these kinds of projects is that this is further privatisation of important infrastructure and disregard of land in favour of profit - whereas if these were community led projects / publicly owned assets, that would be different. The Green Party is, at it's core, a party in favour of local democracy having power in local areas. So, yes, we need more green energy and it may be identified by government these are the best places to put them. But at that point local democracy and engagement should happen - not the power of the state and interests of private capital.
So the Green party is a watermelon party.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
GPEW are an eco-socialist-libertarian party; if you want Climate Stalin or Climate Musk - that isn't us. We take the position that environmentalism must come hand in hand with democratic input and local autonomy; and also argue that even if you do do private led "solutions" it won't actually solve the problem because the voracious desire for profit is much of what got us here in the first place and is unlikely to be the solution as well.
Democratic input = cake and eat it
Everyone wants everything, just as long as it doesn't impact them (or their bank balance).
Only an eco-authoritarian approach can make everything happen that needs to happen to protect the planet from the gross excesses of humankind.
Then find and elect Climate Stalin - because that isn't GPEW.
Poor areas vote Labour (or Sinn Fein or Reform UK). Rich areas vote LibDem or Tory.
Yes constituencies which have a LD or Tory MP still are more likely to have a Waitrose and an above average house price.
Constituencies which have a Labour MP now with a Tory second or a Labour MP with the SNP second are about average demographically.
Constituencies where Labour and Reform got the most and second most votes are likely to be the most deprived in the UK
I first came to this site in the late 2000s after reading a news article (Guardian I think) about every constituency with a Waitrose having a Tory MP - I thought that the Tories should strategically push JLP into an expansion of Waitrose to win the next election!!!!
No longer true. Saltash has a Waitrose and, since Friday, a labour MP. And I am sure there's other exceptions.
Otley. Waitrose. Leeds North West. Labour Gain.
Ilkley. Booths. Keighley. Conservative Hold.
How long has Sheffield Central's large Waitrose been there? (albeit conveniently situated for Hallam!)
Rachel Reeves has announced an immediate end to the “absurd” ban on new onshore wind developments in England as she unveiled a series of reforms to the planning system.
On shore wind is the cheapest form of energy there is, its absolutely bonkers its not been maximised. Any NIMBYs need to be told to mind their own business.
Same with housing. Looks like a disappointing lack of reform to be announced today, just a return of the pre-Sunak mandatory housing targets. That's not enough, more needs to be done.
What happens if all the Dukes and Earls refuse to put turbines up?
Then other landowners will and will make the profit instead.
Onshore wind is profitable, reliable, clean and cheap. That's why planning regulations were needed to block it, not people not wanting to put it up.
So you'll pander to rich NIMBYs?
No.
Nobody has a monopoly on land ownership. What people want to do with their own land is up to them, NIMBYism is trying to forbid other people from building on their (not your own) land.
You're thinking of NIOPBYS. Not in other people's back yards.
Would you be happy if someone were to buy small strips of land all over the country to prevent new roads being built?
As a last resort I'm OK with compulsory purchase orders being used for significant infrastructure needs that go across the country, like roads and rails.
But we're not talking about that. There's no need for wind farms to traverse the country, any more than any other type of farm, they can be wherever they get sited.
Actually its pylons etc that are more relevant for needing to be sorted out than wind farms as again they do need to traverse the country.
Your problem is that at the end of the day, you'll tolerate NIMBYism as long as it is consistent with your personal views on how the country should work. In this case, property rights versus a very specific type of national energy infrastructure - wind turbines.
I don't see why any landowner should be allowed to stymie the progress of the country. OTOH, I also don't think you should sacrifice an area of outstanding beauty like the Lake District for turbines. We're both NIMBYs, like it or not.
Bullshit.
NIMBYism is telling people they can't build what they want to build. It is deeply illiberal.
People not wanting to build anything on their own land is their own free choice. It is completely liberal.
No landowner should be allowed to stymie the progress of the country, if any landowner wants their own land to stagnate in value then that's their own choice, let others make a profit instead.
However as I've said many times before, I would tax all land based on its undeveloped value, since land is a finite resource for this country and all landowners should pay their fair share of the upkeep of the country.
So someone who develops their land should be paying no more taxation than someone who does not - conversely not developing land still gets the same tax as if you do.
Which is why the 1948 Planning Act was seen as so extraordinarily radical at the time. It’s amazing they got to do it, really, what with creating our entire national health system and the welfare state on the side. If only we had such radical drive nowadays.
The 1948 Planning Act was an utter disaster that should be repealed, its because of that we have generations of NIMBYism and nowhere near enough housing.
Then you go to Ireland where the act never happened, and its endless low quality ribbon development done on the cheap. Some planning regime is needed.
Comments
He expresses resentment about FPTP, and how Reform do not have 8- MPs. Key issues - more people will be invited in, and agricultural land and green belt will be built on.
So, there's an opportunity maybe for views to be changed if the Government prove competent.
We shall see.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-day-in-le-pen-land/
I am not sure the result of yesterday's Round 2 in France bears out the central contention:
https://x.com/youngvulgarian/status/1810221065374781862
The Spectator and France do not go well together.
;-)
Which it damn well should be!
Kernel of truth if you consider the fertility rate.
Massively increased up front costs to purchase, plus steep increases in annual insurance bills, but then very cheap to run (almost entirely because of a tax arbitrage - diesel cars would be cheaper to run if diesel and electricity were taxed the same) particularly on short journeys where you don't have to recharge away from home.
Over time the up-front costs of motoring should come down too, as battery manufacturing gets scaled up and more affordable.
Not worst result for a Tory Party though, in 1761 the Tories under the leadership of Lord Isham only got 112 MPs so 9 less than Rishi's Conservatives got at the 2024 general election and at the 1754 election only 106, so 15 less than the Conservatives this month.
In 1747 Sir Watkins William Wynn's Tories had done a bit better at 117 MPs but still worse than Rishi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1761_British_general_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1754_British_general_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1747_British_general_election
I guess we should be relieved that the author does at least appear to have visited France before scribbling off this nonsense, unlike his counterpart who published an article about life in lockdown London while holed up somewhere on the South Wales coast.
Anyone who was so unaware of the scale of the mess they actually got appointed Chancellor before finding out is manifestly unsuitable for the job.
Money is created by our private banks.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-is-money-created
So do I, glad we can finally agree on something.
Labour has a unique opportunity tbh with having so many MPs on such a low geographical area.
With a fractional reserve, a credit and a debit and to rules.
They don't just have a blank cheque to create money with no comeback.
"The oncology station of the Children Hospital, which Russians struck this morning, has been evacuated. The children need to receive their cancer treatment in the open. "
https://x.com/Tendar/status/1810241604931719265
Constituencies which have a Labour MP now with a Tory second or a Labour MP with the SNP second are about average demographically.
Constituencies where Labour and Reform got the most and second most votes are likely to be the most deprived in the UK
Diesel has a duty of £0.53 / litre, with VAT on top. So a £1.50 litre of diesel costs ~£0.72. 1 litre of diesel represents about 38MJ, which comes out at a third of that in kinetic energy at the wheel thanks to ICE thermal losses.
So 13MJ KE costs you 72p with diesel.
13MJ is ~ 3.6 kWh. An EV will have some (small) resistive losses & should probably scale by weight as well - an EV has to lug around all that battery compared to an ICE car. So equivalent for an EV is probably 5kWh ish?
If you can charge at home the EV will cost you half the untaxed diesel rate (Octopus EV rate: 7p / kWh). Charging elsewhere is going to be much more expensive, zapmap ways a mean charge on their network of 56p / kWh for “fast” chargers & 80p/kWh for the ultra-rapid chargers.
So for home charging the EV beats even untaxed diesel. If you have to charge elsewhere you’re going to find it’s much, much more expensive!
Be interesting to see the Green take on tidal energy (which was in Labour's manifesto).
There's nothing wrong with creating money to sound fractional rules, its when the rules go out the window and you do it for convenience that there's a problem.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/reports/nhs-compare-health-care-systems-other-countries
The Kings Fund highlights that the UK system is particularly good at shielding people from cost at the time of illness, but it has worse outcomes - it shows significantly lower healthcare professionals than average info Germany, and it does highlight that changing the system holds risk - only Labour could get away with making the case for and instituting such a change.
To make up for it, I would make the costs of driving around our cities and town centres much more expensive, to take account of the costs to everyone else of doing so when other options exist. Congestion, wasted parking space and so on. Polluter pays (though not literally with EVs).
But my main concern is the entry costs of motoring, particularly for younger and poorer people. If you can transfer some of those costs to marginal costs then you increase accessibility. That might mean that overall marginal costs go up a bit to pay for funded driving lessons, tests, no VED etc. If you're a new driver in a rural area, driving will be way cheaper in Eabhal's Britain.
Switching to clean vehicles without at-home charging is going to be very problematic.
Near me a new petrol station has just opened which is the first I've seen that has the price per kwh for EVs on its display board, not just the price for unleaded/diesel.
A litre of unleaded costs £1.389
My self-charging hybrid gets an average (real, based on my own driving) of 9 miles per litre. So it costs 15.4p per mile.
A kwh of electricity costs 59p
From what I've read 3-4 miles per kwh is fairly typical. So it costs 15-20p per mile, making EV more expensive than even unleaded just on running costs without the tax being taken into account.
I don't see a good solution for this.
You don't give a shit about the environment, that's just an excuse to have socialist policies.
Doing the right thing for the planet, privately, you'll oppose even if its good for the environment to go ahead.
They're not that resource intensive and as we switch to renewables they'll be even less resource intensive than they are today.
Motoring does cost much more than its operating costs, due to tax. As we switch to EVs that tax should be abolished and not replaced.
But you certainly can't rely on that in advance of it being the case.
It is the desire for profit that fixes environmental issues, tax the externality (pollution) and give a profit motive for being clean.
That has happened and been shown to work time and again.
And this is where a libertarian approach to land use falls down. If you want cars you want roads including new roads meaning you want compulsory purchase. You are a communist in relation to the land of unwilling sellers on your new route. Which means you can't consistently put a blanket embargo on state prohibitions as to land use.
Given that they defeated the government backed charging consortia in the US - by offering lots of chargers that worked, and easy to use….
That will rapidly change. How rapidly is a combination of the politics of industrial policy, and the speed of technological development, but the trend is inexorable.
Views on road pricing policy will change in turn.
Also - yeah, I don't call myself a liberal
Moon and starfish ?
Probably Phlogiston as well.
Clearly a car like that's not immediately transferable to the UK for that money, and there are all sort of regulatory and trade issues - but it shows that 'cheap motoring' is a solvable problem within the next few years,
Refueling at home is not an option with ICE vehicles.
Still it is amusing to watch 148Grss excuse the NIMBYism.
Not true, even in the UK.
Maintenance costs are dramatically lower for electric cars because they are mechanically much simpler.
Now, on fuel alone you are probably correct (at least in the UK)... but I wouldn't like to bet on that continuing. Electricity prices are going to fall quite a long way from here.
NEW THREAD
Genuine Usonian plea from Dems to other Dems to make a concerted effort to get Biden out.
Bonus fact. They reckon Harris loses but less badly than Joe, buttigieg or whitmer win.
2.65 @12pm today
To
1.89 @ 3pm
Big shift, any reason? Nothing new seems to have broken
Now, personally, I was more than happy to take the solar farm even with those downsides, but lots of people wanted the ability to have their input - and why shouldn't they; they live there, their lives will be affected. So some people put together a response saying "look, in principle we don't mind this solar farm, but can you make these amendments to keep the right of way and do some things to reduce the trees cut down whilst still having a useful number of solar panels". The answer was no - because that would cost the company too much.
To which then my view is - well, why is the profit of the company more important than renewable energy that integrates with the local environment and the local community? And why is the profit motive rated higher than renewable energy when there is a way to get renewable energy that does integrate more with the locals and the surrounding environment? Because a straight up no - no negotiation, no mediation, nothing - meant that local people fought it even harder and campaigns led to lawyers and that slowed down building, etc etc.
Again, the Green view is not "not in my back yard" - it's "make it work in our back yard". Someone buying up a load of green space, fencing it off, and sticking something there is alienating - to people and to ecosystems. We want something that can work together with people.
Ilkley. Booths. Keighley. Conservative Hold.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
Buying land, fencing it off, bulldozing everything within the fenced area and building something that makes renewable energy is a sure fire way to alienate local people, who you could negotiate with to make something that makes renewable energy and still meets the needs and desires of more of the local population, make more people sceptical about further renewable development, that we need, and to do harm to local ecosystems at the same time.
Everyone wants everything, just as long as it doesn't impact them (or their bank balance).
Only an eco-authoritarian approach can make everything happen that needs to happen to protect the planet from the gross excesses of humankind.
30 June CNN/SSRS Biden/Trump 43/49; Harris/Trump 45/47
2 July Ipsos/Reuter Biden/Trump 40/40; Harris/Trump 42/43