That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
one of the best locations is car parks - added benefit the shade will keep cars cooler...
Every time I turn on to BBC to see some olympics there's just people talking.
I can't be alone in thinking this is far worse than previous years?
Bloody Claire Balding is bloody awful. She doesn't appear to actually like sport - she's trying to make everything into a human interest story. I mean, I don't mind a bit of backstory, but the balance of sport/chat ought to be at least 80% in sport's favour. It's less than 50/50 at the moment. However, there is the iplayer coverage, which ameliorates this a bit.
£3.99 for a Discovery Plus account and you can stream what you want with multiple, multiple cameras including every piece of Gym equipment.
Yet you still have to pay the BBC to not watch Balding.
Nice lady but I find her fundamentally trite and unwatchable.
She's very good on the radio in relaxed interview format. Try Ramblings R4 on Sat 6:30am I think - walking with a guest.
Slightly Jolly Hockey Sticks (she's a Downe House girl), but OK.
She is also a very good speaker to an audience. Saw her on Cunard talking about her favourite subjects - horses and dogs.
Labour have an opportunity here at the start of Parliament and with a massive landslide majority.
Merge National Insurance and Income Tax and create a single Income Tax rate that is paid by all adults of all ages on the same income equitably.
No increase at all in Income Tax for those who are working and on PAYE.
Doubt they will do this. Will burn lots of political capital, will inevitably increase taxes for some groups, and althoygh logical, isn't a top priority.
I think they need to find a way of raising more money that isn't too unpopular. Reducing the very generous pension tax reliefs for higher earners is the obvious move imo.
Except that will result in a lot of people doing less work - little point doing a full 5 day week if tax makes it more sensible to work a 4 or even 3 day week...
The people who are impacted by those sort of changes aren't earning day to day living expenses they have savings and options...
Doubt it would be a major factor honestly. Anyone earning over £50k is a higher rate taxpayer.
Most of those are not so wealthy that they could easily afford a 20 or 40% drop in income.
Doing so because they only get 20% pension relief rather than 40% would be a very strange financial decision to make.
And yet that is what @MisterBedfordshire said earlier and is the experience of many others.
I carefully kept my income below £50,000 to ensure I kept child benefit for many years and last year played similar games to keep my income below £100,000...
Remove full tax relief on my large pension contribution and a 4 day week sounds very nice...
I may need to look at these games, and pulling my kids out of private school, when we get to the Autumn and we know the lie of the land in the budget. Already tough as it is. It will get harder.
Of course, that will mean much less tax for the exchequer, and a bigger burden on the State, but hey ho, that's what you get when you try and squeeze people dry.
There was an opportunity to reset the tax narrative for Labour and remove the cliff edges but they've failed to do so. Another 5 years at least with people going part time or using tax avoidance at £100k.
I've shifted down to 3.5 days per week in my new job to stay below the cliff edge from an earlier agreed 4 day week. I now get Wednesday afternoon and Fridays with my kids which I think is a better use of my time than working so I can give the government 62% of the increment.
This wasn't the budget though - so there is little surprise that the tax narrative has been reset.
However it's clear from the discussions this afternoon that any changes impact people who are well paid is going to have interesting (and unexpected by the Government) consequences..
But £100k isn't even a huge salary today, not the same as what it was in 2009 when Brown introduced the 62% marginal rate, it's £152k in equivalent money today just by inflation. I'd happily do a 4.5 day week with Friday afternoons off if there was no marginal rate. It's immoral for the state to ask me for more than half of my income, I go to work to provide for my family not to fund a huge payrise for public sector fatcats.
£100k is still nearly 3 times the median wage (£34,963) and over twice the average wage (£42,210)..
Although the rest of your argument is absolutely valid - the lack of indexing has forced way more people into it...
And it used to be 4x the median salary in 2009. £100k is relatively a much smaller salary than it was when the cliff edge was introduced. It has a third less purchasing power and the number of people who earn at least £100k has more than doubled in that time. It's no longer a huge salary, a senior developer or data engineer can earn more than that before part time or AVCs are taken into account. In 2009 it was C suite or directors of big companies who would be in that salary range.
it's a silly anomaly if it can be sorted at neutral cost. What would your preferred method for getting rid of the cliff edge - without costing the Exchequer (otherwise it won't happen) ?
Bring the 45% rate down to £100k remove the cliff edge. Enough people will add an extra day or half day to their working week to more than make up for the 15% difference between the 60% effective rate and 45%. At my last company we did the sums and it was something mad like net gain of £2.4bn by removing the cliff edges at £100k.
Indeed. One of the thing which frustrates me about Labour government - the last lot were just as bad - is an apparent blindness to the fact that people (and indeed businesses) respond to things which are incentives/disincentives to do things by doing more or less of those things.
This is what comes of electing lawyers and religious types rather than psychologists or economists, even advertisers at a pinch. Their instinct is to reach for laws and commandments rather than incentives.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
Any idea as to motive? They've ruled out terrorism. He's 17 so not the parent of any of the children. And he had to get a cab to what is by all accounts an out of the way location, which rules out a random attack by a mentally ill stranger. Could it have been he was groomed by someone who did have a motive?
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
one of the best locations is car parks - added benefit the shade will keep cars cooler...
And the electricity can be used to recharge the cars that are parked there.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
one of the best locations is car parks - added benefit the shade will keep cars cooler...
As we build out grid connections for EV charging to car parks, hooking up solar becomes a no brainer as well.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
NEW: Harris maintains 1-point lead over Trump in latest @MorningConsult tracker update, but the biggest story is her favorability, which is up 12 net points since last week, driven by upticks among Democrats and independents.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
one of the best locations is car parks - added benefit the shade will keep cars cooler...
There's still an awful lot of low-hanging fruit for solar, especially now the panels themselves are so cheap.
5 GW or so to start getting periods of time where we don't need gas...
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
one of the best locations is car parks - added benefit the shade will keep cars cooler...
And the electricity can be used to recharge the cars that are parked there.
Hmm. I know someone who came up with that idea for a business some 15 or more years back but the technology wasn't ready at the time. You could only do one car a day, or something.
This is a pretty massive change - particularly as there's no way even the 300k target is likely to be met in the first year of government.
Rayner says new housing target system will raise number of homes planned from 300,000 per year to 370,000..
Good small step in the right direction.
If you want 200k achieved, aim for 300k If you want 300k achieved, aim for 450k
Etc
Yes - but they still have to deliver. We'll know within a year if it's at all likely, I think. If they don't make the required legislative/planning/policy changes by then, it probably won't in this Parliament.
And 370k is an almost unprecedented target. It will take a sea change in policy.
Oh dear, another day with the PB-rightists foaming at the mouth that a Labour government has the audacity to, er... actually govern.
Did you think they would just follow the Tory playbook?
You lot had it easy. The Conservatives never actually did anything right wing. You had to content yourselves with complaining about the ineffectual right wing noises they were making.
True to a point: the Tories found it quite difficult to do anything very much. But the few things they did attempt included quite a few right-wing nasties: Rwanda, trashing EU relationships, voter ID...
But yeah, mostly they didn't manage to do too much.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
This is a pretty massive change - particularly as there's no way even the 300k target is likely to be met in the first year of government.
Rayner says new housing target system will raise number of homes planned from 300,000 per year to 370,000..
Good small step in the right direction.
If you want 200k achieved, aim for 300k If you want 300k achieved, aim for 450k
Etc
Yes - but they still have to deliver. We'll know within a year if it's at all likely, I think. If they don't make the required legislative/planning/policy changes by then, it probably won't in this Parliament.
And 370k is an almost unprecedented target. It will take a sea change in policy.
Presumably what's needed is forcing councils to build a set quota of house as per the 1950s council house boom.
"A social-media account for white male supporters of Kamala Harris was briefly suspended from X, formerly Twitter, sparking anger online. Newsweek observed that the White Dudes for Harris X account had been temporarily suspended after the group held a star-studded virtual call on Monday night that raised more than $4 million. It is not clear why the account was suspended, but it appeared to have been restored as of the early hours of Tuesday. The automated message when the account was suspended read: "X suspends accounts which violate the X rules." Mike Nellis, who is involved in the organization, shared an update on Tuesday explaining that while the X account is live again, it still remains suspended."
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
No, it's pretty well here already. I'm only cautious because this is the UK.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
This is a pretty massive change - particularly as there's no way even the 300k target is likely to be met in the first year of government.
Rayner says new housing target system will raise number of homes planned from 300,000 per year to 370,000..
Good small step in the right direction.
If you want 200k achieved, aim for 300k If you want 300k achieved, aim for 450k
Etc
Yes - but they still have to deliver. We'll know within a year if it's at all likely, I think. If they don't make the required legislative/planning/policy changes by then, it probably won't in this Parliament.
And 370k is an almost unprecedented target. It will take a sea change in policy.
And dismantling of various sacred cow acts that put all sorts of expensive bureacratic tasks challengeable in court between buy ground and start building.
Equality impact assessment on whether the impact on nitrate discharges will result in Newts being more racist and the like.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
Oh dear, another day with the PB-rightists foaming at the mouth that a Labour government has the audacity to, er... actually govern.
Did you think they would just follow the Tory playbook?
You lot had it easy. The Conservatives never actually did anything right wing. You had to content yourselves with complaining about the ineffectual right wing noises they were making.
True to a point: the Tories found it quite difficult to do anything very much. But the few things they did attempt included quite a few right-wing nasties: Rwanda, trashing EU relationships, voter ID...
But yeah, mostly they didn't manage to do too much.
The things you cite are all Blairite policies.
Blair make a speciality of tabloid-friendly aslyum policies, trashed European relationships over the Iraq war and other things, and promoted an expansion of the use of ID documentation.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
A pedant notes: surely born and bred implies that his parents and his parents' parents and his parents' parents' parents were all British? People often describe themselves as being born and bred somewhere when they mean born and raised. Unless they are talking about 'bred' in the sense of where their parents were when they were conceived. Which is information most people don't care to think about too much, let alone proudly trumpet.
~£10bn of the "blackhole" is due to Labour's bumper increase in public sector pay. It's completely optional and they could hold back more than half of that figure. If the public sector doesn't like it they can move to the private sector.
The problem is that they /have/ moved to the private sector - the NHS has something like 100k unfilled jobs, current teacher recruitment in secondary schools is running ~50% below the target.
At some point either you pay the going rate or you stop being able to recruit staff.
1 problem with teacher recruitment is that they've f***ed up teacher training so badly that remarkable few graduates are taking teacher training courses. My daughter would have happily done so via the local training school (they usually have 10 or so ex pupils returning for it). This year 2 are going to do teacher training...
Though it depends upon subject does it not?
The stats I've seen show that more people are doing PE Teacher Training than desired, but very few people are doing Physics or Maths etc
Which hardly seems surprising to me given that teachers are paid the same regardless of subject specialism and a qualified physicist can typically do better privately (or academically elsewhere) than teaching teenagers.
Adjusting teacher remuneration so in-demand specialists are paid more than less-demanded specialists seems logical to me. Why not pay a physics teacher more than a PE teacher?
Oh dear, another day with the PB-rightists foaming at the mouth that a Labour government has the audacity to, er... actually govern.
Did you think they would just follow the Tory playbook?
You lot had it easy. The Conservatives never actually did anything right wing. You had to content yourselves with complaining about the ineffectual right wing noises they were making.
True to a point: the Tories found it quite difficult to do anything very much. But the few things they did attempt included quite a few right-wing nasties: Rwanda, trashing EU relationships, voter ID...
But yeah, mostly they didn't manage to do too much.
The things you cite are all Blairite policies.
Blair make a speciality of tabloid-friendly aslyum policies, trashed European relationships over the Iraq war and other things, and promoted an expansion of the use of ID documentation.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
LFP battery prices are $75/kWh factory at the moment in China, which is the point where the cost is definitely in the configuration rather than the battery themselves.
For reference Fogstar do a 15.5kwh pack for £2500 including VAT to show the lowest UK cost at the moment..
Oh dear, another day with the PB-rightists foaming at the mouth that a Labour government has the audacity to, er... actually govern.
Did you think they would just follow the Tory playbook?
You lot had it easy. The Conservatives never actually did anything right wing. You had to content yourselves with complaining about the ineffectual right wing noises they were making.
True to a point: the Tories found it quite difficult to do anything very much. But the few things they did attempt included quite a few right-wing nasties: Rwanda, trashing EU relationships, voter ID...
But yeah, mostly they didn't manage to do too much.
The things you cite are all Blairite policies.
Blair make a speciality of tabloid-friendly aslyum policies, trashed European relationships over the Iraq war and other things, and promoted an expansion of the use of ID documentation.
Desperate stuff, William, desperate stuff.
Perhaps the uncomfortable truth is that Labour are better at nationalism than the Tories.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
The reason household solar fails to add up is almost all the cost of installation. We didn't have solar for ages, because we were going to get a new roof. Then we got a new roof, and it became a very easy decision to make. Once you have scaffolding up - for whatever reason - the cost of slapping a few panels on suddenly becomes much smaller.
Also, some people object to solar on aesthetic grounds. Can't see it myself, but there you go. I'm very pleased with mine, which at @MattW 's recommendation are built into my roof and look splendid.
One minor problem is what to do with all that electricity you are generating in the summer? You can sell it to the grid but not at any particularly exciting prices. I have dealt with this by making use of an inflatable hot tub, which I heat up during the periods my generation is greater than my consumption. I recommend it.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
A pedant notes: surely born and bred implies that his parents and his parents' parents and his parents' parents' parents were all British? People often describe themselves as being born and bred somewhere when they mean born and raised. Unless they are talking about 'bred' in the sense of where their parents were when they were conceived. Which is information most people don't care to think about too much, let alone proudly trumpet.
I do indeed mean born and raised - that was how I'd always understood the phrase.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
What is deeply frustrating (at least for those like me obsessed with the balance of payments) is that even with those figures we are only generating about 84% of the power we need and are importing the rest. We really want to get to a situation between wind and solar that we are a net exporter of energy. We are a long way short of that. https://grid.iamkate.com/
The new government will never have more goodwill than they do now, a month into a large majority.
Yet they’ve actually been very timid with the annoucements, and made some basic errors such as cancelling infrastructure projects to pay for current spending, especially their old friends in the public sector unions.
The 22% raise for those who already earn well above average wage comes across as particularly egregious, and will no doubt inspire other unions to ask for the same. A 22% offer that’s been described as derisory by the union involved, the leader of which does his best to come across as Arthur Scargill with a stethoscope.
It's a curious set of infrastructure projects that have been cancelled because most of them were pie in sky crap (the restoring your railway ones) or could be argued to be ongoing expenditure (is it really investment if you are replacing an existing hospital)...
You then have the very contentious A303 Stonehenge tunnel and an A27 scheme which the locals seem to actively hate...
So I see a couple of political point scoring victories (A303,A27) hidden in the cost cutting there, a pile of populist crap (the restoring railways "projects") and a question over what is investment..
I don’t know about the A27, but the A303 has been top of the agenda for at least three decades now, and the HS2 link to Euston leaves a white elephant of a line that no-one actually going to London is going to use except with promotional fares, and adds more human congestion to the reduced number of trains on the legacy main lines. The Thames crossing has already spend a quarter of a billion on paperwork, and don’t start me on Heathrow’s third runway.
All of these should have been done a long, long time ago, and it’s disappointing to see a new government kick the can just as the last one did. And the one before that.
Heathrow's third runway isn't a money issue - that would be paid for by Heathrow.
As for HS2 - my opinion is that once it was designed it should have been built as is - but Euston should be being advertised as the 2/3 different projects it is so that people know where the money is going...
I'm less concerned about delaying the final part to Euston (a) because I think they will do it eventually and (b) it doesn't invalidate the rest of the line.
Much play is made that people don't want to journey to Old Oak Common. But they mostly don't want to go to Euston either. Almost everyone wants to go to a station in London and from there take local transport to their final destination. Old Oak Common fulfills that role as does Euston. A third of passengers would choose to get off at Old Oak Common anyway, it's marginal for many of the rest and almost everyone will make the trip to Old Oak Common if that's where the station is. The main effect is to overload the Elizabeth Line.
I'm a lot more concerned about the section to Crewe. If you don't put the capacity in to a similar specification as the southern part, it undermines the whole project.
edit - you already made both my points further down..
Isn't the Birmingham to Crewe bit the most economically viable part of the entire project?
After that I thought it was the HSb (Eastern Leg) and then the bit to Manchester?
Mm - define 'economically viable'.
Birmingham to Crewe is certainly the least costly. But I'd say 'economically viable' would be your balance of costs and benefits. So: a) what benefits does the economic case of the business case say it delivers? b) does it deliver those if the other sections are not delivered? c) what about the other non-quantified benefits (which are in all likelihood greater than those which have been quantified) - e.g. regeneration benefits, e.g. capacity relief, e.g. sections which deliver parts of other proposed investments?
Answer: it's complicated!
Its not that complicated.
If they don't build phase 2a to Crewe, six tracks (four Trent Valley and Two HS2) will converge on un grade separated Colwich Junction and two track Shugborough Tunnel.
It's a total clusterfuck. That is such a pinchpoint that an upgrade to bypass it all was already planned before being canned when HS2 came along.
Er, the Stone avoiding line diverges *before* Shugborough Tunnel. So it's four lines, not two, that operate there.
It would still be a pinch point but not quite as bad a one as you think.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
Labour have an opportunity here at the start of Parliament and with a massive landslide majority.
Merge National Insurance and Income Tax and create a single Income Tax rate that is paid by all adults of all ages on the same income equitably.
No increase at all in Income Tax for those who are working and on PAYE.
Doubt they will do this. Will burn lots of political capital, will inevitably increase taxes for some groups, and althoygh logical, isn't a top priority.
I think they need to find a way of raising more money that isn't too unpopular. Reducing the very generous pension tax reliefs for higher earners is the obvious move imo.
Except that will result in a lot of people doing less work - little point doing a full 5 day week if tax makes it more sensible to work a 4 or even 3 day week...
The people who are impacted by those sort of changes aren't earning day to day living expenses they have savings and options...
Doubt it would be a major factor honestly. Anyone earning over £50k is a higher rate taxpayer.
Most of those are not so wealthy that they could easily afford a 20 or 40% drop in income.
Doing so because they only get 20% pension relief rather than 40% would be a very strange financial decision to make.
And yet that is what @MisterBedfordshire said earlier and is the experience of many others.
I carefully kept my income below £50,000 to ensure I kept child benefit for many years and last year played similar games to keep my income below £100,000...
Remove full tax relief on my large pension contribution and a 4 day week sounds very nice...
I may need to look at these games, and pulling my kids out of private school, when we get to the Autumn and we know the lie of the land in the budget. Already tough as it is. It will get harder.
Of course, that will mean much less tax for the exchequer, and a bigger burden on the State, but hey ho, that's what you get when you try and squeeze people dry.
After the two directors of my small firm sold their holding and invested the proceeds, they promptly went to a 3 day week. A colleague approaching retirement with a few small pensions and 2 buy-to-lets went down to 4 days, reducing to 3 next year for that very reason.
The new government will never have more goodwill than they do now, a month into a large majority.
Yet they’ve actually been very timid with the annoucements, and made some basic errors such as cancelling infrastructure projects to pay for current spending, especially their old friends in the public sector unions.
The 22% raise for those who already earn well above average wage comes across as particularly egregious, and will no doubt inspire other unions to ask for the same. A 22% offer that’s been described as derisory by the union involved, the leader of which does his best to come across as Arthur Scargill with a stethoscope.
It's a curious set of infrastructure projects that have been cancelled because most of them were pie in sky crap (the restoring your railway ones) or could be argued to be ongoing expenditure (is it really investment if you are replacing an existing hospital)...
You then have the very contentious A303 Stonehenge tunnel and an A27 scheme which the locals seem to actively hate...
So I see a couple of political point scoring victories (A303,A27) hidden in the cost cutting there, a pile of populist crap (the restoring railways "projects") and a question over what is investment..
I don’t know about the A27, but the A303 has been top of the agenda for at least three decades now, and the HS2 link to Euston leaves a white elephant of a line that no-one actually going to London is going to use except with promotional fares, and adds more human congestion to the reduced number of trains on the legacy main lines. The Thames crossing has already spend a quarter of a billion on paperwork, and don’t start me on Heathrow’s third runway.
All of these should have been done a long, long time ago, and it’s disappointing to see a new government kick the can just as the last one did. And the one before that.
Heathrow's third runway isn't a money issue - that would be paid for by Heathrow.
As for HS2 - my opinion is that once it was designed it should have been built as is - but Euston should be being advertised as the 2/3 different projects it is so that people know where the money is going...
I'm less concerned about delaying the final part to Euston (a) because I think they will do it eventually and (b) it doesn't invalidate the rest of the line.
Much play is made that people don't want to journey to Old Oak Common. But they mostly don't want to go to Euston either. Almost everyone wants to go to a station in London and from there take local transport to their final destination. Old Oak Common fulfills that role as does Euston. A third of passengers would choose to get off at Old Oak Common anyway, it's marginal for many of the rest and almost everyone will make the trip to Old Oak Common if that's where the station is. The main effect is to overload the Elizabeth Line.
I'm a lot more concerned about the section to Crewe. If you don't put the capacity in to a similar specification as the southern part, it undermines the whole project.
edit - you already made both my points further down..
Isn't the Birmingham to Crewe bit the most economically viable part of the entire project?
After that I thought it was the HSb (Eastern Leg) and then the bit to Manchester?
Mm - define 'economically viable'.
Birmingham to Crewe is certainly the least costly. But I'd say 'economically viable' would be your balance of costs and benefits. So: a) what benefits does the economic case of the business case say it delivers? b) does it deliver those if the other sections are not delivered? c) what about the other non-quantified benefits (which are in all likelihood greater than those which have been quantified) - e.g. regeneration benefits, e.g. capacity relief, e.g. sections which deliver parts of other proposed investments?
Answer: it's complicated!
Its not that complicated.
If they don't build phase 2a to Crewe, six tracks (four Trent Valley and Two HS2) will converge on un grade separated Colwich Junction and two track Shugborough Tunnel.
It's a total clusterfuck. That is such a pinchpoint that an upgrade to bypass it all was already planned before being canned when HS2 came along.
Er, the Stone avoiding line diverges *before* Shugborough Tunnel. So it's four lines, not two, that operate there.
It would still be a pinch point but not quite as bad a one as you think.
Slow lines are on the outside, fast lines are in the middle - it really is as bad as implied.
~£10bn of the "blackhole" is due to Labour's bumper increase in public sector pay. It's completely optional and they could hold back more than half of that figure. If the public sector doesn't like it they can move to the private sector.
The problem is that they /have/ moved to the private sector - the NHS has something like 100k unfilled jobs, current teacher recruitment in secondary schools is running ~50% below the target.
At some point either you pay the going rate or you stop being able to recruit staff.
1 problem with teacher recruitment is that they've f***ed up teacher training so badly that remarkable few graduates are taking teacher training courses. My daughter would have happily done so via the local training school (they usually have 10 or so ex pupils returning for it). This year 2 are going to do teacher training...
Though it depends upon subject does it not?
The stats I've seen show that more people are doing PE Teacher Training than desired, but very few people are doing Physics or Maths etc
Which hardly seems surprising to me given that teachers are paid the same regardless of subject specialism and a qualified physicist can typically do better privately (or academically elsewhere) than teaching teenagers.
Adjusting teacher remuneration so in-demand specialists are paid more than less-demanded specialists seems logical to me. Why not pay a physics teacher more than a PE teacher?
I approve this message…
LOL, I very nearly tagged you in that post but wasn't sure you'd approve of that!
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
The reason household solar fails to add up is almost all the cost of installation. We didn't have solar for ages, because we were going to get a new roof. Then we got a new roof, and it became a very easy decision to make. Once you have scaffolding up - for whatever reason - the cost of slapping a few panels on suddenly becomes much smaller.
Also, some people object to solar on aesthetic grounds. Can't see it myself, but there you go. I'm very pleased with mine, which at @MattW 's recommendation are built into my roof and look splendid.
One minor problem is what to do with all that electricity you are generating in the summer? You can sell it to the grid but not at any particularly exciting prices. I have dealt with this by making use of an inflatable hot tub, which I heat up during the periods my generation is greater than my consumption. I recommend it.
It is the same reason that any railway track alterations or enhancements are very expensive unless done at the same time as a general resignalling.
As ever the problem is getting the benefits yourself rather than lining the pockets of vsrious middlemen.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
The reason household solar fails to add up is almost all the cost of installation. We didn't have solar for ages, because we were going to get a new roof. Then we got a new roof, and it became a very easy decision to make. Once you have scaffolding up - for whatever reason - the cost of slapping a few panels on suddenly becomes much smaller.
Also, some people object to solar on aesthetic grounds. Can't see it myself, but there you go. I'm very pleased with mine, which at @MattW 's recommendation are built into my roof and look splendid.
One minor problem is what to do with all that electricity you are generating in the summer? You can sell it to the grid but not at any particularly exciting prices. I have dealt with this by making use of an inflatable hot tub, which I heat up during the periods my generation is greater than my consumption. I recommend it.
It fits pretty well with the new house build targets, then. As for your question - get an EV at some point.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
Is it not possible that ethnic resentment was a motivating factor in which case it is highly relevant? The line between terrorism and mental health issues can get very blurred at times.
"I suspect Reeves and Starmer are following the Thatcher/Cameron playbook which is to complete the unpopular policies at the start of the parliament and reap the rewards at the end of the parliament."
The problem will be if the 22% pay rise for doctors is just the start of above inflation wage increases for public sector workers, because we know how that ends up, don't we?
If I understaand correctly the pay rise is for England only. I cant see the celtic fringe accepting less nor Starmer refusing them.
Scotland offered and had accepted 17.5 percent over two years about a year ago;
And "celtic fringe", as well as being mistyped, is inaccurate and therefore meaningless. It'd better describe a haircut bought at the barber's opposite Parkhead Stadium.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
The reason household solar fails to add up is almost all the cost of installation. We didn't have solar for ages, because we were going to get a new roof. Then we got a new roof, and it became a very easy decision to make. Once you have scaffolding up - for whatever reason - the cost of slapping a few panels on suddenly becomes much smaller.
Also, some people object to solar on aesthetic grounds. Can't see it myself, but there you go. I'm very pleased with mine, which at @MattW 's recommendation are built into my roof and look splendid.
One minor problem is what to do with all that electricity you are generating in the summer? You can sell it to the grid but not at any particularly exciting prices. I have dealt with this by making use of an inflatable hot tub, which I heat up during the periods my generation is greater than my consumption. I recommend it.
It is the same reason that any railway track alterations or enhancements are very expensive unless done at the same time as a general resignalling.
As ever the problem is getting the benefits yourself rather than lining the pockets of vsrious middlemen.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
The reason household solar fails to add up is almost all the cost of installation. We didn't have solar for ages, because we were going to get a new roof. Then we got a new roof, and it became a very easy decision to make. Once you have scaffolding up - for whatever reason - the cost of slapping a few panels on suddenly becomes much smaller.
Also, some people object to solar on aesthetic grounds. Can't see it myself, but there you go. I'm very pleased with mine, which at @MattW 's recommendation are built into my roof and look splendid.
One minor problem is what to do with all that electricity you are generating in the summer? You can sell it to the grid but not at any particularly exciting prices. I have dealt with this by making use of an inflatable hot tub, which I heat up during the periods my generation is greater than my consumption. I recommend it.
It is the same reason that any railway track alterations or enhancements are very expensive unless done at the same time as a general resignalling.
As ever the problem is getting the benefits yourself rather than lining the pockets of vsrious middlemen.
If they're imprecise then why did you use the terms?
Cheap mass electricity storage is getting rolled out annually today, its not remotely comparable to fusion.
And its getting both cheaper, and more xWh of storage that is being rolled out annually, every single year too.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
Is it not possible that ethnic resentment was a motivating factor in which case it is highly relevant? The line between terrorism and mental health issues can get very blurred at times.
Anything is possible. Why don't we wait to find out?
~£10bn of the "blackhole" is due to Labour's bumper increase in public sector pay. It's completely optional and they could hold back more than half of that figure. If the public sector doesn't like it they can move to the private sector.
The problem is that they /have/ moved to the private sector - the NHS has something like 100k unfilled jobs, current teacher recruitment in secondary schools is running ~50% below the target.
At some point either you pay the going rate or you stop being able to recruit staff.
1 problem with teacher recruitment is that they've f***ed up teacher training so badly that remarkable few graduates are taking teacher training courses. My daughter would have happily done so via the local training school (they usually have 10 or so ex pupils returning for it). This year 2 are going to do teacher training...
Though it depends upon subject does it not?
The stats I've seen show that more people are doing PE Teacher Training than desired, but very few people are doing Physics or Maths etc
Which hardly seems surprising to me given that teachers are paid the same regardless of subject specialism and a qualified physicist can typically do better privately (or academically elsewhere) than teaching teenagers.
Adjusting teacher remuneration so in-demand specialists are paid more than less-demanded specialists seems logical to me. Why not pay a physics teacher more than a PE teacher?
I approve this message…
LOL, I very nearly tagged you in that post but wasn't sure you'd approve of that!
Just to confuse things, my letter of appointment to my current job is for “Physics Teacher and Rugby Coach”.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
Is it not possible that ethnic resentment was a motivating factor in which case it is highly relevant? The line between terrorism and mental health issues can get very blurred at times.
Anything is possible. Why don't we wait to find out?
Some of us find it more fun to have what one might call a Glasgow bin lorry fire.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
The reason household solar fails to add up is almost all the cost of installation. We didn't have solar for ages, because we were going to get a new roof. Then we got a new roof, and it became a very easy decision to make. Once you have scaffolding up - for whatever reason - the cost of slapping a few panels on suddenly becomes much smaller.
Also, some people object to solar on aesthetic grounds. Can't see it myself, but there you go. I'm very pleased with mine, which at @MattW 's recommendation are built into my roof and look splendid.
One minor problem is what to do with all that electricity you are generating in the summer? You can sell it to the grid but not at any particularly exciting prices. I have dealt with this by making use of an inflatable hot tub, which I heat up during the periods my generation is greater than my consumption. I recommend it.
If you have a hot tank then the immersion heaters that kick in when you start to export have always seemed like a great simple idea.
We have a combi and no tank, at present
ETA: The other option, of course, becoming financially more attractive all the time, is batteries. But the immersion heater add-ons are very cheap and would make a lot of sense. Even in winter there are times when we are exporting.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
Bullshit.
Racist bullshit no less.
Why were these two (and their races) not identified before they were convicted?
We don't identify under-18 suspects. That's the law. If convicted, the Judge can then waive anonymity, but that should not happen before.
Yes. It is not only his home State is the most important out of the 50 in finalising the result, it is also that the States to the west of Penn in the central north of the country where Biden did well and a Californian woman of colour may not like Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, which are all incredibly close, are likely to like Shapiro more than someone from the South West.
Oh dear, another day with the PB-rightists foaming at the mouth that a Labour government has the audacity to, er... actually govern.
Did you think they would just follow the Tory playbook?
You lot had it easy. The Conservatives never actually did anything right wing. You had to content yourselves with complaining about the ineffectual right wing noises they were making.
They implemented plenty of right wing policies. Most prominently Brexit (I appreciate there are sections of the Left who've always been against the EU, but I don't imagine the form it took was the one Tony Benn might have envisaged). They've also cut working age benefits and disability benefits, slashed local government budgets as a non-protected area (which has tended to impact discretionary services - libraries, sports and so on). They've simultaneously reduced scrutiny of local authorities including through abolition of the Audit Commission, contributing to catastrophic failures in some places. They've cut capital spending on schools.
You can make a case for some of those policies, and they'd plainly have done much better earlier this month if they'd done those things but not also had Partygate, absurd cakeism that Johnson never had the ability to deliver, the abortive but damaging Truss budget, the farce of Sunak's Rwanda scheme etc.
But it isn't really an accurate that the Conservatives didn't deliver any right wing red meat for the centre left to complain about (and right to cheer). It wasn't an inconsequential period in office.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
The reason household solar fails to add up is almost all the cost of installation. We didn't have solar for ages, because we were going to get a new roof. Then we got a new roof, and it became a very easy decision to make. Once you have scaffolding up - for whatever reason - the cost of slapping a few panels on suddenly becomes much smaller.
Also, some people object to solar on aesthetic grounds. Can't see it myself, but there you go. I'm very pleased with mine, which at @MattW 's recommendation are built into my roof and look splendid.
One minor problem is what to do with all that electricity you are generating in the summer? You can sell it to the grid but not at any particularly exciting prices. I have dealt with this by making use of an inflatable hot tub, which I heat up during the periods my generation is greater than my consumption. I recommend it.
If you have a hot tank then the immersion heaters that kick in when you start to export have always seemed like a great simple idea.
We have a combi and no tank, at present
Yes, me too. I tried to come up with a way to make it work but essentially, too complicated. At least, too complicated to deal with at the same time as having other major building works.
Are Labour really going to bring in the school fees VAT in January mid way through a school year?
That feels bizarre to me.
They’re attempting to make it retrospective to this September, but can’t get the legislation through in time.
Which I suspect will lead to a well-funded legal challenge.
Any evidence to back the September claim up?
Because if they were doing that they would have had to do it yesterday and instead all they said January.. (Remember this sort of trick is something I'm very aware of - so the wording yesterday was interesting and carefully created a distinct line)...
Reality is that by implementing it in January and announcing yesterday after the school year and finished it's designed to minimise the number of people able to move schools before September which is probably a relief to both State and Private schools...
Although it does rather mess up people who are already struggling to pay school fees...
It was in Reeves’s statement yesterday IIRC. Let me try and find it.
Edit: it’s actually slightly more complex. The VAT comes in in January, but any invoices sent from now *for education delivered after January 1*, will be expected to include the VAT, even though the legislation is not yet passed. So the schools are expected to include VAT in next year’s invoices if sent out over the summer. Which is retrospective taxation.
It has also been announced that fees invoiced or paid on or after 29 July 2024 that relate to the school terms after 1 January 2025 will be subject to the standard rate of VAT at the beginning of that term.
School fees paid before 29 July 2024 will follow the VAT treatment in force at the time of the normal tax point for these supplies, where the fee rate for the relevant term has been set and was known at the time of payment.
Draft legislation (VAT on Private School Fees & Removing the Charitable Rates Relief for Private Schools), an explanatory note and an accompanying technical note on these changes is available.
As I said very carefully worded to make things clear, there were tax avoidance schemes designed for the advanced payment of fees most of which simply didn't work because of the way VAT is charged.
The reality is there is actually a hefty concession in there for parents / grandparents who may have paid years up front provided the school was equally organised...
So businesses are expected to issue invoices purely off the back of the government making a statement, rather than actually passing the legislation? That’s the bit I can’t get my head around.
Presumably many of the schools have invoices printed and dated 28th July, which they will have posted yesterday afternoon?
The building industry copes well enough making tenders include wage rises promulgated but not taking effect for 9-10 months.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
Bullshit.
Racist bullshit no less.
Why were these two (and their races) not identified before they were convicted?
We don't identify under-18 suspects. That's the law. If convicted, the Judge can then waive anonymity, but that should not happen before.
Er, I'm going from multiple reports in the Telegraph and Mail that say he's from a Rwandan family and eye witness reports saying he's black/very dark. And also that video, you can just about see
It's not me that's been banging on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how skin colour matters, for the last ten fucking years, it's the idiot Wokerati, they can't now turn around and say Oh no, skin colour is irrelevant
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
Bullshit.
Racist bullshit no less.
Why were these two (and their races) not identified before they were convicted?
We don't identify under-18 suspects. That's the law. If convicted, the Judge can then waive anonymity, but that should not happen before.
Er, I'm going from multiple reports in the Telegraph and Mail that say he's from a Rwandan family and eye witness reports saying he's black/very dark. And also that video, you can just about see
It's not me that's been banging on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how skin colour matters, for the last ten fucking years, it's the idiot Wokerati, they can't now turn around and say Oh no, skin colour is irrelevant
You've banged on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on about race more than any other poster here.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
Bullshit.
Racist bullshit no less.
Why were these two (and their races) not identified before they were convicted?
We don't identify under-18 suspects. That's the law. If convicted, the Judge can then waive anonymity, but that should not happen before.
Er, I'm going from multiple reports in the Telegraph and Mail that say he's from a Rwandan family and eye witness reports saying he's black/very dark. And also that video, you can just about see
It's not me that's been banging on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how skin colour matters, for the last ten fucking years, it's the idiot Wokerati, they can't now turn around and say Oh no, skin colour is irrelevant
You've banged on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on about race more than any other poster here.
Yes, Mrs Roberts, whatever you say. Have an eggnog
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
Nope. Skin colour is always irrelevant, unless it is.
When it is, should be obvious to most sane people, but for some it does seems more relevant than to others. You know people like Tommy Robinson or Katie Hopkins (whatever happened to her) for instance.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
Bullshit.
Racist bullshit no less.
Why were these two (and their races) not identified before they were convicted?
We don't identify under-18 suspects. That's the law. If convicted, the Judge can then waive anonymity, but that should not happen before.
Er, I'm going from multiple reports in the Telegraph and Mail that say he's from a Rwandan family and eye witness reports saying he's black/very dark. And also that video, you can just about see
It's not me that's been banging on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how skin colour matters, for the last ten fucking years, it's the idiot Wokerati, they can't now turn around and say Oh no, skin colour is irrelevant
You've banged on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on about race more than any other poster here.
Yes, Mrs Roberts, whatever you say. Have an eggnog
I'd like to know a single "woke" poster on this site that has brought up race, unprompted, more than you have.
The new government will never have more goodwill than they do now, a month into a large majority.
Yet they’ve actually been very timid with the annoucements, and made some basic errors such as cancelling infrastructure projects to pay for current spending, especially their old friends in the public sector unions.
The 22% raise for those who already earn well above average wage comes across as particularly egregious, and will no doubt inspire other unions to ask for the same. A 22% offer that’s been described as derisory by the union involved, the leader of which does his best to come across as Arthur Scargill with a stethoscope.
It's a curious set of infrastructure projects that have been cancelled because most of them were pie in sky crap (the restoring your railway ones) or could be argued to be ongoing expenditure (is it really investment if you are replacing an existing hospital)...
You then have the very contentious A303 Stonehenge tunnel and an A27 scheme which the locals seem to actively hate...
So I see a couple of political point scoring victories (A303,A27) hidden in the cost cutting there, a pile of populist crap (the restoring railways "projects") and a question over what is investment..
I don’t know about the A27, but the A303 has been top of the agenda for at least three decades now, and the HS2 link to Euston leaves a white elephant of a line that no-one actually going to London is going to use except with promotional fares, and adds more human congestion to the reduced number of trains on the legacy main lines. The Thames crossing has already spend a quarter of a billion on paperwork, and don’t start me on Heathrow’s third runway.
All of these should have been done a long, long time ago, and it’s disappointing to see a new government kick the can just as the last one did. And the one before that.
Heathrow's third runway isn't a money issue - that would be paid for by Heathrow.
As for HS2 - my opinion is that once it was designed it should have been built as is - but Euston should be being advertised as the 2/3 different projects it is so that people know where the money is going...
I'm less concerned about delaying the final part to Euston (a) because I think they will do it eventually and (b) it doesn't invalidate the rest of the line.
Much play is made that people don't want to journey to Old Oak Common. But they mostly don't want to go to Euston either. Almost everyone wants to go to a station in London and from there take local transport to their final destination. Old Oak Common fulfills that role as does Euston. A third of passengers would choose to get off at Old Oak Common anyway, it's marginal for many of the rest and almost everyone will make the trip to Old Oak Common if that's where the station is. The main effect is to overload the Elizabeth Line.
I'm a lot more concerned about the section to Crewe. If you don't put the capacity in to a similar specification as the southern part, it undermines the whole project.
edit - you already made both my points further down..
Isn't the Birmingham to Crewe bit the most economically viable part of the entire project?
After that I thought it was the HSb (Eastern Leg) and then the bit to Manchester?
Mm - define 'economically viable'.
Birmingham to Crewe is certainly the least costly. But I'd say 'economically viable' would be your balance of costs and benefits. So: a) what benefits does the economic case of the business case say it delivers? b) does it deliver those if the other sections are not delivered? c) what about the other non-quantified benefits (which are in all likelihood greater than those which have been quantified) - e.g. regeneration benefits, e.g. capacity relief, e.g. sections which deliver parts of other proposed investments?
Answer: it's complicated!
Its not that complicated.
If they don't build phase 2a to Crewe, six tracks (four Trent Valley and Two HS2) will converge on un grade separated Colwich Junction and two track Shugborough Tunnel.
It's a total clusterfuck. That is such a pinchpoint that an upgrade to bypass it all was already planned before being canned when HS2 came along.
Er, the Stone avoiding line diverges *before* Shugborough Tunnel. So it's four lines, not two, that operate there.
It would still be a pinch point but not quite as bad a one as you think.
Colwich is where the line to stoke on trent goes of and the WCML goes down to 2 track north of it through Shugborough Tunnel.
All it carries is two of the Euston to Manchesters per hour (down trains thereof also conflict with up trains from Stafford at Colwich).
If the "stone avoiding line" had a route back to the West Coast Main Line north of Stafford, you might have a point, but it dosent south of Crewe. Although the Stoke to Crewe Line being electrified in the last few years helps.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
Yes but, to take our house as an example:
We generated c.4,200kWh in 2023 off our 4kW array. We used 2,700kWh of that and sent the other 1,500kWh to the grid. However we also imported 9,500kWh from the grid.
So our total use was 12,200kWh (we're all electric, no other heating).
If we tripled the size of our array (easily doable) we would generate all our annual needs but we would need about 10gWh (10,000kWh) of battery storage to store the summer electricity to meet our winter demand.
That's a lot of batteries - $500k at projected costs of $50k per kWh?
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
Bullshit.
Racist bullshit no less.
Why were these two (and their races) not identified before they were convicted?
We don't identify under-18 suspects. That's the law. If convicted, the Judge can then waive anonymity, but that should not happen before.
Er, I'm going from multiple reports in the Telegraph and Mail that say he's from a Rwandan family and eye witness reports saying he's black/very dark. And also that video, you can just about see
It's not me that's been banging on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how skin colour matters, for the last ten fucking years, it's the idiot Wokerati, they can't now turn around and say Oh no, skin colour is irrelevant
You've banged on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on about race more than any other poster here.
Yes, Mrs Roberts, whatever you say. Have an eggnog
One of the glories of yesterday was not getting your 'hot takes' on the attack. Sad to see that we're getting them now you're back.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
You seem to be struggling here.
Yes: the available information makes 'black' a reasonable assumption for skin colour. I don't see that this is particularly relevant in the absence of other information on motivation. As Bart has just posted, for those under 18 details are not released, in general, once an arrest has been made. (And, FWIW, I don't think skin colour should matter, perpetrator or victim. The killing of Sarah Everard is as heinous, to me, as the killing of Stephen Lawrence. I'm not really a fan of the 'hate crime' idea.)
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
Nope. Skin colour is always irrelevant, unless it is.
When it is, should be obvious to most sane people, but for some it does seems more relevant than to others. You know people like Tommy Robinson or Katie Hopkins (whatever happened to her) for instance.
So who gets to decide when it is relevant? And when it isn't?
Is there an official Government Office for Determining the Relevance of Melanin or Lack Of? We could call it Off-peak
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
The reason household solar fails to add up is almost all the cost of installation. We didn't have solar for ages, because we were going to get a new roof. Then we got a new roof, and it became a very easy decision to make. Once you have scaffolding up - for whatever reason - the cost of slapping a few panels on suddenly becomes much smaller.
Also, some people object to solar on aesthetic grounds. Can't see it myself, but there you go. I'm very pleased with mine, which at @MattW 's recommendation are built into my roof and look splendid.
One minor problem is what to do with all that electricity you are generating in the summer? You can sell it to the grid but not at any particularly exciting prices. I have dealt with this by making use of an inflatable hot tub, which I heat up during the periods my generation is greater than my consumption. I recommend it.
Why bother when I can whip up my famous Brussels sprout consommé and eat it in the bath?
Yes. It is not only his home State is the most important out of the 50 in finalising the result, it is also that the States to the west of Penn in the central north of the country where Biden did well and a Californian woman of colour may not like Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, which are all incredibly close, are likely to like Shapiro more than someone from the South West.
It really is a no brainer.
What advantages does Shapiro have over Mark Kelly?
~£10bn of the "blackhole" is due to Labour's bumper increase in public sector pay. It's completely optional and they could hold back more than half of that figure. If the public sector doesn't like it they can move to the private sector.
The problem is that they /have/ moved to the private sector - the NHS has something like 100k unfilled jobs, current teacher recruitment in secondary schools is running ~50% below the target.
At some point either you pay the going rate or you stop being able to recruit staff.
1 problem with teacher recruitment is that they've f***ed up teacher training so badly that remarkable few graduates are taking teacher training courses. My daughter would have happily done so via the local training school (they usually have 10 or so ex pupils returning for it). This year 2 are going to do teacher training...
Though it depends upon subject does it not?
The stats I've seen show that more people are doing PE Teacher Training than desired, but very few people are doing Physics or Maths etc
Which hardly seems surprising to me given that teachers are paid the same regardless of subject specialism and a qualified physicist can typically do better privately (or academically elsewhere) than teaching teenagers.
Adjusting teacher remuneration so in-demand specialists are paid more than less-demanded specialists seems logical to me. Why not pay a physics teacher more than a PE teacher?
I approve this message…
LOL, I very nearly tagged you in that post but wasn't sure you'd approve of that!
Just to confuse things, my letter of appointment to my current job is for “Physics Teacher and Rugby Coach”.
It's all physics though, isn't it, really? I assume you simplify rugby to a spherical ball in a vacuum?
Are Labour really going to bring in the school fees VAT in January mid way through a school year?
That feels bizarre to me.
They’re attempting to make it retrospective to this September, but can’t get the legislation through in time.
Which I suspect will lead to a well-funded legal challenge.
Any evidence to back the September claim up?
Because if they were doing that they would have had to do it yesterday and instead all they said January.. (Remember this sort of trick is something I'm very aware of - so the wording yesterday was interesting and carefully created a distinct line)...
Reality is that by implementing it in January and announcing yesterday after the school year and finished it's designed to minimise the number of people able to move schools before September which is probably a relief to both State and Private schools...
Although it does rather mess up people who are already struggling to pay school fees...
It was in Reeves’s statement yesterday IIRC. Let me try and find it.
Edit: it’s actually slightly more complex. The VAT comes in in January, but any invoices sent from now *for education delivered after January 1*, will be expected to include the VAT, even though the legislation is not yet passed. So the schools are expected to include VAT in next year’s invoices if sent out over the summer. Which is retrospective taxation.
It has also been announced that fees invoiced or paid on or after 29 July 2024 that relate to the school terms after 1 January 2025 will be subject to the standard rate of VAT at the beginning of that term.
School fees paid before 29 July 2024 will follow the VAT treatment in force at the time of the normal tax point for these supplies, where the fee rate for the relevant term has been set and was known at the time of payment.
Draft legislation (VAT on Private School Fees & Removing the Charitable Rates Relief for Private Schools), an explanatory note and an accompanying technical note on these changes is available.
Where can I fund the legal challenge?
What with? I thought the your kids' school fees left you stoney broke?
Yes. It is not only his home State is the most important out of the 50 in finalising the result, it is also that the States to the west of Penn in the central north of the country where Biden did well and a Californian woman of colour may not like Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, which are all incredibly close, are likely to like Shapiro more than someone from the South West.
It really is a no brainer.
What advantages does Shapiro have over Mark Kelly?
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
You seem to be struggling here.
Yes: the available information makes 'black' a reasonable assumption for skin colour. I don't see that this is particularly relevant in the absence of other information on motivation. As Bart has just posted, for those under 18 details are not released, in general, once an arrest has been made. (And, FWIW, I don't think skin colour should matter, perpetrator or victim. The killing of Sarah Everard is as heinous, to me, as the killing of Stephen Lawrence. I'm not really a fan of the 'hate crime' idea.)
Really not struggling. Sitting in the French sun
As it happens, I agree with you. "Hate crimes" are a bad idea. Prosecute all crimes vigorously and punish with condign severity. The law should be colour blind
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
Yes but, to take our house as an example:
We generated c.4,200kWh in 2023 off our 4kW array. We used 2,700kWh of that and sent the other 1,500kWh to the grid. However we also imported 9,500kWh from the grid.
So our total use was 12,200kWh (we're all electric, no other heating).
If we tripled the size of our array (easily doable) we would generate all our annual needs but we would need about 10gWh (10,000kWh) of battery storage to store the summer electricity to meet our winter demand.
That's a lot of batteries - $500k at projected costs of $50k per kWh?
Storing from summer to winter is never going to be viable, or realistic.
Storing from day to night certainly can be.
Especially adding if you work away from home then night will be both when you use the electricity, run your washing machine/dryer etc, and plug in your car etc
Currently those who are away from home during the day don't gain much from solar EV, unless they can add a battery in which case it is transformative.
~£10bn of the "blackhole" is due to Labour's bumper increase in public sector pay. It's completely optional and they could hold back more than half of that figure. If the public sector doesn't like it they can move to the private sector.
The problem is that they /have/ moved to the private sector - the NHS has something like 100k unfilled jobs, current teacher recruitment in secondary schools is running ~50% below the target.
At some point either you pay the going rate or you stop being able to recruit staff.
1 problem with teacher recruitment is that they've f***ed up teacher training so badly that remarkable few graduates are taking teacher training courses. My daughter would have happily done so via the local training school (they usually have 10 or so ex pupils returning for it). This year 2 are going to do teacher training...
Though it depends upon subject does it not?
The stats I've seen show that more people are doing PE Teacher Training than desired, but very few people are doing Physics or Maths etc
Which hardly seems surprising to me given that teachers are paid the same regardless of subject specialism and a qualified physicist can typically do better privately (or academically elsewhere) than teaching teenagers.
Adjusting teacher remuneration so in-demand specialists are paid more than less-demanded specialists seems logical to me. Why not pay a physics teacher more than a PE teacher?
I approve this message…
LOL, I very nearly tagged you in that post but wasn't sure you'd approve of that!
Just to confuse things, my letter of appointment to my current job is for “Physics Teacher and Rugby Coach”.
It's all physics though, isn't it, really? I assume you simplify rugby to a spherical ball in a vacuum?
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
Bullshit.
Racist bullshit no less.
Why were these two (and their races) not identified before they were convicted?
We don't identify under-18 suspects. That's the law. If convicted, the Judge can then waive anonymity, but that should not happen before.
Er, I'm going from multiple reports in the Telegraph and Mail that say he's from a Rwandan family and eye witness reports saying he's black/very dark. And also that video, you can just about see
It's not me that's been banging on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how skin colour matters, for the last ten fucking years, it's the idiot Wokerati, they can't now turn around and say Oh no, skin colour is irrelevant
You've banged on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on about race more than any other poster here.
Yes, Mrs Roberts, whatever you say. Have an eggnog
I'd like to know a single "woke" poster on this site that has brought up race, unprompted, more than you have.
As you did, again, today.
Going back over this thread I see that Selebian was the first to mention "immigrant parents"
Niot me. Not least because I've not even been on PB all day, I have been sunbathing on my new terrace, or working
It is now 35C and i have come indoors and my work is done
~£10bn of the "blackhole" is due to Labour's bumper increase in public sector pay. It's completely optional and they could hold back more than half of that figure. If the public sector doesn't like it they can move to the private sector.
The problem is that they /have/ moved to the private sector - the NHS has something like 100k unfilled jobs, current teacher recruitment in secondary schools is running ~50% below the target.
At some point either you pay the going rate or you stop being able to recruit staff.
1 problem with teacher recruitment is that they've f***ed up teacher training so badly that remarkable few graduates are taking teacher training courses. My daughter would have happily done so via the local training school (they usually have 10 or so ex pupils returning for it). This year 2 are going to do teacher training...
Though it depends upon subject does it not?
The stats I've seen show that more people are doing PE Teacher Training than desired, but very few people are doing Physics or Maths etc
Which hardly seems surprising to me given that teachers are paid the same regardless of subject specialism and a qualified physicist can typically do better privately (or academically elsewhere) than teaching teenagers.
Adjusting teacher remuneration so in-demand specialists are paid more than less-demanded specialists seems logical to me. Why not pay a physics teacher more than a PE teacher?
I approve this message…
LOL, I very nearly tagged you in that post but wasn't sure you'd approve of that!
Just to confuse things, my letter of appointment to my current job is for “Physics Teacher and Rugby Coach”.
It's all physics though, isn't it, really? I assume you simplify rugby to a spherical ball in a vacuum?
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
The skin colour doesn't matter to me,* why should it? It's also not actually known to me from the reports I have read - it will be known to some from witness accounts, of course. Personally I have a close friend of Pakistani ethnicity whose parents immigrated from Africa (father from Rwanda, in fact), so while Black seems likely, it's not a given.
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
There have been several eye witness reports which have made it through the intense media blackout on speculation. I was wary of them at first - the initial blaze of misinformation - but they all describe the assailant as "very dark"
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
Bullshit.
Racist bullshit no less.
Why were these two (and their races) not identified before they were convicted?
We don't identify under-18 suspects. That's the law. If convicted, the Judge can then waive anonymity, but that should not happen before.
Er, I'm going from multiple reports in the Telegraph and Mail that say he's from a Rwandan family and eye witness reports saying he's black/very dark. And also that video, you can just about see
It's not me that's been banging on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how skin colour matters, for the last ten fucking years, it's the idiot Wokerati, they can't now turn around and say Oh no, skin colour is irrelevant
You've banged on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on about race more than any other poster here.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
Nope. Skin colour is always irrelevant, unless it is.
When it is, should be obvious to most sane people, but for some it does seems more relevant than to others. You know people like Tommy Robinson or Katie Hopkins (whatever happened to her) for instance.
So who gets to decide when it is relevant? And when it isn't?
Is there an official Government Office for Determining the Relevance of Melanin or Lack Of? We could call it Off-peak
Thanks. I am here all week. Try the Volvic
I think I made that quite clear in my reply.
To those on the far right it is clearly relevant just about all the time.
To those of a woke tendency it is probably more often relevant than it is to me.
For me it is pretty well irrelevant unless there is some cultural context.
It appears to be much more relevant to you.
I'm afraid that means nobody decides for definite. There is no meter or chart you can refer to. Sorry. You will just have to carry on getting very annoyed about it. I won't, but you can console yourself that I get annoyed about other things as we discussed a few weeks ago.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
Yes but, to take our house as an example:
We generated c.4,200kWh in 2023 off our 4kW array. We used 2,700kWh of that and sent the other 1,500kWh to the grid. However we also imported 9,500kWh from the grid.
So our total use was 12,200kWh (we're all electric, no other heating).
If we tripled the size of our array (easily doable) we would generate all our annual needs but we would need about 10gWh (10,000kWh) of battery storage to store the summer electricity to meet our winter demand.
That's a lot of batteries - $500k at projected costs of $50k per kWh?
But at the moment you can export your solar to Octopus at 15p per kWh and import overnight at 7.5p per kWh. Now that isn't going to last but it shows that short term batteries (charge overnight use during the day) may make sense...
Equally looking at fogstar - you can get the 30kWh of batteries you would need for £6000 or so..
Yes. It is not only his home State is the most important out of the 50 in finalising the result, it is also that the States to the west of Penn in the central north of the country where Biden did well and a Californian woman of colour may not like Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, which are all incredibly close, are likely to like Shapiro more than someone from the South West.
It really is a no brainer.
What advantages does Shapiro have over Mark Kelly?
Both seem like good picks.
And both infinitely better than Vance.
Penn has, according to that piece, a 30% chance of being the State that is going to determine the election on the current map. It has 19 electoral votes in this cycle compared to Az's 11. It is an absolute must win for Harris. Arizona would be nice too and Kelly is an interesting guy (as is Buttigieg) but the advantage that Shapiro can give Harris in the key state is invaluable. She cannot afford to put aside any advantage that she might gain there.
Edit, completely agree about Vance. I can only presume that Trump chose him because he wanted someone younger on the ticket when the opponent was Biden. He looks a very poor choice.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
Yes but, to take our house as an example:
We generated c.4,200kWh in 2023 off our 4kW array. We used 2,700kWh of that and sent the other 1,500kWh to the grid. However we also imported 9,500kWh from the grid.
So our total use was 12,200kWh (we're all electric, no other heating).
If we tripled the size of our array (easily doable) we would generate all our annual needs but we would need about 10gWh (10,000kWh) of battery storage to store the summer electricity to meet our winter demand.
That's a lot of batteries - $500k at projected costs of $50k per kWh?
Storing from summer to winter is never going to be viable, or realistic.
Storing from day to night certainly can be.
Especially adding if you work away from home then night will be both when you use the electricity, run your washing machine/dryer etc, and plug in your car etc
Currently those who are away from home during the day don't gain much from solar EV, unless they can add a battery in which case it is transformative.
Various technologies for making your washing machine start at arbitrary times are pretty mature
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
Yes but, to take our house as an example:
We generated c.4,200kWh in 2023 off our 4kW array. We used 2,700kWh of that and sent the other 1,500kWh to the grid. However we also imported 9,500kWh from the grid.
So our total use was 12,200kWh (we're all electric, no other heating).
If we tripled the size of our array (easily doable) we would generate all our annual needs but we would need about 10gWh (10,000kWh) of battery storage to store the summer electricity to meet our winter demand.
That's a lot of batteries - $500k at projected costs of $50k per kWh?
Storing from summer to winter is never going to be viable, or realistic.
Storing from day to night certainly can be.
Especially adding if you work away from home then night will be both when you use the electricity, run your washing machine/dryer etc, and plug in your car etc
Currently those who are away from home during the day don't gain much from solar EV, unless they can add a battery in which case it is transformative.
Never say never. There's no physics reason why it is not possible, we just haven't found it yet.
(In fact it's possible now ofc but not very efficiently. We could use the summer electricity to split water, then generate electricity from the hydrogen in the winter.)
Yes. It is not only his home State is the most important out of the 50 in finalising the result, it is also that the States to the west of Penn in the central north of the country where Biden did well and a Californian woman of colour may not like Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, which are all incredibly close, are likely to like Shapiro more than someone from the South West.
It really is a no brainer.
What advantages does Shapiro have over Mark Kelly?
Both seem like good picks.
And both infinitely better than Vance.
1. Shapiro is Governor rather than a Senator, providing balance for Harris as a former Senator (Governors have quite specific executive achievements to trumpet).
2. Regional balance - Harris and Kelly hail from adjoining south western states. Without rustbelt representation they may be vulnerable to Trump's rhetoric on protectionism plus Vance representing Ohio.
3. Although both are swing states, Pennsylvania carries 19 electoral votes to Arizona's 11. So there are more plausible routes to victory that go through Pennsylvania but not Arizona than vice versa.
Not to say that's my preference - Kelly has some compelling strengths, there are fewer policy differences between him and Harris, and Shapiro has a record to defend as well as trumpet - but there are some obvious advantages on paper for Shapiro.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
Nope. Skin colour is always irrelevant, unless it is.
When it is, should be obvious to most sane people, but for some it does seems more relevant than to others. You know people like Tommy Robinson or Katie Hopkins (whatever happened to her) for instance.
So who gets to decide when it is relevant? And when it isn't?
Is there an official Government Office for Determining the Relevance of Melanin or Lack Of? We could call it Off-peak
Thanks. I am here all week. Try the Volvic
I think I made that quite clear in my reply.
To those on the far right it is clearly relevant just about all the time.
To those of a woke tendency it is probably more often relevant than it is to me.
For me it is pretty well irrelevant unless there is some cultural context.
It appears to be much more relevant to you.
I'm afraid that means nobody decides for definite. There is no meter or chart you can refer to. Sorry. You will just have to carry on getting very annoyed about it. I won't, but you can console yourself that I get annoyed about other things as we discussed a few weeks ago.
The whole Southport thing is too depressing to discuss, so I shall desist shortly. I am in a benign mood and don't want to ruin it
I will make just one further point, 10-15 years ago I honestly felt we were heading for a colour blind world, and it made me happy. That is the ideal
A decade of Wokeness has, to my mind, done nothing but regress us, it has taken us back to a more racist past, obsessing about skin colour. It is both tragic and ridiculous
And that is my last word on Southport for the day. I'm now going to have a slice of saucisson
The new government will never have more goodwill than they do now, a month into a large majority.
Yet they’ve actually been very timid with the annoucements, and made some basic errors such as cancelling infrastructure projects to pay for current spending, especially their old friends in the public sector unions.
The 22% raise for those who already earn well above average wage comes across as particularly egregious, and will no doubt inspire other unions to ask for the same. A 22% offer that’s been described as derisory by the union involved, the leader of which does his best to come across as Arthur Scargill with a stethoscope.
It's a curious set of infrastructure projects that have been cancelled because most of them were pie in sky crap (the restoring your railway ones) or could be argued to be ongoing expenditure (is it really investment if you are replacing an existing hospital)...
You then have the very contentious A303 Stonehenge tunnel and an A27 scheme which the locals seem to actively hate...
So I see a couple of political point scoring victories (A303,A27) hidden in the cost cutting there, a pile of populist crap (the restoring railways "projects") and a question over what is investment..
I don’t know about the A27, but the A303 has been top of the agenda for at least three decades now, and the HS2 link to Euston leaves a white elephant of a line that no-one actually going to London is going to use except with promotional fares, and adds more human congestion to the reduced number of trains on the legacy main lines. The Thames crossing has already spend a quarter of a billion on paperwork, and don’t start me on Heathrow’s third runway.
All of these should have been done a long, long time ago, and it’s disappointing to see a new government kick the can just as the last one did. And the one before that.
Heathrow's third runway isn't a money issue - that would be paid for by Heathrow.
As for HS2 - my opinion is that once it was designed it should have been built as is - but Euston should be being advertised as the 2/3 different projects it is so that people know where the money is going...
I'm less concerned about delaying the final part to Euston (a) because I think they will do it eventually and (b) it doesn't invalidate the rest of the line.
Much play is made that people don't want to journey to Old Oak Common. But they mostly don't want to go to Euston either. Almost everyone wants to go to a station in London and from there take local transport to their final destination. Old Oak Common fulfills that role as does Euston. A third of passengers would choose to get off at Old Oak Common anyway, it's marginal for many of the rest and almost everyone will make the trip to Old Oak Common if that's where the station is. The main effect is to overload the Elizabeth Line.
I'm a lot more concerned about the section to Crewe. If you don't put the capacity in to a similar specification as the southern part, it undermines the whole project.
edit - you already made both my points further down..
Isn't the Birmingham to Crewe bit the most economically viable part of the entire project?
After that I thought it was the HSb (Eastern Leg) and then the bit to Manchester?
Mm - define 'economically viable'.
Birmingham to Crewe is certainly the least costly. But I'd say 'economically viable' would be your balance of costs and benefits. So: a) what benefits does the economic case of the business case say it delivers? b) does it deliver those if the other sections are not delivered? c) what about the other non-quantified benefits (which are in all likelihood greater than those which have been quantified) - e.g. regeneration benefits, e.g. capacity relief, e.g. sections which deliver parts of other proposed investments?
Answer: it's complicated!
Its not that complicated.
If they don't build phase 2a to Crewe, six tracks (four Trent Valley and Two HS2) will converge on un grade separated Colwich Junction and two track Shugborough Tunnel.
It's a total clusterfuck. That is such a pinchpoint that an upgrade to bypass it all was already planned before being canned when HS2 came along.
Er, the Stone avoiding line diverges *before* Shugborough Tunnel. So it's four lines, not two, that operate there.
It would still be a pinch point but not quite as bad a one as you think.
Slow lines are on the outside, fast lines are in the middle - it really is as bad as implied.
Its slightly more complicated than that.
The slow and fast lines turn into Stafford and stoke lines south of Colwich,
So from left to right.
Down Slow, Down Fast, Up Fast Up Slow
become.
Down Stafford, Down Stoke Up Stafford Up Stoke.
With Down Stoke crossing Up Stafford on the flat at Colwich where it splits into two double track lines.
Basically the West Coast Main line is four track all the way from Euston to Crewe* EXCEPT a couple of miles between Colwich and Stafford through Shugborough Tunnel.
And where, with HS2 canned will HS2 now end and join the WCML, yes a few miles south of Colwich Junction.
Yes. It is not only his home State is the most important out of the 50 in finalising the result, it is also that the States to the west of Penn in the central north of the country where Biden did well and a Californian woman of colour may not like Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, which are all incredibly close, are likely to like Shapiro more than someone from the South West.
It really is a no brainer.
What advantages does Shapiro have over Mark Kelly?
Both seem like good picks.
And both infinitely better than Vance.
Penn has, according to that piece, a 30% chance of being the State that is going to determine the election on the current map. It has 19 electoral votes in this cycle compared to Az's 11. It is an absolute must win for Harris. Arizona would be nice too and Kelly is an interesting guy (as is Buttigieg) but the advantage that Shapiro can give Harris in the key state is invaluable. She cannot afford to put aside any advantage that she might gain there.
Yes but Harris needs to win a swathe of swing states, not just one.
Neither Arizona alone nor Penn alone will decide the election, a group of states include Penn and some states mainly in the Mid West and Mountain West (like Arizona) will decide the election.
Hypothetically (I don't know) if Kelly helps more in the Mountain West and Mid West than Shapiro does, then that's an advantage to him.
It seems like it has to be either of them, but doesn't seem to me like it absolutely has to be one over the other, they're both good picks - which is better than can be said about Vance.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
Yes but, to take our house as an example:
We generated c.4,200kWh in 2023 off our 4kW array. We used 2,700kWh of that and sent the other 1,500kWh to the grid. However we also imported 9,500kWh from the grid.
So our total use was 12,200kWh (we're all electric, no other heating).
If we tripled the size of our array (easily doable) we would generate all our annual needs but we would need about 10gWh (10,000kWh) of battery storage to store the summer electricity to meet our winter demand.
That's a lot of batteries - $500k at projected costs of $50k per kWh?
Storing from summer to winter is never going to be viable, or realistic.
Storing from day to night certainly can be.
Especially adding if you work away from home then night will be both when you use the electricity, run your washing machine/dryer etc, and plug in your car etc
Currently those who are away from home during the day don't gain much from solar EV, unless they can add a battery in which case it is transformative.
Various technologies for making your washing machine start at arbitrary times are pretty mature
Yes, but not for charging your EV while its away from home. Or running the rest of your power consumption you do while at home.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I was told on PB that this was ridiculous a while back. The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
The cheap mass battery storage always seems to be a year or three away, like Thorium Reactors and Fusion.
Cheap mass battery storage is here today, and its getting cheaper every year.
Yes but, to take our house as an example:
We generated c.4,200kWh in 2023 off our 4kW array. We used 2,700kWh of that and sent the other 1,500kWh to the grid. However we also imported 9,500kWh from the grid.
So our total use was 12,200kWh (we're all electric, no other heating).
If we tripled the size of our array (easily doable) we would generate all our annual needs but we would need about 10gWh (10,000kWh) of battery storage to store the summer electricity to meet our winter demand.
That's a lot of batteries - $500k at projected costs of $50k per kWh?
Storing from summer to winter is never going to be viable, or realistic.
Storing from day to night certainly can be.
Especially adding if you work away from home then night will be both when you use the electricity, run your washing machine/dryer etc, and plug in your car etc
Currently those who are away from home during the day don't gain much from solar EV, unless they can add a battery in which case it is transformative.
Never say never. There's no physics reason why it is not possible, we just haven't found it yet.
(In fact it's possible now ofc but not very efficiently. We could use the summer electricity to split water, then generate electricity from the hydrogen in the winter.)
but not very efficiently - from memory splitting water into hydrogen is about the last resort when it comes to uses for excess electricity.
That's just incredible. OK, it's early afternoon on a sunny day in mid-July. But if you'd shown that stat to someone 30 years ago it would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Even 10 years ago it would have been wildly improbable.
The even better thing is that we are nowhere close to the peak of what we could easily be generating with solar. The number of houses with solar panels is, what, about 10%? (Wildly unscientific survey based on a look out of the window). I salivate to think what this figure will be in a decade's time.
I think it's about half that in terms of households with solar. It should be said that there is a reason for that - even with higher energy prices, the investment just isn't worth it for a lot of people in terms of the time it would take to recover the up-front cost (and potential for repair costs) given the roof space, direction in which it faces, and part of the country.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
The reason household solar fails to add up is almost all the cost of installation. We didn't have solar for ages, because we were going to get a new roof. Then we got a new roof, and it became a very easy decision to make. Once you have scaffolding up - for whatever reason - the cost of slapping a few panels on suddenly becomes much smaller.
Also, some people object to solar on aesthetic grounds. Can't see it myself, but there you go. I'm very pleased with mine, which at @MattW 's recommendation are built into my roof and look splendid.
One minor problem is what to do with all that electricity you are generating in the summer? You can sell it to the grid but not at any particularly exciting prices. I have dealt with this by making use of an inflatable hot tub, which I heat up during the periods my generation is greater than my consumption. I recommend it.
Stats
The latest is that in England and Wales there are just under 1.5 million dwellings (ie habitations) with solar panels. Scotland adds another 130k or just under 10%.
In terms of % of households, that is around 4-5%.
To be more useful, there are around 27 million dwellings in EW (so ~29 million with Scotland). Approx 18-20% are flats. And some of the rest will be less suitable for various orientation or environmental or policy reasons.
So there's a *lot* of potential, I'd say to get up to 5-7x the current installed amount without having to go last low hanging fruit.
I knew a man who was responsible for running the jacuzzi at a YMCA ("Fun to be at the ..."), and after reports of what was in it (eg clogging up the drain), I'm never going near one.
Solar Export
On exporting solar energy - there are now a wide range of export tariffs available. I keep it simple and am on a Fixed Tariff from Octopus which pays me 15p per unit. For highest rates you can get ones which pay 25+p per unit, with a high rate in say the 4pm to 7pm window, and a lower rate the rest of the time.
You can also get export rates related to wholesale prices. I was on one of those for a year to test, but the 15p fixed is better on average and simpler for me. Octopus has a whole family of these tariffs, as do others.
You can arbitrage it (import to a battery then export at a time of high export prices), and you probably can automate it, but it's not worth the aggro for me.
Racial tensions can be temporary, such as when a large number of West Indians came and cultural grating, occured, particularly with youths.
However there was enough common culture (and goodwill) to enable integration within a generation or two.
However, when there is no cultural commonality, and a strong religious culture of a different religion which is all encompasing and frowns on marriage to outsiders, you end up with segregation.
What we are now seeing is a Falls and Bogside in many mainland cities and the working class native population reacting by starting to go all Shankhill/Riverside.
Are Labour really going to bring in the school fees VAT in January mid way through a school year?
That feels bizarre to me.
They’re attempting to make it retrospective to this September, but can’t get the legislation through in time.
Which I suspect will lead to a well-funded legal challenge.
Any evidence to back the September claim up?
Because if they were doing that they would have had to do it yesterday and instead all they said January.. (Remember this sort of trick is something I'm very aware of - so the wording yesterday was interesting and carefully created a distinct line)...
Reality is that by implementing it in January and announcing yesterday after the school year and finished it's designed to minimise the number of people able to move schools before September which is probably a relief to both State and Private schools...
Although it does rather mess up people who are already struggling to pay school fees...
So we’ll get a winter of freezing pensioner headlines followed by a January of taking the little darlings out of school/could state schools be overwhelmed headlines. Plus whatever comes down the line in the budget in October.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing much by way of a Labour honeymoon. That doesn’t mean that the Tories are going to suddenly look amazing (they’re not). But it will be interesting to see what the polls are coming out with early next year.
Not optimal… but then I guess they’re getting these hits out of the way early.
I LOL at Labour for the private school fees move.
I think Starmer reckons it'll be another foxhunting ban moment. But foxhunting was directly supported by very few people, and this move will affect many, many more people directly. It'll cheer those who hate people who are richer than them; but dismay many more.
Personally I’m a VAT supremacist, so this is grist to the mill. VAT on everything!
VAT on everything is a fair argument. But this is VAT on something very specific and targeted, mostly for ideological reasons rather than attempting to raise revenue.
It’s red meat to an activist base who think every private school is just like “Boris Johnson’s Eton”.
And it may well work out that Boris Johnson Eton comes out ahead on the changes, and it small / special needs schools that are the ones most effected.
If you want an extra £1bn from rich people there are much easier ways to get it.
The VAT isn't meant to apply to special needs, so special needs schools should be least effected.
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
Nope. Skin colour is always irrelevant, unless it is.
When it is, should be obvious to most sane people, but for some it does seems more relevant than to others. You know people like Tommy Robinson or Katie Hopkins (whatever happened to her) for instance.
So who gets to decide when it is relevant? And when it isn't?
Is there an official Government Office for Determining the Relevance of Melanin or Lack Of? We could call it Off-peak
Thanks. I am here all week. Try the Volvic
I think I made that quite clear in my reply.
To those on the far right it is clearly relevant just about all the time.
To those of a woke tendency it is probably more often relevant than it is to me.
For me it is pretty well irrelevant unless there is some cultural context.
It appears to be much more relevant to you.
I'm afraid that means nobody decides for definite. There is no meter or chart you can refer to. Sorry. You will just have to carry on getting very annoyed about it. I won't, but you can console yourself that I get annoyed about other things as we discussed a few weeks ago.
The whole Southport thing is too depressing to discuss, so I shall desist shortly. I am in a benign mood and don't want to ruin it
I will make just one further point, 10-15 years ago I honestly felt we were heading for a colour blind world, and it made me happy. That is the ideal
A decade of Wokeness has, to my mind, done nothing but regress us, it has taken us back to a more racist past, obsessing about skin colour. It is both tragic and ridiculous
And that is my last word on Southport for the day. I'm now going to have a slice of saucisson
BREAKING: A third child is confirmed to have died in yesterday’s knife attack in Southport. She was just 9 years old.
Heartbreaking. So so sad.
It makes me think if my 5 year old niece who could easily have been at this kind of daycare/club in the school holidays. I don't pay as much attention to the news as I used to but this one has really bummed me out. If anyone did anything to hurt my daughter I'd be demanding blood, if the judge doesn't waive anonymity in this case it will show once and for all that the UK justice system is not fit for purpose and geared towards criminals rather than victims.
I've seen rumours of the culprit circulate rapidly on social media/WhatsApp today. No media outlet daring to fill in the blanks.
Biggest giveaway is the Mayor of Liverpool "warning people not to speculate on the identity of the culprit", which in and of itself gives a bit of the game away.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents"
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
Nope. Skin colour is always irrelevant, unless it is.
When it is, should be obvious to most sane people, but for some it does seems more relevant than to others. You know people like Tommy Robinson or Katie Hopkins (whatever happened to her) for instance.
So who gets to decide when it is relevant? And when it isn't?
Is there an official Government Office for Determining the Relevance of Melanin or Lack Of? We could call it Off-peak
Thanks. I am here all week. Try the Volvic
I think I made that quite clear in my reply.
To those on the far right it is clearly relevant just about all the time.
To those of a woke tendency it is probably more often relevant than it is to me.
For me it is pretty well irrelevant unless there is some cultural context.
It appears to be much more relevant to you.
I'm afraid that means nobody decides for definite. There is no meter or chart you can refer to. Sorry. You will just have to carry on getting very annoyed about it. I won't, but you can console yourself that I get annoyed about other things as we discussed a few weeks ago.
The whole Southport thing is too depressing to discuss, so I shall desist shortly. I am in a benign mood and don't want to ruin it
I will make just one further point, 10-15 years ago I honestly felt we were heading for a colour blind world, and it made me happy. That is the ideal
A decade of Wokeness has, to my mind, done nothing but regress us, it has taken us back to a more racist past, obsessing about skin colour. It is both tragic and ridiculous
And that is my last word on Southport for the day. I'm now going to have a slice of saucisson
It is difficult though isn't it. We want to be colour blind, but we don't want everything to be the dull same. Cultural differences are to be enjoyed as you clearly do in your travels. The trouble is cultural differences seem to frighten the dim who come up with all sorts of irrational stuff to hate people different to them. I suspect you can't have one without the other, which is a shame.
The celebration of those differences however can eventually get over the top and lead to woke, and I have a little sympathy with you on that front, but it doesn't annoy me like it annoys you.
Comments
Hitler governed.
Mao governed.
People - even political opponents - complaining about how a government governs does not mean that the government is doing the right thing.
I’m quite happy to criticise Labour (who I voted for) and I was exceptionally happy to criticise the Tories.
The addition of cheaper coupled battery storage - which is inevitable within a year or three - will increase take up massively.
@cameron_easley
NEW: Harris maintains 1-point lead over Trump in latest @MorningConsult tracker update, but the biggest story is her favorability, which is up 12 net points since last week, driven by upticks among Democrats and independents.
https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/2024-presidential-election-polling"
https://x.com/cameron_easley/status/1818036840118764014
5 GW or so to start getting periods of time where we don't need gas...
We'll know within a year if it's at all likely, I think.
If they don't make the required legislative/planning/policy changes by then, it probably won't in this Parliament.
And 370k is an almost unprecedented target. It will take a sea change in policy.
But yeah, mostly they didn't manage to do too much.
Some made up shit widely shared online is indeed made up shit - the suspect is British born and bred (for completeness, although the relevance is questionable, apparently with immigrant parents).
It is not legal at present to name the individual, I believe.
ETA: An earlier version of the post explicitly stated that the quoted name was incorrect, which is not there now, but the BBC would not be sharing this name if it was known or suspected to be correct.
"A social-media account for white male supporters of Kamala Harris was briefly suspended from X, formerly Twitter, sparking anger online. Newsweek observed that the White Dudes for Harris X account had been temporarily suspended after the group held a star-studded virtual call on Monday night that raised more than $4 million. It is not clear why the account was suspended, but it appeared to have been restored as of the early hours of Tuesday. The automated message when the account was suspended read: "X suspends accounts which violate the X rules." Mike Nellis, who is involved in the organization, shared an update on Tuesday explaining that while the X account is live again, it still remains suspended."
https://www.newsweek.com/white-dudes-harris-x-suspension-1931827
I'm only cautious because this is the UK.
That might well shift over time, but the fact we could have more solar panels in more places isn't some secret - it's just that a lot of people have done the maths and it doesn't at the moment add up. That's hard-nosed businesses as well as individuals. I mean Tesco have a lot of car parks and a lot of roofs - some have solar panels, but a lot don't and not, I suspect, because they haven't considered if it's a good investment.
27 is probably not worth it but if I wasn't already long 40 then I'd be on that 38 offer (well there is a confusing mix of terminology, heh).
I want Jenrick to shorten to under 3 so I can lay the bastard and have a financial reward if he loses, not just a moral one.
Equality impact assessment on whether the impact on nitrate discharges will result in Newts being more racist and the like.
Blair make a speciality of tabloid-friendly aslyum policies, trashed European relationships over the Iraq war and other things, and promoted an expansion of the use of ID documentation.
For reference Fogstar do a 15.5kwh pack for £2500 including VAT to show the lowest UK cost at the moment..
So he's black? I thought Black Lives Matter? i thought skin colour was of paramount importance? I thought we were all meant to focus on the amounts of pignentation in our epidermis? As it trumps all other human attributes?
That is, until a heinous and horrific crime is committed by a black person, and then suddenly mentioning their skin colour makes you a racist, and blackness doesn't matter at all?
Confused of Auvergne
Once you have scaffolding up - for whatever reason - the cost of slapping a few panels on suddenly becomes much smaller.
Also, some people object to solar on aesthetic grounds. Can't see it myself, but there you go. I'm very pleased with mine, which at @MattW 's recommendation are built into my roof and look splendid.
One minor problem is what to do with all that electricity you are generating in the summer? You can sell it to the grid but not at any particularly exciting prices. I have dealt with this by making use of an inflatable hot tub, which I heat up during the periods my generation is greater than my consumption. I recommend it.
https://x.com/ForecasterEnten/status/1818274266695286970
https://grid.iamkate.com/
It would still be a pinch point but not quite as bad a one as you think.
Glad I'm not working at MS at the moment...
If having immigrant parents is in any way relevant then it's likely from an upbringing and/or religion angle, but given the statement that it doesn't seem to be terror related, we can presumably rule out Islamic or other extremism.
So, again, is the second generation immigrant status of any relevance, is it a sever mental health issue (with possible, unknown at present and maybe absent) links to chronic underfunding of CAMHS in the country or is it somethine else entirely. I suggest we wait for the facts.
*It's also of bugger all relevance in the Manchester airport police incident, unless you believe the officer was racially motivated - I think he just got angry in a situation where he/colleagues had been attacked
Australian swimming camp hit by Covid as medal hope Lani Pallister tests positive
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/30/paris-olympics-australia-swimming-lani-pallister-tests-positive-covid
I hope team GB have a stock of rapid tests and FFP2 masks.
As ever the problem is getting the benefits yourself rather than lining the pockets of vsrious middlemen.
As for your question - get an EV at some point.
And "celtic fringe", as well as being mistyped, is inaccurate and therefore meaningless. It'd better describe a haircut bought at the barber's opposite Parkhead Stadium.
Given that it is confirmed his family are Rwandan, it sounds extremely likely that he is black African
Now, in an ideal world, this should not matter. i would love to live in a world where it did not matter. But for the last 5-10 years the Woke left has been telling us that skin colour - literally, the colour of your skin, especially black skin - matters more than anything else in the world. If that is the case, then it also matters here
Cheap mass electricity storage is getting rolled out annually today, its not remotely comparable to fusion.
And its getting both cheaper, and more xWh of storage that is being rolled out annually, every single year too.
We have a combi and no tank, at present
ETA: The other option, of course, becoming financially more attractive all the time, is batteries. But the immersion heater add-ons are very cheap and would make a lot of sense. Even in winter there are times when we are exporting.
Racist bullshit no less.
Why were these two (and their races) not identified before they were convicted?
We don't identify under-18 suspects. That's the law. If convicted, the Judge can then waive anonymity, but that should not happen before.
It really is a no brainer.
You can make a case for some of those policies, and they'd plainly have done much better earlier this month if they'd done those things but not also had Partygate, absurd cakeism that Johnson never had the ability to deliver, the abortive but damaging Truss budget, the farce of Sunak's Rwanda scheme etc.
But it isn't really an accurate that the Conservatives didn't deliver any right wing red meat for the centre left to complain about (and right to cheer). It wasn't an inconsequential period in office.
It's not me that's been banging on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how skin colour matters, for the last ten fucking years, it's the idiot Wokerati, they can't now turn around and say Oh no, skin colour is irrelevant
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13687949/Teenager-17-arrested-Southport-stabbings-Rwanda.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=social-twitter_mailonline
You've banged on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on on and on and on and on and on and on about race more than any other poster here.
When it is, should be obvious to most sane people, but for some it does seems more relevant than to others. You know people like Tommy Robinson or Katie Hopkins (whatever happened to her) for instance.
As you did, again, today.
All it carries is two of the Euston to Manchesters per hour (down trains thereof also conflict with up trains from Stafford at Colwich).
If the "stone avoiding line" had a route back to the West Coast Main Line north of Stafford, you might have a point, but it dosent south of Crewe. Although the Stoke to Crewe Line being electrified in the last few years helps.
We generated c.4,200kWh in 2023 off our 4kW array.
We used 2,700kWh of that and sent the other 1,500kWh to the grid.
However we also imported 9,500kWh from the grid.
So our total use was 12,200kWh (we're all electric, no other heating).
If we tripled the size of our array (easily doable) we would generate all our annual needs but we would need about 10gWh (10,000kWh) of battery storage to store the summer electricity to meet our winter demand.
That's a lot of batteries - $500k at projected costs of $50k per kWh?
Yes: the available information makes 'black' a reasonable assumption for skin colour.
I don't see that this is particularly relevant in the absence of other information on motivation.
As Bart has just posted, for those under 18 details are not released, in general, once an arrest has been made.
(And, FWIW, I don't think skin colour should matter, perpetrator or victim. The killing of Sarah Everard is as heinous, to me, as the killing of Stephen Lawrence. I'm not really a fan of the 'hate crime' idea.)
Is there an official Government Office for Determining the Relevance of Melanin or Lack Of? We could call it Off-peak
Thanks. I am here all week. Try the Volvic
Both seem like good picks.
And both infinitely better than Vance.
As it happens, I agree with you. "Hate crimes" are a bad idea. Prosecute all crimes vigorously and punish with condign severity. The law should be colour blind
Storing from day to night certainly can be.
Especially adding if you work away from home then night will be both when you use the electricity, run your washing machine/dryer etc, and plug in your car etc
Currently those who are away from home during the day don't gain much from solar EV, unless they can add a battery in which case it is transformative.
Niot me. Not least because I've not even been on PB all day, I have been sunbathing on my new terrace, or working
It is now 35C and i have come indoors and my work is done
To those on the far right it is clearly relevant just about all the time.
To those of a woke tendency it is probably more often relevant than it is to me.
For me it is pretty well irrelevant unless there is some cultural context.
It appears to be much more relevant to you.
I'm afraid that means nobody decides for definite. There is no meter or chart you can refer to. Sorry. You will just have to carry on getting very annoyed about it. I won't, but you can console yourself that I get annoyed about other things as we discussed a few weeks ago.
Equally looking at fogstar - you can get the 30kWh of batteries you would need for £6000 or so..
Edit, completely agree about Vance. I can only presume that Trump chose him because he wanted someone younger on the ticket when the opponent was Biden. He looks a very poor choice.
(In fact it's possible now ofc but not very efficiently. We could use the summer electricity to split water, then generate electricity from the hydrogen in the winter.)
2. Regional balance - Harris and Kelly hail from adjoining south western states. Without rustbelt representation they may be vulnerable to Trump's rhetoric on protectionism plus Vance representing Ohio.
3. Although both are swing states, Pennsylvania carries 19 electoral votes to Arizona's 11. So there are more plausible routes to victory that go through Pennsylvania but not Arizona than vice versa.
Not to say that's my preference - Kelly has some compelling strengths, there are fewer policy differences between him and Harris, and Shapiro has a record to defend as well as trumpet - but there are some obvious advantages on paper for Shapiro.
I will make just one further point, 10-15 years ago I honestly felt we were heading for a colour blind world, and it made me happy. That is the ideal
A decade of Wokeness has, to my mind, done nothing but regress us, it has taken us back to a more racist past, obsessing about skin colour. It is both tragic and ridiculous
And that is my last word on Southport for the day. I'm now going to have a slice of saucisson
The slow and fast lines turn into Stafford and stoke lines south of Colwich,
So from left to right.
Down Slow, Down Fast, Up Fast Up Slow
become.
Down Stafford, Down Stoke Up Stafford Up Stoke.
With Down Stoke crossing Up Stafford on the flat at Colwich where it splits into two double track lines.
Basically the West Coast Main line is four track all the way from Euston to Crewe* EXCEPT a couple of miles between Colwich and Stafford through Shugborough Tunnel.
And where, with HS2 canned will HS2 now end and join the WCML, yes a few miles south of Colwich Junction.
Neither Arizona alone nor Penn alone will decide the election, a group of states include Penn and some states mainly in the Mid West and Mountain West (like Arizona) will decide the election.
Hypothetically (I don't know) if Kelly helps more in the Mountain West and Mid West than Shapiro does, then that's an advantage to him.
It seems like it has to be either of them, but doesn't seem to me like it absolutely has to be one over the other, they're both good picks - which is better than can be said about Vance.
The latest is that in England and Wales there are just under 1.5 million dwellings (ie habitations) with solar panels. Scotland adds another 130k or just under 10%.
In terms of % of households, that is around 4-5%.
To be more useful, there are around 27 million dwellings in EW (so ~29 million with Scotland). Approx 18-20% are flats. And some of the rest will be less suitable for various orientation or environmental or policy reasons.
So there's a *lot* of potential, I'd say to get up to 5-7x the current installed amount without having to go last low hanging fruit.
https://www.sunsave.energy/solar-panels-advice/solar-energy/statistics
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/housinginenglandandwales/2021comparedwith2011
Gunge & Hot tubs.
I knew a man who was responsible for running the jacuzzi at a YMCA ("Fun to be at the ..."), and after reports of what was in it (eg clogging up the drain), I'm never going near one.
Solar Export
On exporting solar energy - there are now a wide range of export tariffs available. I keep it simple and am on a Fixed Tariff from Octopus which pays me 15p per unit. For highest rates you can get ones which pay 25+p per unit, with a high rate in say the 4pm to 7pm window, and a lower rate the rest of the time.
You can also get export rates related to wholesale prices. I was on one of those for a year to test, but the 15p fixed is better on average and simpler for me. Octopus has a whole family of these tariffs, as do others.
You can arbitrage it (import to a battery then export at a time of high export prices), and you probably can automate it, but it's not worth the aggro for me.
Racial tensions can be temporary, such as when a large number of West Indians came and cultural grating, occured, particularly with youths.
However there was enough common culture (and goodwill) to enable integration within a generation or two.
However, when there is no cultural commonality, and a strong religious culture of a different religion which is all encompasing and frowns on marriage to outsiders, you end up with segregation.
What we are now seeing is a Falls and Bogside in many mainland cities and the working class native population reacting by starting to go all Shankhill/Riverside.
The celebration of those differences however can eventually get over the top and lead to woke, and I have a little sympathy with you on that front, but it doesn't annoy me like it annoys you.