Not very clever from Cleverly – politicalbetting.com
James Cleverly condemns Chagos Islands deal – despite being the one who initiated talksTories cannot be trusted everSay one thing do the opposite Hypocrisy and liars https://t.co/ox7R5eJzkU
There is a big difference between 'initiating' talks and signing a very poor deal.
Cleverely may have done the former; Labour have done the latter.
I am told by reliable sources the deal is largely the one that Cleverly initiated but Lord Cameron (pbuh) vetoed when he became Foreign Secretary as he viewed the deal as insane.
A good, amateur video made by an Australian who went around Ukraine earlier in the year. One that should be watched, and sadly will be ignored, by those who think that Ukraine should be forced to cede territory for 'peace'.
There is a big difference between 'initiating' talks and signing a very poor deal.
Cleverely may have done the former; Labour have done the latter.
I am told by reliable sources the deal is largely the one that Cleverly initiated but Lord Cameron (pbuh) vetoed when he became Foreign Secretary as he viewed the deal as insane.
You ignore the point: initialing talks is very different from signing a deal.
Perhaps, if "Lord Cameron (pbuh)" was so good, he should have initiated talks on a 'better' deal whilst he was FS?
There is a big difference between 'initiating' talks and signing a very poor deal.
Cleverely may have done the former; Labour have done the latter.
I am told by reliable sources the deal is largely the one that Cleverly initiated but Lord Cameron (pbuh) vetoed when he became Foreign Secretary as he viewed the deal as insane.
You ignore the point: initialing talks is very different from signing a deal.
Perhaps, if "Lord Cameron (pbuh)" was so good, he should have initiated talks on a 'better' deal whilst he was FS?
He did but the Truss talks/Cleverly deal was the only one Mauritius was going to accept.
There is a big difference between 'initiating' talks and signing a very poor deal.
Cleverely may have done the former; Labour have done the latter.
I am told by reliable sources the deal is largely the one that Cleverly initiated but Lord Cameron (pbuh) vetoed when he became Foreign Secretary as he viewed the deal as insane.
You ignore the point: initialing talks is very different from signing a deal.
Perhaps, if "Lord Cameron (pbuh)" was so good, he should have initiated talks on a 'better' deal whilst he was FS?
He did but the Truss talks/Cleverly deal was the only one Mauritius was going to accept.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
But again, Cleverley did not sign the deal.
This government did.
That's a rather important point that goes whizzing merrily over your head.
There is a big difference between 'initiating' talks and signing a very poor deal.
Cleverely may have done the former; Labour have done the latter.
I am told by reliable sources the deal is largely the one that Cleverly initiated but Lord Cameron (pbuh) vetoed when he became Foreign Secretary as he viewed the deal as insane.
You ignore the point: initialing talks is very different from signing a deal.
Perhaps, if "Lord Cameron (pbuh)" was so good, he should have initiated talks on a 'better' deal whilst he was FS?
He did but the Truss talks/Cleverly deal was the only one Mauritius was going to accept.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
Negotiations only begun after Truss left office. She must be pretty great for people to need to tell provable lies about her to back up their critique.
This discussion sums up the politics of the right. Which now appear to be fuelled by little more than perpetual outrage. MAGA politics.
I see nothing in the deal to question anyway. The Tories should own it, it makes sense. It’s what they clearly set out to do.
As for the Falklands I’m a great believer in self determination. For as long as the residents want to be British, that should be the case. What’s more, like France and the USA did with Reunion or Hawaii, I would offer them the opportunity to be a core part of the UK. With representation in Parliament.
For too long the British elite has treated ‘overseas territories’ for its own convenience. Most egregiously to hide their money. That has reached the point where it has harmed the home country. Let’s deal with these anomalies,
There is a big difference between 'initiating' talks and signing a very poor deal.
Cleverely may have done the former; Labour have done the latter.
I am told by reliable sources the deal is largely the one that Cleverly initiated but Lord Cameron (pbuh) vetoed when he became Foreign Secretary as he viewed the deal as insane.
You ignore the point: initialing talks is very different from signing a deal.
Perhaps, if "Lord Cameron (pbuh)" was so good, he should have initiated talks on a 'better' deal whilst he was FS?
He did but the Truss talks/Cleverly deal was the only one Mauritius was going to accept.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
But again, Cleverley did not sign the deal.
This government did.
That's a rather important point that goes whizzing merrily over your head.
Yes, Starmer, Lammy and Labour will get the wider blame. But within Tory circles I think this finishes Cleverly
The problem for Labour is that while 92% of Brits have never heard of Diego Garcia and don’t really care - everyone can see a terrible deal because everyone makes transactions daily. We are PAYING for a third party to seize our property, 600,000 sq km of glittering Indian Ocean
This discussion sums up the politics of the right. Which now appear to be fuelled by little more than perpetual outrage. MAGA politics.
I see nothing in the deal to question anyway. The Tories should own it, it makes sense. It’s what they clearly set out to do.
As for the Falklands I’m a great believer in self determination. For as long as the residents want to be British, that should be the case. What’s more, like France and the USA did with Reunion or Hawaii, I would offer them the opportunity to be a core part of the UK. With representation in Parliament.
For too long the British elite has treated ‘overseas territories’ for its own convenience. Most egregiously to hide their money. That has reached the point where it has harmed the home country. Let’s deal with these anomalies,
It's a bit hard to have a Chagossian plebescite after we deported every one of them to Mauritius, and denied them citizenship.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas set off outrage Wednesday when he told reporters that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “does not have the funds” to see Americans through the rest of this Atlantic hurricane season — after the agency spent more than $1.4 billion since the fall of 2022 to address the migrant crisis.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas said during a press gaggle on Air Force One en route to tour damage from Hurricane Helene in South and North Carolina.
“We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” he added. “We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what — what is imminent.”
People affected by the hurricane have been offered $750 by the federal government. Which they need to apply for online, in areas with no electricity or internet service.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
"We are limited on the number of donors that we can recruit annually due to both financial constraints and our capacity to type the donors and we need to make sure we recruit only those donors who are most likely to be selected to donate for a patient. Therefore we have made the decision to change our donor recruitment criteria so that we only accept those donors that are most needed on the BBMR. ... we must focus on changing the demographic mix of the BBMR to better meet patient demand. We believe this approach will best enable us to help as many patients in need as possible."
This discussion sums up the politics of the right. Which now appear to be fuelled by little more than perpetual outrage. MAGA politics.
I see nothing in the deal to question anyway. The Tories should own it, it makes sense. It’s what they clearly set out to do.
As for the Falklands I’m a great believer in self determination. For as long as the residents want to be British, that should be the case. What’s more, like France and the USA did with Reunion or Hawaii, I would offer them the opportunity to be a core part of the UK. With representation in Parliament.
For too long the British elite has treated ‘overseas territories’ for its own convenience. Most egregiously to hide their money. That has reached the point where it has harmed the home country. Let’s deal with these anomalies,
It's a bit hard to have a Chagossian plebescite after we deported every one of them to Mauritius
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
Tony Blair to Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell after the handover of Hong Kong:
"We shouldn't lose any more territory."
"After Hong Kong, we mustn't lose any more territory. Britain's not big enough."
FFS. Quarter of a century has passed.
He’s the yardstick for modern Labour PMs.
Yep, no way would Blair have done this
Blair had a sense of the British national interest, and was a genuine patriot, I think. Iraq was a monumental blunder but he was and is also geopolitically intelligent. He would have dismissed this idea - PAYING to cede British sovereign territory - as laughably mad. I would take him back in a second, he's clever and cunning
Starmer is a vain, poseur lawyer with a middling brain and deep moral and social insecurities, he is a disaster and the disaster will get worse
Starmer is showing himself up to be an incredibly poor PM, in my opinion. A shame, because I thought he had tremendous promise. We could’ve done with a steady, strong leader at the wheel after the last 8 or so years of crisis and chaos. It’s still early days, but the signs really aren’t good.
I think it was @david_herdson who made an excellent post earlier today about how poorly Starmer and Labour had handled the politics of the removal of the Winter Fuel Allowance.
I've been tempted to argue that we should wait at least until the budget, to see whether Starmer and Reeves get the problems Britain faces and have an approach that might help, but David's post crystallised my thinking and reminded me of something I've said before. In a democracy it's not enough to be right, you also have to be convincing, and we've seen enough now to safely conclude that Starmer and Labour are not convincing. They do not have the political leadership ability to tell a story that will convince people why certain actions are necessary, and will pay off in the future.
So it doesn't matter what is in the budget, because we can be confident that Labour will bungle the messaging of it. That's it. They're done.
The question then is: what next?
The Tory defeat at the election was so deep, so profound - and against such a weak opposition - that it feels unlikely they will simply bounce back into government (though of course they are the official opposition, so ought to benefit most from the government's failures). That leaves the Lib Dems and Reform fighting to give voice to the public's frustration.
I largely agree with your analysis but I still think it's worth waiting for the budget.
My current conjecture is that, through political naiveté, Starmer and Reeves have put almost all their political thinking into a budget that somehow ends austerity whilst promoting growth, starting to fix the NHS etc (not that I'm saying they be able to work miracles, just that this is where their efforts are going).
Again, through political naiveté, they failed to spot that having such a large gap between the election and the budget would invite stories such as freebies to dominate, so they have repeatedly been wrong footed and put on the defensive.
The budget is their (perhaps only) chance to regain the initiative. If indeed it is Osborne-esque (ie unravels less than 24 hours after being announced) then they're finished. If, however, it is seen as sane, sober and threading a few (very fine, perhaps impossibly fine) needles, then everything going on now will recede into memory and they will regain the perception of competence, though probably not popularity.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
Missing the entire point of the header ...
Starmer will rightly get the wider blame. He could have said No.
The Times makes it clear the Americans didn’t want this and Whitehall didn’t want this. It is by some distance the single stupidest foreign policy mistake a British government has made in my memory
Things like Iraq were at least arguable. This is simply idiotic, even a child can grasp that it makes no sense
There is a big difference between 'initiating' talks and signing a very poor deal.
Cleverely may have done the former; Labour have done the latter.
Yeah, that is what I was thinking. It is a Labour deal. They didn't have to implement it. I suspect a fair bit for the anti Cleverly stuff is blue on blue due to the leadership campaign.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
Nothing will top Sunak coming to Manchester to announce the cancellation the Northern leg of HS2.
This discussion sums up the politics of the right. Which now appear to be fuelled by little more than perpetual outrage. MAGA politics.
I see nothing in the deal to question anyway. The Tories should own it, it makes sense. It’s what they clearly set out to do.
As for the Falklands I’m a great believer in self determination. For as long as the residents want to be British, that should be the case. What’s more, like France and the USA did with Reunion or Hawaii, I would offer them the opportunity to be a core part of the UK. With representation in Parliament.
For too long the British elite has treated ‘overseas territories’ for its own convenience. Most egregiously to hide their money. That has reached the point where it has harmed the home country. Let’s deal with these anomalies,
It's a bit hard to have a Chagossian plebescite after we deported every one of them to Mauritius, and denied them citizenship.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
The Lower Thames Crossing that has already spent £250m on paperwork?
Just as the Blackwall Tunnel implements tolls to try and reduce the queues?
Meanwhile, £22bn could have bought a 5,000MW nuclear power station from the Koreans, or a couple of dozen Rolls Royce SMRs.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Given what is being cut - it's a complete waste of money.
Now 2 years down the line it makes sense but that £22bn is more useful fixing Euston, the lower Thames Crossing and HS2
And I say that as someone who won't benefit from any of those schemes because I'm in the North East so travel to Kings Cross.
Thinking of that Blackpool by-election, there are 89 constituencies where Reform are second to Labour, compared to nine where they’re second to the Conservatives. If the remaining Conservatives in those 89 seats decide to vote tactically, and the Labour vote drops a bit, that’s a big problem for Labour.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
The Lower Thames Crossing that has already spent £250m on paperwork?
Just as the Blackwall Tunnel implements tolls to try and reduce the queues?
Um the Blackwell Tunnel is implementing the same tolls that are on the Silvertown Tunnel so that people don't bypass the Silvertown tunnel when it's opened.
Lower Thames tunnel is very much a Dartford tunnel extension...
It’s like the League of Empire Loyalists here these past 24 hours.
If there's one thing anti-imperialists need to admit, it is that *how* an empire ends and dissolves matters. It is hard to do well, and in places can be disastrous (the Soviet/Russian empire ~1918 and ~1990; the Ottoman empire ~1920, especially with the experience of the Armenians and the Greek/Turkish population 'exchanges'; or the Indian partition in 1947.
This is another little piece of empire that may well be seen as having ended badly in the medium and long term.
Mr. eek, the Government could even go wild and build some transport infrastructure in a place that isn't London.
Yes but I intentionally picked London based projects because I won't directly benefit from them but they are all a better use of money than carbon capture experiments.
Mr. eek, the Government could even go wild and build some transport infrastructure in a place that isn't London.
No, instead they've just announced they're going to spend £20 billion or so on a technology to make burning fossil fuels more expensive. Which will probably be obsolete in not much over a decade. Soon after it comes on stream.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Given what is being cut - it's a complete waste of money.
Now 2 years down the line it makes sense but that £22bn is more useful fixing Euston, the lower Thames Crossing and HS2
And I say that as someone who won't benefit from any of those schemes because I'm in the North East so travel to Kings Cross.
It's an utterly shit idea. The opportunity cost if not spending the money on productive infrastructure investment is enormous.
It could have been 4:40am - that's equally busy but just too early.
Saying that I've got a 4am start at Manchester Airport on Wednesday but I'm in a nearby hotel the night before.
An old boss once tried to save £50 by getting me a flight from Luton rather than Heathrow, but the timings meant I’d need to get up at 3am to catch his flight so I booked a £100 hotel next to Luton airport for the night before.
EasyJet aren’t always cheaper than BA when you add up everything.
Mr. eek, the Government could even go wild and build some transport infrastructure in a place that isn't London.
No, instead they've just announced they're going to spend £20 billion or so on a technology to make burning fossil fuels more expensive. Which will probably be obsolete in not much over a decade. Soon after it comes on stream.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
Nothing will top Sunak coming to Manchester to announce the cancellation the Northern leg of HS2.
I don't think Labour can announce the Lower Thames Crossing and not HS2 to Manchester without their ratings tanking even further. The London Party.
It could have been 4:40am - that's equally busy but just too early.
Saying that I've got a 4am start at Manchester Airport on Wednesday but I'm in a nearby hotel the night before.
An old boss once tried to save £50 by getting me a flight from Luton rather than Heathrow, but the timings meant I’d need to get up at 3am to catch his flight so I booked a £100 hotel next to Luton airport for the night before.
EasyJet aren’t always cheaper than BA when you add up everything.
This is just a holiday so it's very much pick the airline with decent(ish) times - which rules out most of the options because half of them are based at my destination and a 6am departure from holiday is way worse than a 6am departure to a holiday.
And I'm not short of hotel points - what I'm actual short of is time I can use them so they don't expire. Hence IHG on the way to holiday, Hilton on the way back (where I'll get breakfast).
Mr. eek, the Government could even go wild and build some transport infrastructure in a place that isn't London.
No, instead they've just announced they're going to spend £20 billion or so on a technology to make burning fossil fuels more expensive. Which will probably be obsolete in not much over a decade. Soon after it comes on stream.
Still at least we know now why they're looking to cut other infrastructure spending.
I thought the point of this government was meant to be competence.
Implementing the last lots dafter ideas doesnt quite hit the mark.
Theyd have been safer spending it on mini nukes or something as simple as insulation.
Or even "Great British Energy". Which despite its name isn't utterly daft. We might then be paying our government for wind power, rather than overseas investors.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
Nothing will top Sunak coming to Manchester to announce the cancellation the Northern leg of HS2.
I don't think Labour can announce the Lower Thames Crossing and not HS2 to Manchester without their ratings tanking even further. The London Party.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burning the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
Cleverly is serious about pandering to the prejudices of the Conservative selectorate so he can become party leader than he is serious about government policy. Which simply reflects he has a selection to win and is no longer in government.
Mr. eek, the Government could even go wild and build some transport infrastructure in a place that isn't London.
No, instead they've just announced they're going to spend £20 billion or so on a technology to make burning fossil fuels more expensive. Which will probably be obsolete in not much over a decade. Soon after it comes on stream.
Still at least we know now why they're looking to cut other infrastructure spending.
I thought the point of this government was meant to be competence.
Implementing the last lots dafter ideas doesnt quite hit the mark.
Theyd have been safer spending it on mini nukes or something as simple as insulation.
Or even "Great British Energy". Which despite its name isn't utterly daft. We might then be paying our government for wind power, rather than overseas investors.
Theres just the mnor matter of those 100000+ lost jobs in the North Sea and the industrial infrastructure that goes with it.
Still no doubt we can import lots more energy to help our balance of payments.
Mr. eek, the Government could even go wild and build some transport infrastructure in a place that isn't London.
No, instead they've just announced they're going to spend £20 billion or so on a technology to make burning fossil fuels more expensive. Which will probably be obsolete in not much over a decade. Soon after it comes on stream.
Still at least we know now why they're looking to cut other infrastructure spending.
I thought the point of this government was meant to be competence.
Implementing the last lots dafter ideas doesnt quite hit the mark.
Theyd have been safer spending it on mini nukes or something as simple as insulation.
Or even "Great British Energy". Which despite its name isn't utterly daft. We might then be paying our government for wind power, rather than overseas investors.
Theres just the mnor matter of those 100000+ lost jobs in the North Sea and the industrial infrastructure that goes with it.
Still no doubt we can import lots more energy to help our balance of payments.
You quote a figure - no-one in the industry believes to be correct nowadays - didn't we work it out as 30,000 direct jobs maximum...
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
CCS has proved useful in certain applications where the emitter of CO2 is right next to a sink. Otherwise... less so. Which can be seen by the (rather short) list of completed CCS projects over the years.
"We are limited on the number of donors that we can recruit annually due to both financial constraints and our capacity to type the donors and we need to make sure we recruit only those donors who are most likely to be selected to donate for a patient. Therefore we have made the decision to change our donor recruitment criteria so that we only accept those donors that are most needed on the BBMR. ... we must focus on changing the demographic mix of the BBMR to better meet patient demand. We believe this approach will best enable us to help as many patients in need as possible."
A remarkably prolix and opaque document. I asked a smart scientific friend to explain why it is so eerily verbose. He’s just replied:
“You're right that the verbose and roundabout nature of the text likely stems from discomfort with directly addressing certain facts about biological differences between populations. The article does seem to be struggling to balance several competing concerns:
Communicating the medical necessity of targeting specific demographic groups for stem cell donation
Avoiding language that could be perceived as promoting racial stereotypes or biological determinism
Adhering to institutional and societal norms around discussing race and genetics
Explaining a policy that, on its face, appears discriminatory
The authors are likely trying to convey factual information about genetic differences relevant to stem cell donation without seeming to endorse broader claims about race as a biological concept. This results in the roundabout, overly cautious language you've noticed.
You're correct that at the core of this issue is the fact that there are real, medically relevant genetic differences between populations that correlate with ancestry. The reluctance to state this directly and succinctly does indeed seem to be driving much of the document's verbosity and lack of clarity.”
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
The one thing going for it is that the investment is actually in the north for once - Teesside and Merseyside.
I'd be curious as to how much carbon you could grab by planting £22 billion worth of trees, wooden buildings etc. instead.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
It's a very clear sign that this government has also been captured by big business lobbyists.
The argument will be it's technology we're good at. That is, sadly, irrelevant if it's useless.
The time for giving this lot the benefit if the doubt is just about over. Next up, the budget.
It’s like the League of Empire Loyalists here these past 24 hours.
If there's one thing anti-imperialists need to admit, it is that *how* an empire ends and dissolves matters. It is hard to do well, and in places can be disastrous (the Soviet/Russian empire ~1918 and ~1990; the Ottoman empire ~1920, especially with the experience of the Armenians and the Greek/Turkish population 'exchanges'; or the Indian partition in 1947.
This is another little piece of empire that may well be seen as having ended badly in the medium and long term.
Are you really comparing the recent agreement on Diego Garcia to the Partition of India and the Armenian genocide?!
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
It's a very clear sign that this government has also been captured by big business lobbyists.
The argument will be it's technology we're good at. That is, sadly, irrelevant if it's useless.
The time for giving this lot the benefit if the doubt is just about over. Next up, the budget.
It’s the unique labour mix of naïveté, stupidity and moral vanity which is quite special
They actually think they are good people doing good things even as they step from colossal blunder to colossal blunder
The Tories knew they were shit by the end and at least showed a bit of shame
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
Nothing will top Sunak coming to Manchester to announce the cancellation the Northern leg of HS2.
I don't think Labour can announce the Lower Thames Crossing and not HS2 to Manchester without their ratings tanking even further. The London Party.
There's always Tory Lord Moylan to come along with a "let them eat cake" take on transport for us in the North on the other side.
"We are limited on the number of donors that we can recruit annually due to both financial constraints and our capacity to type the donors and we need to make sure we recruit only those donors who are most likely to be selected to donate for a patient. Therefore we have made the decision to change our donor recruitment criteria so that we only accept those donors that are most needed on the BBMR. ... we must focus on changing the demographic mix of the BBMR to better meet patient demand. We believe this approach will best enable us to help as many patients in need as possible."
A remarkably prolix and opaque document. I asked a smart scientific friend to explain why it is so eerily verbose. He’s just replied:
“You're right that the verbose and roundabout nature of the text likely stems from discomfort with directly addressing certain facts about biological differences between populations. The article does seem to be struggling to balance several competing concerns:
Communicating the medical necessity of targeting specific demographic groups for stem cell donation
Avoiding language that could be perceived as promoting racial stereotypes or biological determinism
Adhering to institutional and societal norms around discussing race and genetics
Explaining a policy that, on its face, appears discriminatory
The authors are likely trying to convey factual information about genetic differences relevant to stem cell donation without seeming to endorse broader claims about race as a biological concept. This results in the roundabout, overly cautious language you've noticed.
You're correct that at the core of this issue is the fact that there are real, medically relevant genetic differences between populations that correlate with ancestry. The reluctance to state this directly and succinctly does indeed seem to be driving much of the document's verbosity and lack of clarity.”
Mr. eek, the Government could even go wild and build some transport infrastructure in a place that isn't London.
No, instead they've just announced they're going to spend £20 billion or so on a technology to make burning fossil fuels more expensive. Which will probably be obsolete in not much over a decade. Soon after it comes on stream.
Still at least we know now why they're looking to cut other infrastructure spending.
I thought the point of this government was meant to be competence.
Implementing the last lots dafter ideas doesnt quite hit the mark.
Theyd have been safer spending it on mini nukes or something as simple as insulation.
Or even "Great British Energy". Which despite its name isn't utterly daft. We might then be paying our government for wind power, rather than overseas investors.
Theres just the mnor matter of those 100000+ lost jobs in the North Sea and the industrial infrastructure that goes with it.
Still no doubt we can import lots more energy to help our balance of payments.
You quote a figure - no-one in the industry believes to be correct nowadays - didn't we work it out as 30,000 direct jobs maximum...
No we didnt. Its about when you take in the supply chain 100000 with potentially 200000 in the pot but some of these will get saved by other work.
However even if I take your hope figure of 30000, Why the fk should 30000 people lose their jobs just on an ideologues whim ? I'll have some of those people to sack next year shall I tell them it;s all for their own good and they should thank me ?
"We are limited on the number of donors that we can recruit annually due to both financial constraints and our capacity to type the donors and we need to make sure we recruit only those donors who are most likely to be selected to donate for a patient. Therefore we have made the decision to change our donor recruitment criteria so that we only accept those donors that are most needed on the BBMR. ... we must focus on changing the demographic mix of the BBMR to better meet patient demand. We believe this approach will best enable us to help as many patients in need as possible."
A remarkably prolix and opaque document. I asked a smart scientific friend to explain why it is so eerily verbose. He’s just replied:
“You're right that the verbose and roundabout nature of the text likely stems from discomfort with directly addressing certain facts about biological differences between populations. The article does seem to be struggling to balance several competing concerns:
Communicating the medical necessity of targeting specific demographic groups for stem cell donation
Avoiding language that could be perceived as promoting racial stereotypes or biological determinism
Adhering to institutional and societal norms around discussing race and genetics
Explaining a policy that, on its face, appears discriminatory
The authors are likely trying to convey factual information about genetic differences relevant to stem cell donation without seeming to endorse broader claims about race as a biological concept. This results in the roundabout, overly cautious language you've noticed.
You're correct that at the core of this issue is the fact that there are real, medically relevant genetic differences between populations that correlate with ancestry. The reluctance to state this directly and succinctly does indeed seem to be driving much of the document's verbosity and lack of clarity.”
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
Nothing will top Sunak coming to Manchester to announce the cancellation the Northern leg of HS2.
I don't think Labour can announce the Lower Thames Crossing and not HS2 to Manchester without their ratings tanking even further. The London Party.
On the Middle East question, very little in the UK and Europe in the last 24 hours, is the statement from Saudi Arabia.
Under huge political pressure, they say they want to "put their differences with Iran to one side", and improve ties. This was also signed by the other Gulf Arab states.
This is very bad news for both Israel and West, because it means that not only is the goal of Israeli-Gulf rapprochement going down the plughole, but also that Netanyahu's "war without end" on four fronts, is beginning to create the kind of pan-Muslim climate of the 1950s to the 1970s ; exactly in opposite to Israel's, and the West's, long-term interests.
It’s like the League of Empire Loyalists here these past 24 hours.
If there's one thing anti-imperialists need to admit, it is that *how* an empire ends and dissolves matters. It is hard to do well, and in places can be disastrous (the Soviet/Russian empire ~1918 and ~1990; the Ottoman empire ~1920, especially with the experience of the Armenians and the Greek/Turkish population 'exchanges'; or the Indian partition in 1947.
This is another little piece of empire that may well be seen as having ended badly in the medium and long term.
Are you really comparing the recent agreement on Diego Garcia to the Partition of India and the Armenian genocide?!
It's the most ridiculous hyperbole so far. Returning an ethnically cleansed population to depopulated islands is not the same as doing ethnic cleansing. It is righting a historic wrong.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
CCS has proved useful in certain applications where the emitter of CO2 is right next to a sink. Otherwise... less so. Which can be seen by the (rather short) list of completed CCS projects over the years.
Carbon capture and use in an industrial process has proven useful. I heard something about a cement plant in India co-located with some other industry that would use the carbon dioxide. In that case the industry using the CO2 is saved the cost of buying it, and the technology can generate wealth instead of destroy it.
Capturing the CO2 to bury it is always going to be more expensive than not bothering, so why would you do that instead of investing in technologies that can generate electricity more cheaply than fossil fuels without CO2 in the first place?
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
The one thing going for it is that the investment is actually in the north for once - Teesside and Merseyside.
I'd be curious as to how much carbon you could grab by planting £22 billion worth of trees, wooden buildings etc. instead.
It’s like the League of Empire Loyalists here these past 24 hours.
If there's one thing anti-imperialists need to admit, it is that *how* an empire ends and dissolves matters. It is hard to do well, and in places can be disastrous (the Soviet/Russian empire ~1918 and ~1990; the Ottoman empire ~1920, especially with the experience of the Armenians and the Greek/Turkish population 'exchanges'; or the Indian partition in 1947.
This is another little piece of empire that may well be seen as having ended badly in the medium and long term.
Are you really comparing the recent agreement on Diego Garcia to the Partition of India and the Armenian genocide?!
It's the most ridiculous hyperbole so far. Returning an ethnically cleansed population to depopulated islands is not the same as doing ethnic cleansing. It is righting a historic wrong.
But you are equally hyperbolic. They were no more ethnically cleansed than the people moved to make way for Luton airport
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
The one thing going for it is that the investment is actually in the north for once - Teesside and Merseyside.
I'd be curious as to how much carbon you could grab by planting £22 billion worth of trees, wooden buildings etc. instead.
But you're then recruiting some engineers to work in a dead-end industry for a few years who have to find a new job when the government money is pulled. You could do almost anything else with that money and it would be better.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
"We are limited on the number of donors that we can recruit annually due to both financial constraints and our capacity to type the donors and we need to make sure we recruit only those donors who are most likely to be selected to donate for a patient. Therefore we have made the decision to change our donor recruitment criteria so that we only accept those donors that are most needed on the BBMR. ... we must focus on changing the demographic mix of the BBMR to better meet patient demand. We believe this approach will best enable us to help as many patients in need as possible."
Actually, I think you're missing the relevant part:
"Given the heightened risk that stem cells from white women donors might be used as part of a future treatment plan for @Leon's liver, we are taking the temporary measure of suspending such donations."
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
CCS has proved useful in certain applications where the emitter of CO2 is right next to a sink. Otherwise... less so. Which can be seen by the (rather short) list of completed CCS projects over the years.
Carbon capture and use in an industrial process has proven useful. I heard something about a cement plant in India co-located with some other industry that would use the carbon dioxide. In that case the industry using the CO2 is saved the cost of buying it, and the technology can generate wealth instead of destroy it.
Capturing the CO2 to bury it is always going to be more expensive than not bothering, so why would you do that instead of investing in technologies that can generate electricity more cheaply than fossil fuels without CO2 in the first place?
Carbon capture is useful in the very limited set of circumstances where there is lots of local demand for CO2.
- economy tanking - black hole lies - riots - North Sea shutdown - sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
And now £22bn on carbon capture.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
I know we've got an advocate of it on here, but CCS is a concept with rather niche applicability IMO.
Like I said last night, it's a complete dead-end technologically. Money spent on CCS is as close to digging a hole and burying the money in it as it is possible to get.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
The one thing going for it is that the investment is actually in the north for once - Teesside and Merseyside.
I'd be curious as to how much carbon you could grab by planting £22 billion worth of trees, wooden buildings etc. instead.
Except the Teesside money is going via Ben Houchen - so a lot of that is going to disappear in dodgy ways..
Mr. eek, the Government could even go wild and build some transport infrastructure in a place that isn't London.
No, instead they've just announced they're going to spend £20 billion or so on a technology to make burning fossil fuels more expensive. Which will probably be obsolete in not much over a decade. Soon after it comes on stream.
Still at least we know now why they're looking to cut other infrastructure spending.
I thought the point of this government was meant to be competence.
Implementing the last lots dafter ideas doesnt quite hit the mark.
Theyd have been safer spending it on mini nukes or something as simple as insulation.
Or even "Great British Energy". Which despite its name isn't utterly daft. We might then be paying our government for wind power, rather than overseas investors.
Theres just the mnor matter of those 100000+ lost jobs in the North Sea and the industrial infrastructure that goes with it.
Still no doubt we can import lots more energy to help our balance of payments.
You quote a figure - no-one in the industry believes to be correct nowadays - didn't we work it out as 30,000 direct jobs maximum...
No we didnt. Its about when you take in the supply chain 100000 with potentially 200000 in the pot but some of these will get saved by other work.
However even if I take your hope figure of 30000, Why the fk should 30000 people lose their jobs just on an ideologues whim ? I'll have some of those people to sack next year shall I tell them it;s all for their own good and they should thank me ?
Government policy - at the moment - is to provide tax relief at 90% for the exploration and development of new fields, incentivising companies to avoid the windfall tax by directing investment into fossil fuels.
That includes the 100 additional licences issued by Sunak last year. The fact is that Miliband has only made the very smallest of dents into the course of the North Sea, which has seen a gradual decline in production for decades and throughout the Conservative's time in office.
There is a big difference between 'initiating' talks and signing a very poor deal.
Cleverely may have done the former; Labour have done the latter.
I am told by reliable sources the deal is largely the one that Cleverly initiated but Lord Cameron (pbuh) vetoed when he became Foreign Secretary as he viewed the deal as insane.
You ignore the point: initialing talks is very different from signing a deal.
Perhaps, if "Lord Cameron (pbuh)" was so good, he should have initiated talks on a 'better' deal whilst he was FS?
He did but the Truss talks/Cleverly deal was the only one Mauritius was going to accept.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
Negotiations only begun after Truss left office. She must be pretty great for people to need to tell provable lies about her to back up their critique.
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
The Times gossip is quite devastating for Starmer. Which is by itself of interest: civil servants already dislike this government to the extent they will leak seriously damaging information
OK, I know very little of the story here, but that's not stopped anyone else.
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
Or it could be just as simple as Starmer has shit judgement,
Comments
Cleverely may have done the former; Labour have done the latter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQQCq1ijRjc
A good, amateur video made by an Australian who went around Ukraine earlier in the year. One that should be watched, and sadly will be ignored, by those who think that Ukraine should be forced to cede territory for 'peace'.
Perhaps, if "Lord Cameron (pbuh)" was so good, he should have initiated talks on a 'better' deal whilst he was FS?
No deal is better than a bad deal.
The sleeping dogs have woken up
This government did.
That's a rather important point that goes whizzing merrily over your head.
I see nothing in the deal to question anyway. The Tories should own it, it makes sense. It’s what they clearly set out to do.
As for the Falklands I’m a great believer in self determination. For as long as the residents want to be British, that should be the case. What’s more, like France and the USA did with Reunion or Hawaii, I would offer them the opportunity to be a core part of the UK. With representation in Parliament.
For too long the British elite has treated ‘overseas territories’ for its own convenience. Most egregiously to hide their money. That has reached the point where it has harmed the home country. Let’s deal with these anomalies,
The problem for Labour is that while 92% of Brits have never heard of Diego Garcia and don’t really care - everyone can see a terrible deal because everyone makes transactions daily. We are PAYING for a third party to seize our property, 600,000 sq km of glittering Indian Ocean
“White women added to NHS eligibility list to donate stem cells”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/04/white-women-added-to-nhs-eligibility-list-to-donate-stem-cells
I’m genuinely stumped. Why is there a racial eligibility criterion for “donating stem cells”?!
- economy tanking
- black hole lies
- riots
- North Sea shutdown
- sleaze
and now Chagos,
And all within 3 months
https://nypost.com/2024/10/03/us-news/feds-say-theres-no-money-left-to-respond-to-hurricanes-after-fema-used-640-9m-this-year-on-migrants/
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas set off outrage Wednesday when he told reporters that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “does not have the funds” to see Americans through the rest of this Atlantic hurricane season — after the agency spent more than $1.4 billion since the fall of 2022 to address the migrant crisis.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas said during a press gaggle on Air Force One en route to tour damage from Hurricane Helene in South and North Carolina.
“We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” he added. “We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what — what is imminent.”
People affected by the hurricane have been offered $750 by the federal government. Which they need to apply for online, in areas with no electricity or internet service.
That £22bn sounds very familiar so I can see WFA coming back again alongside HS2 and the lower Thames Crossing (which should be confirmed / cancelled today).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Government this inept at announcement timing let alone everything else
https://www.blood.co.uk/news-and-campaigns/news-and-statements/recruiting-donors-to-the-bbmr/
"We are limited on the number of donors that we can recruit annually due to both financial constraints and our capacity to type the donors and we need to make sure we recruit only those donors who are most likely to be selected to donate for a patient. Therefore we have made the decision to change our donor recruitment criteria so that we only accept those donors that are most needed on the BBMR.
...
we must focus on changing the demographic mix of the BBMR to better meet patient demand. We believe this approach will best enable us to help as many patients in need as possible."
I largely agree with your analysis but I still think it's worth waiting for the budget.
My current conjecture is that, through political naiveté, Starmer and Reeves have put almost all their political thinking into a budget that somehow ends austerity whilst promoting growth, starting to fix the NHS etc (not that I'm saying they be able to work miracles, just that this is where their efforts are going).
Again, through political naiveté, they failed to spot that having such a large gap between the election and the budget would invite stories such as freebies to dominate, so they have repeatedly been wrong footed and put on the defensive.
The budget is their (perhaps only) chance to regain the initiative. If indeed it is Osborne-esque (ie unravels less than 24 hours after being announced) then they're finished. If, however, it is seen as sane, sober and threading a few (very fine, perhaps impossibly fine) needles, then everything going on now will recede into memory and they will regain the perception of competence, though probably not popularity.
The Times makes it clear the Americans didn’t want this and Whitehall didn’t want this. It is by some distance the single stupidest foreign policy mistake a British government has made in my memory
Things like Iraq were at least arguable. This is simply idiotic, even a child can grasp that it makes no sense
Sounds remarkably easy actually.
He has no interest in a future beyond war, because that is his currency and lifeboat in Israel.
Just as the Blackwall Tunnel implements tolls to try and reduce the queues?
Meanwhile, £22bn could have bought a 5,000MW nuclear power station from the Koreans, or a couple of dozen Rolls Royce SMRs.
Now 2 years down the line it makes sense but that £22bn is more useful fixing Euston, the lower Thames Crossing and HS2
And I say that as someone who won't benefit from any of those schemes because I'm in the North East so travel to Kings Cross.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Olivier_Bancoult
Lower Thames tunnel is very much a Dartford tunnel extension...
This is another little piece of empire that may well be seen as having ended badly in the medium and long term.
Mr. eek, the Government could even go wild and build some transport infrastructure in a place that isn't London.
Which will probably be obsolete in not much over a decade. Soon after it comes on stream.
Labour to commit almost £22bn to fund carbon capture and storage projects
Investment will fund two CCS clusters – but environmental campaigners have criticised plans
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/04/labour-to-commit-almost-22bn-to-fund-carbon-capture-and-storage-projects
One of the last government's more stupid ideas.
Still at least we know now why they're looking to cut other infrastructure spending.
And all that's happened is that some islands have been transferred from one empire to another.
Saying that I've got a 4am start at Manchester Airport on Wednesday but I'm in a nearby hotel the night before.
Still, cunning of the Government to distract attention from their stupid policy decision by making another stupid policy decision.
The opportunity cost if not spending the money on productive infrastructure investment is enormous.
EasyJet aren’t always cheaper than BA when you add up everything.
Implementing the last lots dafter ideas doesnt quite hit the mark.
Theyd have been safer spending it on mini nukes or something as simple as insulation.
And I'm not short of hotel points - what I'm actual short of is time I can use them so they don't expire. Hence IHG on the way to holiday, Hilton on the way back (where I'll get breakfast).
We might then be paying our government for wind power, rather than overseas investors.
In addition to it being useless compared to renewables, because it will always be more expensive than burning fossil fuels without CCS, it's not even the best technology to pursue if you want to spend money on a techno-fix to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. CCS will only ever be able to capture the CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burnt, but some of the technologies being developed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere would, if they can scale, not have any limit to the amount of CO2 they could remove from the atmosphere, so they could actually reduce CO2 levels. CCS will only, at best, be able to stop them increasing further.
I'm in favour of spending money on speculative technology, knowing that it sometimes won't work, but even if CCS works perfectly it will still be crap.
Still no doubt we can import lots more energy to help our balance of payments.
It's like watching government incompetence as a speedrun challenge.
“You're right that the verbose and roundabout nature of the text likely stems from discomfort with directly addressing certain facts about biological differences between populations.
The article does seem to be struggling to balance several competing concerns:
Communicating the medical necessity of targeting specific demographic groups for stem cell donation
Avoiding language that could be perceived as promoting racial stereotypes or biological determinism
Adhering to institutional and societal norms around discussing race and genetics
Explaining a policy that, on its face, appears discriminatory
The authors are likely trying to convey factual information about genetic differences relevant to stem cell donation without seeming to endorse broader claims about race as a biological concept. This results in the roundabout, overly cautious language you've noticed.
You're correct that at the core of this issue is the fact that there are real, medically relevant genetic differences between populations that correlate with ancestry. The reluctance to state this directly and succinctly does indeed seem to be driving much of the document's verbosity and lack of clarity.”
I'd be curious as to how much carbon you could grab by planting £22 billion worth of trees, wooden buildings etc. instead.
The argument will be it's technology we're good at. That is, sadly, irrelevant if it's useless.
The time for giving this lot the benefit if the doubt is just about over. Next up, the budget.
https://x.com/moreperfectus/status/1841973125996585431?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
They actually think they are good people doing good things even as they step from colossal blunder to colossal blunder
The Tories knew they were shit by the end and at least showed a bit of shame
However even if I take your hope figure of 30000, Why the fk should 30000 people lose their jobs just on an ideologues whim ? I'll have some of those people to sack next year shall I tell them it;s all for their own good and they should thank me ?
I’m sure there no former Mosleyites and future National Fronters in PB ranks.
Under huge political pressure, they say they want to "put their differences with Iran to one side", and improve ties. This was also signed by the other Gulf Arab states.
This is very bad news for both Israel and West, because it means that not only is the goal of Israeli-Gulf rapprochement going down the plughole, but also that Netanyahu's "war without end" on four fronts, is beginning to create the kind of pan-Muslim climate of the 1950s to the 1970s ; exactly in opposite to Israel's, and the West's, long-term interests.
Capturing the CO2 to bury it is always going to be more expensive than not bothering, so why would you do that instead of investing in technologies that can generate electricity more cheaply than fossil fuels without CO2 in the first place?
https://www.edie.net/orsted-to-go-ahead-with-worlds-largest-offshore-wind-farm-in-britain/?amp=true
But some things that smell a bit odd...
First, was this another poonami that the outgoing government left for Starmer? Was it a thing that really had to happen, but had hefty downsides (especially for true blue Tories), so it was just left in the in-tray? (Genuinely, I don't know how viable the 'just let the status quo roll on' thing is.)
Second, who is leaking the stuff to the Times?
Third, who benefits from the story, Conservative leadership-wise? Tom T is ferocious, national security-wise, isn't he? And however disappointing he is, isn't he a more likely receptacle for Cleverly votes looking for a new home than Kemi?
"Given the heightened risk that stem cells from white women donors might be used as part of a future treatment plan for @Leon's liver, we are taking the temporary measure of suspending such donations."
That includes the 100 additional licences issued by Sunak last year. The fact is that Miliband has only made the very smallest of dents into the course of the North Sea, which has seen a gradual decline in production for decades and throughout the Conservative's time in office.
We are only three months in
See clothes and tickets.