This week’s political agreement is subject to a treaty and supporting legal instruments being finalised. Both sides have committed to complete this as quickly as possible.
Attention seeker demanding attention.
I should have been more clear. Could the outcome of the Gina Miller case mean that this deal needs primary legislation and could be blocked in the Lords?
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?!
I am pointing out that ending 'imperialism' can have very negative and long-lasting consequences. I think there are enough examples out there, including the ones I pointed out, to make that fairly unarguable.
That does not mean that imperialism should not end, especially if local populations want it; just that extreme care needs to be taken to ensure those negative consequences are minimised.
I don't think that this has been done here.
The whole place is going to be under water in 100 years time. Of course it will end badly.
No, it won't.
Th rate of sea level rise will be small, per actual year. Given the value of the base, it will be trivial to increase the height of atoll in the areas wanted. Indeed, this has already been done by the Americans on portions of the base, in the past.
See the wholesale construction/raising of islands by China.
The bit the Chagos islanders will live on - that's another matter. Why should the Mauritius bother? They will have the fishing rights.
That bit will sort itself out naturally. Coral atolls grow and shrink to match sealevel changes. They have to otherwise there wouldn't be any left.
If I had £22 billion to spend on carbon [sic] reduction, the first thing I would do is make sure every public building that wasn't Grade I listed was absolutely plastered with solar panels.
The next thing I would do is build some damn tidal stations, at last.
I might look at any schemes to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
I wouldn't spend a red cent on 'carbon capture.'
It's the present day equivalent of Thatcher deciding to pacify the miners and subsidise UK coalfields for the duration of her premiership.
If I'm honest - as somebody who's not a scientist - it looks more like the present day equivalent of massively funding research into perpetual motion machines.
With the storage side there are some real sticking points in the physics which the companies have had a lot of trouble trying to overcome. (Until last year I was involved in planning drilling wells for CCS projects for one of the oil companies involved).
Simple physics. When you are collecting and pumping the CO2 you put it under compression. When you then pump that CO2 down the hole and into the reservoir that pressure is rapidly diminished as the CO2 enters the reservoir. This results in an effect known as Joule-Thomson Cooling. This has a lot of effects, none of them good for the reservoir, but the most immediate is a phase change in the residual water around the well bore. This will block the pore spaces and reduce or prevent injection and also causes thermal stress due to ice formation which can damage the resrvoir around the injection well and reduce injection further or cause a breach of the top of the reservoir.
This has proved rather problematic in trying to get an efficient storage system in place.
Excellent, informed and interesting comment.
I've never forgotten the effect of expansion on CO2 ever since seeing the doctor generate a slug of the solid stuff to put on my ingrowing toe when I was a teenager. It cooled so much when being let out of the cylinder that some of it froze - not water ice but CO2 ice.
The most obvious example of this is CO2 fire extinguishers. It is why you should never hold the metal cone on them when using them. You can see the ice form around the cone end.
They're all plastic these days, for just that reason. Though you still shouldn't hold them.
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.
Albeit Israel did manage to defeat all its Muslim neighbours in the 1970s and 1950s yes Netanyahu has overreached when he should just have focused on defeating Hamas
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.
Albeit Israel did manage to defeat all its Muslim neighbours in the 1970s and 1950s yes Netanyahu has overreached when he should just have focused on defeating Hamas
However, this kind of dynamic would be a disaster for both Israel and the West in the long-term, though. The Israelis really only stabilised their geopolitical position in the 1970s by breaking off the Egyptians from the pan-Arab alliance, and doing a land-for-peace deal with them, for instance.
The Saudis and Gulf Arab states are now also taking about not allowing any overflights of the territory for any attack against Iran. It's going to take the West a long time to understand how damaging indulging Netanyahu's almost every whim has turned out to be.
From Biden and Harris' and Starmer's perspective Saudi not allowing Israeli bombers overflights to attack Iran is a good thing.
It is only Trump who really wants a war with Iran like Netanyahu
Interestingly US Dem Senator Chris Murphy suggested that Netanyahu is trying to get Trump elected and that’s why he’s refused any ceasefire in Gaza .
Putin and Netanyahu both want a Trump win. As Trump would effectively dump backing for Zelansky and push him to make a peace deal with Putin handing over much of Eastern Ukraine to Russia and then shift arms to Israel to support Netanyahu in a full on war with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran
If I had £22 billion to spend on carbon [sic] reduction, the first thing I would do is make sure every public building that wasn't Grade I listed was absolutely plastered with solar panels.
The next thing I would do is build some damn tidal stations, at last.
I might look at any schemes to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
I wouldn't spend a red cent on 'carbon capture.'
It's the present day equivalent of Thatcher deciding to pacify the miners and subsidise UK coalfields for the duration of her premiership.
If I'm honest - as somebody who's not a scientist - it looks more like the present day equivalent of massively funding research into perpetual motion machines.
With the storage side there are some real sticking points in the physics which the companies have had a lot of trouble trying to overcome. (Until last year I was involved in planning drilling wells for CCS projects for one of the oil companies involved).
Simple physics. When you are collecting and pumping the CO2 you put it under compression. When you then pump that CO2 down the hole and into the reservoir that pressure is rapidly diminished as the CO2 enters the reservoir. This results in an effect known as Joule-Thomson Cooling. This has a lot of effects, none of them good for the reservoir, but the most immediate is a phase change in the residual water around the well bore. This will block the pore spaces and reduce or prevent injection and also causes thermal stress due to ice formation which can damage the resrvoir around the injection well and reduce injection further or cause a breach of the top of the reservoir.
This has proved rather problematic in trying to get an efficient storage system in place.
Excellent, informed and interesting comment.
I've never forgotten the effect of expansion on CO2 ever since seeing the doctor generate a slug of the solid stuff to put on my ingrowing toe when I was a teenager. It cooled so much when being let out of the cylinder that some of it froze - not water ice but CO2 ice.
CO2 doesn't have a liquid phase at 1 atmosphere. So it goes straight from gas to solid and back. Which part of the reason that it is fun to play around with.
We are going to spunk £22 billion on carbon capture (largely untried), and that carbon capture is basically the CO2 emissions from gas power stations, separating CO2 and pumping it underground when the gas is burnt.
Wouldn't it therefore make economic sense and indeed environmental sense to get that gas from the north sea rather than shipping it from Qatar (or wherever) ?
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.
Albeit Israel did manage to defeat all its Muslim neighbours in the 1970s and 1950s yes Netanyahu has overreached when he should just have focused on defeating Hamas
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.
Albeit Israel did manage to defeat all its Muslim neighbours in the 1970s and 1950s yes Netanyahu has overreached when he should just have focused on defeating Hamas
However, this kind of dynamic would be a disaster for both Israel and the West in the long-term, though. The Israelis really only stabilised their geopolitical position in the 1970s by breaking off the Egyptians from the pan-Arab alliance, and doing a land-for-peace deal with them, for instance.
The Saudis and Gulf Arab states are now also taking about not allowing any overflights of the territory for any attack against Iran. It's going to take the West a long time to understand how damaging indulging Netanyahu's almost every whim has turned out to be.
From Biden and Harris' and Starmer's perspective Saudi not allowing Israeli bombers overflights to attack Iran is a good thing.
It is only Trump who really wants a war with Iran like Netanyahu
Interestingly US Dem Senator Chris Murphy suggested that Netanyahu is trying to get Trump elected and that’s why he’s refused any ceasefire in Gaza .
Putin and Netanyahu both want a Trump win. As Trump would effectively dump backing for Zelansky and push him to make a peace deal with Putin handing over much of Eastern Ukraine to Russia and then shift arms to Israel to support Netanyahu in a full on war with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran
I wonder if even Trump might hesitate on the brink, seeing the kind of nightmare that Netanyahu and Iran could unleash together if not checked.
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?!
I am pointing out that ending 'imperialism' can have very negative and long-lasting consequences. I think there are enough examples out there, including the ones I pointed out, to make that fairly unarguable.
That does not mean that imperialism should not end, especially if local populations want it; just that extreme care needs to be taken to ensure those negative consequences are minimised.
I don't think that this has been done here.
The whole place is going to be under water in 100 years time. Of course it will end badly.
No, it won't.
Th rate of sea level rise will be small, per actual year. Given the value of the base, it will be trivial to increase the height of atoll in the areas wanted. Indeed, this has already been done by the Americans on portions of the base, in the past.
See the wholesale construction/raising of islands by China.
The bit the Chagos islanders will live on - that's another matter. Why should the Mauritius bother? They will have the fishing rights.
That bit will sort itself out naturally. Coral atolls grow and shrink to match sealevel changes. They have to otherwise there wouldn't be any left.
That's assuming the reef is alive and growing. Uninhabited that might happen - human habitation tends to stop the process, pretty much.
There's also the matter of pace - depends on the speed of sea level rise. Coral is sloooooooooow.
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.
Albeit Israel did manage to defeat all its Muslim neighbours in the 1970s and 1950s yes Netanyahu has overreached when he should just have focused on defeating Hamas
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.
Albeit Israel did manage to defeat all its Muslim neighbours in the 1970s and 1950s yes Netanyahu has overreached when he should just have focused on defeating Hamas
However, this kind of dynamic would be a disaster for both Israel and the West in the long-term, though. The Israelis really only stabilised their geopolitical position in the 1970s by breaking off the Egyptians from the pan-Arab alliance, and doing a land-for-peace deal with them, for instance.
The Saudis and Gulf Arab states are now also taking about not allowing any overflights of the territory for any attack against Iran. It's going to take the West a long time to understand how damaging indulging Netanyahu's almost every whim has turned out to be.
From Biden and Harris' and Starmer's perspective Saudi not allowing Israeli bombers overflights to attack Iran is a good thing.
It is only Trump who really wants a war with Iran like Netanyahu
Interestingly US Dem Senator Chris Murphy suggested that Netanyahu is trying to get Trump elected and that’s why he’s refused any ceasefire in Gaza .
Putin and Netanyahu both want a Trump win. As Trump would effectively dump backing for Zelansky and push him to make a peace deal with Putin handing over much of Eastern Ukraine to Russia and then shift arms to Israel to support Netanyahu in a full on war with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran
Or put more simply, the two crooks support the crook.
If I had £22 billion to spend on carbon [sic] reduction, the first thing I would do is make sure every public building that wasn't Grade I listed was absolutely plastered with solar panels.
The next thing I would do is build some damn tidal stations, at last.
I might look at any schemes to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
I wouldn't spend a red cent on 'carbon capture.'
It's the present day equivalent of Thatcher deciding to pacify the miners and subsidise UK coalfields for the duration of her premiership.
If I'm honest - as somebody who's not a scientist - it looks more like the present day equivalent of massively funding research into perpetual motion machines.
With the storage side there are some real sticking points in the physics which the companies have had a lot of trouble trying to overcome. (Until last year I was involved in planning drilling wells for CCS projects for one of the oil companies involved).
Simple physics. When you are collecting and pumping the CO2 you put it under compression. When you then pump that CO2 down the hole and into the reservoir that pressure is rapidly diminished as the CO2 enters the reservoir. This results in an effect known as Joule-Thomson Cooling. This has a lot of effects, none of them good for the reservoir, but the most immediate is a phase change in the residual water around the well bore. This will block the pore spaces and reduce or prevent injection and also causes thermal stress due to ice formation which can damage the resrvoir around the injection well and reduce injection further or cause a breach of the top of the reservoir.
This has proved rather problematic in trying to get an efficient storage system in place.
Excellent, informed and interesting comment.
I've never forgotten the effect of expansion on CO2 ever since seeing the doctor generate a slug of the solid stuff to put on my ingrowing toe when I was a teenager. It cooled so much when being let out of the cylinder that some of it froze - not water ice but CO2 ice.
CO2 doesn't have a liquid phase at 1 atmosphere. So it goes straight from gas to solid and back. Which part of the reason that it is fun to play around with.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
I see that @JonO is running for Elmbridge Council next week. Best of luck.
We have no fewer than 38 by-elections over the next fortnight. I’d expect a lot of Labour losses.
How many Reform UK gains? Will Reform UK even stand that many candidates? I think that’s an interesting question: can RefUK transform itself into a traditional party that wins seats? That will be a big determiner of the next general election result.
Good morning
Last night Reform took two seats off Labour in Blackpool and generally Labour are tanking in local elections
There is sufficient evidence to suggest Reform could decimate Labour in the red wall seats
The bigger question is over the next few years is a closer Conservative-Reform possible and if so it will be very interesting
The local elections next year in places like Durham may well be interesting as Labour would have, until recently, been expecting to gain control back from the rather hapless coalition.
I have a good independent in my seat that will vote for. Not sure of the other vote at the moment.
Visited Woodhorn mining museum (Much quieter/better day than Cragside ) when we were up your way a few weeks back. Amazing to think Ed Miliband is leader energy sec. of the very same party synonymous with mining history.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
We are going to spunk £22 billion on carbon capture (largely untried), and that carbon capture is basically the CO2 emissions from gas power stations, separating CO2 and pumping it underground when the gas is burnt.
Wouldn't it therefore make economic sense and indeed environmental sense to get that gas from the north sea rather than shipping it from Qatar (or wherever) ?
Short answer yes.
But to be fair it is not just power stations. One of the reasons that some of the main targets for CO2 storage are off Humberside is because there is a concentration of insdustries around Immingham which produce large amounts of CO2. Humberside is the highest emmitting region in the UK.
That said, killing the UK petrochemical and manufacturing industries as Labour seem determined to do might make that all redundant.
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?
I honestly think they genuinely thought this would make them look good. Because British Empire = bad. And they don't really mix with anyone who thinks differently. We see this a lot from Labour. Policy decisions by what will most annoy the right.
I dunno about that. In this case, I really dunno.
Did the government really choose to do this, or is it putting the best face on something it didn't really have a realistic choice about? Forget Dave's claims of a veto- by the time he became Foreign Secretary, he knew it was an interim gig and his veto was a delay at most.
But the bigger picture is simple. This government will do things that you don't like and that I don't like. Not always because they are seeking to taunt, but because the Conservatives made in utter Horlicks of governing in recent years and so they lost. This is what losing looks like, and it's why sensible parties try to avoid it.
As of now, I don't see much evidence that the Conservatives have recovered their senses.
It's simpler than that I think. Given the UK was found to be clear breach of international law in splitting Chagos from Mauritius at time of independence and it wants to retain the Diego Garcia base mainly for the Americans without contestation, it has no choice but to deal with the Mauritius government. In those terms it is likely to be a good deal.
We can argue about the rightness of that calculation but it is a serious decision from Starmer when no-one else in politics is being serious.
I'd have gone with handing the Chagos over to the Chagos islanders and their descendants.
Then give them a referendum on either some kind of UK related status (Chagos would need outside money input to make it viable) or joining Mauritius.
Or the Maldives - closer and shares a lot of the common interest in the area. The UK and Maldives had spent a lot of time looking at the question of overlapping Economic Zones of Interest over the years.
This is not a matter of preference, it is a matter of law. The UN has determined that the UK broke international law. Either you accept the remedy or you don´t. There is no legal basis to do anything beyond returning the Chagos to Mauritius, in this case conditional on the maintenance of the base at DG which is why the US welcomed the deal. As for the comments re: Guyana, the fact is that the Cooperative Republic of Guyana has its territorial integrity legally recognised by the UN charter, and it is an attack by Venezuela that would be in breach of international law.
It is a serious deal and by hypocritically attacking it, Cleverly has joined Jenrick and Badenoch in the dunces class.
Seems like only Tom Tugendhat got the memo that the Tories need to start behaving like adults.
It's very much a matter of preference, or at any rate politics.
You know as well as the rest of us do that rulings of the UN are adhered to when States wish to adhere to them, and ignored when States wish to ignore them.
With no means of enforcement, and no common standards, public international law is really an agreed-upon fiction.
This week’s political agreement is subject to a treaty and supporting legal instruments being finalised. Both sides have committed to complete this as quickly as possible.
Attention seeker demanding attention.
I should have been more clear. Could the outcome of the Gina Miller case mean that this deal needs primary legislation and could be blocked in the Lords?
An interesting point, but I think it's very doubtful.
As I recall, the relevant Miller case (Miller I rather than Miller II) wasn't decided on the basis of whether the Government could exercise prerogative powers to make treaties generally. It rested on the fact that, specifically for entry into the EU, withdrawal would effectively repeal large parts of the European Communities Act 1972, and repealing legislation is not a prerogative power. I doubt there is an equivalent for the Chagos Islands.
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?!
I am pointing out that ending 'imperialism' can have very negative and long-lasting consequences. I think there are enough examples out there, including the ones I pointed out, to make that fairly unarguable.
That does not mean that imperialism should not end, especially if local populations want it; just that extreme care needs to be taken to ensure those negative consequences are minimised.
I don't think that this has been done here.
The whole place is going to be under water in 100 years time. Of course it will end badly.
No, it won't.
Th rate of sea level rise will be small, per actual year. Given the value of the base, it will be trivial to increase the height of atoll in the areas wanted. Indeed, this has already been done by the Americans on portions of the base, in the past.
See the wholesale construction/raising of islands by China.
The bit the Chagos islanders will live on - that's another matter. Why should the Mauritius bother? They will have the fishing rights.
That bit will sort itself out naturally. Coral atolls grow and shrink to match sealevel changes. They have to otherwise there wouldn't be any left.
That's assuming the reef is alive and growing. Uninhabited that might happen - human habitation tends to stop the process, pretty much.
There's also the matter of pace - depends on the speed of sea level rise. Coral is sloooooooooow.
Not as slow as sea level rise. Indeed averages about 4x faster.
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?
I honestly think they genuinely thought this would make them look good. Because British Empire = bad. And they don't really mix with anyone who thinks differently. We see this a lot from Labour. Policy decisions by what will most annoy the right.
I dunno about that. In this case, I really dunno.
Did the government really choose to do this, or is it putting the best face on something it didn't really have a realistic choice about? Forget Dave's claims of a veto- by the time he became Foreign Secretary, he knew it was an interim gig and his veto was a delay at most.
But the bigger picture is simple. This government will do things that you don't like and that I don't like. Not always because they are seeking to taunt, but because the Conservatives made in utter Horlicks of governing in recent years and so they lost. This is what losing looks like, and it's why sensible parties try to avoid it.
As of now, I don't see much evidence that the Conservatives have recovered their senses.
It's simpler than that I think. Given the UK was found to be clear breach of international law in splitting Chagos from Mauritius at time of independence and it wants to retain the Diego Garcia base mainly for the Americans without contestation, it has no choice but to deal with the Mauritius government. In those terms it is likely to be a good deal.
We can argue about the rightness of that calculation but it is a serious decision from Starmer when no-one else in politics is being serious.
Oddly enough, your view might also be peterninent on the Venezuela / Guyana land grab border dispute. And not one in favour of the Guyanans.
So other questions comes into it: how far back do such 'imperialist' problems have to go back before they can be ignored; what about self-determination; and is removing one imperialist power right if it just gets replaced with another imperialist power, or a power that will ignore the rights of the population in the new area?
I suppose it also applies, in the minds of some at least, to Russia - Ukraine. In both directions:
Whether it is a 'good deal' or not should not be said by people in the UK or Mauritius, or China. It should be said by the people who it most directly effects - the islanders themselves.
Personally I am in favour of self determination but this is about bases in strategic islands and that's a different calculation. In general owners of these bases want their ownership to be underpinned by treaty and international law. Getting the Mauritius government to formally agree the long term presence of the base is a win for the Americans.
I see that @JonO is running for Elmbridge Council next week. Best of luck.
We have no fewer than 38 by-elections over the next fortnight. I’d expect a lot of Labour losses.
How many Reform UK gains? Will Reform UK even stand that many candidates? I think that’s an interesting question: can RefUK transform itself into a traditional party that wins seats? That will be a big determiner of the next general election result.
Good morning
Last night Reform took two seats off Labour in Blackpool and generally Labour are tanking in local elections
There is sufficient evidence to suggest Reform could decimate Labour in the red wall seats
The bigger question is over the next few years is a closer Conservative-Reform possible and if so it will be very interesting
The local elections next year in places like Durham may well be interesting as Labour would have, until recently, been expecting to gain control back from the rather hapless coalition.
I have a good independent in my seat that will vote for. Not sure of the other vote at the moment.
Visited Woodhorn mining museum (Much quieter/better day than Cragside ) when we were up your way a few weeks back. Amazing to think Ed Miliband is leader energy sec. of the very same party synonymous with mining history.
It is a few years since we have been to Cragside, will have too look out for a day trip to Woodhorn. Had not heard of it before will look it up.
Labour really has long since ceased to be the party of the working class. Labour used to fight for miners, mining jobs and the jobs of the working class. Now they seem to care more about the lanyard class in the public sector.
I am not surprised in these areas Reform fills the gap for some. They are the only party who speak to these areas and listen to their concerns.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
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?!
I am pointing out that ending 'imperialism' can have very negative and long-lasting consequences. I think there are enough examples out there, including the ones I pointed out, to make that fairly unarguable.
That does not mean that imperialism should not end, especially if local populations want it; just that extreme care needs to be taken to ensure those negative consequences are minimised.
I don't think that this has been done here.
The whole place is going to be under water in 100 years time. Of course it will end badly.
No, it won't.
Th rate of sea level rise will be small, per actual year. Given the value of the base, it will be trivial to increase the height of atoll in the areas wanted. Indeed, this has already been done by the Americans on portions of the base, in the past.
See the wholesale construction/raising of islands by China.
The bit the Chagos islanders will live on - that's another matter. Why should the Mauritius bother? They will have the fishing rights.
That bit will sort itself out naturally. Coral atolls grow and shrink to match sealevel changes. They have to otherwise there wouldn't be any left.
That's assuming the reef is alive and growing. Uninhabited that might happen - human habitation tends to stop the process, pretty much.
There's also the matter of pace - depends on the speed of sea level rise. Coral is sloooooooooow.
Not as slow as sea level rise. Indeed averages about 4x faster.
Why bring facts to this?
But am I correct in saying that some coral atolls are being damaged not because of sea-level rise or climate change, but because of chemical composition of the water (or, more accurately, chemicals in the water)?
- 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
I have said this a bit and will keep pointing it out. They are failing at their 'signature' policy: planning reform. Firstly they have accepted the developer lobbying argument - the problem with housing is all about land release and political opposition to new development. There is something in this. But they seem to have no understanding of the viability problem. The cost of building newbuild housing has risen exponentially, but the sale prices have stagnated or even fallen in large parts of the country. There is no policy initiative to increase demand (ie no replacement 'help to buy'). Without this you will have a deflating housing market, with little or no increase in supply. Meanwhile the government press on with more and more environmental and safety regulation thus driving up the cost of building further.
I am just looking at this situation in complete despair.
Labour failing to understand, again, that increased tax/regulation leads to increased costs.
I don't understand how they can be that ignorant frankly.
But actually it sort of makes sense if you consider that Starmer is a human rights lawyer, many of the MP's are activists with limited business experience, to a large degree the civil service is increasingly 'like them'; they are close to the trade unions who peddle simplistic notions about 'shareholder greed' along with demands for vast pay rises; along with a cumulative near religious belief in 'taxing the rich'.
They are trying to govern with all the above baggage, and it is likely that they will just completely fail.
If I had £22 billion to spend on carbon [sic] reduction, the first thing I would do is make sure every public building that wasn't Grade I listed was absolutely plastered with solar panels.
The next thing I would do is build some damn tidal stations, at last.
I might look at any schemes to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
I wouldn't spend a red cent on 'carbon capture.'
It's the present day equivalent of Thatcher deciding to pacify the miners and subsidise UK coalfields for the duration of her premiership.
If I'm honest - as somebody who's not a scientist - it looks more like the present day equivalent of massively funding research into perpetual motion machines.
With the storage side there are some real sticking points in the physics which the companies have had a lot of trouble trying to overcome. (Until last year I was involved in planning drilling wells for CCS projects for one of the oil companies involved).
Simple physics. When you are collecting and pumping the CO2 you put it under compression. When you then pump that CO2 down the hole and into the reservoir that pressure is rapidly diminished as the CO2 enters the reservoir. This results in an effect known as Joule-Thomson Cooling. This has a lot of effects, none of them good for the reservoir, but the most immediate is a phase change in the residual water around the well bore. This will block the pore spaces and reduce or prevent injection and also causes thermal stress due to ice formation which can damage the resrvoir around the injection well and reduce injection further or cause a breach of the top of the reservoir.
This has proved rather problematic in trying to get an efficient storage system in place.
So how many geologists and physicists do you think Ed Miliband had spoken to, before his announcement?
Or does he not give a sh!t about science, and makes decisions based on ideology?
There's nothing ideological about the decision. It's only support comes from special interests.
The most charitable interpretation is that Miliband hasn't kept up with the collapse in the cost of renewables since he was last energy secretary in 2010, but even then it would be a bad choice, if a slightly more understandable one.
This week’s political agreement is subject to a treaty and supporting legal instruments being finalised. Both sides have committed to complete this as quickly as possible.
Attention seeker demanding attention.
I should have been more clear. Could the outcome of the Gina Miller case mean that this deal needs primary legislation and could be blocked in the Lords?
An interesting point, but I think it's very doubtful.
As I recall, the relevant Miller case (Miller I rather than Miller II) wasn't decided on the basis of whether the Government could exercise prerogative powers to make treaties generally. It rested on the fact that, specifically for entry into the EU, withdrawal would effectively repeal large parts of the European Communities Act 1972, and repealing legislation is not a prerogative power. I doubt there is an equivalent for the Chagos Islands.
Besides, the most the Lords can do is delay things by a year.
Remember, opposition is impotence and irrelevance. Which is why it's wise to avoid it.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Even though the US produces most of its own oil and gas any further escalation in the Middle East could cause a global energy spike and this is why the Dems are nervous about what Israel might do .
Trumps campaign needs to maintain its lead over Harris on the economy . Harris has closed that but still remains behind .
The road to the WH still remains full of hurdles for the Dems as external factors could have an impact .
There will be a huge relief though after the dockworkers suspended their strike , this could have had a disastrous effect on that economic argument and put Harris in an impossible position .
Looking ahead , today we have the latest jobs report and then next week the inflation report , the latter is like to show a further fall which will help Harris . After this there’s only one more important report which will be the jobs report for October which comes out a few days before the election .
This is where the suspension of the dockworkers strike is absolutely crucial. The knock on effect if the strike had dragged on would be job losses / temporary suspensions in connected industries . There’s already the impacts of the hurricane to deal with.
In terms of early in person voting next week sees many more states starting including the key battleground state of Arizona . Georgia starts the following week.
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?!
I am pointing out that ending 'imperialism' can have very negative and long-lasting consequences. I think there are enough examples out there, including the ones I pointed out, to make that fairly unarguable.
That does not mean that imperialism should not end, especially if local populations want it; just that extreme care needs to be taken to ensure those negative consequences are minimised.
I don't think that this has been done here.
The whole place is going to be under water in 100 years time. Of course it will end badly.
No, it won't.
Th rate of sea level rise will be small, per actual year. Given the value of the base, it will be trivial to increase the height of atoll in the areas wanted. Indeed, this has already been done by the Americans on portions of the base, in the past.
See the wholesale construction/raising of islands by China.
The bit the Chagos islanders will live on - that's another matter. Why should the Mauritius bother? They will have the fishing rights.
That bit will sort itself out naturally. Coral atolls grow and shrink to match sealevel changes. They have to otherwise there wouldn't be any left.
That's assuming the reef is alive and growing. Uninhabited that might happen - human habitation tends to stop the process, pretty much.
There's also the matter of pace - depends on the speed of sea level rise. Coral is sloooooooooow.
Not as slow as sea level rise. Indeed averages about 4x faster.
Why bring facts to this?
But am I correct in saying that some coral atolls are being damaged not because of sea-level rise or climate change, but because of chemical composition of the water (or, more accurately, chemicals in the water)?
Yes - among other things. Many corals seem to be very fragile to environmental disturbances.
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?
I honestly think they genuinely thought this would make them look good. Because British Empire = bad. And they don't really mix with anyone who thinks differently. We see this a lot from Labour. Policy decisions by what will most annoy the right.
I dunno about that. In this case, I really dunno.
Did the government really choose to do this, or is it putting the best face on something it didn't really have a realistic choice about? Forget Dave's claims of a veto- by the time he became Foreign Secretary, he knew it was an interim gig and his veto was a delay at most.
But the bigger picture is simple. This government will do things that you don't like and that I don't like. Not always because they are seeking to taunt, but because the Conservatives made in utter Horlicks of governing in recent years and so they lost. This is what losing looks like, and it's why sensible parties try to avoid it.
As of now, I don't see much evidence that the Conservatives have recovered their senses.
It's simpler than that I think. Given the UK was found to be clear breach of international law in splitting Chagos from Mauritius at time of independence and it wants to retain the Diego Garcia base mainly for the Americans without contestation, it has no choice but to deal with the Mauritius government. In those terms it is likely to be a good deal.
We can argue about the rightness of that calculation but it is a serious decision from Starmer when no-one else in politics is being serious.
Oddly enough, your view might also be peterninent on the Venezuela / Guyana land grab border dispute. And not one in favour of the Guyanans.
So other questions comes into it: how far back do such 'imperialist' problems have to go back before they can be ignored; what about self-determination; and is removing one imperialist power right if it just gets replaced with another imperialist power, or a power that will ignore the rights of the population in the new area?
I suppose it also applies, in the minds of some at least, to Russia - Ukraine. In both directions:
Whether it is a 'good deal' or not should not be said by people in the UK or Mauritius, or China. It should be said by the people who it most directly effects - the islanders themselves.
Personally I am in favour of self determination but this is about bases in strategic islands and that's a different calculation. In general owners of these bases want their ownership to be underpinned by treaty and international law. Getting the Mauritius government to formally agree the long term presence of the base is a win for the Americans.
The newly-found oil and gas in Guyana is very strategic, is it not? Which is precisely the reason why Venezuela is making so much noise about their 'ownership' of Esequibo.
Hiving off a geographical area and its natural resources to keep control, only to end up paying compensation to its rightful owners when it is restored? More ammunition for the Scotnat 'we wuz robbed' faction.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
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?!
I am pointing out that ending 'imperialism' can have very negative and long-lasting consequences. I think there are enough examples out there, including the ones I pointed out, to make that fairly unarguable.
That does not mean that imperialism should not end, especially if local populations want it; just that extreme care needs to be taken to ensure those negative consequences are minimised.
I don't think that this has been done here.
The whole place is going to be under water in 100 years time. Of course it will end badly.
No, it won't.
Th rate of sea level rise will be small, per actual year. Given the value of the base, it will be trivial to increase the height of atoll in the areas wanted. Indeed, this has already been done by the Americans on portions of the base, in the past.
See the wholesale construction/raising of islands by China.
The bit the Chagos islanders will live on - that's another matter. Why should the Mauritius bother? They will have the fishing rights.
That bit will sort itself out naturally. Coral atolls grow and shrink to match sealevel changes. They have to otherwise there wouldn't be any left.
That's assuming the reef is alive and growing. Uninhabited that might happen - human habitation tends to stop the process, pretty much.
There's also the matter of pace - depends on the speed of sea level rise. Coral is sloooooooooow.
Not as slow as sea level rise. Indeed averages about 4x faster.
Why bring facts to this?
But am I correct in saying that some coral atolls are being damaged not because of sea-level rise or climate change, but because of chemical composition of the water (or, more accurately, chemicals in the water)?
That has been an issue but the most recent news is that it appears to be far more cyclical than was previously thought and a lot of previously damaged an bleached coral has recovered. As far as I can see the biggest threat to coral in the Chagos archipelago is the US airbase itself which both limits growth and pollutes the local waters.
I see that @JonO is running for Elmbridge Council next week. Best of luck.
We have no fewer than 38 by-elections over the next fortnight. I’d expect a lot of Labour losses.
How many Reform UK gains? Will Reform UK even stand that many candidates? I think that’s an interesting question: can RefUK transform itself into a traditional party that wins seats? That will be a big determiner of the next general election result.
Good morning
Last night Reform took two seats off Labour in Blackpool and generally Labour are tanking in local elections
There is sufficient evidence to suggest Reform could decimate Labour in the red wall seats
The bigger question is over the next few years is a closer Conservative-Reform possible and if so it will be very interesting
The local elections next year in places like Durham may well be interesting as Labour would have, until recently, been expecting to gain control back from the rather hapless coalition.
I have a good independent in my seat that will vote for. Not sure of the other vote at the moment.
Visited Woodhorn mining museum (Much quieter/better day than Cragside ) when we were up your way a few weeks back. Amazing to think Ed Miliband is leader energy sec. of the very same party synonymous with mining history.
It is a few years since we have been to Cragside, will have too look out for a day trip to Woodhorn. Had not heard of it before will look it up.
Labour really has long since ceased to be the party of the working class. Labour used to fight for miners, mining jobs and the jobs of the working class. Now they seem to care more about the lanyard class in the public sector.
I am not surprised in these areas Reform fills the gap for some. They are the only party who speak to these areas and listen to their concerns.
Dreadful numbers for France there. Not great for Germany either. The larger members of the EU really are in a bit of a slump
Hence the doom-and-gloom statements from Draghi and Macron recently.
Some countries on the periphery are doing well. Greece, and I think the Baltics.
Germany is fairly stuck.
Spain is also doing pretty well.
One problem with the continuing economic problems in France and Germany is that it will increase the political instability there.
Both countries could get trapped in a negative loop of economic problems leading to more political instability leading to inability to make economic reforms.
- 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
I have said this a bit and will keep pointing it out. They are failing at their 'signature' policy: planning reform. Firstly they have accepted the developer lobbying argument - the problem with housing is all about land release and political opposition to new development. There is something in this. But they seem to have no understanding of the viability problem. The cost of building newbuild housing has risen exponentially, but the sale prices have stagnated or even fallen in large parts of the country. There is no policy initiative to increase demand (ie no replacement 'help to buy'). Without this you will have a deflating housing market, with little or no increase in supply. Meanwhile the government press on with more and more environmental and safety regulation thus driving up the cost of building further.
I am just looking at this situation in complete despair.
Labour failing to understand, again, that increased tax/regulation leads to increased costs.
I don't understand how they can be that ignorant frankly.
But actually it sort of makes sense if you consider that Starmer is a human rights lawyer, many of the MP's are activists with limited business experience, to a large degree the civil service is increasingly 'like them'; they are close to the trade unions who peddle simplistic notions about 'shareholder greed' along with demands for vast pay rises; along with a cumulative near religious belief in 'taxing the rich'.
They are trying to govern with all the above baggage, and it is likely that they will just completely fail.
One of the reasons I decided to vote labour after all was I thought Reeves did get it. She gave me confidence that in the Treasury she would be a stable influence and able to moderate the clowns as she has some real world experience.
But you are right about the make up of labour and its backbenchers. They are there to manage it seems rather than just legislate and let business get on with it.
You also have a business secretary with no experience of business who is influenced by academics with no experience of business on matters of policy. It may end in tears.
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?!
I am pointing out that ending 'imperialism' can have very negative and long-lasting consequences. I think there are enough examples out there, including the ones I pointed out, to make that fairly unarguable.
That does not mean that imperialism should not end, especially if local populations want it; just that extreme care needs to be taken to ensure those negative consequences are minimised.
I don't think that this has been done here.
The whole place is going to be under water in 100 years time. Of course it will end badly.
No, it won't.
Th rate of sea level rise will be small, per actual year. Given the value of the base, it will be trivial to increase the height of atoll in the areas wanted. Indeed, this has already been done by the Americans on portions of the base, in the past.
See the wholesale construction/raising of islands by China.
The bit the Chagos islanders will live on - that's another matter. Why should the Mauritius bother? They will have the fishing rights.
That bit will sort itself out naturally. Coral atolls grow and shrink to match sealevel changes. They have to otherwise there wouldn't be any left.
That's assuming the reef is alive and growing. Uninhabited that might happen - human habitation tends to stop the process, pretty much.
There's also the matter of pace - depends on the speed of sea level rise. Coral is sloooooooooow.
Not as slow as sea level rise. Indeed averages about 4x faster.
Why bring facts to this?
But am I correct in saying that some coral atolls are being damaged not because of sea-level rise or climate change, but because of chemical composition of the water (or, more accurately, chemicals in the water)?
Cleaning the ocean is the next big challenge, despite the hysteria by some, the west has done an incredible job of cleaning their inland rivers, their coastal regions and air quality. But we (all humans) are dumping with impunity the lowest grade and dirtiest of diesel going into the air and oils slipping into the seas.
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?
I honestly think they genuinely thought this would make them look good. Because British Empire = bad. And they don't really mix with anyone who thinks differently. We see this a lot from Labour. Policy decisions by what will most annoy the right.
I dunno about that. In this case, I really dunno.
Did the government really choose to do this, or is it putting the best face on something it didn't really have a realistic choice about? Forget Dave's claims of a veto- by the time he became Foreign Secretary, he knew it was an interim gig and his veto was a delay at most.
But the bigger picture is simple. This government will do things that you don't like and that I don't like. Not always because they are seeking to taunt, but because the Conservatives made in utter Horlicks of governing in recent years and so they lost. This is what losing looks like, and it's why sensible parties try to avoid it.
As of now, I don't see much evidence that the Conservatives have recovered their senses.
It's simpler than that I think. Given the UK was found to be clear breach of international law in splitting Chagos from Mauritius at time of independence and it wants to retain the Diego Garcia base mainly for the Americans without contestation, it has no choice but to deal with the Mauritius government. In those terms it is likely to be a good deal.
We can argue about the rightness of that calculation but it is a serious decision from Starmer when no-one else in politics is being serious.
Oddly enough, your view might also be peterninent on the Venezuela / Guyana land grab border dispute. And not one in favour of the Guyanans.
So other questions comes into it: how far back do such 'imperialist' problems have to go back before they can be ignored; what about self-determination; and is removing one imperialist power right if it just gets replaced with another imperialist power, or a power that will ignore the rights of the population in the new area?
I suppose it also applies, in the minds of some at least, to Russia - Ukraine. In both directions:
Whether it is a 'good deal' or not should not be said by people in the UK or Mauritius, or China. It should be said by the people who it most directly effects - the islanders themselves.
Personally I am in favour of self determination but this is about bases in strategic islands and that's a different calculation. In general owners of these bases want their ownership to be underpinned by treaty and international law. Getting the Mauritius government to formally agree the long term presence of the base is a win for the Americans.
The newly-found oil and gas in Guyana is very strategic, is it not? Which is precisely the reason why Venezuela is making so much noise about their 'ownership' of Esequibo.
International law being on the side of Guyana (or Ukraine) is …. nice to have.
But, what counts is having the military muscle to repel predators.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
I think the TLDR is that the public are profuoundly unkeen on the government, but perhaps dislike them less than the alternatives.
This isnt really unsurprising. People don't like to think they have made a bad choice. It takes time. But this is supposed to be the honeymoon. A government only a few months old looks like it is on the rocks. Utterly bizarre. It isnt just PBcrazies noticing that this isnt normal.
I see that @JonO is running for Elmbridge Council next week. Best of luck.
We have no fewer than 38 by-elections over the next fortnight. I’d expect a lot of Labour losses.
How many Reform UK gains? Will Reform UK even stand that many candidates? I think that’s an interesting question: can RefUK transform itself into a traditional party that wins seats? That will be a big determiner of the next general election result.
Good morning
Last night Reform took two seats off Labour in Blackpool and generally Labour are tanking in local elections
There is sufficient evidence to suggest Reform could decimate Labour in the red wall seats
The bigger question is over the next few years is a closer Conservative-Reform possible and if so it will be very interesting
The local elections next year in places like Durham may well be interesting as Labour would have, until recently, been expecting to gain control back from the rather hapless coalition.
I have a good independent in my seat that will vote for. Not sure of the other vote at the moment.
Ben Houchen's results in Teesside demonstrate that there is a definite appetite in some NE communities to vote against Labour. I think Co Durham could, indeed, be somewhat challenging for Sir Keir. Depends who the voters turn to. There are areas of strength for both Tories and LibDems in the county and a lot of potential for Reform too.
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Not for long if Israel goes after the Iranian oil assets. Even though that mostly affects oil to Russia and China it will mean their demand goes elsewhere although there is alot of supply in the world. it also depends if Iran responds by going after Saudi and others oil assets. I wonder if the risk of that is why the Saudis held out an olive branch to Iran recently.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
I see that @JonO is running for Elmbridge Council next week. Best of luck.
We have no fewer than 38 by-elections over the next fortnight. I’d expect a lot of Labour losses.
How many Reform UK gains? Will Reform UK even stand that many candidates? I think that’s an interesting question: can RefUK transform itself into a traditional party that wins seats? That will be a big determiner of the next general election result.
Good morning
Last night Reform took two seats off Labour in Blackpool and generally Labour are tanking in local elections
There is sufficient evidence to suggest Reform could decimate Labour in the red wall seats
The bigger question is over the next few years is a closer Conservative-Reform possible and if so it will be very interesting
The local elections next year in places like Durham may well be interesting as Labour would have, until recently, been expecting to gain control back from the rather hapless coalition.
I have a good independent in my seat that will vote for. Not sure of the other vote at the moment.
Ben Houchen's results in Teesside demonstrate that there is a definite appetite in some NE communities to vote against Labour. I think Co Durham could, indeed, be somewhat challenging for Sir Keir. Depends who the voters turn to. There are areas of strength for both Tories and LibDems in the county and a lot of potential for Reform too.
The last locals here were definitely a vote against labour. You only have to look at the make up of the coalition. Tories, Lib Dems and a host of small independent groupings. Whoever was the closest challenger tended to benefit. People like Simon Henig only held on as the independent challenger to him was not very good.
I see that @JonO is running for Elmbridge Council next week. Best of luck.
We have no fewer than 38 by-elections over the next fortnight. I’d expect a lot of Labour losses.
How many Reform UK gains? Will Reform UK even stand that many candidates? I think that’s an interesting question: can RefUK transform itself into a traditional party that wins seats? That will be a big determiner of the next general election result.
Good morning
Last night Reform took two seats off Labour in Blackpool and generally Labour are tanking in local elections
There is sufficient evidence to suggest Reform could decimate Labour in the red wall seats
The bigger question is over the next few years is a closer Conservative-Reform possible and if so it will be very interesting
The local elections next year in places like Durham may well be interesting as Labour would have, until recently, been expecting to gain control back from the rather hapless coalition.
I have a good independent in my seat that will vote for. Not sure of the other vote at the moment.
Ben Houchen's results in Teesside demonstrate that there is a definite appetite in some NE communities to vote against Labour. I think Co Durham could, indeed, be somewhat challenging for Sir Keir. Depends who the voters turn to. There are areas of strength for both Tories and LibDems in the county and a lot of potential for Reform too.
The last locals here were definitely a vote against labour. You only have to look at the make up of the coalition. Tories, Lib Dems and a host of small independent groupings. Whoever was the closest challenger tended to benefit. People like Simon Henig only held on as the independent challenger to him was not very good.
I’ve no doubt Labour will go backwards in Durham in 2025.
This week’s political agreement is subject to a treaty and supporting legal instruments being finalised. Both sides have committed to complete this as quickly as possible.
Attention seeker demanding attention.
I should have been more clear. Could the outcome of the Gina Miller case mean that this deal needs primary legislation and could be blocked in the Lords?
An interesting point, but I think it's very doubtful.
As I recall, the relevant Miller case (Miller I rather than Miller II) wasn't decided on the basis of whether the Government could exercise prerogative powers to make treaties generally. It rested on the fact that, specifically for entry into the EU, withdrawal would effectively repeal large parts of the European Communities Act 1972, and repealing legislation is not a prerogative power. I doubt there is an equivalent for the Chagos Islands.
Besides, the most the Lords can do is delay things by a year.
Remember, opposition is impotence and irrelevance. Which is why it's wise to avoid it.
They wouldn't even do that in practice. Despite the gassing on here, and the play into the Tory leadership contest, this really isn't that controversial a decision. Certainly not worth the Lords having a wrangle with a newly elected Government whose priority, at the moment, isn't to radically reform the Lords.
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Not for long if Israel goes after the Iranian oil assets. Even though that mostly affects oil to Russia and China it will mean their demand goes elsewhere although there is alot of supply in the world. it also depends if Iran responds by going after Saudi and others oil assets. I wonder if the risk of that is why the Saudis held out an olive branch to Iran recently.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
The Dems don’t want a spike in pump prices just a few weeks from the election . With such narrow margins in the polling it doesn’t need much to tip a swing state.
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?!
I am pointing out that ending 'imperialism' can have very negative and long-lasting consequences. I think there are enough examples out there, including the ones I pointed out, to make that fairly unarguable.
That does not mean that imperialism should not end, especially if local populations want it; just that extreme care needs to be taken to ensure those negative consequences are minimised.
I don't think that this has been done here.
The whole place is going to be under water in 100 years time. Of course it will end badly.
No, it won't.
Th rate of sea level rise will be small, per actual year. Given the value of the base, it will be trivial to increase the height of atoll in the areas wanted. Indeed, this has already been done by the Americans on portions of the base, in the past.
See the wholesale construction/raising of islands by China.
The bit the Chagos islanders will live on - that's another matter. Why should the Mauritius bother? They will have the fishing rights.
That bit will sort itself out naturally. Coral atolls grow and shrink to match sealevel changes. They have to otherwise there wouldn't be any left.
That's assuming the reef is alive and growing. Uninhabited that might happen - human habitation tends to stop the process, pretty much.
There's also the matter of pace - depends on the speed of sea level rise. Coral is sloooooooooow.
Not as slow as sea level rise. Indeed averages about 4x faster.
Why bring facts to this?
But am I correct in saying that some coral atolls are being damaged not because of sea-level rise or climate change, but because of chemical composition of the water (or, more accurately, chemicals in the water)?
Here are some actual facts regarding the effect of climate change on coral reefs:
"Climate change is the greatest global threat to coral reef ecosystems. Scientific evidence now clearly indicates that the Earth's atmosphere and ocean are warming, and that these changes are primarily due to greenhouse gases derived from human activities.
As temperatures rise, mass coral bleaching events and infectious disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent. Additionally, carbon dioxide absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere has already begun to reduce calcification rates in reef-building and reef-associated organisms by altering seawater chemistry through decreases in pH. This process is called ocean acidification.
Climate change will affect coral reef ecosystems, through sea level rise, changes to the frequency and intensity of tropical storms, and altered ocean circulation patterns. When combined, all of these impacts dramatically alter ecosystem function, as well as the goods and services coral reef ecosystems provide to people around the globe."
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Not for long if Israel goes after the Iranian oil assets. Even though that mostly affects oil to Russia and China it will mean their demand goes elsewhere although there is alot of supply in the world. it also depends if Iran responds by going after Saudi and others oil assets. I wonder if the risk of that is why the Saudis held out an olive branch to Iran recently.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
You might be right, but the oil and gas industry works in strange ways. Lots of idiots warned Ukraine from striking Russian refineries and storage facilities, because it would increase the price of gas in America.
- 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...
That's rational.
The institutionalised discrimination built into the scheme is not rational, but here we are.
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.
Sorry but that is rubbish. The cancellation of projects and the shifting of investment away from the North Sea has turned from a trickle into a tidal wave since Milliband got into power. I had a number of potential contracts where the companies were absolutely clear that they had their plans on hold until they saw if Labour won (and followed through on their promises) and which have now been cancelled. Serica, Hartshead, Harbour, Ithaca and Dana are all reducing North Sea investment and reinvesting in exploration and development elsewhere - many of them in Norway.
Prior to the election Labour had been claiming that increasing the windfall tax would push North Sea tax revenues up from the (OBR) predicted £8.6 billion a year in 2028 to something over £10 billion. The latest prediction based on what Labour has proposed/done since it came to power is that that revenue will fall to £2 billion a year at most by 2028. To be honest, the way companies are now fleeing the North Sea I think they will be lucky to make that.
I have had 2 cases in Aberdeen recently and was staying in an hotel in the outskirts near the airport. The number of businesses and industrial estates there is remarkable, there is nothing even close to it in Scotland. Bristow helicopters were flying out from early in the morning (too early for my taste anyway). There were a lot of large jets as well.
The glory days of Aberdeen and Union Street have long since past. John Lewis is gone and the shopping centres are half empty. But there is still a scarily long way to fall. The consequences for Scottish industrial output (along with the consequential loss of Grangemouth) are going to be catastrophic. Scotland needs time to find new jobs and new investment. They could also do with a government that has some idea of the implications this has for the Scottish tax base. This policy of preventing the granting of more licences for the North Sea is the sort of economic vandalism that Thatcher was rightly criticised for during the Howe monetarist period. It is criminally stupid and not a little vicious.
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Not for long if Israel goes after the Iranian oil assets. Even though that mostly affects oil to Russia and China it will mean their demand goes elsewhere although there is alot of supply in the world. it also depends if Iran responds by going after Saudi and others oil assets. I wonder if the risk of that is why the Saudis held out an olive branch to Iran recently.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
You might be right, but the oil and gas industry works in strange ways. Lots of idiots warned Ukraine from striking Russian refineries and storage facilities, because it would increase the price of gas in America.
Ukraine ignored them, and prices went down.
Iran has threatened to target Emirati, Kuwaiti and Saudi oil assets in retribution. Let's see what happens.
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Not for long if Israel goes after the Iranian oil assets. Even though that mostly affects oil to Russia and China it will mean their demand goes elsewhere although there is alot of supply in the world. it also depends if Iran responds by going after Saudi and others oil assets. I wonder if the risk of that is why the Saudis held out an olive branch to Iran recently.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
Not a great time, if you're an American politician, to be causing harm to consumers or the global economy - no matter how short term. Maybe avoid that for a month and a couple of days if possible.
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.
It appears that the Cleverly deal got to the point of cross-Departmental circulation, which implies he did provisionally, at least, sign it off. A former Defence Secretary said he vetoed it at that point because it left the base in limbo (which implies that the Cleverly deal was, if anything, worse than the one finally signed). It then went back so that it was still in draft when Cameron came in. Cameron paused it (but did not end it) over the base situation (according to his testimony to a Select Committee).
If the status of the base was agreed later, then the situation would have unfolded exactly as we saw, as the incoming FS and DS would have seen no grounds to veto it and send it back further.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
I think the TLDR is that the public are profuoundly unkeen on the government, but perhaps dislike them less than the alternatives.
This isnt really unsurprising. People don't like to think they have made a bad choice. It takes time. But this is supposed to be the honeymoon. A government only a few months old looks like it is on the rocks. Utterly bizarre. It isnt just PBcrazies noticing that this isnt normal.
True and don't forget the polls generally overstate Labour vote share significantly as they did at the last GE. I think that they were about 6 points out then, so if that would be repeated at a hypothetical election tomorrow, the main parties are roughly equal.
And if that 6 points went to Reform, we'd have the fascinating situation of the three main parties being roughly equal.
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Not for long if Israel goes after the Iranian oil assets. Even though that mostly affects oil to Russia and China it will mean their demand goes elsewhere although there is alot of supply in the world. it also depends if Iran responds by going after Saudi and others oil assets. I wonder if the risk of that is why the Saudis held out an olive branch to Iran recently.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
The Dems don’t want a spike in pump prices just a few weeks from the election . With such narrow margins in the polling it doesn’t need much to tip a swing state.
Biden doesn't seem to care either way from his response when questioned about it.
If the Warmongers in Israel really do want a Trump presidency if this action precipitates one why wouldn't they do it anyway ?
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
The general election is five years away. I’m not sure some people here have clocked that and are still in election mode.
Normally a government with a landslide majority would hold an election after four years, rather than five. The repeated mantra about the election being five years away (though May 2029 is now four years and seven months away) is an implicit confirmation that the new government is already struggling, and seeking to hang on to the bitter end.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
I think the TLDR is that the public are profuoundly unkeen on the government, but perhaps dislike them less than the alternatives.
This isnt really unsurprising. People don't like to think they have made a bad choice. It takes time. But this is supposed to be the honeymoon. A government only a few months old looks like it is on the rocks. Utterly bizarre. It isnt just PBcrazies noticing that this isnt normal.
I think it's right on people liking the alternative even less - or rather there being a critical mass of people who do.
Labour started from an unusually pessimistic position, and one they haven't improved both with their strategy - get the doom and gloom in early - and missteps like the donations row.
But...and it's an important but. The Tories terrible decade and the lack of a coherent oppositional narrative to the Big Two, means that the bar is relatively low to get to a position where could be fairly optimistic about re-election chances.
Namely signs our economic position is improving and public services are improving and not getting worse- even if not by an awful lot. Get there and there's enough people who have become pretty staunchly anti-Tory, even those with little love for Labour and Starmer, to put in a strong electoral position.
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?!
I am pointing out that ending 'imperialism' can have very negative and long-lasting consequences. I think there are enough examples out there, including the ones I pointed out, to make that fairly unarguable.
That does not mean that imperialism should not end, especially if local populations want it; just that extreme care needs to be taken to ensure those negative consequences are minimised.
I don't think that this has been done here.
The whole place is going to be under water in 100 years time. Of course it will end badly.
No, it won't.
Th rate of sea level rise will be small, per actual year. Given the value of the base, it will be trivial to increase the height of atoll in the areas wanted. Indeed, this has already been done by the Americans on portions of the base, in the past.
See the wholesale construction/raising of islands by China.
The bit the Chagos islanders will live on - that's another matter. Why should the Mauritius bother? They will have the fishing rights.
That bit will sort itself out naturally. Coral atolls grow and shrink to match sealevel changes. They have to otherwise there wouldn't be any left.
That's assuming the reef is alive and growing. Uninhabited that might happen - human habitation tends to stop the process, pretty much.
There's also the matter of pace - depends on the speed of sea level rise. Coral is sloooooooooow.
Not as slow as sea level rise. Indeed averages about 4x faster.
Why bring facts to this?
But am I correct in saying that some coral atolls are being damaged not because of sea-level rise or climate change, but because of chemical composition of the water (or, more accurately, chemicals in the water)?
Here are some actual facts regarding the effect of climate change on coral reefs:
"Climate change is the greatest global threat to coral reef ecosystems. Scientific evidence now clearly indicates that the Earth's atmosphere and ocean are warming, and that these changes are primarily due to greenhouse gases derived from human activities.
As temperatures rise, mass coral bleaching events and infectious disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent. Additionally, carbon dioxide absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere has already begun to reduce calcification rates in reef-building and reef-associated organisms by altering seawater chemistry through decreases in pH. This process is called ocean acidification.
Climate change will affect coral reef ecosystems, through sea level rise, changes to the frequency and intensity of tropical storms, and altered ocean circulation patterns. When combined, all of these impacts dramatically alter ecosystem function, as well as the goods and services coral reef ecosystems provide to people around the globe."
We have had both record highs for coral and record lows in recent years. The position is undoubtedly more volatile but it remains a fact that corals are currently at record highs and there are something like 30% more corals than there was 5 years ago.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
I think the TLDR is that the public are profuoundly unkeen on the government, but perhaps dislike them less than the alternatives.
This isnt really unsurprising. People don't like to think they have made a bad choice. It takes time. But this is supposed to be the honeymoon. A government only a few months old looks like it is on the rocks. Utterly bizarre. It isnt just PBcrazies noticing that this isnt normal.
I think it's right on people liking the alternative even less - or rather there being a critical mass of people who do.
Labour started from an unusually pessimistic position, and one they haven't improved both with their strategy - get the doom and gloom in early - and missteps like the donations row.
But...and it's an important but. The Tories terrible decade and the lack of a coherent oppositional narrative to the Big Two, means that the bar is relatively low to get to a position where could be fairly optimistic about re-election chances.
Namely signs our economic position is improving and public services are improving and not getting worse- even if not by an awful lot. Get there and there's enough people who have become pretty staunchly anti-Tory, even those with little love for Labour and Starmer, to put in a strong electoral position.
Spot on. If they do ok, they will be re-elected and deservedly so. If they don't, they'll get kicked out.
Setting expectations low, and making harder decisions in years 1 is clearly the right strategy. We have become so used to being told what we want to hear by fantasist politicians that we have forgotten what a year 1 government should look like.
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Not for long if Israel goes after the Iranian oil assets. Even though that mostly affects oil to Russia and China it will mean their demand goes elsewhere although there is alot of supply in the world. it also depends if Iran responds by going after Saudi and others oil assets. I wonder if the risk of that is why the Saudis held out an olive branch to Iran recently.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
The Dems don’t want a spike in pump prices just a few weeks from the election . With such narrow margins in the polling it doesn’t need much to tip a swing state.
If Saudi doesn't allow Israeli bombers to fly over and strike Iran that isn't happening anyway.
Of equal significance will be Melania Trump's memoir on Monday which has already annoyed pro life evangelicals by saying she is staunchly pro choice some of whom may stay home now in swing states and is now saying she weakened his immigration policy too (which while maybe correct will hardly help him drive up white working class turnout either)
- 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.
Also only relevant for climate purposes if the Co2 doesn't end up released anyway - e.g. Co2 used as shield gas for welding is used on a total loss basis.
Industrial Co2 is dirt cheap anyway, presumably because when firms like BOC extract various industrial gasses from air to sell (e.g. oxygen) they end up with more Co2 as a byproduct than they can sell anyway.
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Not for long if Israel goes after the Iranian oil assets. Even though that mostly affects oil to Russia and China it will mean their demand goes elsewhere although there is alot of supply in the world. it also depends if Iran responds by going after Saudi and others oil assets. I wonder if the risk of that is why the Saudis held out an olive branch to Iran recently.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
The Dems don’t want a spike in pump prices just a few weeks from the election . With such narrow margins in the polling it doesn’t need much to tip a swing state.
Biden doesn't seem to care either way from his response when questioned about it.
If the Warmongers in Israel really do want a Trump presidency if this action precipitates one why wouldn't they do it anyway ?
There's also a real question of how open-ended this Israeli operation. In Lebanon may turn out to be. His loony ministers are still using the same rhetoric as in Gaza, a "total victory" over Hezbollah.
This clearly hasn't worked in Gasa - Hamas are still operating- , but it has killed tens of thousands of civilians in horrific circumstances. There's a real risk that the same kind of scenario could unfold in Lebanon, with added pan-Muslim unity against Israel, unless someone in the U.S. finally gets a grip of the situation. Netanyahu is about to embark on a sinilar sttategic and hunanitarian catastrophe as in Gaza, but the level of strategic leadership shown by the U S. so far has been woeful.
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.
Sorry but that is rubbish. The cancellation of projects and the shifting of investment away from the North Sea has turned from a trickle into a tidal wave since Milliband got into power. I had a number of potential contracts where the companies were absolutely clear that they had their plans on hold until they saw if Labour won (and followed through on their promises) and which have now been cancelled. Serica, Hartshead, Harbour, Ithaca and Dana are all reducing North Sea investment and reinvesting in exploration and development elsewhere - many of them in Norway.
Prior to the election Labour had been claiming that increasing the windfall tax would push North Sea tax revenues up from the (OBR) predicted £8.6 billion a year in 2028 to something over £10 billion. The latest prediction based on what Labour has proposed/done since it came to power is that that revenue will fall to £2 billion a year at most by 2028. To be honest, the way companies are now fleeing the North Sea I think they will be lucky to make that.
I have had 2 cases in Aberdeen recently and was staying in an hotel in the outskirts near the airport. The number of businesses and industrial estates there is remarkable, there is nothing even close to it in Scotland. Bristow helicopters were flying out from early in the morning (too early for my taste anyway). There were a lot of large jets as well.
The glory days of Aberdeen and Union Street have long since past. John Lewis is gone and the shopping centres are half empty. But there is still a scarily long way to fall. The consequences for Scottish industrial output (along with the consequential loss of Grangemouth) are going to be catastrophic. Scotland needs time to find new jobs and new investment. They could also do with a government that has some idea of the implications this has for the Scottish tax base. This policy of preventing the granting of more licences for the North Sea is the sort of economic vandalism that Thatcher was rightly criticised for during the Howe monetarist period. It is criminally stupid and not a little vicious.
Just wait till GB Energy (headquartered in Aberdeen) gets going.
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Not for long if Israel goes after the Iranian oil assets. Even though that mostly affects oil to Russia and China it will mean their demand goes elsewhere although there is alot of supply in the world. it also depends if Iran responds by going after Saudi and others oil assets. I wonder if the risk of that is why the Saudis held out an olive branch to Iran recently.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
Another month of planning - with the US providing Israel with its latest intel - would suit Biden. Heck, after the election, knock yourselves out. And Iran's hydrocarbons industry too.
Jonathan Powell on Chagos: “These are very tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean where no one actually goes. So I don’t think we should be too worried about losing that bit of territory. We’re probably losing more to tidal erosion in the East Coast than that.”
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
I think the TLDR is that the public are profuoundly unkeen on the government, but perhaps dislike them less than the alternatives.
This isnt really unsurprising. People don't like to think they have made a bad choice. It takes time. But this is supposed to be the honeymoon. A government only a few months old looks like it is on the rocks. Utterly bizarre. It isnt just PBcrazies noticing that this isnt normal.
True and don't forget the polls generally overstate Labour vote share significantly as they did at the last GE. I think that they were about 6 points out then, so if that would be repeated at a hypothetical election tomorrow, the main parties are roughly equal.
And if that 6 points went to Reform, we'd have the fascinating situation of the three main parties being roughly equal.
The polls overstated Labour in 2024, got them about right in 2019, and understated them in 2017. You're suffering from the recency fallacy there.
I'd also note, as an aside, that they also overstated RefUK a fair bit in 2024.
Jonathan Powell on Chagos: “These are very tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean where no one actually goes. So I don’t think we should be too worried about losing that bit of territory. We’re probably losing more to tidal erosion in the East Coast than that.”
"A far off country of which we know little" ! doesn't bode well, does it ?
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.
Sorry but that is rubbish. The cancellation of projects and the shifting of investment away from the North Sea has turned from a trickle into a tidal wave since Milliband got into power. I had a number of potential contracts where the companies were absolutely clear that they had their plans on hold until they saw if Labour won (and followed through on their promises) and which have now been cancelled. Serica, Hartshead, Harbour, Ithaca and Dana are all reducing North Sea investment and reinvesting in exploration and development elsewhere - many of them in Norway.
Prior to the election Labour had been claiming that increasing the windfall tax would push North Sea tax revenues up from the (OBR) predicted £8.6 billion a year in 2028 to something over £10 billion. The latest prediction based on what Labour has proposed/done since it came to power is that that revenue will fall to £2 billion a year at most by 2028. To be honest, the way companies are now fleeing the North Sea I think they will be lucky to make that.
I have had 2 cases in Aberdeen recently and was staying in an hotel in the outskirts near the airport. The number of businesses and industrial estates there is remarkable, there is nothing even close to it in Scotland. Bristow helicopters were flying out from early in the morning (too early for my taste anyway). There were a lot of large jets as well.
The glory days of Aberdeen and Union Street have long since past. John Lewis is gone and the shopping centres are half empty. But there is still a scarily long way to fall. The consequences for Scottish industrial output (along with the consequential loss of Grangemouth) are going to be catastrophic. Scotland needs time to find new jobs and new investment. They could also do with a government that has some idea of the implications this has for the Scottish tax base. This policy of preventing the granting of more licences for the North Sea is the sort of economic vandalism that Thatcher was rightly criticised for during the Howe monetarist period. It is criminally stupid and not a little vicious.
Just wait till GB Energy (headquartered in Aberdeen) gets going.
If they were being given the budget of £22bn that is being wasted on carbon capture I would be more hopeful.
There was a time which carbon capture could have been genuinely useful. It was a time when huge coal burning power stations were our major source of energy. But we closed down the last coal burning power station last week. Even our gas powered stations are playing a smaller role. This strikes me as a classic Westminster catastrophe. By the time they finally get it up and running the need for it has disappeared.
Scotland, to me, is facing an economic tsunami. We need help to rebalance our economy away from plentiful North Sea oil. There is a moral obligation on the UK Treasury, who benefitted so substantially during the peak years, to help. I am genuinely concerned we have a government in Holyrood who are simply failing to recognise the consequences because they want to pretend that we are viable and should be independent on the one hand and a government overly influenced by a fool like Ed Miliband on the other. Neither are recognising the problem let alone seeking to address it. I am seriously pessimistic about Scotland's economic future.
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.
It appears that the Cleverly deal got to the point of cross-Departmental circulation, which implies he did provisionally, at least, sign it off. A former Defence Secretary said he vetoed it at that point because it left the base in limbo (which implies that the Cleverly deal was, if anything, worse than the one finally signed). It then went back so that it was still in draft when Cameron came in. Cameron paused it (but did not end it) over the base situation (according to his testimony to a Select Committee).
If the status of the base was agreed later, then the situation would have unfolded exactly as we saw, as the incoming FS and DS would have seen no grounds to veto it and send it back further.
So much for "no Government can bind its successors"...
Jonathan Powell on Chagos: “These are very tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean where no one actually goes. So I don’t think we should be too worried about losing that bit of territory. We’re probably losing more to tidal erosion in the East Coast than that.”
He is intimately involved in this and this tweet demonstrates that he doesn't give a fig for either the geopolitical implications or the idea of restitution for the Chagossians
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.
Sorry but that is rubbish. The cancellation of projects and the shifting of investment away from the North Sea has turned from a trickle into a tidal wave since Milliband got into power. I had a number of potential contracts where the companies were absolutely clear that they had their plans on hold until they saw if Labour won (and followed through on their promises) and which have now been cancelled. Serica, Hartshead, Harbour, Ithaca and Dana are all reducing North Sea investment and reinvesting in exploration and development elsewhere - many of them in Norway.
Prior to the election Labour had been claiming that increasing the windfall tax would push North Sea tax revenues up from the (OBR) predicted £8.6 billion a year in 2028 to something over £10 billion. The latest prediction based on what Labour has proposed/done since it came to power is that that revenue will fall to £2 billion a year at most by 2028. To be honest, the way companies are now fleeing the North Sea I think they will be lucky to make that.
I have had 2 cases in Aberdeen recently and was staying in an hotel in the outskirts near the airport. The number of businesses and industrial estates there is remarkable, there is nothing even close to it in Scotland. Bristow helicopters were flying out from early in the morning (too early for my taste anyway). There were a lot of large jets as well.
The glory days of Aberdeen and Union Street have long since past. John Lewis is gone and the shopping centres are half empty. But there is still a scarily long way to fall. The consequences for Scottish industrial output (along with the consequential loss of Grangemouth) are going to be catastrophic. Scotland needs time to find new jobs and new investment. They could also do with a government that has some idea of the implications this has for the Scottish tax base. This policy of preventing the granting of more licences for the North Sea is the sort of economic vandalism that Thatcher was rightly criticised for during the Howe monetarist period. It is criminally stupid and not a little vicious.
Just wait till GB Energy (headquartered in Aberdeen) gets going.
If they were being given the budget of £22bn that is being wasted on carbon capture I would be more hopeful.
There was a time which carbon capture could have been genuinely useful. It was a time when huge coal burning power stations were our major source of energy. But we closed down the last coal burning power station last week. Even our gas powered stations are playing a smaller role. This strikes me as a classic Westminster catastrophe. By the time they finally get it up and running the need for it has disappeared.
Scotland, to me, is facing an economic tsunami. We need help to rebalance our economy away from plentiful North Sea oil. There is a moral obligation on the UK Treasury, who benefitted so substantially during the peak years, to help. I am genuinely concerned we have a government in Holyrood who are simply failing to recognise the consequences because they want to pretend that we are viable and should be independent on the one hand and a government overly influenced by a fool like Ed Miliband on the other. Neither are recognising the problem let alone seeking to address it. I am seriously pessimistic about Scotland's economic future.
I’m struggling to recall those crazy, hazy days when you were anything other than seriously pessimistic..
The looming threat of all-out war exploding in the Middle East has thrown Dubai into chaos, with flights grounded or delayed as Brits prepare for a mass exodus from the ex-pat paradise
Err, nope.
Flights to war zones have indeed been cancelled, but most of the immigration to Dubai is incoming, from those fleeing the wars. There’s definitely not any signs of an exodus.
Jonathan Powell on Chagos: “These are very tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean where no one actually goes. So I don’t think we should be too worried about losing that bit of territory. We’re probably losing more to tidal erosion in the East Coast than that.”
He is intimately involved in this and this tweet demonstrates that he doesn't give a fig for either the geopolitical implications or the idea of restitution for the Chagossians
I think that so far as the Foreign Office was concerned this was annoying because there were several decisions against us in international courts that they found embarrassing to ignore. They simply wanted it to go away and close the file. To hell with those who once lived there.
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.
Sorry but that is rubbish. The cancellation of projects and the shifting of investment away from the North Sea has turned from a trickle into a tidal wave since Milliband got into power. I had a number of potential contracts where the companies were absolutely clear that they had their plans on hold until they saw if Labour won (and followed through on their promises) and which have now been cancelled. Serica, Hartshead, Harbour, Ithaca and Dana are all reducing North Sea investment and reinvesting in exploration and development elsewhere - many of them in Norway.
Prior to the election Labour had been claiming that increasing the windfall tax would push North Sea tax revenues up from the (OBR) predicted £8.6 billion a year in 2028 to something over £10 billion. The latest prediction based on what Labour has proposed/done since it came to power is that that revenue will fall to £2 billion a year at most by 2028. To be honest, the way companies are now fleeing the North Sea I think they will be lucky to make that.
I have had 2 cases in Aberdeen recently and was staying in an hotel in the outskirts near the airport. The number of businesses and industrial estates there is remarkable, there is nothing even close to it in Scotland. Bristow helicopters were flying out from early in the morning (too early for my taste anyway). There were a lot of large jets as well.
The glory days of Aberdeen and Union Street have long since past. John Lewis is gone and the shopping centres are half empty. But there is still a scarily long way to fall. The consequences for Scottish industrial output (along with the consequential loss of Grangemouth) are going to be catastrophic. Scotland needs time to find new jobs and new investment. They could also do with a government that has some idea of the implications this has for the Scottish tax base. This policy of preventing the granting of more licences for the North Sea is the sort of economic vandalism that Thatcher was rightly criticised for during the Howe monetarist period. It is criminally stupid and not a little vicious.
Just wait till GB Energy (headquartered in Aberdeen) gets going.
If they were being given the budget of £22bn that is being wasted on carbon capture I would be more hopeful.
There was a time which carbon capture could have been genuinely useful. It was a time when huge coal burning power stations were our major source of energy. But we closed down the last coal burning power station last week. Even our gas powered stations are playing a smaller role. This strikes me as a classic Westminster catastrophe. By the time they finally get it up and running the need for it has disappeared.
Scotland, to me, is facing an economic tsunami. We need help to rebalance our economy away from plentiful North Sea oil. There is a moral obligation on the UK Treasury, who benefitted so substantially during the peak years, to help. I am genuinely concerned we have a government in Holyrood who are simply failing to recognise the consequences because they want to pretend that we are viable and should be independent on the one hand and a government overly influenced by a fool like Ed Miliband on the other. Neither are recognising the problem let alone seeking to address it. I am seriously pessimistic about Scotland's economic future.
More than budget, are they putting people in charge who know anything about energy?
I recall a comic moment when I asked someone (civil service) about BritVolt - their reply was something like "No, they are properly run. The technology and talent can just be bought in later".
The looming threat of all-out war exploding in the Middle East has thrown Dubai into chaos, with flights grounded or delayed as Brits prepare for a mass exodus from the ex-pat paradise
Err, nope.
Flights to war zones have indeed been cancelled, but most of the immigration to Dubai is incoming, from those fleeing the wars. There’s definitely not any signs of an exodus.
Daily Mail (written by cads for over a century) printing a pile of tosh designed to get people worried?
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.
Sorry but that is rubbish. The cancellation of projects and the shifting of investment away from the North Sea has turned from a trickle into a tidal wave since Milliband got into power. I had a number of potential contracts where the companies were absolutely clear that they had their plans on hold until they saw if Labour won (and followed through on their promises) and which have now been cancelled. Serica, Hartshead, Harbour, Ithaca and Dana are all reducing North Sea investment and reinvesting in exploration and development elsewhere - many of them in Norway.
Prior to the election Labour had been claiming that increasing the windfall tax would push North Sea tax revenues up from the (OBR) predicted £8.6 billion a year in 2028 to something over £10 billion. The latest prediction based on what Labour has proposed/done since it came to power is that that revenue will fall to £2 billion a year at most by 2028. To be honest, the way companies are now fleeing the North Sea I think they will be lucky to make that.
I have had 2 cases in Aberdeen recently and was staying in an hotel in the outskirts near the airport. The number of businesses and industrial estates there is remarkable, there is nothing even close to it in Scotland. Bristow helicopters were flying out from early in the morning (too early for my taste anyway). There were a lot of large jets as well.
The glory days of Aberdeen and Union Street have long since past. John Lewis is gone and the shopping centres are half empty. But there is still a scarily long way to fall. The consequences for Scottish industrial output (along with the consequential loss of Grangemouth) are going to be catastrophic. Scotland needs time to find new jobs and new investment. They could also do with a government that has some idea of the implications this has for the Scottish tax base. This policy of preventing the granting of more licences for the North Sea is the sort of economic vandalism that Thatcher was rightly criticised for during the Howe monetarist period. It is criminally stupid and not a little vicious.
Just wait till GB Energy (headquartered in Aberdeen) gets going.
If they were being given the budget of £22bn that is being wasted on carbon capture I would be more hopeful.
There was a time which carbon capture could have been genuinely useful. It was a time when huge coal burning power stations were our major source of energy. But we closed down the last coal burning power station last week. Even our gas powered stations are playing a smaller role. This strikes me as a classic Westminster catastrophe. By the time they finally get it up and running the need for it has disappeared.
Scotland, to me, is facing an economic tsunami. We need help to rebalance our economy away from plentiful North Sea oil. There is a moral obligation on the UK Treasury, who benefitted so substantially during the peak years, to help. I am genuinely concerned we have a government in Holyrood who are simply failing to recognise the consequences because they want to pretend that we are viable and should be independent on the one hand and a government overly influenced by a fool like Ed Miliband on the other. Neither are recognising the problem let alone seeking to address it. I am seriously pessimistic about Scotland's economic future.
More than budget, are they putting people in charge who know anything about energy?
I recall a comic moment when I asked someone (civil service) about BritVolt - their reply was something like "No, they are properly run. The technology and talent can just be bought in later".
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?!
I am pointing out that ending 'imperialism' can have very negative and long-lasting consequences. I think there are enough examples out there, including the ones I pointed out, to make that fairly unarguable.
That does not mean that imperialism should not end, especially if local populations want it; just that extreme care needs to be taken to ensure those negative consequences are minimised.
I don't think that this has been done here.
The whole place is going to be under water in 100 years time. Of course it will end badly.
No, it won't.
Th rate of sea level rise will be small, per actual year. Given the value of the base, it will be trivial to increase the height of atoll in the areas wanted. Indeed, this has already been done by the Americans on portions of the base, in the past.
See the wholesale construction/raising of islands by China.
The bit the Chagos islanders will live on - that's another matter. Why should the Mauritius bother? They will have the fishing rights.
That bit will sort itself out naturally. Coral atolls grow and shrink to match sealevel changes. They have to otherwise there wouldn't be any left.
That's assuming the reef is alive and growing. Uninhabited that might happen - human habitation tends to stop the process, pretty much.
There's also the matter of pace - depends on the speed of sea level rise. Coral is sloooooooooow.
Not as slow as sea level rise. Indeed averages about 4x faster.
Why bring facts to this?
But am I correct in saying that some coral atolls are being damaged not because of sea-level rise or climate change, but because of chemical composition of the water (or, more accurately, chemicals in the water)?
Here are some actual facts regarding the effect of climate change on coral reefs:
"Climate change is the greatest global threat to coral reef ecosystems. Scientific evidence now clearly indicates that the Earth's atmosphere and ocean are warming, and that these changes are primarily due to greenhouse gases derived from human activities.
As temperatures rise, mass coral bleaching events and infectious disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent. Additionally, carbon dioxide absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere has already begun to reduce calcification rates in reef-building and reef-associated organisms by altering seawater chemistry through decreases in pH. This process is called ocean acidification.
Climate change will affect coral reef ecosystems, through sea level rise, changes to the frequency and intensity of tropical storms, and altered ocean circulation patterns. When combined, all of these impacts dramatically alter ecosystem function, as well as the goods and services coral reef ecosystems provide to people around the globe."
We have had both record highs for coral and record lows in recent years. The position is undoubtedly more volatile but it remains a fact that corals are currently at record highs and there are something like 30% more corals than there was 5 years ago.
From the article you cite:
"What we should take from this is the reef – the world’s largest living structure – is currently still able to recover from repeated shocks. But these shocks are getting worse and arriving more often, and future recovery is not guaranteed.
This is the rollercoaster ride the reef faces at just 1.1°C of warming. The pattern of disturbance and recovery is shifting – and not in the Reef’s favour."
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.
It appears that the Cleverly deal got to the point of cross-Departmental circulation, which implies he did provisionally, at least, sign it off. A former Defence Secretary said he vetoed it at that point because it left the base in limbo (which implies that the Cleverly deal was, if anything, worse than the one finally signed). It then went back so that it was still in draft when Cameron came in. Cameron paused it (but did not end it) over the base situation (according to his testimony to a Select Committee).
If the status of the base was agreed later, then the situation would have unfolded exactly as we saw, as the incoming FS and DS would have seen no grounds to veto it and send it back further.
So much for "no Government can bind its successors"...
Not exactly bound. They certainly had the option of saying "Nah, we don't like it," but it looks like they didn't see any reason to.
EDIT: As could Cameron, of course, but he, for whatever reason, saw fit merely to pause it rather than close it down.
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.
Sorry but that is rubbish. The cancellation of projects and the shifting of investment away from the North Sea has turned from a trickle into a tidal wave since Milliband got into power. I had a number of potential contracts where the companies were absolutely clear that they had their plans on hold until they saw if Labour won (and followed through on their promises) and which have now been cancelled. Serica, Hartshead, Harbour, Ithaca and Dana are all reducing North Sea investment and reinvesting in exploration and development elsewhere - many of them in Norway.
Prior to the election Labour had been claiming that increasing the windfall tax would push North Sea tax revenues up from the (OBR) predicted £8.6 billion a year in 2028 to something over £10 billion. The latest prediction based on what Labour has proposed/done since it came to power is that that revenue will fall to £2 billion a year at most by 2028. To be honest, the way companies are now fleeing the North Sea I think they will be lucky to make that.
I have had 2 cases in Aberdeen recently and was staying in an hotel in the outskirts near the airport. The number of businesses and industrial estates there is remarkable, there is nothing even close to it in Scotland. Bristow helicopters were flying out from early in the morning (too early for my taste anyway). There were a lot of large jets as well.
The glory days of Aberdeen and Union Street have long since past. John Lewis is gone and the shopping centres are half empty. But there is still a scarily long way to fall. The consequences for Scottish industrial output (along with the consequential loss of Grangemouth) are going to be catastrophic. Scotland needs time to find new jobs and new investment. They could also do with a government that has some idea of the implications this has for the Scottish tax base. This policy of preventing the granting of more licences for the North Sea is the sort of economic vandalism that Thatcher was rightly criticised for during the Howe monetarist period. It is criminally stupid and not a little vicious.
Just wait till GB Energy (headquartered in Aberdeen) gets going.
If they were being given the budget of £22bn that is being wasted on carbon capture I would be more hopeful.
There was a time which carbon capture could have been genuinely useful. It was a time when huge coal burning power stations were our major source of energy. But we closed down the last coal burning power station last week. Even our gas powered stations are playing a smaller role. This strikes me as a classic Westminster catastrophe. By the time they finally get it up and running the need for it has disappeared.
Scotland, to me, is facing an economic tsunami. We need help to rebalance our economy away from plentiful North Sea oil. There is a moral obligation on the UK Treasury, who benefitted so substantially during the peak years, to help. I am genuinely concerned we have a government in Holyrood who are simply failing to recognise the consequences because they want to pretend that we are viable and should be independent on the one hand and a government overly influenced by a fool like Ed Miliband on the other. Neither are recognising the problem let alone seeking to address it. I am seriously pessimistic about Scotland's economic future.
More than budget, are they putting people in charge who know anything about energy?
I recall a comic moment when I asked someone (civil service) about BritVolt - their reply was something like "No, they are properly run. The technology and talent can just be bought in later".
*weeps softly*
Why cry - this is how it has always been.
Consider. A loony South African demolished the Russian State Space program, Boeing and Lockheeds space programs and took a chunk out of ESA. We are talking about prestige projects backed by governments who back their currencies with plutonium*.
How?
Not through some secret sauce of genius. But hiring domain experts (enthusiastic ones at that) with a leavening of young, bright engineers - and giving them the structure to actually do something.
We can see the same pattern in smaller, emerging companies, in the same field - such as Stoke (https://www.stokespace.com). Stoke just fired a FFSC rocket engine. A type of engine that, until recently, was judged impossible by the big, governmental programs. Stoke did it with a handful of engineers.
Meanwhile, the giant governmental programs above were "properly run".
*The ultimate hard currency. Gold is for slackers.
US oil prices at the pump continue to fall but for how long ?
Not for long if Israel goes after the Iranian oil assets. Even though that mostly affects oil to Russia and China it will mean their demand goes elsewhere although there is alot of supply in the world. it also depends if Iran responds by going after Saudi and others oil assets. I wonder if the risk of that is why the Saudis held out an olive branch to Iran recently.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
The Dems don’t want a spike in pump prices just a few weeks from the election . With such narrow margins in the polling it doesn’t need much to tip a swing state.
Biden doesn't seem to care either way from his response when questioned about it.
If the Warmongers in Israel really do want a Trump presidency if this action precipitates one why wouldn't they do it anyway ?
There's also a real question of how open-ended this Israeli operation. In Lebanon may turn out to be. His loony ministers are still using the same rhetoric as in Gaza, a "total victory" over Hezbollah.
This clearly hasn't worked in Gasa - Hamas are still operating- , but it has killed tens of thousands of civilians in horrific circumstances. There's a real risk that the same kind of scenario could unfold in Lebanon, with added pan-Muslim unity against Israel, unless someone in the U.S. finally gets a grip of the situation. Netanyahu is about to embark on a sinilar sttategic and hunanitarian catastrophe as in Gaza, but the level of strategic leadership shown by the U S. so far has been woeful.
It hasn't worked in Gaza, nearly a year on and there is no total victory.
They are also firing into the West Bank as well.
You're right about the US and its strategic leadership. The Israelis are happy to take their weapons and aid but their advice, well, they just treat with contempt and do what they want to.
On the carbon capture investment, are we about to see another festival of senior Conservative Politicians maundering on about a Labour Government doing something that was in the July 2024 Conservative Party Election Manifesto?
Viz page 48:
We are delivering record investment into UK renewables. But we need to go further, unlocking more investment to secure our energy supply in the future. In the next Parliament we will: ... - Build the first two carbon capture and storage clusters, based across North Wales and, the North West of England and Teesside and the Humber, cutting carbon and creating tens of thousands of jobs in these regions, and progress the second tranche of projects in Aberdeenshire and the Humber. https://public.conservatives.com/static/documents/GE2024/Conservative-Manifesto-GE2024.pdf
Jonathan Powell on Chagos: “These are very tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean where no one actually goes. So I don’t think we should be too worried about losing that bit of territory. We’re probably losing more to tidal erosion in the East Coast than that.”
This was Britain’s top negotiator on this issue? Heaven help us.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
I think the TLDR is that the public are profuoundly unkeen on the government, but perhaps dislike them less than the alternatives.
This isnt really unsurprising. People don't like to think they have made a bad choice. It takes time. But this is supposed to be the honeymoon. A government only a few months old looks like it is on the rocks. Utterly bizarre. It isnt just PBcrazies noticing that this isnt normal.
I think it's right on people liking the alternative even less - or rather there being a critical mass of people who do.
Labour started from an unusually pessimistic position, and one they haven't improved both with their strategy - get the doom and gloom in early - and missteps like the donations row.
But...and it's an important but. The Tories terrible decade and the lack of a coherent oppositional narrative to the Big Two, means that the bar is relatively low to get to a position where could be fairly optimistic about re-election chances.
Namely signs our economic position is improving and public services are improving and not getting worse- even if not by an awful lot. Get there and there's enough people who have become pretty staunchly anti-Tory, even those with little love for Labour and Starmer, to put in a strong electoral position.
Spot on. If they do ok, they will be re-elected and deservedly so. If they don't, they'll get kicked out.
Setting expectations low, and making harder decisions in years 1 is clearly the right strategy. We have become so used to being told what we want to hear by fantasist politicians that we have forgotten what a year 1 government should look like.
The other point is that we're a much more divided country than have been in modern political history - with different groups having fairly staunchly opposed positions, but nonetheless sometimes coalescing together to stop those they see as more detrimental or dangerous to their interests.
For example, among those who are potential Labour voters you have those who think they're too right-wing, are upset over Gaza and think Starmer is a red Tory, pro-Europeans upset at lack of repudiation of Brexit. Normies fed up with Tories. Younger people upset at how their generations have been treated, plus older traditional Labour voters and so on.
On the right you have traditional Tories, traditionalist pro-Brexit voters, more radical anti-woke, and the anti-immigration Tories, radical tax cutters, and those who believe the Tories are part of an establishment conspiracy and love Reform - and so on.
Each has their overlaps but are set against each other in other ways. Gluing as much of your 'side' together as possible probably doesn't mean engendering the most enthusiasm - as doing so scares the other side together and can break apart yours. But rather being seen as less threatening and serving enough of their interests to convince it's worth voting you in to keep out the awful other lot.
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.
Sorry but that is rubbish. The cancellation of projects and the shifting of investment away from the North Sea has turned from a trickle into a tidal wave since Milliband got into power. I had a number of potential contracts where the companies were absolutely clear that they had their plans on hold until they saw if Labour won (and followed through on their promises) and which have now been cancelled. Serica, Hartshead, Harbour, Ithaca and Dana are all reducing North Sea investment and reinvesting in exploration and development elsewhere - many of them in Norway.
Prior to the election Labour had been claiming that increasing the windfall tax would push North Sea tax revenues up from the (OBR) predicted £8.6 billion a year in 2028 to something over £10 billion. The latest prediction based on what Labour has proposed/done since it came to power is that that revenue will fall to £2 billion a year at most by 2028. To be honest, the way companies are now fleeing the North Sea I think they will be lucky to make that.
I have had 2 cases in Aberdeen recently and was staying in an hotel in the outskirts near the airport. The number of businesses and industrial estates there is remarkable, there is nothing even close to it in Scotland. Bristow helicopters were flying out from early in the morning (too early for my taste anyway). There were a lot of large jets as well.
The glory days of Aberdeen and Union Street have long since past. John Lewis is gone and the shopping centres are half empty. But there is still a scarily long way to fall. The consequences for Scottish industrial output (along with the consequential loss of Grangemouth) are going to be catastrophic. Scotland needs time to find new jobs and new investment. They could also do with a government that has some idea of the implications this has for the Scottish tax base. This policy of preventing the granting of more licences for the North Sea is the sort of economic vandalism that Thatcher was rightly criticised for during the Howe monetarist period. It is criminally stupid and not a little vicious.
Just wait till GB Energy (headquartered in Aberdeen) gets going.
If they were being given the budget of £22bn that is being wasted on carbon capture I would be more hopeful.
There was a time which carbon capture could have been genuinely useful. It was a time when huge coal burning power stations were our major source of energy. But we closed down the last coal burning power station last week. Even our gas powered stations are playing a smaller role. This strikes me as a classic Westminster catastrophe. By the time they finally get it up and running the need for it has disappeared.
Scotland, to me, is facing an economic tsunami. We need help to rebalance our economy away from plentiful North Sea oil. There is a moral obligation on the UK Treasury, who benefitted so substantially during the peak years, to help. I am genuinely concerned we have a government in Holyrood who are simply failing to recognise the consequences because they want to pretend that we are viable and should be independent on the one hand and a government overly influenced by a fool like Ed Miliband on the other. Neither are recognising the problem let alone seeking to address it. I am seriously pessimistic about Scotland's economic future.
I’m struggling to recall those crazy, hazy days when you were anything other than seriously pessimistic..
We have been running a substantial trade deficit for well over 20 years. We got a lot of growth out of financial services, Edinburgh did particularly well, but that has been a lot more difficult since 2008. Our industrial base is continuing to decline. Our education system, which we once could be particularly proud of, is declining. Our public sector is too large and, frankly, too well paid sucking talent out of the economy. We need to do some seriously hard thinking about what our children and their children are going to do for a living.
So, what can we do?
We have some excellent Universities in St Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde. We have some good ones in Dundee, Aberdeen and Stirling. They seem to me the obvious base for our future, just as Monasteries were in the middle ages .
Not only do they bring a lot of money into Scotland through foreign students but they also spin off some businesses and generate significant investment such as the Wellcome Trust in Dundee and Microsoft in Edinburgh. We need to do all we can to generate more such businesses. That will include enterprise zones with lower taxes, close liaison between what the Universities teach and what these businesses of tomorrow want, tax and investment incentives and we need to encourage those trained here to stay and create their businesses here. They have the capacity to replace those industrial estates around Aberdeen.
We still have strength in financial services but it is absolutely essential that that business remains closely tied with London to which it is back office and services.
We need to try and get our tax rates competitive with the rest of the UK, to be focused on our economy and close the door on constitutional uncertainty, indeed every kind of uncertainty that we can control.
But this is not likely to happen, hence my pessimism.
On the carbon capture investment, are we about to see another festival of senior Conservative Politicians maundering on about a Labour Government doing something that was in the July 2024 Conservative Party Election Manifesto?
One of the odd things about CCS is that British governments have been promising to spend £bns on it for years. Since at least 2007. There have been lots of announcements, but I think the big ten-digit money has never been spent.
Comments
Though you still shouldn't hold them.
Equally irrelevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rax27_ZIVM
We are going to spunk £22 billion on carbon capture (largely untried), and that carbon capture is basically the CO2 emissions from gas power stations, separating CO2 and pumping it underground when the gas is burnt.
Wouldn't it therefore make economic sense and indeed environmental sense to get that gas from the north sea rather than shipping it from Qatar (or wherever) ?
There's also the matter of pace - depends on the speed of sea level rise. Coral is sloooooooooow.
Has the French construction sector hit rock bottom? The French construction sector remains in deep crisis, as reflected in the HCOB PMI for September, which dropped to 37.9 points – the lowest level in nearly a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic period. The index for civil engineering, in particular, saw a sharp decline compared to the previous month, with the steepest contraction in activity once again occurring in the residential property market. In light of this downturn, the question arises whether the sector has finally reached its lowest point.
The French construction sector continues to suffer from rising prices. Although the pace of price increases slowed
somewhat in September, input costs are still growing despite historically weak demand. A small silver lining is the decline in subcontractor prices, likely due to construction companies having sharply reduced their reliance on subcontractors by the end of the third quarter.
The outlook for the French construction sector remains bleak. Order intake continues to shrink significantly, and forecasts for future activity are equally pessimistic. Many construction companies have expressed concerns about the weak demand environment, leading to a further wave of layoffs. A recovery in the sector seems likely only through substantial interest rate cuts in the Eurozone, but hopes for such action remain limited at present.
https://www.pmi.spglobal.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/cbd48985551b452d90a11c4325386249
UK construction companies indicated a decisive improvement in output growth momentum during September, driven by faster upturns across all three major categories of activity.
A combination of lower interest rates, domestic economic stability and strong pipelines of infrastructure work have helped to boost order books in recent months.
New project starts contributed to a moderate expansion of employment numbers and a faster rise in purchasing activity across the construction sector in September. However, greater demand for raw materials and the pass-through of higher wages by suppliers led to the steepest increase in input costs for 16 months.
Business optimism edged down to the lowest since April, but remained much higher than the low point seen last October. Survey respondents cited rising sales enquires since the general election, as well as lower borrowing costs and the potential for stronger house building demand as factors supporting business activity expectations in September.
https://www.pmi.spglobal.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/5082bac169384c5ca4f7d15bf3a63737
But to be fair it is not just power stations. One of the reasons that some of the main targets for CO2 storage are off Humberside is because there is a concentration of insdustries around Immingham which produce large amounts of CO2. Humberside is the highest emmitting region in the UK.
That said, killing the UK petrochemical and manufacturing industries as Labour seem determined to do might make that all redundant.
You know as well as the rest of us do that rulings of the UN are adhered to when States wish to adhere to them, and ignored when States wish to ignore them.
With no means of enforcement, and no common standards, public international law is really an agreed-upon fiction.
As I recall, the relevant Miller case (Miller I rather than Miller II) wasn't decided on the basis of whether the Government could exercise prerogative powers to make treaties generally. It rested on the fact that, specifically for entry into the EU, withdrawal would effectively repeal large parts of the European Communities Act 1972, and repealing legislation is not a prerogative power. I doubt there is an equivalent for the Chagos Islands.
I thought it was signed, sealed, and delivered judging by the comments last night but it seems it still has some way to go
See @williamglenn at 9.35
Labour really has long since ceased to be the party of the working class. Labour used to fight for miners, mining jobs and the jobs of the working class. Now they seem to care more about the lanyard class in the public sector.
I am not surprised in these areas Reform fills the gap for some. They are the only party who speak to these areas and listen to their concerns.
Germany is fairly stuck.
Meanwhile, in "other numbers that don't quite fit the narrative" news:
Techne for this week:
Labour: 31% (-1)
Conservatives: 23% (+1)
Lib Dems: 13% (=)
Reform UK: 18% (=)
Greens: 7% (=)
SNP: 2% (=)
Others: 6% (=)
Public sentiment towards the government’s handling of national priorities, remains low with a net confidence of -22%
Confident: 32%
Not Confident: 54%
https://www.techneuk.com/tracker/
I think the TLDR is that the public are profuoundly unkeen on the government, but perhaps dislike them less than the alternatives.
But am I correct in saying that some coral atolls are being damaged not because of sea-level rise or climate change, but because of chemical composition of the water (or, more accurately, chemicals in the water)?
But actually it sort of makes sense if you consider that Starmer is a human rights lawyer, many of the MP's are activists with limited business experience, to a large degree the civil service is increasingly 'like them'; they are close to the trade unions who peddle simplistic notions about 'shareholder greed' along with demands for vast pay rises; along with a cumulative near religious belief in 'taxing the rich'.
They are trying to govern with all the above baggage, and it is likely that they will just completely fail.
The most charitable interpretation is that Miliband hasn't kept up with the collapse in the cost of renewables since he was last energy secretary in 2010, but even then it would be a bad choice, if a slightly more understandable one.
Remember, opposition is impotence and irrelevance. Which is why it's wise to avoid it.
Labour inherited a growing economy with lots of demand for new construction and interest rates on the downward trend.
How things look in a year and more will be affected by government decisions.
Even though the US produces most of its own oil and gas any further escalation in the Middle East could cause a global energy spike and this is why the Dems are nervous about what Israel might do .
Trumps campaign needs to maintain its lead over Harris on the economy . Harris has closed that but still remains behind .
The road to the WH still remains full of hurdles for the Dems as external factors could have an impact .
There will be a huge relief though after the dockworkers suspended their strike , this could have had a disastrous effect on that economic argument and put Harris in an impossible position .
Looking ahead , today we have the latest jobs report and then next week the inflation report , the latter is like to show a further fall which will help Harris . After this there’s only one more important report which will be the jobs report for October which comes out a few days before the election .
This is where the suspension of the dockworkers strike is absolutely crucial. The knock on effect if the strike had dragged on would be job losses / temporary suspensions in connected industries . There’s already the impacts of the hurricane to deal with.
In terms of early in person voting next week sees many more states starting including the key battleground state of Arizona . Georgia starts the following week.
Would see Labour lose 37 seats to the Tories and 3 seats to Reform
https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/conservative
https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/reform-uk
One problem with the continuing economic problems in France and Germany is that it will increase the political instability there.
Both countries could get trapped in a negative loop of economic problems leading to more political instability leading to inability to make economic reforms.
But you are right about the make up of labour and its backbenchers. They are there to manage it seems rather than just legislate and let business get on with it.
You also have a business secretary with no experience of business who is influenced by academics with no experience of business on matters of policy. It may end in tears.
But, what counts is having the military muscle to repel predators.
Joe Biden seems happy to let Israel do that. After all the US is a major oil producer. It won't harm any nation who produces oil. Just the consumer and the global economy in the short term.
Exclusive: Labour said they had no choice but to sign the deal because of the legal mess left by the Tories
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/diego-garcia-airbase-liz-truss-boris-johnson-b2623626.html
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html
"Climate change is the greatest global threat to coral reef ecosystems. Scientific evidence now clearly indicates that the Earth's atmosphere and ocean are warming, and that these changes are primarily due to greenhouse gases derived from human activities.
As temperatures rise, mass coral bleaching events and infectious disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent. Additionally, carbon dioxide absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere has already begun to reduce calcification rates in reef-building and reef-associated organisms by altering seawater chemistry through decreases in pH. This process is called ocean acidification.
Climate change will affect coral reef ecosystems, through sea level rise, changes to the frequency and intensity of tropical storms, and altered ocean circulation patterns. When combined, all of these impacts dramatically alter ecosystem function, as well as the goods and services coral reef ecosystems provide to people around the globe."
Ukraine ignored them, and prices went down.
The institutionalised discrimination built into the scheme is not rational, but here we are.
The glory days of Aberdeen and Union Street have long since past. John Lewis is gone and the shopping centres are half empty. But there is still a scarily long way to fall. The consequences for Scottish industrial output (along with the consequential loss of Grangemouth) are going to be catastrophic. Scotland needs time to find new jobs and new investment. They could also do with a government that has some idea of the implications this has for the Scottish tax base. This policy of preventing the granting of more licences for the North Sea is the sort of economic vandalism that Thatcher was rightly criticised for during the Howe monetarist period. It is criminally stupid and not a little vicious.
Welcome to 1973 all over again.
A former Defence Secretary said he vetoed it at that point because it left the base in limbo (which implies that the Cleverly deal was, if anything, worse than the one finally signed). It then went back so that it was still in draft when Cameron came in.
Cameron paused it (but did not end it) over the base situation (according to his testimony to a Select Committee).
If the status of the base was agreed later, then the situation would have unfolded exactly as we saw, as the incoming FS and DS would have seen no grounds to veto it and send it back further.
And if that 6 points went to Reform, we'd have the fascinating situation of the three main parties being roughly equal.
If the Warmongers in Israel really do want a Trump presidency if this action precipitates one why wouldn't they do it anyway ?
Labour started from an unusually pessimistic position, and one they haven't improved both with their strategy - get the doom and gloom in early - and missteps like the donations row.
But...and it's an important but. The Tories terrible decade and the lack of a coherent oppositional narrative to the Big Two, means that the bar is relatively low to get to a position where could be fairly optimistic about re-election chances.
Namely signs our economic position is improving and public services are improving and not getting worse- even if not by an awful lot. Get there and there's enough people who have become pretty staunchly anti-Tory, even those with little love for Labour and Starmer, to put in a strong electoral position.
We have had both record highs for coral and record lows in recent years. The position is undoubtedly more volatile but it remains a fact that corals are currently at record highs and there are something like 30% more corals than there was 5 years ago.
Setting expectations low, and making harder decisions in years 1 is clearly the right strategy. We have become so used to being told what we want to hear by fantasist politicians that we have forgotten what a year 1 government should look like.
Of equal significance will be Melania Trump's memoir on Monday which has already annoyed pro life evangelicals by saying she is staunchly pro choice some of whom may stay home now in swing states and is now saying she weakened his immigration policy too (which while maybe correct will hardly help him drive up white working class turnout either)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/03/melania-trump-donald-immigration-jacket-slogan-book
Industrial Co2 is dirt cheap anyway, presumably because when firms like BOC extract various industrial gasses from air to sell (e.g. oxygen) they end up with more Co2 as a byproduct than they can sell anyway.
This clearly hasn't worked in Gasa - Hamas are still operating- , but it has killed tens of thousands of civilians in horrific circumstances. There's a real risk that the same kind of scenario could unfold in Lebanon, with added pan-Muslim unity against Israel, unless someone in the U.S. finally gets a grip of the situation. Netanyahu is about to embark on a sinilar sttategic and hunanitarian catastrophe as in Gaza, but the level of strategic leadership shown by the U S. so far has been woeful.
I'd also note, as an aside, that they also overstated RefUK a fair bit in 2024.
There was a time which carbon capture could have been genuinely useful. It was a time when huge coal burning power stations were our major source of energy. But we closed down the last coal burning power station last week. Even our gas powered stations are playing a smaller role. This strikes me as a classic Westminster catastrophe. By the time they finally get it up and running the need for it has disappeared.
Scotland, to me, is facing an economic tsunami. We need help to rebalance our economy away from plentiful North Sea oil. There is a moral obligation on the UK Treasury, who benefitted so substantially during the peak years, to help. I am genuinely concerned we have a government in Holyrood who are simply failing to recognise the consequences because they want to pretend that we are viable and should be independent on the one hand and a government overly influenced by a fool like Ed Miliband on the other. Neither are recognising the problem let alone seeking to address it. I am seriously pessimistic about Scotland's economic future.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13923927/middle-east-conflict-dubai-flights-cancelled-brits-stranded.html
The looming threat of all-out war exploding in the Middle East has thrown Dubai into chaos, with flights grounded or delayed as Brits prepare for a mass exodus from the ex-pat paradise
Err, nope.
Flights to war zones have indeed been cancelled, but most of the immigration to Dubai is incoming, from those fleeing the wars. There’s definitely not any signs of an exodus.
Meanwhile, I’m off to the pub.
I recall a comic moment when I asked someone (civil service) about BritVolt - their reply was something like "No, they are properly run. The technology and talent can just be bought in later".
Surely not.
"What we should take from this is the reef – the world’s largest living structure – is currently still able to recover from repeated shocks. But these shocks are getting worse and arriving more often, and future recovery is not guaranteed.
This is the rollercoaster ride the reef faces at just 1.1°C of warming. The pattern of disturbance and recovery is shifting – and not in the Reef’s favour."
EDIT: As could Cameron, of course, but he, for whatever reason, saw fit merely to pause it rather than close it down.
Consider. A loony South African demolished the Russian State Space program, Boeing and Lockheeds space programs and took a chunk out of ESA. We are talking about prestige projects backed by governments who back their currencies with plutonium*.
How?
Not through some secret sauce of genius. But hiring domain experts (enthusiastic ones at that) with a leavening of young, bright engineers - and giving them the structure to actually do something.
We can see the same pattern in smaller, emerging companies, in the same field - such as Stoke (https://www.stokespace.com). Stoke just fired a FFSC rocket engine. A type of engine that, until recently, was judged impossible by the big, governmental programs. Stoke did it with a handful of engineers.
Meanwhile, the giant governmental programs above were "properly run".
*The ultimate hard currency. Gold is for slackers.
They are also firing into the West Bank as well.
You're right about the US and its strategic leadership. The Israelis are happy to take their weapons and aid but their advice, well, they just treat with contempt and do what they want to.
Viz page 48:
We are delivering record investment into UK renewables. But we need to go further, unlocking more investment to secure our energy supply in the future. In the next Parliament we will:
...
- Build the first two carbon capture and storage clusters, based across North Wales and, the North West of England and Teesside and the Humber, cutting carbon and creating tens of thousands of jobs in these regions, and progress the second tranche of projects in Aberdeenshire and the Humber.
https://public.conservatives.com/static/documents/GE2024/Conservative-Manifesto-GE2024.pdf
Just asking.
Munich
Everybody talk about
Pop Music
For example, among those who are potential Labour voters you have those who think they're too right-wing, are upset over Gaza and think Starmer is a red Tory, pro-Europeans upset at lack of repudiation of Brexit. Normies fed up with Tories. Younger people upset at how their generations have been treated, plus older traditional Labour voters and so on.
On the right you have traditional Tories, traditionalist pro-Brexit voters, more radical anti-woke, and the anti-immigration Tories, radical tax cutters, and those who believe the Tories are part of an establishment conspiracy and love Reform - and so on.
Each has their overlaps but are set against each other in other ways. Gluing as much of your 'side' together as possible probably doesn't mean engendering the most enthusiasm - as doing so scares the other side together and can break apart yours. But rather being seen as less threatening and serving enough of their interests to convince it's worth voting you in to keep out the awful other lot.
So, what can we do?
We have some excellent Universities in St Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde. We have some good ones in Dundee, Aberdeen and Stirling. They seem to me the obvious base for our future, just as Monasteries were in the middle ages .
Not only do they bring a lot of money into Scotland through foreign students but they also spin off some businesses and generate significant investment such as the Wellcome Trust in Dundee and Microsoft in Edinburgh. We need to do all we can to generate more such businesses. That will include enterprise zones with lower taxes, close liaison between what the Universities teach and what these businesses of tomorrow want, tax and investment incentives and we need to encourage those trained here to stay and create their businesses here. They have the capacity to replace those industrial estates around Aberdeen.
We still have strength in financial services but it is absolutely essential that that business remains closely tied with London to which it is back office and services.
We need to try and get our tax rates competitive with the rest of the UK, to be focused on our economy and close the door on constitutional uncertainty, indeed every kind of uncertainty that we can control.
But this is not likely to happen, hence my pessimism.
Perhaps this announcement is more of the same?