President-elect Donald Trump is expected to be name Florida congressman Michael Waltz as the next national security adviser, two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News
Good good. Last week he said we need to be much harder on Russian sanctions and those who are buying his oil, while letting Ukraine do what they wish with American weapons, in order to force Putin to the negotiating table from a point of weakness. https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1856166839794933992
And as a counterpoint to this, to show how the administration is going to go:
Musky Baby replied "Interesting" to a post proclaiming: "Jeffrey Sachs explains how the US and NATO provoked the war in Ukraine."
Elon Musk undeniably played a huge role at the start of the conflict in supporting Ukraine through the provision of Starlink, and this has been ongoing, his position is just that he wants the war to end as a priority, and that he doesn't support a return to the 2014 borders - a legitimate position, even though it is one that you don't agree with.
He really did not play a huge role. His role was tiny when compared to (say) Boris Johnson. Yes, and I mean that.
Yet again, people believe Musk's own hype.
Since he lacks the control of the sixth biggest military on the planet, has no standing army, or billions of munitions, of course his contribution will be less than the British Prime Minister.
He is the richest man in the world, and idiots listen to his every pronouncement. The statement was: "Elon Musk undeniably played a huge role at the start of the conflict in supporting Ukraine through the provision of Starlink,"
My argument is that the statement is bullshit, for a number of reasons. What Ukraine needed at the start of the conflict was weapons, and it was those weapons - and the international support - that allowed their brave fighters to drive Russia out of much of Ukraine in early 2022. Musk was not there telling Russia to get out; AFAICR he was remarkably quiescent.
Finally: Musk is parroting Russian and tankie propaganda. It is untrue, and does nothing to help Ukraine.
Anyone who believes NATO and the US 'provoked' Russia into invading Ukraine is either a blithering idiot, or someone who is knowingly doing Putin's evil for him.
Has Musked said anything Tankie related?
He agreed (*) with the suggestion that the US and NATO 'provoked' Russia into invading Ukraine. That is a classic tankie line, that gives Russia no agency and blames us for Putin's evil.
(*) I take responses such as 'interesting' as lily-livered agreement. If he felt it was wrong, he should have said so.
It's not quite what you said at the beginning though, is it? You only clarified when I asked what he said. For none state actors he was the first in there at the beginning with starlink. If he's the richest, can we go down the list of other rich people, and see at what point we get to somebody else? Or corporations who were too busy not wanting to lose their investments as a result of state sanctions.
I think 'interesting' is a low bar to call someone a tankie. It is quite possible of course his position has changed on Ukraine. It is a partisan issue in the US unlike here, but then despite what we have been doing, the heavy lifting has come from the american taxpayer.
You’re confusing me with Josias there. Yes IMHO Musk’s efforts with Starlink were critical to the Ukranian military in the early stages of the war, and continue to be today.
Even if true (it isn't), he's doing massive harm to Ukraine now.
By giving them thousands of satellite internet connections for military use?
Meanwhile, Trump is about to appoint a security advisor who favours letting the Ukranians bomb the hell out of Russian infrastructure and intends to drag Putin to the negotiating table from a position of weakness.
We're talking about the start of the war.
Answer this: how is Musky Baby parroting Russian propaganda helping Ukraine?
I know this might seem petty but any chance you could stop calling him “Musky Baby”. For some unknown reason it makes my skin crawl.
Maybe, if you want to be derogatory, rename him something that reflects a bad side of him - Elon Muscovy perhaps. But please not Musky Baby. Thanks
Nah. I use it because it highlights an important part of his character. If you don't like it, you know where the door is. ---->
Um, what part of his character is being highlighted by calling him “Musky Baby”?
Sounds like a dad in Happy Days talking to one of the Fonz’s out of town friends in an attempt to be down with the youth.
The fact that all too often, he acts like a baby. Obvs.
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to be name Florida congressman Michael Waltz as the next national security adviser, two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News
Good good. Last week he said we need to be much harder on Russian sanctions and those who are buying his oil, while letting Ukraine do what they wish with American weapons, in order to force Putin to the negotiating table from a point of weakness. https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1856166839794933992
And as a counterpoint to this, to show how the administration is going to go:
Musky Baby replied "Interesting" to a post proclaiming: "Jeffrey Sachs explains how the US and NATO provoked the war in Ukraine."
Elon Musk undeniably played a huge role at the start of the conflict in supporting Ukraine through the provision of Starlink, and this has been ongoing, his position is just that he wants the war to end as a priority, and that he doesn't support a return to the 2014 borders - a legitimate position, even though it is one that you don't agree with.
He really did not play a huge role. His role was tiny when compared to (say) Boris Johnson. Yes, and I mean that.
Yet again, people believe Musk's own hype.
Since he lacks the control of the sixth biggest military on the planet, has no standing army, or billions of munitions, of course his contribution will be less than the British Prime Minister.
He is the richest man in the world, and idiots listen to his every pronouncement. The statement was: "Elon Musk undeniably played a huge role at the start of the conflict in supporting Ukraine through the provision of Starlink,"
My argument is that the statement is bullshit, for a number of reasons. What Ukraine needed at the start of the conflict was weapons, and it was those weapons - and the international support - that allowed their brave fighters to drive Russia out of much of Ukraine in early 2022. Musk was not there telling Russia to get out; AFAICR he was remarkably quiescent.
Finally: Musk is parroting Russian and tankie propaganda. It is untrue, and does nothing to help Ukraine.
Anyone who believes NATO and the US 'provoked' Russia into invading Ukraine is either a blithering idiot, or someone who is knowingly doing Putin's evil for him.
Has Musked said anything Tankie related?
He agreed (*) with the suggestion that the US and NATO 'provoked' Russia into invading Ukraine. That is a classic tankie line, that gives Russia no agency and blames us for Putin's evil.
(*) I take responses such as 'interesting' as lily-livered agreement. If he felt it was wrong, he should have said so.
It's not quite what you said at the beginning though, is it? You only clarified when I asked what he said. For none state actors he was the first in there at the beginning with starlink. If he's the richest, can we go down the list of other rich people, and see at what point we get to somebody else? Or corporations who were too busy not wanting to lose their investments as a result of state sanctions.
I think 'interesting' is a low bar to call someone a tankie. It is quite possible of course his position has changed on Ukraine. It is a partisan issue in the US unlike here, but then despite what we have been doing, the heavy lifting has come from the american taxpayer.
You’re confusing me with Josias there. Yes IMHO Musk’s efforts with Starlink were critical to the Ukranian military in the early stages of the war, and continue to be today.
Even if true (it isn't), he's doing massive harm to Ukraine now.
By giving them thousands of satellite internet connections for military use?
Meanwhile, Trump is about to appoint a security advisor who favours letting the Ukranians bomb the hell out of Russian infrastructure and intends to drag Putin to the negotiating table from a position of weakness.
We're talking about the start of the war.
Answer this: how is Musky Baby parroting Russian propaganda helping Ukraine?
I know this might seem petty but any chance you could stop calling him “Musky Baby”. For some unknown reason it makes my skin crawl.
Maybe, if you want to be derogatory, rename him something that reflects a bad side of him - Elon Muscovy perhaps. But please not Musky Baby. Thanks
Nah. I use it because it highlights an important part of his character. If you don't like it, you know where the door is. ---->
Pet names and other terms of endearment should be kept in the bedroom.
Is Musk standing to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury?
Unlikely given he is of Calvinist heritage
Ah, but is he a Protestant Calvinist, or a Catholic Calvinist?
That's a good quip.
Plenty of subspecies of Roman Catholic theology have doctrines around Predestination and things that amount to Irresistible Grace.
(TULIP the Five Points of Calvinism:
TULIP is an acronym that summarizes the five points of Calvinism, a theological doctrine that summarizes God's work of salvation:
- total depravity, - unconditional election *, - limited atonement, - irresistible grace, and - perseverance of the saints .
* Technically election as Saints, not as Pope - though some would draw the parallel.)
Just to add that ordinary English Christianity among ordinary people has never and could never accept the weird Calvinist doctrine that Jesus died for some people but not others.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
Strange - I really don't know why he generates such, well, dislike from a certain section of the public. He was a very good footballer who played well for his country.
He does well on tv - I can only imagine it must be his politics and the fact he isn't a Conservative which seems to irritate, well, Conservatives.
For many he is an icon of an overpaid BBC talking head, and therefore a symbol that they can use to have a go at the BBC - which is what it is really about.
For me (on balance I will still defend the BBC), because he's a pompous wanker who thinks he can credibly intervene in politics without having a clue what he is talking about on the particular things he intervenes about. Like a less desperate Carol Vorderman.
And for some, part of it is that he has tended to have a go at Conservative Governments (which he has because they were in power). I wonder if views will change once he starts having a go at our new Labour Government.
If he wants to do politics, arguably being an owner of the "Rest is.." podcast network is a better place to start from, though he'll be open to the usual "media baron" criticisms.
I think he's an excellent presenter. Do I think he should stay out of politics? Yes while he's such a high profile BBC figure because people will elide his views and the views of the BBC which is, lest we forget, a state broadcaster. Once he's gone he can jump on his high horse and ride to the rescue of anyone who needs it but until then he oughtn't to.
Lineker could be an interesting panellist on Any Questions or The Moral Maze, perhaps.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
CNN reporting that the puppy killer has been given head of homeland security !
Should fit in perfectly with the Trump cabinet , cruel and a total nutjob .
I see that Kari Lake is one of those politicians who has been affiliated to all 4 tendencies in the US - Democrat, independent, sane Republican, and MAGA.
CNN reporting that the puppy killer has been given head of homeland security !
Should fit in perfectly with the Trump cabinet , cruel and a total nutjob .
I see that Kari Lake is one of those politicians who has been affiliated to all 4 tendencies in the US - Democrat, independent, sane Republican, and MAGA.
The left is full of chatter about how they need their own, liberal version of Joe Rogan and the like.
But that's the thing: The left used to have a liberal version of Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. He voted for Obama twice and endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. But because he's openminded, will talk to anyone, and doesn't mindlessly accept the latest propaganda, the left kicked him out. They censored his interview with Robert Malone and pressured Spotify to drop him.
The left can't have their own version of Joe Rogan, because everything that makes Rogan special makes it impossible for him to be on the left.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
That's far from always true. The Huntingdon to Cambridge A14 upgrade was a large project at £1.5 billion. It was completed six months early and, AIUI, at cost.
The struggle continues here in the Philippines. It’s easy for all you people, comfy in your cosy western lives and cosy British jobs in the snuggly November weather, to realise how tough it is for others. Like us out here doing the quiet hard yards, to keep all of you informed
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
That's far from always true. The Huntingdon to Cambridge A14 upgrade was a large project at £1.5 billion. It was completed six months early and, AIUI, at cost.
That was a road project - which meant once it was approved the project managers were left alone to deliver it - there would have been no micromanagement after initiation..
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
That's far from always true. The Huntingdon to Cambridge A14 upgrade was a large project at £1.5 billion. It was completed six months early and, AIUI, at cost.
That was a road project - which meant once it was approved the project managers were left alone to deliver it - there would have been no micromanagement after initiation..
No micromanagement after initiation?
{I felt a great disturbance in the Farce, as if millions of Management Consultants suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something wonderful had happened}
CNN reporting that the puppy killer has been given head of homeland security !
Should fit in perfectly with the Trump cabinet , cruel and a total nutjob .
I see that Kari Lake is one of those politicians who has been affiliated to all 4 tendencies in the US - Democrat, independent, sane Republican, and MAGA.
The left is full of chatter about how they need their own, liberal version of Joe Rogan and the like.
But that's the thing: The left used to have a liberal version of Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. He voted for Obama twice and endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. But because he's openminded, will talk to anyone, and doesn't mindlessly accept the latest propaganda, the left kicked him out. They censored his interview with Robert Malone and pressured Spotify to drop him.
The left can't have their own version of Joe Rogan, because everything that makes Rogan special makes it impossible for him to be on the left.
The same happens with the right, certainly in the UK (and arguably more on the right here than on the left). Anyone who strays from the pure line and shows interest in anything remotely liberal gets castigated as a centrist dad or a wet and slowly but surely becomes seen as a left-liberal. Consider all the commentators here in the UK who started as solid Tories and are now written off in this way. Rory, Osborne, Hague, Gauke... they attract considerably more spite and opprobrium from the right wingers on here than actual lefties do.
This is the culture war writ large, and amplified by social media. The extremists on both sides of the argument engage in purity tests and quickly write off anyone with nuanced views as part of the other.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
The struggle continues here in the Philippines. It’s easy for all you people, comfy in your cosy western lives and cosy British jobs in the snuggly November weather, to realise how tough it is for others. Like us out here doing the quiet hard yards, to keep all of you informed
The struggle continues here in the Philippines. It’s easy for all you people, comfy in your cosy western lives and cosy British jobs in the snuggly November weather, to realise how tough it is for others. Like us out here doing the quiet hard yards, to keep all of you informed
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Miliband is a total idiot and risks a backlash against what are sensible long-term goals, by trying to accomplish them in the short term regardless of cost. All while ignoring tidal and small nuclear, which have the potential to be revolutionary.
Meanwhile China is still building more coal power stations, and the incoming US administration is going to be more interested in drilling for oil than building windmills.
Miliband Derangement Syndrome. Current plans for carbon emission mitigation are in line with the fall in emissions achieved by the Conservative government.
A Communist dictatorship without the efficiencies of the free market always seemed like an odd place for the Right to look to as a model to follow.
Except they aren't without the efficiencies of the free market.
For example, the competition between solar module manufacturers is absolutely cutthroat. The combination of that, and state subsidies massively priming the pump, has wiped out most of their foreign competition.
They aren't a free market economy - but their are plenty of very efficient markets operating within the system.
The struggle continues here in the Philippines. It’s easy for all you people, comfy in your cosy western lives and cosy British jobs in the snuggly November weather, to realise how tough it is for others. Like us out here doing the quiet hard yards, to keep all of you informed
Looks very treaty.
You are at the other end of the country but the Banaue rice terraces are worth seeing if you're in the region.
The easter time flagellations are bonkers as well but the clue is in the name for why you won't see those now.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
That's far from always true. The Huntingdon to Cambridge A14 upgrade was a large project at £1.5 billion. It was completed six months early and, AIUI, at cost.
The struggle continues here in the Philippines. It’s easy for all you people, comfy in your cosy western lives and cosy British jobs in the snuggly November weather, to realise how tough it is for others. Like us out here doing the quiet hard yards, to keep all of you informed
Looks very treaty.
You are at the other end of the country but the Banaue rice terraces are worth seeing if you're in the region.
The easter time flagellations are bonkers as well but the clue is in the name for why you won't see those now.
CNN reporting that the puppy killer has been given head of homeland security !
Should fit in perfectly with the Trump cabinet , cruel and a total nutjob .
I see that Kari Lake is one of those politicians who has been affiliated to all 4 tendencies in the US - Democrat, independent, sane Republican, and MAGA.
The left is full of chatter about how they need their own, liberal version of Joe Rogan and the like.
But that's the thing: The left used to have a liberal version of Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. He voted for Obama twice and endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. But because he's openminded, will talk to anyone, and doesn't mindlessly accept the latest propaganda, the left kicked him out. They censored his interview with Robert Malone and pressured Spotify to drop him.
The left can't have their own version of Joe Rogan, because everything that makes Rogan special makes it impossible for him to be on the left.
The same happens with the right, certainly in the UK (and arguably more on the right here than on the left). Anyone who strays from the pure line and shows interest in anything remotely liberal gets castigated as a centrist dad or a wet and slowly but surely becomes seen as a left-liberal. Consider all the commentators here in the UK who started as solid Tories and are now written off in this way. Rory, Osborne, Hague, Gauke... they attract considerably more spite and opprobrium from the right wingers on here than actual lefties do.
This is the culture war writ large, and amplified by social media. The extremists on both sides of the argument engage in purity tests and quickly write off anyone with nuanced views as part of the other.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
That's far from always true. The Huntingdon to Cambridge A14 upgrade was a large project at £1.5 billion. It was completed six months early and, AIUI, at cost.
Milliband's been responsible for all our carbon emission reductions since 1990?
Wow. What a wunderkind.
I don't think that is the point being made in this chart. Isn't the point that Miliband is simply proposing a linear extrapolation of the trend under the Conservatives? I guess this stage of the decarbonisation process is harder though, as low hanging fruit are harvested first, so will be more politically contentious.
The struggle continues here in the Philippines. It’s easy for all you people, comfy in your cosy western lives and cosy British jobs in the snuggly November weather, to realise how tough it is for others. Like us out here doing the quiet hard yards, to keep all of you informed
Looks very treaty.
You are at the other end of the country but the Banaue rice terraces are worth seeing if you're in the region.
The easter time flagellations are bonkers as well but the clue is in the name for why you won't see those now.
Mr. Sandpit, Miliband wants the credit. The alternative is that he's actually an idiot fundamentalist.
It's unfortunate that this brand of economic self-harm has arisen in a governing party that promised growth, and at a time when our economic picture is less than rosy.
The government are not going to last. They will just fall apart in a couple of years time.
"The international liberal order in which Keir Starmer and David Lammy insist Britain belongs is coming to an end. Labour confronts an enigma of arrival: the world it expected to join when it came to power does not exist."
By what mechanism, outside if the next general election ?
Internal implosion. A split on Gaza. A split on Trump. A split on Austerity. A rump Corbyn party. Any number of 'culture war' style rebellions. The 'tiggers' part 2. They are held together only by power for its own sake and nothing else, they have no mission or plan for what they are doing, other than just being in power.
That sustained the last government through three prime ministers, with a much smaller majority.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
Milliband's been responsible for all our carbon emission reductions since 1990?
Wow. What a wunderkind.
I don't think that is the point being made in this chart. Isn't the point that Miliband is simply proposing a linear extrapolation of the trend under the Conservatives? I guess this stage of the decarbonisation process is harder though, as low hanging fruit are harvested first, so will be more politically contentious.
I would say that assuming a linear trend like that is utterly bizarre.
As in show the breakdown of the data, because that looks like “fixing reality to the fiat of the senior manager”
{Robert McNamara has entered the chat, carrying a model of an F-111}
Milliband's been responsible for all our carbon emission reductions since 1990?
Wow. What a wunderkind.
I don't think that is the point being made in this chart. Isn't the point that Miliband is simply proposing a linear extrapolation of the trend under the Conservatives? I guess this stage of the decarbonisation process is harder though, as low hanging fruit are harvested first, so will be more politically contentious.
I would say that assuming a linear trend like that is utterly bizarre.
As in show the breakdown of the data, because that looks like “fixing reality to the fiat of the senior manager”
{Robert McNamara has entered the chat, carrying a model of an F-111}
The dashed line just represents a linear route to their 2035 objective from current emission levels. It happens to match the trend in place under the last Conservative administration.
Politically, this is probably the slowest reduction Miliband could commit to, otherwise he'd be accused of doing a worse job than Sunak.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
Civil servants, not poiiticians.
Both plus many other actors.
See the £100 million Bat tunnel saga.
The same thing has happened since forever. Lots of interest groups all pulling the project towards them…. A classic is the story of the development of TSR2.
Which was not a wonder plane that never was. More an epic disaster.
One favourite was that all the electronics were designed and specified by different groups. Towards the end of the project, someone did an estimate of Mean Time Between Failure. For everything, all together. 8 minutes, IIRC. That is, if a TSR2 was fired up, it would suffer a mission critical failure before it got to the end of the runway….
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
Civil servants, not poiiticians.
Both civil servants *and* politicians. And the chattering classes/pressure groups/NIMBYs.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
Casino is (I think) talking about the private sector management of projects, taking the constraints of planning, and government messing around, etc as a given.
Which is spectacularly to miss the point. Doing a really good job of building a nuclear power plant at for times the cost of (say) S Korea, is not being "actually quite good at managing projects".
In my book, managing projects includes government working out (for example) the trade offs between regulation and cost. The running of regulators like Offwat also falls into this category.
Just to accept all of that as someone else's responsibility is why we are where we are.
And just to remind Casino, the party which he enthusiastically supports was in power for the best part of a decade and a half, and sorted none of this stuff out.
Milliband's been responsible for all our carbon emission reductions since 1990?
Wow. What a wunderkind.
I don't think that is the point being made in this chart. Isn't the point that Miliband is simply proposing a linear extrapolation of the trend under the Conservatives? I guess this stage of the decarbonisation process is harder though, as low hanging fruit are harvested first, so will be more politically contentious.
I would say that assuming a linear trend like that is utterly bizarre.
As in show the breakdown of the data, because that looks like “fixing reality to the fiat of the senior manager”
{Robert McNamara has entered the chat, carrying a model of an F-111}
The dashed line just represents a linear route to their 2035 objective from current emission levels. It happens to match the trend in place under the last Conservative administration.
Politically, this is probably the slowest reduction Miliband could commit to, otherwise he'd be accused of doing a worse job than Sunak.
Politicians drawing lines to tell reality what to do is known to cause epic failure.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
But we're better at it that the United States Navy. Perhaps.
They bought in the French/Italian FREMM frigate design as something that would be "we know it works" so could be delivered quickly because they needed it NOW.
They currently have very few common parts left in the design due to f**cked up project management, requirements creep and gold-plating, and not having the workforce, and I think the delivery date is delayed by about 100%.
One of the hopes for a better future for the USA is that Mr Chump will prove to be as ineffectual at domestic authoritarianism as his friend Putin is at making war.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
That's far from always true. The Huntingdon to Cambridge A14 upgrade was a large project at £1.5 billion. It was completed six months early and, AIUI, at cost.
Heathrow Terminal 5.
I’ll never tire of saying that Dubai Airport’s Terminal 3, a building on an existing airfield with a couple of access roads, was built in less time than the LHR T5 planning enquiry. Same project scope, massively different attitude.
CNN reporting that the puppy killer has been given head of homeland security !
Should fit in perfectly with the Trump cabinet , cruel and a total nutjob .
I see that Kari Lake is one of those politicians who has been affiliated to all 4 tendencies in the US - Democrat, independent, sane Republican, and MAGA.
CNN reporting that the puppy killer has been given head of homeland security !
Should fit in perfectly with the Trump cabinet , cruel and a total nutjob .
I see that Kari Lake is one of those politicians who has been affiliated to all 4 tendencies in the US - Democrat, independent, sane Republican, and MAGA.
Arizona Senate. Estimated 88 percent of votes have been counted.
Votes received and percentages of total vote Candidate Votes Pct. Ruben Gallego DEM 1,484,205 49.7 Kari Lake GOP 1,436,045 48.1 Eduardo Quintana GRN 63,582 2.1
Lead: 48,160
Arizona Senate. Estimated 88.9 percent of votes have been counted.
Votes received and percentages of total vote Candidate Votes Pct. Ruben Gallego DEM 1,500,850 49.8 Kari Lake GOP 1,449,464 48.1 Eduardo Quintana GRN 64,552 2.1
Lead: 51,386
Arizona Senate. Estimated 91.8 percent of votes have been counted.
Votes received and percentages of total vote Candidate Votes Pct. Ruben Gallego DEM 1,555,426 50.0 Kari Lake GOP 1,488,733 47.8 Eduardo Quintana GRN 67,961 2.2
Lead: 66,693
Arizona Senate. Estimated 93.1 percent of votes have been counted.
Votes received and percentages of total vote Candidate Votes Pct. Ruben Gallego DEM 1,574,597 50.0 Kari Lake GOP 1,505,837 47.8 Eduardo Quintana GRN 69,107 2.2
Lead 68,760
Arizona Senate. Estimated 94.6 percent of votes have been counted.
Votes received and percentages of total vote Candidate Votes Pct. Ruben Gallego DEM 1,600,923 50.0 Kari Lake GOP 1,528,297 47.8 Eduardo Quintana GRN 70,678 2.2
Lead 72,626.
Gallego (D) is projected to win by the Associated Press.
Milliband's been responsible for all our carbon emission reductions since 1990?
Wow. What a wunderkind.
I don't think that is the point being made in this chart. Isn't the point that Miliband is simply proposing a linear extrapolation of the trend under the Conservatives? I guess this stage of the decarbonisation process is harder though, as low hanging fruit are harvested first, so will be more politically contentious.
I would say that assuming a linear trend like that is utterly bizarre.
As in show the breakdown of the data, because that looks like “fixing reality to the fiat of the senior manager”
{Robert McNamara has entered the chat, carrying a model of an F-111}
The dashed line just represents a linear route to their 2035 objective from current emission levels. It happens to match the trend in place under the last Conservative administration.
Politically, this is probably the slowest reduction Miliband could commit to, otherwise he'd be accused of doing a worse job than Sunak.
Politicians drawing lines to tell reality what to do is known to cause epic failure.
Or the opposite. The Conservatives actually beat their "line" and chose not to roll over the carbon "surplus", which is part of the reason we've managed to reduce emissions so much.
CNN reporting that the puppy killer has been given head of homeland security !
Should fit in perfectly with the Trump cabinet , cruel and a total nutjob .
I see that Kari Lake is one of those politicians who has been affiliated to all 4 tendencies in the US - Democrat, independent, sane Republican, and MAGA.
The left is full of chatter about how they need their own, liberal version of Joe Rogan and the like.
But that's the thing: The left used to have a liberal version of Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. He voted for Obama twice and endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. But because he's openminded, will talk to anyone, and doesn't mindlessly accept the latest propaganda, the left kicked him out. They censored his interview with Robert Malone and pressured Spotify to drop him.
The left can't have their own version of Joe Rogan, because everything that makes Rogan special makes it impossible for him to be on the left.
The same happens with the right, certainly in the UK (and arguably more on the right here than on the left). Anyone who strays from the pure line and shows interest in anything remotely liberal gets castigated as a centrist dad or a wet and slowly but surely becomes seen as a left-liberal. Consider all the commentators here in the UK who started as solid Tories and are now written off in this way. Rory, Osborne, Hague, Gauke... they attract considerably more spite and opprobrium from the right wingers on here than actual lefties do.
This is the culture war writ large, and amplified by social media. The extremists on both sides of the argument engage in purity tests and quickly write off anyone with nuanced views as part of the other.
IKAAAAAAARA!!!!!!
Eh? What do rocket-dropped torpedoes have to do with culture wars?
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
Civil servants, not poiiticians.
Both plus many other actors.
See the £100 million Bat tunnel saga.
The same thing has happened since forever. Lots of interest groups all pulling the project towards them…. A classic is the story of the development of TSR2.
Which was not a wonder plane that never was. More an epic disaster.
One favourite was that all the electronics were designed and specified by different groups. Towards the end of the project, someone did an estimate of Mean Time Between Failure. For everything, all together. 8 minutes, IIRC. That is, if a TSR2 was fired up, it would suffer a mission critical failure before it got to the end of the runway….
I agree that the much-lamented TSR2 was probably not much needed.
But I think the MTBF argument is a little unfair. It was a new high-technology project that was in its first few flights. Of course that tech will give problems; that's why you test and develop it. And a fair bit of that internal technology was further developed, and ended up in the Tornado.
I've got a book somewhere that posits that the two main TSR2 prototypes should have been kept as flying testbeds for the tech, not the plane itself.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
Civil servants, not poiiticians.
I don't think the Civil servants binned HS2 to Manchester - that was Rishi and a couple of mates in a hotel room in Manchester...
CNN reporting that the puppy killer has been given head of homeland security !
Should fit in perfectly with the Trump cabinet , cruel and a total nutjob .
I see that Kari Lake is one of those politicians who has been affiliated to all 4 tendencies in the US - Democrat, independent, sane Republican, and MAGA.
The left is full of chatter about how they need their own, liberal version of Joe Rogan and the like.
But that's the thing: The left used to have a liberal version of Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. He voted for Obama twice and endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. But because he's openminded, will talk to anyone, and doesn't mindlessly accept the latest propaganda, the left kicked him out. They censored his interview with Robert Malone and pressured Spotify to drop him.
The left can't have their own version of Joe Rogan, because everything that makes Rogan special makes it impossible for him to be on the left.
Says Charlie Kirk, a far-right politicial activist, who believes in racial differences in intelligence, opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, said hydroxychloroquine is 100% effective against COVID-19 but that masks are not, opposes use of oral contraceptives, has pushed various anti-vax positions, etc. So, you know, maybe not the most reliable or unbiased commentator here.
Really, Sandpit, do you think Charlie Kirk is someone we should be listening to on any topic?
CNN reporting that the puppy killer has been given head of homeland security !
Should fit in perfectly with the Trump cabinet , cruel and a total nutjob .
I see that Kari Lake is one of those politicians who has been affiliated to all 4 tendencies in the US - Democrat, independent, sane Republican, and MAGA.
The left is full of chatter about how they need their own, liberal version of Joe Rogan and the like.
But that's the thing: The left used to have a liberal version of Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. He voted for Obama twice and endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. But because he's openminded, will talk to anyone, and doesn't mindlessly accept the latest propaganda, the left kicked him out. They censored his interview with Robert Malone and pressured Spotify to drop him.
The left can't have their own version of Joe Rogan, because everything that makes Rogan special makes it impossible for him to be on the left.
The same happens with the right, certainly in the UK (and arguably more on the right here than on the left). Anyone who strays from the pure line and shows interest in anything remotely liberal gets castigated as a centrist dad or a wet and slowly but surely becomes seen as a left-liberal. Consider all the commentators here in the UK who started as solid Tories and are now written off in this way. Rory, Osborne, Hague, Gauke... they attract considerably more spite and opprobrium from the right wingers on here than actual lefties do.
This is the culture war writ large, and amplified by social media. The extremists on both sides of the argument engage in purity tests and quickly write off anyone with nuanced views as part of the other.
IKAAAAAAARA!!!!!!
Eh? What do rocket-dropped torpedoes have to do with culture wars?
Trans women are people and should have all the political freedom of people. But to say that they are women—and that making any distinction between them and biological women, for any purpose, is a thought crime and an act of bigotry—that is the precept of a new religion. And it is a religion that most Americans want nothing to do with.
[...]
I know people who haven't been touched by this issue personally, for whom it was the only issue that decided their vote. In fact, it is the issue that fully radicalized Elon, and he's spoken about this at length. Do you think Elon continuously messaging to 200 million people on X, and going to Trump's rallies, and donating over 100 million dollars to the campaign, and supporting him on podcasts, and doing everything else in his power to get Trump elected, might have accounted for a few votes? Honestly, I think a doctoral dissertation, and perhaps several, could be written on how trans activism completely destroyed Democratic politics—without most Democrats knowing.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
So we are incompetent at initiating approving and running projects due to micromanagement at every stage.
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
That's far from always true. The Huntingdon to Cambridge A14 upgrade was a large project at £1.5 billion. It was completed six months early and, AIUI, at cost.
Heathrow Terminal 5.
I’ll never tire of saying that Dubai Airport’s Terminal 3, a building on an existing airfield with a couple of access roads, was built in less time than the LHR T5 planning enquiry. Same project scope, massively different attitude.
Do you think not having democracy and 89% of the population being immigrants is part of that different attitude? Are you suggesting those as a model for the UK?
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
Civil servants, not poiiticians.
Both plus many other actors.
See the £100 million Bat tunnel saga.
The same thing has happened since forever. Lots of interest groups all pulling the project towards them…. A classic is the story of the development of TSR2.
Which was not a wonder plane that never was. More an epic disaster.
One favourite was that all the electronics were designed and specified by different groups. Towards the end of the project, someone did an estimate of Mean Time Between Failure. For everything, all together. 8 minutes, IIRC. That is, if a TSR2 was fired up, it would suffer a mission critical failure before it got to the end of the runway….
I agree that the much-lamented TSR2 was probably not much needed.
But I think the MTBF argument is a little unfair. It was a new high-technology project that was in its first few flights. Of course that tech will give problems; that's why you test and develop it. And a fair bit of that internal technology was further developed, and ended up in the Tornado.
I've got a book somewhere that posits that the two main TSR2 prototypes should have been kept as flying testbeds for the tech, not the plane itself.
Electronics in the 60s were much less reliable. This was known.
So you designed electronics to a “complexity budget” - too much complexity and you ended up with the American A6a. Which was brilliant on paper. Except it never all worked at the same time.
In the case of the TSR2 - this was simply ignored. So all possible requirements were to be implemented.
By the time that it got to the Tornado, many years later, the systems had been redesigned with more modern electronics. It was still noticeable that the Tornado systems were less functional, on paper, than those planned for the TSR2. Because they were still designed to a complexity, MTBF budget.
I must question your data - not sure of the units, but I'm pretty convinced Miliband derangement syndrome peaked near 2015, then dropped and is now having a major, even larger peak. This apparent decline in MDS does not match my lived experience!
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Congratulations on a take which is nonsensical at best and plain bonkers at worst.
We need to generate electricity. We can’t burn coal as we don’t have any, so we can’t copy the Chinese. We burnt off much of North Sea gas already. We’re functionally incompetent when it comes to building nukes. What we do have is wind. What you propose is that we ignore our abundant natural resource and instead be reliant on very expensive foreign resources. Great plan man.
We aren't functionally incompetent at building nukes - we just aren't given Rolls Royce the orders we should have given them 3 years ago.
What we are incompetent at is managing projects - Hinkley Point C is built to a working French design but we insisted on a whole set of changes and other insane rules such as (supposedly) having both analogue and Digital monitoring of all sensors.
No, we're incompetent at the due process in initiating and approving projects.
The examples you give there are both how the Government insist on a full tender and procurement evaluation before awarding anything to Rolls Royce (that will need to satisfy all sort of criteria) and how our own regulatory bodies insisted on all sort of changes to a functional design to get it "as safe as reasonably practical" (the last two words doing an awful lot of lifting.
We are actually quite good at managing projects.
I will say HS2 and leave things there.
HS2 is what happens when the politicans start to micromanage the project stage by stage, rather than giving the professionals a scope and and a budget, then letting them get on with it.
Civil servants, not poiiticians.
I don't think the Civil servants binned HS2 to Manchester - that was Rishi and a couple of mates in a hotel room in Manchester...
Probably best to say equally culpable..
That was merely one stage in the comedy.
The reason that it was canceled was the explosion in costs.
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to be name Florida congressman Michael Waltz as the next national security adviser, two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News
Good good. Last week he said we need to be much harder on Russian sanctions and those who are buying his oil, while letting Ukraine do what they wish with American weapons, in order to force Putin to the negotiating table from a point of weakness. https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1856166839794933992
And as a counterpoint to this, to show how the administration is going to go:
Musky Baby replied "Interesting" to a post proclaiming: "Jeffrey Sachs explains how the US and NATO provoked the war in Ukraine."
Elon Musk undeniably played a huge role at the start of the conflict in supporting Ukraine through the provision of Starlink, and this has been ongoing, his position is just that he wants the war to end as a priority, and that he doesn't support a return to the 2014 borders - a legitimate position, even though it is one that you don't agree with.
He really did not play a huge role. His role was tiny when compared to (say) Boris Johnson. Yes, and I mean that.
Yet again, people believe Musk's own hype.
Since he lacks the control of the sixth biggest military on the planet, has no standing army, or billions of munitions, of course his contribution will be less than the British Prime Minister.
He is the richest man in the world, and idiots listen to his every pronouncement. The statement was: "Elon Musk undeniably played a huge role at the start of the conflict in supporting Ukraine through the provision of Starlink,"
My argument is that the statement is bullshit, for a number of reasons. What Ukraine needed at the start of the conflict was weapons, and it was those weapons - and the international support - that allowed their brave fighters to drive Russia out of much of Ukraine in early 2022. Musk was not there telling Russia to get out; AFAICR he was remarkably quiescent.
Finally: Musk is parroting Russian and tankie propaganda. It is untrue, and does nothing to help Ukraine.
Anyone who believes NATO and the US 'provoked' Russia into invading Ukraine is either a blithering idiot, or someone who is knowingly doing Putin's evil for him.
Has Musked said anything Tankie related?
He agreed (*) with the suggestion that the US and NATO 'provoked' Russia into invading Ukraine. That is a classic tankie line, that gives Russia no agency and blames us for Putin's evil.
(*) I take responses such as 'interesting' as lily-livered agreement. If he felt it was wrong, he should have said so.
It's not quite what you said at the beginning though, is it? You only clarified when I asked what he said. For none state actors he was the first in there at the beginning with starlink. If he's the richest, can we go down the list of other rich people, and see at what point we get to somebody else? Or corporations who were too busy not wanting to lose their investments as a result of state sanctions.
I think 'interesting' is a low bar to call someone a tankie. It is quite possible of course his position has changed on Ukraine. It is a partisan issue in the US unlike here, but then despite what we have been doing, the heavy lifting has come from the american taxpayer.
You’re confusing me with Josias there. Yes IMHO Musk’s efforts with Starlink were critical to the Ukranian military in the early stages of the war, and continue to be today.
Even if true (it isn't), he's doing massive harm to Ukraine now.
By giving them thousands of satellite internet connections for military use?
Meanwhile, Trump is about to appoint a security advisor who favours letting the Ukranians bomb the hell out of Russian infrastructure and intends to drag Putin to the negotiating table from a position of weakness.
We're talking about the start of the war.
Answer this: how is Musky Baby parroting Russian propaganda helping Ukraine?
I know this might seem petty but any chance you could stop calling him “Musky Baby”. For some unknown reason it makes my skin crawl.
Maybe, if you want to be derogatory, rename him something that reflects a bad side of him - Elon Muscovy perhaps. But please not Musky Baby. Thanks
Nah. I use it because it highlights an important part of his character. If you don't like it, you know where the door is. ---->
Um, what part of his character is being highlighted by calling him “Musky Baby”?
Sounds like a dad in Happy Days talking to one of the Fonz’s out of town friends in an attempt to be down with the youth.
Nothing says down with the youth more than references to a 1970s sitcom. More like centrist dadgrandad great-grandad.
Yet you listen to the climate loons and you'd think we have done nothing
If we'd listened to the anti-renewables loons we wouldn't have.
Almost everything achieved has been from switching from coal to gas. And we have loads more of it under the sea and parts of Lancashire.
That was perhaps true 20 years ago after the dash for gas, though you are not clear whether you are talking about energy use or emissions, and which emissions, or global warming.
From about 2000, the switch on electricity generation was from Coal to Renewables, not Coal to Gas. You can also see the reduction in quantum from peak, despite increase in domestic electric heating and electric transport - electricity imports do not account for that. My photo quota: Source: p28 of https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/664c827ff34f9b5a56adcb5d/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2023.pdf
(We need a version of that graph for total energy production, which I do not have to hand. I think the curve is/will be similar, but offset to the right as we shift to more electricity usage over time.)
Since then very major contributions have been made by both reduction of energy use, and decarbonisation through a pivot to renewables.
One big indicator, which the Usonians will really struggle with as they are addicted to being profligate, is reduced energy/emissions intensity per unit of GDP, which we have slashed since 2000.
I must question your data - not sure of the units, but I'm pretty convinced Miliband derangement syndrome peaked near 2015, then dropped and is now having a major, even larger peak. This apparent decline in MDS does not match my lived experience!
I don't think we're yet at the 2015 peaks of MDS. It's bubbling up on forums like this but hasn't really gone mainstream in the way it did in the run up to the 2015 election.
It's a sign that Ed is actually doing things. A number of right wing posters here have said of the new government things along the lines of "If they actually had a coherent vision that they were executing, even if it was a hard left agenda that I completely disagreed with intellectually, then at least I could respect their position". Well Ed is one, of very few on the front bench, who is doing exactly that. He has a vision and a programme for government - which a number of people vehemently object to or question the details on (e.g. why CCS) - and isn't hanging about.
But retail politics wise they really need to fix one thing - we have to delink the cost of electricity from marginal wholesale gas prices otherwise it'll become easier and easier for the trope that net zero is making energy unaffordable to take hold. Gas prices are up again as we head into winter. Other countries don't have that problem: our pricing system seems to be uniquely badly designed.
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to be name Florida congressman Michael Waltz as the next national security adviser, two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News
Good good. Last week he said we need to be much harder on Russian sanctions and those who are buying his oil, while letting Ukraine do what they wish with American weapons, in order to force Putin to the negotiating table from a point of weakness. https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1856166839794933992
And as a counterpoint to this, to show how the administration is going to go:
Musky Baby replied "Interesting" to a post proclaiming: "Jeffrey Sachs explains how the US and NATO provoked the war in Ukraine."
Elon Musk undeniably played a huge role at the start of the conflict in supporting Ukraine through the provision of Starlink, and this has been ongoing, his position is just that he wants the war to end as a priority, and that he doesn't support a return to the 2014 borders - a legitimate position, even though it is one that you don't agree with.
He really did not play a huge role. His role was tiny when compared to (say) Boris Johnson. Yes, and I mean that.
Yet again, people believe Musk's own hype.
Since he lacks the control of the sixth biggest military on the planet, has no standing army, or billions of munitions, of course his contribution will be less than the British Prime Minister.
He is the richest man in the world, and idiots listen to his every pronouncement. The statement was: "Elon Musk undeniably played a huge role at the start of the conflict in supporting Ukraine through the provision of Starlink,"
My argument is that the statement is bullshit, for a number of reasons. What Ukraine needed at the start of the conflict was weapons, and it was those weapons - and the international support - that allowed their brave fighters to drive Russia out of much of Ukraine in early 2022. Musk was not there telling Russia to get out; AFAICR he was remarkably quiescent.
Finally: Musk is parroting Russian and tankie propaganda. It is untrue, and does nothing to help Ukraine.
Anyone who believes NATO and the US 'provoked' Russia into invading Ukraine is either a blithering idiot, or someone who is knowingly doing Putin's evil for him.
Has Musked said anything Tankie related?
He agreed (*) with the suggestion that the US and NATO 'provoked' Russia into invading Ukraine. That is a classic tankie line, that gives Russia no agency and blames us for Putin's evil.
(*) I take responses such as 'interesting' as lily-livered agreement. If he felt it was wrong, he should have said so.
It's not quite what you said at the beginning though, is it? You only clarified when I asked what he said. For none state actors he was the first in there at the beginning with starlink. If he's the richest, can we go down the list of other rich people, and see at what point we get to somebody else? Or corporations who were too busy not wanting to lose their investments as a result of state sanctions.
I think 'interesting' is a low bar to call someone a tankie. It is quite possible of course his position has changed on Ukraine. It is a partisan issue in the US unlike here, but then despite what we have been doing, the heavy lifting has come from the american taxpayer.
You’re confusing me with Josias there. Yes IMHO Musk’s efforts with Starlink were critical to the Ukranian military in the early stages of the war, and continue to be today.
Even if true (it isn't), he's doing massive harm to Ukraine now.
By giving them thousands of satellite internet connections for military use?
Meanwhile, Trump is about to appoint a security advisor who favours letting the Ukranians bomb the hell out of Russian infrastructure and intends to drag Putin to the negotiating table from a position of weakness.
We're talking about the start of the war.
Answer this: how is Musky Baby parroting Russian propaganda helping Ukraine?
I know this might seem petty but any chance you could stop calling him “Musky Baby”. For some unknown reason it makes my skin crawl.
Maybe, if you want to be derogatory, rename him something that reflects a bad side of him - Elon Muscovy perhaps. But please not Musky Baby. Thanks
Nah. I use it because it highlights an important part of his character. If you don't like it, you know where the door is. ---->
Um, what part of his character is being highlighted by calling him “Musky Baby”?
Sounds like a dad in Happy Days talking to one of the Fonz’s out of town friends in an attempt to be down with the youth.
Nothing says down with the youth more than references to a 1970s sitcom. More like centrist dadgrandad great-grandad.
Reminds me of "Santa Baby" - definitely comes across as a term of endearment.
That does look like a Badenoch bounce to me. Her approval ratings have jumped (Keir's are up too, interestingly). A bad poll for the Lib Dems.
The Greens haven't achieved the lift off I'd expected after the election.
The whole of the western world is swinging hard to the right
It’s pretty bloody obvious. Cf Donald Trump
You will pleased to know that I think (others can correct me) this is the first RefCon lead over LLG since the election. RefCon 48%, LLG 46%.
Pre-election we were getting polling of occasionally up to 60:35 in favour of LLG.
Good morning
There does appear to be a mood shift and, in my opinion, aided by Starmer alienating pensioners, farmers, small businesses and most recently students but also since Trump's landslide [wholly unexpected by me] the consequences only now seem to be dawning that a new political landscape is happening that most leaders have not as yet taken on board nor have any idea how to respond
It interesting that Starmer has gone to Baku but the US, China, India and Indonesia are not and they represent 42% of the worlds population. Also Macron, Scholz, and Ursula von der Leyen are not attending but ironically the Taliban are and this lukewarm support is interesting
In a discussion yesterday it was said the some EU leaders are considering a deal with Trump to buy oil and gas from the US in exchange for a compromise on US tariffs and that pragmatic politics will be the order of the day
I am sure many will still hold on to the view that nothing has changed much, but that is just burying ones head in the ground
Everything changed last week, and certainly Starmer will have Trump in the US to deal with for most all of his time upto the next GE
Trans women are people and should have all the political freedom of people. But to say that they are women—and that making any distinction between them and biological women, for any purpose, is a thought crime and an act of bigotry—that is the precept of a new religion. And it is a religion that most Americans want nothing to do with.
[...]
I know people who haven't been touched by this issue personally, for whom it was the only issue that decided their vote. In fact, it is the issue that fully radicalized Elon, and he's spoken about this at length. Do you think Elon continuously messaging to 200 million people on X, and going to Trump's rallies, and donating over 100 million dollars to the campaign, and supporting him on podcasts, and doing everything else in his power to get Trump elected, might have accounted for a few votes? Honestly, I think a doctoral dissertation, and perhaps several, could be written on how trans activism completely destroyed Democratic politics—without most Democrats knowing.
That's a very good article by Harris.
"One lesson that I would be quick to draw from this election is that Americans aren't really fond of seeing biological men punch women in the face at the Olympics. And if that sounds like transphobia to you—you're the problem."
Yet you listen to the climate loons and you'd think we have done nothing
If we'd listened to the anti-renewables loons we wouldn't have.
Almost everything achieved has been from switching from coal to gas. And we have loads more of it under the sea and parts of Lancashire.
That was perhaps true 20 years ago after the dash for gas, though you are not clear whether you are talking about energy use or emissions, and which emissions, or global warming.
From about 2000, the switch on electricity generation was from Coal to Renewables, not Coal to Gas. You can also see the reduction in quantum from peak, despite increase in domestic electric heating and electric transport - electricity imports do not account for that. My photo quota: Source: p28 of https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/664c827ff34f9b5a56adcb5d/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2023.pdf
(We need a version of that graph for total energy production, which I do not have to hand. I think the curve is/will be similar, but offset to the right as we shift to more electricity usage over time.)
Since then very major contributions have been made by both reduction of energy use, and decarbonisation through a pivot to renewables.
One big indicator, which the Usonians will really struggle with as they are addicted to being profligate, is reduced energy/emissions intensity per unit of GDP, which we have slashed since 2000.
The reason for the energy efficiency has been high prices.
I haven’t seen any recognition of the issue coming down the road - with solar plus storage continuing to crater in price terms, the religion of We Must Have High Prices To Curtail Usage becomes obsolete.
Yet you listen to the climate loons and you'd think we have done nothing
If we'd listened to the anti-renewables loons we wouldn't have.
Almost everything achieved has been from switching from coal to gas. And we have loads more of it under the sea and parts of Lancashire.
That was perhaps true 20 years ago after the dash for gas, though you are not clear whether you are talking about energy use or emissions, and which emissions, or global warming.
From about 2000, the switch on electricity generation was from Coal to Renewables, not Coal to Gas. You can also see the reduction in quantum from peak, despite increase in domestic electric heating and electric transport - electricity imports do not account for that. My photo quota: Source: p28 of https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/664c827ff34f9b5a56adcb5d/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2023.pdf
(We need a version of that graph for total energy production, which I do not have to hand. I think the curve is/will be similar, but offset to the right as we shift to more electricity usage over time.)
Since then very major contributions have been made by both reduction of energy use, and decarbonisation through a pivot to renewables.
One big indicator, which the Usonians will really struggle with as they are addicted to being profligate, is reduced energy/emissions intensity per unit of GDP, which we have slashed since 2000.
On the last point, yes that's been big. Some straightforward energy efficiency - labelling of white goods making it a purchase decision (and influencing manufacturers to modify designs) and things like LED lighting. Beyond electricity, better insulation and better gas boilers will have made a fair difference, too. On insulation, we've added over 50% extra living space to our home over the past five years coupled with a reduction in energy use through insulation, largely for free with well insulated extensions making solid external walls internal walls, but also some easy works such as internal insulation boards elsewhere.
There is also the question though, when comparing to GDP, of how much of that is offshoring some of the more energy intensive industries and whether that's a net global gain or loss (depends where it's gone and how it's powered).
ETA: Manufacturing (all types) in total G$US and as % of GDP. The value hasn't actually dropped and the % of GDP has declined only a little since 2009. U.K. Manufacturing Output 1990-2024
Trans women are people and should have all the political freedom of people. But to say that they are women—and that making any distinction between them and biological women, for any purpose, is a thought crime and an act of bigotry—that is the precept of a new religion. And it is a religion that most Americans want nothing to do with.
[...]
I know people who haven't been touched by this issue personally, for whom it was the only issue that decided their vote. In fact, it is the issue that fully radicalized Elon, and he's spoken about this at length. Do you think Elon continuously messaging to 200 million people on X, and going to Trump's rallies, and donating over 100 million dollars to the campaign, and supporting him on podcasts, and doing everything else in his power to get Trump elected, might have accounted for a few votes? Honestly, I think a doctoral dissertation, and perhaps several, could be written on how trans activism completely destroyed Democratic politics—without most Democrats knowing.
Brilliantly articulate essay. Much to agree with, much to disagree wirh. But all of it beautifully angry and eloquent
That does look like a Badenoch bounce to me. Her approval ratings have jumped (Keir's are up too, interestingly). A bad poll for the Lib Dems.
The Greens haven't achieved the lift off I'd expected after the election.
The whole of the western world is swinging hard to the right
It’s pretty bloody obvious. Cf Donald Trump
You will pleased to know that I think (others can correct me) this is the first RefCon lead over LLG since the election. RefCon 48%, LLG 46%.
Pre-election we were getting polling of occasionally up to 60:35 in favour of LLG.
Good morning
There does appear to be a mood shift and, in my opinion, aided by Starmer alienating pensioners, farmers, small businesses and most recently students but also since Trump's landslide [wholly unexpected by me] the consequences only now seem to be dawning that a new political landscape is happening that most leaders have not as yet taken on board nor have any idea how to respond
It interesting that Starmer has gone to Baku but the US, China, India and Indonesia are not and they represent 42% of the worlds population. Also Macron, Scholz, and Ursula von der Leyen are not attending but ironically the Taliban are and this lukewarm support is interesting
In a discussion yesterday it was said the some EU leaders are considering a deal with Trump to buy oil and gas from the US in exchange for a compromise on US tariffs and that pragmatic politics will be the order of the day
I am sure many will still hold on to the view that nothing has changed much, but that is just burying ones head in the ground
Everything changed last week, and certainly Starmer will have Trump in the US to deal with for most all of his time upto the next GE
Things have certainly shifted politically, that's undeniable.
Unfortunately for the politically minded, the global energy balance between the w/m2 received at the surface from insolation and the w/m2 reradiated into space does not respect the latest opinion polls or presence or otherwise of politicians at COP29. It just keeps going further and further out of balance.
What we increasingly have, particularly in the Western world where populations are grumpy with their governments, is a growing form of net zero NIMBYism. Everyone's bought into the idea that the world needs to reduce emissions, but not in their back yard.
As we know in other walks of life, once NIMBYism takes hold it's hard to shift because it's such a convenient home for politicians. As with housebuilding, we need a clear shared financial interest in the economic growth benefits of the journey - the cost savings, health improvements and new industry jobs that come with the transition.
Yet you listen to the climate loons and you'd think we have done nothing
If we'd listened to the anti-renewables loons we wouldn't have.
Almost everything achieved has been from switching from coal to gas. And we have loads more of it under the sea and parts of Lancashire.
That was perhaps true 20 years ago after the dash for gas, though you are not clear whether you are talking about energy use or emissions, and which emissions, or global warming.
From about 2000, the switch on electricity generation was from Coal to Renewables, not Coal to Gas. You can also see the reduction in quantum from peak, despite increase in domestic electric heating and electric transport - electricity imports do not account for that. My photo quota: Source: p28 of https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/664c827ff34f9b5a56adcb5d/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2023.pdf
(We need a version of that graph for total energy production, which I do not have to hand. I think the curve is/will be similar, but offset to the right as we shift to more electricity usage over time.)
Since then very major contributions have been made by both reduction of energy use, and decarbonisation through a pivot to renewables.
One big indicator, which the Usonians will really struggle with as they are addicted to being profligate, is reduced energy/emissions intensity per unit of GDP, which we have slashed since 2000.
On the last point, yes that's been big. Some straightforward energy efficiency - labelling of white goods making it a purchase decision (and influencing manufacturers to modify designs) and things like LED lighting. Beyond electricity, better insulation and better gas boilers will have made a fair difference, too. On insulation, we've added over 50% extra living space to our home over the past five years coupled with a reduction in energy use through insulation, largely for free with well insulated extensions making solid external walls internal walls, but also some easy works such as internal insulation boards elsewhere.
There is also the question though, when comparing to GDP, of how much of that is offshoring some of the more energy intensive industries and whether that's a net global gain or loss (depends where it's gone and how it's powered).
ETA: Manufacturing (all types) in total G$US and as % of GDP. The value hasn't actually dropped and the % of GDP has declined only a little since 2009. U.K. Manufacturing Output 1990-2024
The CBAM will deal with the offshoring of the most energy-intensive industries. Not everything that emits carbon, but certainly the really bad ones.
I must question your data - not sure of the units, but I'm pretty convinced Miliband derangement syndrome peaked near 2015, then dropped and is now having a major, even larger peak. This apparent decline in MDS does not match my lived experience!
I don't think we're yet at the 2015 peaks of MDS. It's bubbling up on forums like this but hasn't really gone mainstream in the way it did in the run up to the 2015 election.
It's a sign that Ed is actually doing things. A number of right wing posters here have said of the new government things along the lines of "If they actually had a coherent vision that they were executing, even if it was a hard left agenda that I completely disagreed with intellectually, then at least I could respect their position". Well Ed is one, of very few on the front bench, who is doing exactly that. He has a vision and a programme for government - which a number of people vehemently object to or question the details on (e.g. why CCS) - and isn't hanging about.
But retail politics wise they really need to fix one thing - we have to delink the cost of electricity from marginal wholesale gas prices otherwise it'll become easier and easier for the trope that net zero is making energy unaffordable to take hold. Gas prices are up again as we head into winter. Other countries don't have that problem: our pricing system seems to be uniquely badly designed.
Side note: if this isn't sorted, there is a chance that SNP start to weaponise it. Scotland currently has 15GW of renewable capacity and we are already a net exporter (worth about £1.5 billion last year).
We currently have a further 26GW under construction or in planning. I am genuinely aggrieved that I won't see that in my energy bill under the current constitutional arrangement and pricing system.
Trans women are people and should have all the political freedom of people. But to say that they are women—and that making any distinction between them and biological women, for any purpose, is a thought crime and an act of bigotry—that is the precept of a new religion. And it is a religion that most Americans want nothing to do with.
[...]
I know people who haven't been touched by this issue personally, for whom it was the only issue that decided their vote. In fact, it is the issue that fully radicalized Elon, and he's spoken about this at length. Do you think Elon continuously messaging to 200 million people on X, and going to Trump's rallies, and donating over 100 million dollars to the campaign, and supporting him on podcasts, and doing everything else in his power to get Trump elected, might have accounted for a few votes? Honestly, I think a doctoral dissertation, and perhaps several, could be written on how trans activism completely destroyed Democratic politics—without most Democrats knowing.
Brilliantly articulate essay. Much to agree with, much to disagree wirh. But all of it beautifully angry and eloquent
This is the key phrase from Harris, just before he weighs in with his own hot take: everyone is in danger of believing that their pet issue explains everything that happened on Tuesday.
I must question your data - not sure of the units, but I'm pretty convinced Miliband derangement syndrome peaked near 2015, then dropped and is now having a major, even larger peak. This apparent decline in MDS does not match my lived experience!
I don't think we're yet at the 2015 peaks of MDS. It's bubbling up on forums like this but hasn't really gone mainstream in the way it did in the run up to the 2015 election.
It's a sign that Ed is actually doing things. A number of right wing posters here have said of the new government things along the lines of "If they actually had a coherent vision that they were executing, even if it was a hard left agenda that I completely disagreed with intellectually, then at least I could respect their position". Well Ed is one, of very few on the front bench, who is doing exactly that. He has a vision and a programme for government - which a number of people vehemently object to or question the details on (e.g. why CCS) - and isn't hanging about.
But retail politics wise they really need to fix one thing - we have to delink the cost of electricity from marginal wholesale gas prices otherwise it'll become easier and easier for the trope that net zero is making energy unaffordable to take hold. Gas prices are up again as we head into winter. Other countries don't have that problem: our pricing system seems to be uniquely badly designed.
Yes. He's one of the few who actually seems to have come into government with a clear plan on what to achieve (we may see more from others, but Miliband is the obvious person who has hit the ground running). Now, some will argue that he's running in the wrong direction, or even round and round in circles, but he does at least have a plan and seems able to articulate it.
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.
The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.
Complete masochistic lunacy. We already have some of the most expensive energy in the world, now Free Gear and Mad Ed want to make our position even worse. Households will be shafted and nobody will want to make anything here. The Chinese are building dozens of new coal power stations and Trump will take America in the opposite direction so the US will boom further as a result. So their decision won't have the slightest effect on climate change. But our moronic government will at least be able to float on a cloud of smug.
We need to scrap Net Zero madness while we still have an economy left.
Miliband is a total idiot and risks a backlash against what are sensible long-term goals, by trying to accomplish them in the short term regardless of cost. All while ignoring tidal and small nuclear, which have the potential to be revolutionary.
Meanwhile China is still building more coal power stations, and the incoming US administration is going to be more interested in drilling for oil than building windmills.
Miliband Derangement Syndrome. Current plans for carbon emission mitigation are in line with the fall in emissions achieved by the Conservative government.
The difficulty in doing so, however, starts to rise exponentially as we approach zero. There’s not going to be many commercial aircraft or long-distance trucks using anything but fossil fuels for a while yet.
The best time to start on a difficult problem is now, not to put off any action because you’re worried about future difficulties.
Except that this is a luxury belief for many of the population, and politicians need to work within the constraints of what’s acceptable in terms of energy bills. Telling the bottom quintile that heating their old house is now impossibly expensive unless they invest in new inside walls and solar panels, isn’t compatible with them voting for you in future. Telling the second-bottom quintile that they need to spend £30k on an electric car or pay £10 a day to get to work, also isn’t compatible with them voting for you.
My wife yelled me that Hyundai are launching a new electric car in Ireland next year priced at €19-22k. The more expensive model will have a rated range of 350km.
The new technology keeps on getting cheaper and better. It makes your talking points outdated.
That car is £23,495 in Britain. Comparing prices I'm tempted to say we do live in Rip-off Britain...
350 km is nothing special. I know people who have 5-year-old EVs with range 220 miles who fret when they have trips to areas with sparse EV coverage. 500 miles would make them sit up and trade in.
Trans women are people and should have all the political freedom of people. But to say that they are women—and that making any distinction between them and biological women, for any purpose, is a thought crime and an act of bigotry—that is the precept of a new religion. And it is a religion that most Americans want nothing to do with.
[...]
I know people who haven't been touched by this issue personally, for whom it was the only issue that decided their vote. In fact, it is the issue that fully radicalized Elon, and he's spoken about this at length. Do you think Elon continuously messaging to 200 million people on X, and going to Trump's rallies, and donating over 100 million dollars to the campaign, and supporting him on podcasts, and doing everything else in his power to get Trump elected, might have accounted for a few votes? Honestly, I think a doctoral dissertation, and perhaps several, could be written on how trans activism completely destroyed Democratic politics—without most Democrats knowing.
That's a very good article by Harris.
"One lesson that I would be quick to draw from this election is that Americans aren't really fond of seeing biological men punch women in the face at the Olympics. And if that sounds like transphobia to you—you're the problem."
This is a good sentence imo:
"Obviously, Trump's win and Harris' loss were determined by many factors, and I think everyone is in danger of believing that their pet issue explains everything that happened on Tuesday."
CNN reporting that the puppy killer has been given head of homeland security !
Should fit in perfectly with the Trump cabinet , cruel and a total nutjob .
I see that Kari Lake is one of those politicians who has been affiliated to all 4 tendencies in the US - Democrat, independent, sane Republican, and MAGA.
The left is full of chatter about how they need their own, liberal version of Joe Rogan and the like.
But that's the thing: The left used to have a liberal version of Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. He voted for Obama twice and endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. But because he's openminded, will talk to anyone, and doesn't mindlessly accept the latest propaganda, the left kicked him out. They censored his interview with Robert Malone and pressured Spotify to drop him.
The left can't have their own version of Joe Rogan, because everything that makes Rogan special makes it impossible for him to be on the left.
Says Charlie Kirk, a far-right politicial activist, who believes in racial differences in intelligence, opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, said hydroxychloroquine is 100% effective against COVID-19 but that masks are not, opposes use of oral contraceptives, has pushed various anti-vax positions, etc. So, you know, maybe not the most reliable or unbiased commentator here.
Really, Sandpit, do you think Charlie Kirk is someone we should be listening to on any topic?
Problem is, this reply is exactly what Kirk is criticising. A message can be useful to hear even if the messenger is a loon.
I would argue there is a separate problem - Rogan has a huge amount of power to amplify certain voices. In specific cases (Trump's interview, for a recent example) his popularity skews things in certain directions. I'm not sure this is intentional by Rogan, not do I think this is his fault, but that doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.
I would like to live in a world where Rogan can interview anyone and both Rogan and his listeners can hear messages critically, forming their own opinions rather than taking on the views of those with loud voices in a sheep-like manner.
I'm not sure that's how the world works, though. Attempting to cancel Rogan et al may make the situation even worse.
As a fallback I'd like to keep living in the world where media organisations were held to standards of impartiality in broadcasting but this world has been dismantled rather well, not least by the Tories with respect to the BBC. In hindsight I think it might sit alongside calling the Brexit referendum without a plan as their greatest misstep.
I must question your data - not sure of the units, but I'm pretty convinced Miliband derangement syndrome peaked near 2015, then dropped and is now having a major, even larger peak. This apparent decline in MDS does not match my lived experience!
I don't think we're yet at the 2015 peaks of MDS. It's bubbling up on forums like this but hasn't really gone mainstream in the way it did in the run up to the 2015 election.
It's a sign that Ed is actually doing things. A number of right wing posters here have said of the new government things along the lines of "If they actually had a coherent vision that they were executing, even if it was a hard left agenda that I completely disagreed with intellectually, then at least I could respect their position". Well Ed is one, of very few on the front bench, who is doing exactly that. He has a vision and a programme for government - which a number of people vehemently object to or question the details on (e.g. why CCS) - and isn't hanging about.
But retail politics wise they really need to fix one thing - we have to delink the cost of electricity from marginal wholesale gas prices otherwise it'll become easier and easier for the trope that net zero is making energy unaffordable to take hold. Gas prices are up again as we head into winter. Other countries don't have that problem: our pricing system seems to be uniquely badly designed.
Yes. He's one of the few who actually seems to have come into government with a clear plan on what to achieve (we may see more from others, but Miliband is the obvious person who has hit the ground running). Now, some will argue that he's running in the wrong direction, or even round and round in circles, but he does at least have a plan and seems able to articulate it.
Labour is implementing policies. You can disagree with them as I do on private schools but they are trying to make change. The Tories at the moment are not hence why I keep asking what they would do.
Labour’s most encouraging start is on housing where they’re hopefully going to push through these homes that councils would otherwise reject for no reason.
That does look like a Badenoch bounce to me. Her approval ratings have jumped (Keir's are up too, interestingly). A bad poll for the Lib Dems.
The Greens haven't achieved the lift off I'd expected after the election.
The whole of the western world is swinging hard to the right
It’s pretty bloody obvious. Cf Donald Trump
You will pleased to know that I think (others can correct me) this is the first RefCon lead over LLG since the election. RefCon 48%, LLG 46%.
Pre-election we were getting polling of occasionally up to 60:35 in favour of LLG.
Good morning
There does appear to be a mood shift and, in my opinion, aided by Starmer alienating pensioners, farmers, small businesses and most recently students but also since Trump's landslide [wholly unexpected by me] the consequences only now seem to be dawning that a new political landscape is happening that most leaders have not as yet taken on board nor have any idea how to respond
It interesting that Starmer has gone to Baku but the US, China, India and Indonesia are not and they represent 42% of the worlds population. Also Macron, Scholz, and Ursula von der Leyen are not attending but ironically the Taliban are and this lukewarm support is interesting
In a discussion yesterday it was said the some EU leaders are considering a deal with Trump to buy oil and gas from the US in exchange for a compromise on US tariffs and that pragmatic politics will be the order of the day
I am sure many will still hold on to the view that nothing has changed much, but that is just burying ones head in the ground
Everything changed last week, and certainly Starmer will have Trump in the US to deal with for most all of his time upto the next GE
Things have certainly shifted politically, that's undeniable.
Unfortunately for the politically minded, the global energy balance between the w/m2 received at the surface from insolation and the w/m2 reradiated into space does not respect the latest opinion polls or presence or otherwise of politicians at COP29. It just keeps going further and further out of balance.
What we increasingly have, particularly in the Western world where populations are grumpy with their governments, is a growing form of net zero NIMBYism. Everyone's bought into the idea that the world needs to reduce emissions, but not in their back yard.
As we know in other walks of life, once NIMBYism takes hold it's hard to shift because it's such a convenient home for politicians. As with housebuilding, we need a clear shared financial interest in the economic growth benefits of the journey - the cost savings, health improvements and new industry jobs that come with the transition.
Do you think China and India are guilty of this "net zero NIMBYism"?
Yet you listen to the climate loons and you'd think we have done nothing
If we'd listened to the anti-renewables loons we wouldn't have.
Almost everything achieved has been from switching from coal to gas. And we have loads more of it under the sea and parts of Lancashire.
That was perhaps true 20 years ago after the dash for gas, though you are not clear whether you are talking about energy use or emissions, and which emissions, or global warming.
From about 2000, the switch on electricity generation was from Coal to Renewables, not Coal to Gas. You can also see the reduction in quantum from peak, despite increase in domestic electric heating and electric transport - electricity imports do not account for that. My photo quota: Source: p28 of https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/664c827ff34f9b5a56adcb5d/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2023.pdf
(We need a version of that graph for total energy production, which I do not have to hand. I think the curve is/will be similar, but offset to the right as we shift to more electricity usage over time.)
Since then very major contributions have been made by both reduction of energy use, and decarbonisation through a pivot to renewables.
One big indicator, which the Usonians will really struggle with as they are addicted to being profligate, is reduced energy/emissions intensity per unit of GDP, which we have slashed since 2000.
On the last point, yes that's been big. Some straightforward energy efficiency - labelling of white goods making it a purchase decision (and influencing manufacturers to modify designs) and things like LED lighting. Beyond electricity, better insulation and better gas boilers will have made a fair difference, too. On insulation, we've added over 50% extra living space to our home over the past five years coupled with a reduction in energy use through insulation, largely for free with well insulated extensions making solid external walls internal walls, but also some easy works such as internal insulation boards elsewhere.
There is also the question though, when comparing to GDP, of how much of that is offshoring some of the more energy intensive industries and whether that's a net global gain or loss (depends where it's gone and how it's powered).
Your last point is around what are called consumption-based (as opposed to "territorial") emissions, which have followed the same trend with a pecentage difference of around 10-15%. So whilst our total territorial emissions (even covering increased population) have halved (last Govt published a release about that last spring), the consumption based ones are down by around 35-40%.
On the household bills, when I moved in here in 2013 my total energy bills were around £1600 per annum. We reduced that to around £800 pre-crisis whilst adding 5-10% of floor area, which was energy use reduction plus solar (solar reduced electricity use by about a third), and also gave about £500 per annum from FITs etc.
Two years ago I pivoted from gfch to a portable heat pump for most heating, and combined with a more generous solar export tariff from Octopus, and a solar panel deep clean, I think I am now modestly cash-positive on energy.
And I think I am carbon positive on an over-the-year basis (export more solar kWh than energy I import). But I'm not totally sure yet, and have not done a full lifesycle embedded carbon calculation.
Trans women are people and should have all the political freedom of people. But to say that they are women—and that making any distinction between them and biological women, for any purpose, is a thought crime and an act of bigotry—that is the precept of a new religion. And it is a religion that most Americans want nothing to do with.
[...]
I know people who haven't been touched by this issue personally, for whom it was the only issue that decided their vote. In fact, it is the issue that fully radicalized Elon, and he's spoken about this at length. Do you think Elon continuously messaging to 200 million people on X, and going to Trump's rallies, and donating over 100 million dollars to the campaign, and supporting him on podcasts, and doing everything else in his power to get Trump elected, might have accounted for a few votes? Honestly, I think a doctoral dissertation, and perhaps several, could be written on how trans activism completely destroyed Democratic politics—without most Democrats knowing.
That's a very good article by Harris.
"One lesson that I would be quick to draw from this election is that Americans aren't really fond of seeing biological men punch women in the face at the Olympics. And if that sounds like transphobia to you—you're the problem."
This is a good sentence imo:
"Obviously, Trump's win and Harris' loss were determined by many factors, and I think everyone is in danger of believing that their pet issue explains everything that happened on Tuesday."
His analysis of how musk swang behind Trump, and why, and why that was so important - is spot on
He then goes into a rant of pure Musk Derangement Syndrome, but at least he writes it well
I must question your data - not sure of the units, but I'm pretty convinced Miliband derangement syndrome peaked near 2015, then dropped and is now having a major, even larger peak. This apparent decline in MDS does not match my lived experience!
I don't think we're yet at the 2015 peaks of MDS. It's bubbling up on forums like this but hasn't really gone mainstream in the way it did in the run up to the 2015 election.
It's a sign that Ed is actually doing things. A number of right wing posters here have said of the new government things along the lines of "If they actually had a coherent vision that they were executing, even if it was a hard left agenda that I completely disagreed with intellectually, then at least I could respect their position". Well Ed is one, of very few on the front bench, who is doing exactly that. He has a vision and a programme for government - which a number of people vehemently object to or question the details on (e.g. why CCS) - and isn't hanging about.
But retail politics wise they really need to fix one thing - we have to delink the cost of electricity from marginal wholesale gas prices otherwise it'll become easier and easier for the trope that net zero is making energy unaffordable to take hold. Gas prices are up again as we head into winter. Other countries don't have that problem: our pricing system seems to be uniquely badly designed.
Side note: if this isn't sorted, there is a chance that SNP start to weaponise it. Scotland currently has 15GW of renewable capacity and we are already a net exporter (worth about £1.5 billion last year).
We currently have a further 26GW under construction or in planning. I am genuinely aggrieved that I won't see that in my energy bill under the current constitutional arrangement and pricing system.
The obviously Nat CEO of Octopus has already started.
'Free electricity for Scotland possible, says Octopus boss'
I’m sure we will ignore the fact that KS’s ratings have been going up for several polls in a row now.
He said he’d be happy to be unpopular if it meant doing stuff. Right now Badenoch hasn’t actually proposed anything.
His ratings have gone from dire to appalling.
A PM really shouldn’t be cratering this badly four months into his premiership.
I think he’s making unpopular but necessary decisions. He said he was prepared to do it, the Tories ducked them.
So if they end up working he will get rewarded, otherwise he won’t and he will be out. Personally I think he will be re-elected at this stage but I’m only saying that because of how much of a mess the Tories made - that may change with Badenoch.
The Tories still can win my vote and many in the centre/centre left but they need to propose something for people under the age of 60. Right now they offer nothing.
That does look like a Badenoch bounce to me. Her approval ratings have jumped (Keir's are up too, interestingly). A bad poll for the Lib Dems.
The Greens haven't achieved the lift off I'd expected after the election.
The whole of the western world is swinging hard to the right
It’s pretty bloody obvious. Cf Donald Trump
You will pleased to know that I think (others can correct me) this is the first RefCon lead over LLG since the election. RefCon 48%, LLG 46%.
Pre-election we were getting polling of occasionally up to 60:35 in favour of LLG.
Good morning
There does appear to be a mood shift and, in my opinion, aided by Starmer alienating pensioners, farmers, small businesses and most recently students but also since Trump's landslide [wholly unexpected by me] the consequences only now seem to be dawning that a new political landscape is happening that most leaders have not as yet taken on board nor have any idea how to respond
It interesting that Starmer has gone to Baku but the US, China, India and Indonesia are not and they represent 42% of the worlds population. Also Macron, Scholz, and Ursula von der Leyen are not attending but ironically the Taliban are and this lukewarm support is interesting
In a discussion yesterday it was said the some EU leaders are considering a deal with Trump to buy oil and gas from the US in exchange for a compromise on US tariffs and that pragmatic politics will be the order of the day
I am sure many will still hold on to the view that nothing has changed much, but that is just burying ones head in the ground
Everything changed last week, and certainly Starmer will have Trump in the US to deal with for most all of his time upto the next GE
Things have certainly shifted politically, that's undeniable.
Unfortunately for the politically minded, the global energy balance between the w/m2 received at the surface from insolation and the w/m2 reradiated into space does not respect the latest opinion polls or presence or otherwise of politicians at COP29. It just keeps going further and further out of balance.
What we increasingly have, particularly in the Western world where populations are grumpy with their governments, is a growing form of net zero NIMBYism. Everyone's bought into the idea that the world needs to reduce emissions, but not in their back yard.
As we know in other walks of life, once NIMBYism takes hold it's hard to shift because it's such a convenient home for politicians. As with housebuilding, we need a clear shared financial interest in the economic growth benefits of the journey - the cost savings, health improvements and new industry jobs that come with the transition.
Do you think China and India are guilty of this "net zero NIMBYism"?
India is guilty of denialism, and industrial cronyism. China, for all its other faults, is rushing into renewables at an incredible pace because it sees the competitive benefits of doing so. The NIMBYism is largely coming from Westerners who use "but China" in the same way planning NIMBYs use "but brownfield sites".
Trans women are people and should have all the political freedom of people. But to say that they are women—and that making any distinction between them and biological women, for any purpose, is a thought crime and an act of bigotry—that is the precept of a new religion. And it is a religion that most Americans want nothing to do with.
[...]
I know people who haven't been touched by this issue personally, for whom it was the only issue that decided their vote. In fact, it is the issue that fully radicalized Elon, and he's spoken about this at length. Do you think Elon continuously messaging to 200 million people on X, and going to Trump's rallies, and donating over 100 million dollars to the campaign, and supporting him on podcasts, and doing everything else in his power to get Trump elected, might have accounted for a few votes? Honestly, I think a doctoral dissertation, and perhaps several, could be written on how trans activism completely destroyed Democratic politics—without most Democrats knowing.
That's a very good article by Harris.
"One lesson that I would be quick to draw from this election is that Americans aren't really fond of seeing biological men punch women in the face at the Olympics. And if that sounds like transphobia to you—you're the problem."
This is a good sentence imo:
"Obviously, Trump's win and Harris' loss were determined by many factors, and I think everyone is in danger of believing that their pet issue explains everything that happened on Tuesday."
EDIT: Also noted by Decrepiter, I see.
It does make sense in a relatively narrow loss, there are probably half a dozen marginal factors that all went Trump's way that flipping one of them might have made the difference.
Just to say something positive about Starmer: I agree with his stance of making the proposed assisted dying law something not subject to whipping. Like abortion, it should be a matter of conscience.
Surely something like this should be under a referendum? No-one voted for this at the election.
Yet you listen to the climate loons and you'd think we have done nothing
If we'd listened to the anti-renewables loons we wouldn't have.
Almost everything achieved has been from switching from coal to gas. And we have loads more of it under the sea and parts of Lancashire.
That was perhaps true 20 years ago after the dash for gas, though you are not clear whether you are talking about energy use or emissions, and which emissions, or global warming.
From about 2000, the switch on electricity generation was from Coal to Renewables, not Coal to Gas. You can also see the reduction in quantum from peak, despite increase in domestic electric heating and electric transport - electricity imports do not account for that. My photo quota: Source: p28 of https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/664c827ff34f9b5a56adcb5d/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2023.pdf
(We need a version of that graph for total energy production, which I do not have to hand. I think the curve is/will be similar, but offset to the right as we shift to more electricity usage over time.)
Since then very major contributions have been made by both reduction of energy use, and decarbonisation through a pivot to renewables.
One big indicator, which the Usonians will really struggle with as they are addicted to being profligate, is reduced energy/emissions intensity per unit of GDP, which we have slashed since 2000.
The reason for the energy efficiency has been high prices.
I haven’t seen any recognition of the issue coming down the road - with solar plus storage continuing to crater in price terms, the religion of We Must Have High Prices To Curtail Usage becomes obsolete.
I go about half way with your first para - it's also been things like the many Govt programmes such as ECO1 -> ECO4, and the Blair Government programme which ran from ~2001 and was continued to ~2019 in the social housing sector.
Plus there have been industrial decarbonisation / efficiency programmes running since the 1990s to now, especially in electricity generation.
Except for the first para they are not related to high supply prices as a cause.|
Though TBF I quite like price regulation upwards as a way of influencing behaviour, especially on motor vehicles. An energy Pigou tax !
The "we will have free energy so we can build millions of wind and solar farms" comes up against limited land supply, which seems to me to be a strong justification for driving efficiency over "all you want for free".
Comments
Plenty of subspecies of Roman Catholic theology have doctrines around Predestination and things that amount to Irresistible Grace.
(TULIP the Five Points of Calvinism:
TULIP is an acronym that summarizes the five points of Calvinism, a theological doctrine that summarizes God's work of salvation:
- total depravity,
- unconditional election *,
- limited atonement,
- irresistible grace, and
- perseverance of the saints .
* Technically election as Saints, not as Pope - though some would draw the parallel.)
I did go hunting for a large private sector project that delivered on time and to budget - looking at football stadiums I think the only one where that was true was the Emirates..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kari_Lake
The left is full of chatter about how they need their own, liberal version of Joe Rogan and the like.
But that's the thing: The left used to have a liberal version of Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. He voted for Obama twice and endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. But because he's openminded, will talk to anyone, and doesn't mindlessly accept the latest propaganda, the left kicked him out. They censored his interview with Robert Malone and pressured Spotify to drop him.
The left can't have their own version of Joe Rogan, because everything that makes Rogan special makes it impossible for him to be on the left.
{I felt a great disturbance in the Farce, as if millions of Management Consultants suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something wonderful had happened}
This is the culture war writ large, and amplified by social media. The extremists on both sides of the argument engage in purity tests and quickly write off anyone with nuanced views as part of the other.
🌳CON 29% (+3)
🌹LAB 27% (-1)
🔶 LIB DEM 11% ( -3)
➡️ REF UK 19% (+1)
🌍 GREEN 8% (-)
🟡 SNP 2% (-1)
N=2,111 Dates: 8-11/11 change with 1/11
https://xcancel.com/LukeTryl/status/1856249257214239046#m
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/11/weather-tracker-philippines-braced-for-landslides-as-fourth-cyclone-in-three-weeks-hits
Heh
For example, the competition between solar module manufacturers is absolutely cutthroat. The combination of that, and state subsidies massively priming the pump, has wiped out most of their foreign competition.
They aren't a free market economy - but their are plenty of very efficient markets operating within the system.
You are at the other end of the country but the Banaue rice terraces are worth seeing if you're in the region.
The easter time flagellations are bonkers as well but the clue is in the name for why you won't see those now.
Tories plus Reform on 48% there
A bad poll for the Lib Dems.
The Greens haven't achieved the lift off I'd expected after the election.
It’s pretty bloody obvious. Cf Donald Trump
As in show the breakdown of the data, because that looks like “fixing reality to the fiat of the senior manager”
{Robert McNamara has entered the chat, carrying a model of an F-111}
And as usual so much in it with which to agree.
Politically, this is probably the slowest reduction Miliband could commit to, otherwise he'd be accused of doing a worse job than Sunak.
See the £100 million Bat tunnel saga.
The same thing has happened since forever. Lots of interest groups all pulling the project towards them…. A classic is the story of the development of TSR2.
Which was not a wonder plane that never was. More an epic disaster.
One favourite was that all the electronics were designed and specified by different groups. Towards the end of the project, someone did an estimate of Mean Time Between Failure. For everything, all together. 8 minutes, IIRC. That is, if a TSR2 was fired up, it would suffer a mission critical failure before it got to the end of the runway….
Which is spectacularly to miss the point. Doing a really good job of building a nuclear power plant at for times the cost of (say) S Korea, is not being "actually quite good at managing projects".
In my book, managing projects includes government working out (for example) the trade offs between regulation and cost.
The running of regulators like Offwat also falls into this category.
Just to accept all of that as someone else's responsibility is why we are where we are.
And just to remind Casino, the party which he enthusiastically supports was in power for the best part of a decade and a half, and sorted none of this stuff out.
They bought in the French/Italian FREMM frigate design as something that would be "we know it works" so could be delivered quickly because they needed it NOW.
They currently have very few common parts left in the design due to f**cked up project management, requirements creep and gold-plating, and not having the workforce, and I think the delivery date is delayed by about 100%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation-class_frigate
One of the hopes for a better future for the USA is that Mr Chump will prove to be as ineffectual at domestic authoritarianism as his friend Putin is at making war.
🟦 CON 29% (+3)
🟥 LAB 27% (-1)
🟪 REF 19% (+1)
🟧 LD 11% (-3)
🟩 GRN 8% (-)
Via
@Moreincommon_
, 8-11 Nov (+/- vs 1 Nov
Votes received and percentages of total vote
Candidate Votes Pct.
Ruben Gallego DEM 1,600,923 50.0
Kari Lake GOP 1,528,297 47.8
Eduardo Quintana GRN 70,678 2.2
Lead 72,626.
Gallego (D) is projected to win by the Associated Press.
But I think the MTBF argument is a little unfair. It was a new high-technology project that was in its first few flights. Of course that tech will give problems; that's why you test and develop it. And a fair bit of that internal technology was further developed, and ended up in the Tornado.
I've got a book somewhere that posits that the two main TSR2 prototypes should have been kept as flying testbeds for the tech, not the plane itself.
Probably best to say equally culpable..
Pre-election we were getting polling of occasionally up to 60:35 in favour of LLG.
Britain is following the rest of the west towards the right. Possibly the hard or even far right
It’s just that we’re behind the pack, likely because of Brexit
Really, Sandpit, do you think Charlie Kirk is someone we should be listening to on any topic?
Short version - civilisation creates unstoppable war machine to destroy everything not pure. Purity as defined by fanatics….
Thousands of years later, humans arrive on a dead world and wonder - what happened here?
CA9 - Dem 51.8
CA47 - Dem 50.5
CA21 - Dem 50.5
AL (At large) - GOP 49.6
CA45 - GOP 50.7
CA13 - GOP 51.1
If everything holds it'll be 222 - 213 identical to 2022.
https://samharris.substack.com/p/the-reckoning
Trans women are people and should have all the political freedom of people. But to say that they are women—and that making any distinction between them and biological women, for any purpose, is a thought crime and an act of bigotry—that is the precept of a new religion. And it is a religion that most Americans want nothing to do with.
[...]
I know people who haven't been touched by this issue personally, for whom it was the only issue that decided their vote. In fact, it is the issue that fully radicalized Elon, and he's spoken about this at length. Do you think Elon continuously messaging to 200 million people on X, and going to Trump's rallies, and donating over 100 million dollars to the campaign, and supporting him on podcasts, and doing everything else in his power to get Trump elected, might have accounted for a few votes? Honestly, I think a doctoral dissertation, and perhaps several, could be written on how trans activism completely destroyed Democratic politics—without most Democrats knowing.
So you designed electronics to a “complexity budget” - too much complexity and you ended up with the American A6a. Which was brilliant on paper. Except it never all worked at the same time.
In the case of the TSR2 - this was simply ignored. So all possible requirements were to be implemented.
By the time that it got to the Tornado, many years later, the systems had been redesigned with more modern electronics. It was still noticeable that the Tornado systems were less functional, on paper, than those planned for the TSR2. Because they were still designed to a complexity, MTBF budget.
The reason that it was canceled was the explosion in costs.
He said he’d be happy to be unpopular if it meant doing stuff. Right now Badenoch hasn’t actually proposed anything.
dadgrandadgreat-grandad.From about 2000, the switch on electricity generation was from Coal to Renewables, not Coal to Gas. You can also see the reduction in quantum from peak, despite increase in domestic electric heating and electric transport - electricity imports do not account for that. My photo quota:
Source: p28 of https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/664c827ff34f9b5a56adcb5d/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2023.pdf
(We need a version of that graph for total energy production, which I do not have to hand. I think the curve is/will be similar, but offset to the right as we shift to more electricity usage over time.)
Since then very major contributions have been made by both reduction of energy use, and decarbonisation through a pivot to renewables.
One big indicator, which the Usonians will really struggle with as they are addicted to being profligate, is reduced energy/emissions intensity per unit of GDP, which we have slashed since 2000.
It's a sign that Ed is actually doing things. A number of right wing posters here have said of the new government things along the lines of "If they actually had a coherent vision that they were executing, even if it was a hard left agenda that I completely disagreed with intellectually, then at least I could respect their position". Well Ed is one, of very few on the front bench, who is doing exactly that. He has a vision and a programme for government - which a number of people vehemently object to or question the details on (e.g. why CCS) - and isn't hanging about.
But retail politics wise they really need to fix one thing - we have to delink the cost of electricity from marginal wholesale gas prices otherwise it'll become easier and easier for the trope that net zero is making energy unaffordable to take hold. Gas prices are up again as we head into winter. Other countries don't have that problem: our pricing system seems to be uniquely badly designed.
I naively thought, perhaps though John Profumo's example, that there was a little more honour in the 1960's.
There does appear to be a mood shift and, in my opinion, aided by Starmer alienating pensioners, farmers, small businesses and most recently students but also since Trump's landslide [wholly unexpected by me] the consequences only now seem to be dawning that a new political landscape is happening that most leaders have not as yet taken on board nor have any idea how to respond
It interesting that Starmer has gone to Baku but the US, China, India and Indonesia are not and they represent 42% of the worlds population. Also Macron, Scholz, and Ursula von der Leyen are not attending but ironically the Taliban are and this lukewarm support is interesting
In a discussion yesterday it was said the some EU leaders are considering a deal with Trump to buy oil and gas from the US in exchange for a compromise on US tariffs and that pragmatic politics will be the order of the day
I am sure many will still hold on to the view that nothing has changed much, but that is just burying ones head in the ground
Everything changed last week, and certainly Starmer will have Trump in the US to deal with for most all of his time upto the next GE
"One lesson that I would be quick to draw from this election is that Americans aren't really fond of seeing biological men punch women in the face at the Olympics. And if that sounds like transphobia to you—you're the problem."
I haven’t seen any recognition of the issue coming down the road - with solar plus storage continuing to crater in price terms, the religion of We Must Have High Prices To Curtail Usage becomes obsolete.
There is also the question though, when comparing to GDP, of how much of that is offshoring some of the more energy intensive industries and whether that's a net global gain or loss (depends where it's gone and how it's powered).
ETA: Manufacturing (all types) in total G$US and as % of GDP. The value hasn't actually dropped and the % of GDP has declined only a little since 2009. U.K. Manufacturing Output 1990-2024
Unfortunately for the politically minded, the global energy balance between the w/m2 received at the surface from insolation and the w/m2 reradiated into space does not respect the latest opinion polls or presence or otherwise of politicians at COP29. It just keeps going further and further out of balance.
What we increasingly have, particularly in the Western world where populations are grumpy with their governments, is a growing form of net zero NIMBYism. Everyone's bought into the idea that the world needs to reduce emissions, but not in their back yard.
As we know in other walks of life, once NIMBYism takes hold it's hard to shift because it's such a convenient home for politicians. As with housebuilding, we need a clear shared financial interest in the economic growth benefits of the journey - the cost savings, health improvements and new industry jobs that come with the transition.
We currently have a further 26GW under construction or in planning. I am genuinely aggrieved that I won't see that in my energy bill under the current constitutional arrangement and pricing system.
In 1965, we had more reactors than the rest of the world combined!
But, Britain is set to switch off all but one of our nuclear power stations in four years time.
Here's why we must avoid that happening. 🧵
https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1856264087405048149
Do we just in law have a separate category for trans people? Separate loos?
I think there’s something in this. But I don’t fully understand.
"Obviously, Trump's win and Harris' loss were determined by many factors, and I think everyone is in danger of believing that their pet issue explains everything that happened on Tuesday."
EDIT: Also noted by Decrepiter, I see.
I would argue there is a separate problem - Rogan has a huge amount of power to amplify certain voices. In specific cases (Trump's interview, for a recent example) his popularity skews things in certain directions. I'm not sure this is intentional by Rogan, not do I think this is his fault, but that doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.
I would like to live in a world where Rogan can interview anyone and both Rogan and his listeners can hear messages critically, forming their own opinions rather than taking on the views of those with loud voices in a sheep-like manner.
I'm not sure that's how the world works, though. Attempting to cancel Rogan et al may make the situation even worse.
As a fallback I'd like to keep living in the world where media organisations were held to standards of impartiality in broadcasting but this world has been dismantled rather well, not least by the Tories with respect to the BBC. In hindsight I think it might sit alongside calling the Brexit referendum without a plan as their greatest misstep.
Labour’s most encouraging start is on housing where they’re hopefully going to push through these homes that councils would otherwise reject for no reason.
A PM really shouldn’t be cratering this badly four months into his premiership.
And to their credit, started by the Tories.
On the household bills, when I moved in here in 2013 my total energy bills were around £1600 per annum. We reduced that to around £800 pre-crisis whilst adding 5-10% of floor area, which was energy use reduction plus solar (solar reduced electricity use by about a third), and also gave about £500 per annum from FITs etc.
Two years ago I pivoted from gfch to a portable heat pump for most heating, and combined with a more generous solar export tariff from Octopus, and a solar panel deep clean, I think I am now modestly cash-positive on energy.
And I think I am carbon positive on an over-the-year basis (export more solar kWh than energy I import). But I'm not totally sure yet, and have not done a full lifesycle embedded carbon calculation.
As a house if is an EPC C grade.
He then goes into a rant of pure Musk Derangement Syndrome, but at least he writes it well
'Free electricity for Scotland possible, says Octopus boss'
https://www.energylivenews.com/2024/07/10/free-electricity-for-scotland-possible-says-octopus-boss/
So if they end up working he will get rewarded, otherwise he won’t and he will be out. Personally I think he will be re-elected at this stage but I’m only saying that because of how much of a mess the Tories made - that may change with Badenoch.
The Tories still can win my vote and many in the centre/centre left but they need to propose something for people under the age of 60. Right now they offer nothing.
Plus there have been industrial decarbonisation / efficiency programmes running since the 1990s to now, especially in electricity generation.
Except for the first para they are not related to high supply prices as a cause.|
Though TBF I quite like price regulation upwards as a way of influencing behaviour, especially on motor vehicles. An energy Pigou tax !
The "we will have free energy so we can build millions of wind and solar farms" comes up against limited land supply, which seems to me to be a strong justification for driving efficiency over "all you want for free".