I mean I know it's ( *checks* ) 34 degrees north, but that's still 11 degrees north of the tropic of cancer so I'd have thought we're closish to the coldest (normal) point of the year there. I presume if fires are happening now they can happen at literally any time of year ?
It seems wildfires are possible anytime from when the summer heat has finally dried out all the brush & foliage to the arrival of the first rains of the winter / spring.
IIRC I saw somewhere that it’s been an unusually dry winter in LA this year, which perhaps explains how a wildfire in the middle of January is possible.
“After a typically arid summer and fall, the Los Angeles area has also had a dry winter so far. December, January, February, and March are usually the wettest months in the region by far. More than 80 percent of Los Angeles' rain comes during these colder months. But this year, during December, the region received, on average, less than one-tenth of an inch of rainfall. Normal totals are on the order of 2.5 inches in December.
So, the foliage in the area was already very dry, effectively extending the region's wildfire season.”
Today had an interview with the former Fire chief for LA, he said that the fire risk was dependent on whether the rain or wind arrived first. He also said that, because it had been a few years since the last big wildfire, the authorities had lost focus on prevention measures.
Why is no-one mentioning the obvious? That these fires were probably deliberately started by a human. Is it a wildfire if it is arson? One man has already been arrested for starting one of them.
Yes, there are multiple causes for the fires, but a fire cannot burn without fuel, and the absence of rain this winter is an obvious causal factor.
But no, it's because some fire chief went on a Pride march, not climate change.
Whatever the cause, the film industry is currently in, er, meltdown. Financing is collapsing, deals to get stars attached are on hold, people just not there to do their jobs.
Already, suggestions the fires could ultimately be very good for the UK film industry. Assuming the residents of 10 and 11 Downing Street don't burn down the UK economy in the meantime. Can we bring them in for questioning about setting fire to the nation's finances?
They're doing their best to do that at the moment.
I mean I know it's ( *checks* ) 34 degrees north, but that's still 11 degrees north of the tropic of cancer so I'd have thought we're closish to the coldest (normal) point of the year there. I presume if fires are happening now they can happen at literally any time of year ?
It seems wildfires are possible anytime from when the summer heat has finally dried out all the brush & foliage to the arrival of the first rains of the winter / spring.
IIRC I saw somewhere that it’s been an unusually dry winter in LA this year, which perhaps explains how a wildfire in the middle of January is possible.
“After a typically arid summer and fall, the Los Angeles area has also had a dry winter so far. December, January, February, and March are usually the wettest months in the region by far. More than 80 percent of Los Angeles' rain comes during these colder months. But this year, during December, the region received, on average, less than one-tenth of an inch of rainfall. Normal totals are on the order of 2.5 inches in December.
So, the foliage in the area was already very dry, effectively extending the region's wildfire season.”
Today had an interview with the former Fire chief for LA, he said that the fire risk was dependent on whether the rain or wind arrived first. He also said that, because it had been a few years since the last big wildfire, the authorities had lost focus on prevention measures.
Why is no-one mentioning the obvious? That these fires were probably deliberately started by a human. Is it a wildfire if it is arson? One man has already been arrested for starting one of them.
Citizen's arrest, and on suspicion ... and it may not have been deliberate. Idiot with barbecue syndrome is a thing.
But it could be a bit of broken glass, or a power line going sparky, or an old disposable vape lithium battery. The way the wider risk is, does it make much difference?
Or lightning. Wild fires have happened since forever, and long before any human habitation.
Literally the only good solution (short of complete deforestation) is controlled burns outside of the dry season.
Without them the burns will happen anyway, but in a devastating manner.
A bit of a problem doing planned burns though when the dry season doesn't end, such as LA in 2024..
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah you aren't stopping a fire spreading when conditions are like that. Which is why it is so important to properly evaluate risk when permitting building. i.e. Maybe don't live half-way up a mountain surrounded by kindling.
I mean I know it's ( *checks* ) 34 degrees north, but that's still 11 degrees north of the tropic of cancer so I'd have thought we're closish to the coldest (normal) point of the year there. I presume if fires are happening now they can happen at literally any time of year ?
It seems wildfires are possible anytime from when the summer heat has finally dried out all the brush & foliage to the arrival of the first rains of the winter / spring.
IIRC I saw somewhere that it’s been an unusually dry winter in LA this year, which perhaps explains how a wildfire in the middle of January is possible.
“After a typically arid summer and fall, the Los Angeles area has also had a dry winter so far. December, January, February, and March are usually the wettest months in the region by far. More than 80 percent of Los Angeles' rain comes during these colder months. But this year, during December, the region received, on average, less than one-tenth of an inch of rainfall. Normal totals are on the order of 2.5 inches in December.
So, the foliage in the area was already very dry, effectively extending the region's wildfire season.”
Today had an interview with the former Fire chief for LA, he said that the fire risk was dependent on whether the rain or wind arrived first. He also said that, because it had been a few years since the last big wildfire, the authorities had lost focus on prevention measures.
Why is no-one mentioning the obvious? That these fires were probably deliberately started by a human. Is it a wildfire if it is arson? One man has already been arrested for starting one of them.
Citizen's arrest, and on suspicion ... and it may not have been deliberate. Idiot with barbecue syndrome is a thing.
But it could be a bit of broken glass, or a power line going sparky, or an old disposable vape lithium battery. The way the wider risk is, does it make much difference?
Or lightning. Wild fires have happened since forever, and long before any human habitation.
Literally the only good solution (short of complete deforestation) is controlled burns outside of the dry season.
Without them the burns will happen anyway, but in a devastating manner.
A bit of a problem doing planned burns though when the dry season doesn't end, such as LA in 2024..
Good morning Foxy.
Is there anything in this theory, IYO ? Came across it today.
Nuclear Spin Attenuates the Anesthetic Potency of Xenon Isotopes in Mice: Implications for the Mechanisms of Anesthesia and Consciousness https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29642079/
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
My feet are cold and I have lost a glove.
Hope your glove reappears.
Few days ago my feet were getting pretty cold towards the end of a walk. Rather disconcerting. I've got bad circulation but it's pretty minor and almost never has any actual effect, so when it does show up it's always a bit weird.
On the Truss/Kwarteng budget, it's rarely mentioned now but in my view the most egregious part of it was cutting the top rate of tax from 45% to 40%. This meant the highest earners would gain an extra £10k instantly, on average. At a time when most people were really struggling with the cost of living, they were just taking the piss. It's no surprise they had to U-turn on this pretty quickly, but the damage had been done.
I'm nowhere near that tax bracket BUT (Obviously this didn't happen) if it had attracted more rich people, and rich people to work more and earn more and spend more and generate economic growth though .... would it have been so wrong ?
Yes. And anyway, why is it that it's always rich people who need incentivising? If middle and lower income people earn more, they're much more likely to actually spend their extra money than the rich.
Surely the rise in the minimum wage is an incentive for far more people than the higher tax band?
It should also be an incentive to automate. A topic Eek is keen on. Next have already said they are looking at putting in self service checkouts, for example.
Of course no consolation for people losing their jobs but maybe a side effect of the budget.
Yes, and increase in productivity (though perhaps with more shoplifting), and less demand for immigrant labour.
Not very advisable for Truss to pursue this libel action. Starmer's statement was a matter of opinion and many media commentators agreed with that assessment of his handling of the economy.
It was really just the rough and tumble of political debate
I mean I know it's ( *checks* ) 34 degrees north, but that's still 11 degrees north of the tropic of cancer so I'd have thought we're closish to the coldest (normal) point of the year there. I presume if fires are happening now they can happen at literally any time of year ?
It seems wildfires are possible anytime from when the summer heat has finally dried out all the brush & foliage to the arrival of the first rains of the winter / spring.
IIRC I saw somewhere that it’s been an unusually dry winter in LA this year, which perhaps explains how a wildfire in the middle of January is possible.
“After a typically arid summer and fall, the Los Angeles area has also had a dry winter so far. December, January, February, and March are usually the wettest months in the region by far. More than 80 percent of Los Angeles' rain comes during these colder months. But this year, during December, the region received, on average, less than one-tenth of an inch of rainfall. Normal totals are on the order of 2.5 inches in December.
So, the foliage in the area was already very dry, effectively extending the region's wildfire season.”
Today had an interview with the former Fire chief for LA, he said that the fire risk was dependent on whether the rain or wind arrived first. He also said that, because it had been a few years since the last big wildfire, the authorities had lost focus on prevention measures.
Why is no-one mentioning the obvious? That these fires were probably deliberately started by a human. Is it a wildfire if it is arson? One man has already been arrested for starting one of them.
Citizen's arrest, and on suspicion ... and it may not have been deliberate. Idiot with barbecue syndrome is a thing.
But it could be a bit of broken glass, or a power line going sparky, or an old disposable vape lithium battery. The way the wider risk is, does it make much difference?
Or lightning. Wild fires have happened since forever, and long before any human habitation.
Literally the only good solution (short of complete deforestation) is controlled burns outside of the dry season.
Without them the burns will happen anyway, but in a devastating manner.
A bit of a problem doing planned burns though when the dry season doesn't end, such as LA in 2024..
Good morning Foxy.
Is there anything in this theory, IYO ? Came across it today.
Nuclear Spin Attenuates the Anesthetic Potency of Xenon Isotopes in Mice: Implications for the Mechanisms of Anesthesia and Consciousness https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29642079/
I mean I know it's ( *checks* ) 34 degrees north, but that's still 11 degrees north of the tropic of cancer so I'd have thought we're closish to the coldest (normal) point of the year there. I presume if fires are happening now they can happen at literally any time of year ?
It seems wildfires are possible anytime from when the summer heat has finally dried out all the brush & foliage to the arrival of the first rains of the winter / spring.
IIRC I saw somewhere that it’s been an unusually dry winter in LA this year, which perhaps explains how a wildfire in the middle of January is possible.
“After a typically arid summer and fall, the Los Angeles area has also had a dry winter so far. December, January, February, and March are usually the wettest months in the region by far. More than 80 percent of Los Angeles' rain comes during these colder months. But this year, during December, the region received, on average, less than one-tenth of an inch of rainfall. Normal totals are on the order of 2.5 inches in December.
So, the foliage in the area was already very dry, effectively extending the region's wildfire season.”
Today had an interview with the former Fire chief for LA, he said that the fire risk was dependent on whether the rain or wind arrived first. He also said that, because it had been a few years since the last big wildfire, the authorities had lost focus on prevention measures.
Why is no-one mentioning the obvious? That these fires were probably deliberately started by a human. Is it a wildfire if it is arson? One man has already been arrested for starting one of them.
Citizen's arrest, and on suspicion ... and it may not have been deliberate. Idiot with barbecue syndrome is a thing.
But it could be a bit of broken glass, or a power line going sparky, or an old disposable vape lithium battery. The way the wider risk is, does it make much difference?
You don't think that the actual cause of a fire, that has killed 10's of people and caused billions of pounds worth of damage, is important? Odd. Surely that is the critical starting point for any investigation.
The temperature out in LA is about 19, maybe 20 degrees during the day, down to 11 at night, at the moment.
Very odd that that you are all willing to gloss over a pretty pertinent point, yet concentrate heavily on others.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
And in the investigation, drinking driving (and how often it may happen in that society) would be highlighted front and central along with issues with the bridge.
I'm not saying that all of the other issues should be ignored, far from it, just amazed that no-one cares how a 'wild fire' starts in pretty low temperatures.
It's remarkable, really, that this is probably close to the peak of gas generation this winter. Fossil fuels overall are at 53.8% on the app I'm looking at. Literally only a few years ago there were celebratory newspaper articles when fossil fuel loading went temporarily below 50%.
Wind is 3.8gw right now, under almost entirely calm conditions. Solar is adding a useful 2gw, which isn't bad for midwinter. Wind should remain low through today and tomorrow then pick up overnight into Sunday and stay decent for the following week. (Continental high pressure but tighter isobars over the far North).
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
I was there last week - though it didn't look like that then! I was talking to a friend at school drop-off - he'd been skiing in the Pennines yesterday. Seemingly (I didn't know this) there is a ski centre (well, a slope with a button lift) near Alston. It was the best snow they'd had in 10 years, apparently. Looked absolutely superb from the photos he showed me - like being in Telemark or something. Granted, it wouldn't be your first choice as a skiing holiday. The pistes are only about 600m long. But I find it remarkable that it's possible to ski less than two hours drive from Manchester.
On the Truss/Kwarteng budget, it's rarely mentioned now but in my view the most egregious part of it was cutting the top rate of tax from 45% to 40%. This meant the highest earners would gain an extra £10k instantly, on average. At a time when most people were really struggling with the cost of living, they were just taking the piss. It's no surprise they had to U-turn on this pretty quickly, but the damage had been done.
I'm nowhere near that tax bracket BUT (Obviously this didn't happen) if it had attracted more rich people, and rich people to work more and earn more and spend more and generate economic growth though .... would it have been so wrong ?
Yes. And anyway, why is it that it's always rich people who need incentivising? If middle and lower income people earn more, they're much more likely to actually spend their extra money than the rich.
Surely the rise in the minimum wage is an incentive for far more people than the higher tax band?
It should also be an incentive to automate. A topic Eek is keen on. Next have already said they are looking at putting in self service checkouts, for example.
Of course no consolation for people losing their jobs but maybe a side effect of the budget.
Yes, and increase in productivity (though perhaps with more shoplifting), and less demand for immigrant labour.
Isn't that what we voted for?
The next step is shops where you have to swipe a card to get through the access doors. Already being trialled in America.
Exit is also controlled. If you try and leave without your payment clearing, one of the test designs implements the door locking. So you are stuck in a rotary door until the police arrive. So sorry.
I mean I know it's ( *checks* ) 34 degrees north, but that's still 11 degrees north of the tropic of cancer so I'd have thought we're closish to the coldest (normal) point of the year there. I presume if fires are happening now they can happen at literally any time of year ?
It seems wildfires are possible anytime from when the summer heat has finally dried out all the brush & foliage to the arrival of the first rains of the winter / spring.
IIRC I saw somewhere that it’s been an unusually dry winter in LA this year, which perhaps explains how a wildfire in the middle of January is possible.
“After a typically arid summer and fall, the Los Angeles area has also had a dry winter so far. December, January, February, and March are usually the wettest months in the region by far. More than 80 percent of Los Angeles' rain comes during these colder months. But this year, during December, the region received, on average, less than one-tenth of an inch of rainfall. Normal totals are on the order of 2.5 inches in December.
So, the foliage in the area was already very dry, effectively extending the region's wildfire season.”
Today had an interview with the former Fire chief for LA, he said that the fire risk was dependent on whether the rain or wind arrived first. He also said that, because it had been a few years since the last big wildfire, the authorities had lost focus on prevention measures.
Why is no-one mentioning the obvious? That these fires were probably deliberately started by a human. Is it a wildfire if it is arson? One man has already been arrested for starting one of them.
Citizen's arrest, and on suspicion ... and it may not have been deliberate. Idiot with barbecue syndrome is a thing.
But it could be a bit of broken glass, or a power line going sparky, or an old disposable vape lithium battery. The way the wider risk is, does it make much difference?
You don't think that the actual cause of a fire, that has killed 10's of people and caused billions of pounds worth of damage, is important? Odd. Surely that is the critical starting point for any investigation.
The temperature out in LA is about 19, maybe 20 degrees during the day, down to 11 at night, at the moment.
Very odd that that you are all willing to gloss over a pretty pertinent point, yet concentrate heavily on others.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
And in the investigation, drinking driving (and how often it may happen in that society) would be highlighted front and central along with issues with the bridge.
I'm not saying that all of the other issues should be ignored, far from it, just amazed that no-one cares how a 'wild fire' starts in pretty low temperatures.
It's remarkable, really, that this is probably close to the peak of gas generation this winter. Fossil fuels overall are at 53.8% on the app I'm looking at. Literally only a few years ago there were celebratory newspaper articles when fossil fuel loading went temporarily below 50%.
Wind is 3.8gw right now, under almost entirely calm conditions. Solar is adding a useful 2gw, which isn't bad for midwinter. Wind should remain low through today and tomorrow then pick up overnight into Sunday and stay decent for the following week. (Continental high pressure but tighter isobars over the far North).
5.6% from Drax (Which is far worse than gas) and another 14.3% from interconnectors though...
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
I mean I know it's ( *checks* ) 34 degrees north, but that's still 11 degrees north of the tropic of cancer so I'd have thought we're closish to the coldest (normal) point of the year there. I presume if fires are happening now they can happen at literally any time of year ?
It seems wildfires are possible anytime from when the summer heat has finally dried out all the brush & foliage to the arrival of the first rains of the winter / spring.
IIRC I saw somewhere that it’s been an unusually dry winter in LA this year, which perhaps explains how a wildfire in the middle of January is possible.
“After a typically arid summer and fall, the Los Angeles area has also had a dry winter so far. December, January, February, and March are usually the wettest months in the region by far. More than 80 percent of Los Angeles' rain comes during these colder months. But this year, during December, the region received, on average, less than one-tenth of an inch of rainfall. Normal totals are on the order of 2.5 inches in December.
So, the foliage in the area was already very dry, effectively extending the region's wildfire season.”
Today had an interview with the former Fire chief for LA, he said that the fire risk was dependent on whether the rain or wind arrived first. He also said that, because it had been a few years since the last big wildfire, the authorities had lost focus on prevention measures.
Why is no-one mentioning the obvious? That these fires were probably deliberately started by a human. Is it a wildfire if it is arson? One man has already been arrested for starting one of them.
Citizen's arrest, and on suspicion ... and it may not have been deliberate. Idiot with barbecue syndrome is a thing.
But it could be a bit of broken glass, or a power line going sparky, or an old disposable vape lithium battery. The way the wider risk is, does it make much difference?
Or lightning. Wild fires have happened since forever, and long before any human habitation.
Literally the only good solution (short of complete deforestation) is controlled burns outside of the dry season.
Without them the burns will happen anyway, but in a devastating manner.
A bit of a problem doing planned burns though when the dry season doesn't end, such as LA in 2024..
Good morning Foxy.
Is there anything in this theory, IYO ? Came across it today.
Nuclear Spin Attenuates the Anesthetic Potency of Xenon Isotopes in Mice: Implications for the Mechanisms of Anesthesia and Consciousness https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29642079/
I have no idea!
Me either. I suspect it's nonsense (note the anaesthetic effect is pretty small), but it was an intriguing idea.
On the Truss/Kwarteng budget, it's rarely mentioned now but in my view the most egregious part of it was cutting the top rate of tax from 45% to 40%. This meant the highest earners would gain an extra £10k instantly, on average. At a time when most people were really struggling with the cost of living, they were just taking the piss. It's no surprise they had to U-turn on this pretty quickly, but the damage had been done.
I'm nowhere near that tax bracket BUT (Obviously this didn't happen) if it had attracted more rich people, and rich people to work more and earn more and spend more and generate economic growth though .... would it have been so wrong ?
Yes. And anyway, why is it that it's always rich people who need incentivising? If middle and lower income people earn more, they're much more likely to actually spend their extra money than the rich.
Surely the rise in the minimum wage is an incentive for far more people than the higher tax band?
It should also be an incentive to automate. A topic Eek is keen on. Next have already said they are looking at putting in self service checkouts, for example.
Of course no consolation for people losing their jobs but maybe a side effect of the budget.
They have to follow Uniqlo, it's given Uniqlo a much lower in store cost structure than Next and Uniqlo has proven the value of self serve in clothing and proven very low theft rates with their system.
Uniqlo is amazing. Just chucking all your stuff in that bin, automatic email receipt and you wander out.
I mean I know it's ( *checks* ) 34 degrees north, but that's still 11 degrees north of the tropic of cancer so I'd have thought we're closish to the coldest (normal) point of the year there. I presume if fires are happening now they can happen at literally any time of year ?
It seems wildfires are possible anytime from when the summer heat has finally dried out all the brush & foliage to the arrival of the first rains of the winter / spring.
IIRC I saw somewhere that it’s been an unusually dry winter in LA this year, which perhaps explains how a wildfire in the middle of January is possible.
“After a typically arid summer and fall, the Los Angeles area has also had a dry winter so far. December, January, February, and March are usually the wettest months in the region by far. More than 80 percent of Los Angeles' rain comes during these colder months. But this year, during December, the region received, on average, less than one-tenth of an inch of rainfall. Normal totals are on the order of 2.5 inches in December.
So, the foliage in the area was already very dry, effectively extending the region's wildfire season.”
Today had an interview with the former Fire chief for LA, he said that the fire risk was dependent on whether the rain or wind arrived first. He also said that, because it had been a few years since the last big wildfire, the authorities had lost focus on prevention measures.
Why is no-one mentioning the obvious? That these fires were probably deliberately started by a human. Is it a wildfire if it is arson? One man has already been arrested for starting one of them.
Citizen's arrest, and on suspicion ... and it may not have been deliberate. Idiot with barbecue syndrome is a thing.
But it could be a bit of broken glass, or a power line going sparky, or an old disposable vape lithium battery. The way the wider risk is, does it make much difference?
You don't think that the actual cause of a fire, that has killed 10's of people and caused billions of pounds worth of damage, is important? Odd. Surely that is the critical starting point for any investigation.
The temperature out in LA is about 19, maybe 20 degrees during the day, down to 11 at night, at the moment.
Very odd that that you are all willing to gloss over a pretty pertinent point, yet concentrate heavily on others.
Sure, deal with criminals and negligents if they can be caught with evidence.
But the underlying problem is climate variance leading to a catastrophic combination of lack of precipitation, low humidity, dryness of the combustiblke material, and wind.
There's no future where Labour reduce the amount of regulation. The fact that they've gone and asked the regulators for growth ideas means that they intend to regulate their way to growth. It will go about as well as taxing their way to growth.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
My feet are cold and I have lost a glove.
You wear gloves on your feet?
I charge more for that. But usually, and in this specific case, no.
Not very advisable for Truss to pursue this libel action. Starmer's statement was a matter of opinion and many media commentators agreed with that assessment of his handling of the economy.
It was really just the rough and tumble of political debate
Hey, she was triggered by a lettuce, so maybe politics isn't for her? (Well, not now anyway...)
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
I can't decide what are the best types of UK snow scene. Several are equally pretty: London Georgian terraces, especially pre-Christmas with decorations in the windows (settling snow is sadly rare in London), Rural villages with churchyards and greens, open moorland, highlands with snowy tops in the sunshine, or Southern English downland.
All of these connect in the brain to reference points from childhood. Christmas cards for the first 2, trips out on cold days for the moorland or mountains, and The Snowman for the last one.
The motorbike scene in The Snowman - moonlit night on the white downs, various animals running past, wonderful music - is magical.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah you aren't stopping a fire spreading when conditions are like that. Which is why it is so important to properly evaluate risk when permitting building. i.e. Maybe don't live half-way up a mountain surrounded by kindling.
Choices
1) don’t live there 2) clear anything vaguely flammable back a mile. Literally. 3) build your house completely fireproof.
It's remarkable, really, that this is probably close to the peak of gas generation this winter. Fossil fuels overall are at 53.8% on the app I'm looking at. Literally only a few years ago there were celebratory newspaper articles when fossil fuel loading went temporarily below 50%.
Wind is 3.8gw right now, under almost entirely calm conditions. Solar is adding a useful 2gw, which isn't bad for midwinter. Wind should remain low through today and tomorrow then pick up overnight into Sunday and stay decent for the following week. (Continental high pressure but tighter isobars over the far North).
5.6% from Drax (Which is far worse than gas) and another 14.3% from interconnectors though...
How green are the connections ?
France is all nuclear, Denmark is wind, Norway is hydro. Netherlands and Belgium are a mix. Not sure about Ireland.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
ScotRail signed up with them, incidentally.
As have BA - 10k a month per connection per plane (a plane can have more than one connection)
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah you aren't stopping a fire spreading when conditions are like that. Which is why it is so important to properly evaluate risk when permitting building. i.e. Maybe don't live half-way up a mountain surrounded by kindling.
Choices
1) don’t live there 2) clear anything vaguely flammable back a mile. Literally. 3) build your house completely fireproof.
As any viticulture expert will tell you, the best way to manage vineyard frost risk is to choose a site that's not prone to frost. (Advice I was sadly unable to follow).
Not very advisable for Truss to pursue this libel action. Starmer's statement was a matter of opinion and many media commentators agreed with that assessment of his handling of the economy.
It was really just the rough and tumble of political debate
Hey, she was triggered by a lettuce, so maybe politics isn't for her? (Well, not now anyway...)
I have really struggled to find any lettuce-related puns that sound like cease and desist. It's a shame. The closest I could get was Caesar and desist but that's weak. Ideas welcome.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
I can't decide what are the best types of UK snow scene. Several are equally pretty: London Georgian terraces, especially pre-Christmas with decorations in the windows (settling snow is sadly rare in London), Rural villages with churchyards and greens, open moorland, highlands with snowy tops in the sunshine, or Southern English downland.
All of these connect in the brain to reference points from childhood. Christmas cards for the first 2, trips out on cold days for the moorland or mountains, and The Snowman for the last one.
The motorbike scene in The Snowman - moonlit night on the white downs, various animals running past, wonderful music - is magical.
Instinctively, I'd say the Lake District. The view from Latterbarrow, February, around sunset. Even the thought of it now is bringing a tear to the eye and a lump to the throat. If there is one scene more than any other that plays a massive power chord on all my strings of longing and yearning, that is it.
Though as a less obvious counterpoint: Tegg's Nose, Macclesfield Forest: a view of snow coloured moorland: the sky is heavy with snowclouds, and the light fading from the early evening sky; the landscape is just the white of the land and the black of the millstone grit stone walls, and about a mile away there is a single dwelling, again built of millstone grit, a light in the window and smoke rising shyly from the chimney.
Like you, both link to memories from childhood, though it feels not necessarily my own.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
A friend on a project in the wilds of the Canadian Rockies told me the three months he had to put up with in a trailer out there would have been unendurable without the access to unlimited porn that Starlink gave him, though he complained that sometimes reception was so slow that reminded him of using dialup as a teenager in the 90s, when he would download one boob per minute.
Not very advisable for Truss to pursue this libel action. Starmer's statement was a matter of opinion and many media commentators agreed with that assessment of his handling of the economy.
It was really just the rough and tumble of political debate
Hey, she was triggered by a lettuce, so maybe politics isn't for her? (Well, not now anyway...)
I have really struggled to find any lettuce-related puns that sound like cease and desist. It's a shame. The closest I could get was Caesar and desist but that's weak. Ideas welcome.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
I can't decide what are the best types of UK snow scene. Several are equally pretty: London Georgian terraces, especially pre-Christmas with decorations in the windows (settling snow is sadly rare in London), Rural villages with churchyards and greens, open moorland, highlands with snowy tops in the sunshine, or Southern English downland.
All of these connect in the brain to reference points from childhood. Christmas cards for the first 2, trips out on cold days for the moorland or mountains, and The Snowman for the last one.
The motorbike scene in The Snowman - moonlit night on the white downs, various animals running past, wonderful music - is magical.
Some of the Snow Scenes in Box of Delights are magical.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
A friend on a project in the wilds of the Canadian Rockies told me the three months he had to put up with in a trailer out there would have been unendurable without the access to unlimited porn that Starlink gave him, though he complained that sometimes reception was so slow that reminded him of using dialup as a teenager in the 90s, when he would download one boob per minute ...
Should have signed up for the deluxe service - 10GBs download. Guaranteed. Only a few million a month.
It's remarkable, really, that this is probably close to the peak of gas generation this winter. Fossil fuels overall are at 53.8% on the app I'm looking at. Literally only a few years ago there were celebratory newspaper articles when fossil fuel loading went temporarily below 50%.
Wind is 3.8gw right now, under almost entirely calm conditions. Solar is adding a useful 2gw, which isn't bad for midwinter. Wind should remain low through today and tomorrow then pick up overnight into Sunday and stay decent for the following week. (Continental high pressure but tighter isobars over the far North).
5.6% from Drax (Which is far worse than gas) and another 14.3% from interconnectors though...
How green are the connections ?
France is all nuclear, Denmark is wind, Norway is hydro. Netherlands and Belgium are a mix. Not sure about Ireland.
Production capacities for electricity (billion kWh) Type Amount Fossil fuel 57.87 Wind power 34.84 Hydro 3.70 Biomass 3.60 Solar 0.20 Total 100.21
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
My feet are cold and I have lost a glove.
You wear gloves on your feet?
When my feet feel cold at work, I put a woolly hat on (my head), or a scarf (around my neck), and it warms my feet up
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah you aren't stopping a fire spreading when conditions are like that. Which is why it is so important to properly evaluate risk when permitting building. i.e. Maybe don't live half-way up a mountain surrounded by kindling.
Choices
1) don’t live there 2) clear anything vaguely flammable back a mile. Literally. 3) build your house completely fireproof.
We are blaming these fires on climate change and our solutions have involved burning or removing all natural vegetation from the area.
Not very advisable for Truss to pursue this libel action. Starmer's statement was a matter of opinion and many media commentators agreed with that assessment of his handling of the economy.
It was really just the rough and tumble of political debate
Hey, she was triggered by a lettuce, so maybe politics isn't for her? (Well, not now anyway...)
I have really struggled to find any lettuce-related puns that sound like cease and desist. It's a shame. The closest I could get was Caesar and desist but that's weak. Ideas welcome.
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
I'd support a boycott led by the team or governing body but not one led by the government. The sports secretary should generally support whatever decision they make.
It's remarkable, really, that this is probably close to the peak of gas generation this winter. Fossil fuels overall are at 53.8% on the app I'm looking at. Literally only a few years ago there were celebratory newspaper articles when fossil fuel loading went temporarily below 50%.
Wind is 3.8gw right now, under almost entirely calm conditions. Solar is adding a useful 2gw, which isn't bad for midwinter. Wind should remain low through today and tomorrow then pick up overnight into Sunday and stay decent for the following week. (Continental high pressure but tighter isobars over the far North).
5.6% from Drax (Which is far worse than gas) and another 14.3% from interconnectors though...
How green are the connections ?
France is all nuclear, Denmark is wind, Norway is hydro. Netherlands and Belgium are a mix. Not sure about Ireland.
Production capacities for electricity (billion kWh) Type Amount Fossil fuel 57.87 Wind power 34.84 Hydro 3.70 Biomass 3.60 Solar 0.20 Total 100.21
Moneypoint 0.9 GW of coal power
Also, Ireland tends to import from us not the other way.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah you aren't stopping a fire spreading when conditions are like that. Which is why it is so important to properly evaluate risk when permitting building. i.e. Maybe don't live half-way up a mountain surrounded by kindling.
Choices
1) don’t live there 2) clear anything vaguely flammable back a mile. Literally. 3) build your house completely fireproof.
We are blaming these fires on climate change and our solutions have involved burning or removing all natural vegetation from the area.
That’s because changing the climate back is tad difficult.
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
I can't decide what are the best types of UK snow scene. Several are equally pretty: London Georgian terraces, especially pre-Christmas with decorations in the windows (settling snow is sadly rare in London), Rural villages with churchyards and greens, open moorland, highlands with snowy tops in the sunshine, or Southern English downland.
All of these connect in the brain to reference points from childhood. Christmas cards for the first 2, trips out on cold days for the moorland or mountains, and The Snowman for the last one.
The motorbike scene in The Snowman - moonlit night on the white downs, various animals running past, wonderful music - is magical.
Some of the Snow Scenes in Box of Delights are magical.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
Don’t forget the other ingredient - that acceptance of failure - the social stigma and financial/legal consequences in the US of setting up a business, trying something new and failing are recoverable and “normal” whereas there seems to be a very different attitude to it in the UK and I guess the rest of Europe.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah you aren't stopping a fire spreading when conditions are like that. Which is why it is so important to properly evaluate risk when permitting building. i.e. Maybe don't live half-way up a mountain surrounded by kindling.
Choices
1) don’t live there 2) clear anything vaguely flammable back a mile. Literally. 3) build your house completely fireproof.
We are blaming these fires on climate change and our solutions have involved burning or removing all natural vegetation from the area.
That’s because changing the climate back is tad difficult.
It'll be even more difficult if getting rid of and burning natural vegetation is the solution being offered. And ignoring how the fires are started.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
In the case of AirBnB, the barriers to entry were quite low.
Starlink happened because the cost of launch has collapsed - for one company. The reason that other companies are only now trying to catch up was the hardwiring of expensive launch into the socio-political structure.
Until quite recently, for example, ArianeSpace would get the French government to step on any attempt to start a private launch company in Europe. The quid pro quo is that Ariane provides lots of jobs in France
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
I can't decide what are the best types of UK snow scene. Several are equally pretty: London Georgian terraces, especially pre-Christmas with decorations in the windows (settling snow is sadly rare in London), Rural villages with churchyards and greens, open moorland, highlands with snowy tops in the sunshine, or Southern English downland.
All of these connect in the brain to reference points from childhood. Christmas cards for the first 2, trips out on cold days for the moorland or mountains, and The Snowman for the last one.
The motorbike scene in The Snowman - moonlit night on the white downs, various animals running past, wonderful music - is magical.
Some of the Snow Scenes in Box of Delights are magical.
Agree, and the music too.
Yes, I was most appreciative of BBC4 giving it a screening in December last year.
ICC rules require member nations to have a women’s team, but ICC members are reported to believe that allowing the men’s team to compete will help them influence the Taliban for good.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah you aren't stopping a fire spreading when conditions are like that. Which is why it is so important to properly evaluate risk when permitting building. i.e. Maybe don't live half-way up a mountain surrounded by kindling.
Choices
1) don’t live there 2) clear anything vaguely flammable back a mile. Literally. 3) build your house completely fireproof.
We are blaming these fires on climate change and our solutions have involved burning or removing all natural vegetation from the area.
That’s because changing the climate back is tad difficult.
It'll be even more difficult if getting rid of and burning natural vegetation is the solution being offered. And ignoring how the fires are started.
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
Wanted, one backbone. Please send to DCMS.
“deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”
Whilst it seems women in the country are denied even the right to stand by a window never mind open it.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah you aren't stopping a fire spreading when conditions are like that. Which is why it is so important to properly evaluate risk when permitting building. i.e. Maybe don't live half-way up a mountain surrounded by kindling.
Choices
1) don’t live there 2) clear anything vaguely flammable back a mile. Literally. 3) build your house completely fireproof.
We are blaming these fires on climate change and our solutions have involved burning or removing all natural vegetation from the area.
That’s because changing the climate back is tad difficult.
This one's a bit harder to pin on climate change than most other wildfires (notably recent ones in Australia, the PNW and British Columbia and the Med basin) because the main driver is winter drought which is less of a clearly modelled signal than either summer drought or excess summer heat in Mediterranean climate zones.
That's not to say it's not there indirectly. Californian winter precipitation is heavily affected by the phase of ENSO and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which are partly correlated with each other: La Nina and negative PDO winters tend to be dry and El Nino / Positive PDO winters wet. But we've also had a repeating pattern in the past decade of a huge North East Pacific high pressure dome, which has been linked by scientists to modelled pattern changes. It's that which has produced summer "heat domes" in the PNW. We've also had Northward displacement of the polar front jet. Those can have an impact on dry winters on the West coast and the strength of the Santa Ana winds.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah you aren't stopping a fire spreading when conditions are like that. Which is why it is so important to properly evaluate risk when permitting building. i.e. Maybe don't live half-way up a mountain surrounded by kindling.
Choices
1) don’t live there 2) clear anything vaguely flammable back a mile. Literally. 3) build your house completely fireproof.
We are blaming these fires on climate change and our solutions have involved burning or removing all natural vegetation from the area.
That’s because changing the climate back is tad difficult.
It'll be even more difficult if getting rid of and burning natural vegetation is the solution being offered. And ignoring how the fires are started.
People are not ignoring how they started. There are multiple fires and probably multiple causes. Power line are another one that were almost certainly involved.
The point is that a tinder box situation is lethally unstable. Just as you can’t eliminate crime, you can’t eliminate sources of ignition.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
I can't decide what are the best types of UK snow scene. Several are equally pretty: London Georgian terraces, especially pre-Christmas with decorations in the windows (settling snow is sadly rare in London), Rural villages with churchyards and greens, open moorland, highlands with snowy tops in the sunshine, or Southern English downland.
All of these connect in the brain to reference points from childhood. Christmas cards for the first 2, trips out on cold days for the moorland or mountains, and The Snowman for the last one.
The motorbike scene in The Snowman - moonlit night on the white downs, various animals running past, wonderful music - is magical.
Some of the Snow Scenes in Box of Delights are magical.
Agree, and the music too.
Yes, I was most appreciative of BBC4 giving it a screening in December last year.
I’m trying to persuade someone I know to remake it. I quite like the idea of Hugh Grant playing Abner Brown and Lenny Henry as Cole Hawlings for some reason.
ICC rules require member nations to have a women’s team, but ICC members are reported to believe that allowing the men’s team to compete will help them influence the Taliban for good.
Wasn’t that the exact same argument used for touring South Africa, under Apartheid?
ICC rules require member nations to have a women’s team, but ICC members are reported to believe that allowing the men’s team to compete will help them influence the Taliban for good.
One of the enduring fallacies in politics is that evil people, and evil regimes, will change for the better if they are appeased.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
My feet are cold and I have lost a glove.
Well that's much preferable to the other way round.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
I can't decide what are the best types of UK snow scene. Several are equally pretty: London Georgian terraces, especially pre-Christmas with decorations in the windows (settling snow is sadly rare in London), Rural villages with churchyards and greens, open moorland, highlands with snowy tops in the sunshine, or Southern English downland.
All of these connect in the brain to reference points from childhood. Christmas cards for the first 2, trips out on cold days for the moorland or mountains, and The Snowman for the last one.
The motorbike scene in The Snowman - moonlit night on the white downs, various animals running past, wonderful music - is magical.
Some of the Snow Scenes in Box of Delights are magical.
Agree, and the music too.
Yes, I was most appreciative of BBC4 giving it a screening in December last year.
I’m trying to persuade someone I know to remake it. I quite like the idea of Hugh Grant playing Anne Brown and Lenny Henry as Cole Hawlings for some reason.
As former Dr Who Producer, the legendary Graham Williams said, "How do you improve on perfection ?"
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
Don’t forget the other ingredient - that acceptance of failure - the social stigma and financial/legal consequences in the US of setting up a business, trying something new and failing are recoverable and “normal” whereas there seems to be a very different attitude to it in the UK and I guess the rest of Europe.
But I'm not sure that represents a cultural attitude so much as a financial reality. After all we have a US president and his bond villain accomplice who love to call everyone losers. I do wonder if the social tolerance of failure thing is a myth Americans tell themselves.
In Europe you have to make a profit within a few years otherwise the money runs out. At which point you are objectively a failure, because you have to wind up the business. In US tech you can keep making losses for years and years - as long as you keep doubling down, the pockets keep being replenished. So the date at which you are officially a failure is much later.
The thing that the LA wildfires teach us about climate change is that it is the change in rainfall patterns that follows from the increase in temperature that are more consequential than the increase in temperature itself. Notably, the climate models are very bad on predicting what the changes in rainfall patterns will be, and mostly don't agree with each other. This means that the risks from further global warming are poorly characterised and essentially unbounded*. Might it lead to the failure of the South or East Asian Monsoons, destroying agriculture in one or both of the two most populous countries in the world?
This is why I find the quibbling over things like a 2030 target for stopping sales of ICE cars, or the continued wilful refusal to make use of Britain's tidal energy resources, or the foot-dragging over small modular nuclear reactors really bizarre. We're in a do everything as soon as possible sort of situation, in which every year of delay is another unknown amount of risk of catastrophe.
* By contrast, the largest impact from increasing temperatures - the increase in sea-levels due to thermal expansion and land ice melt - is pretty well bounded by the amount of ice in the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The only element of doubt is to do with timing and rate of change.
ICC rules require member nations to have a women’s team, but ICC members are reported to believe that allowing the men’s team to compete will help them influence the Taliban for good.
Wasn’t that the exact same argument used for touring South Africa, under Apartheid?
You mean the rebel tours? I'm too young to remember, but I'd have thought the Nandy line earlier in the article would apply (it's not fair on players and fans etc.).
By all means, say that, but it's naïve in the extreme to think this makes any difference to what happens in Afghanistan.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
I think people probably should read Varoufakis's Technofeudalism more widely, because it has a long section on how the tech companies were uniquely well-placed in the post-2008 money environment in the U.S. to do so well.
It's not perfect, and has a few blind spots, but now, with the rise of the Musk-Trump alliance, it's looking like one of the most prophetic books of about the last twenty years. It was written about four years ago, I think, and alao already contains a much better understanding of Elon Musk's plans, than many more mainstream commentators had at that time.
While this person may or may not be a murderous idiot, the facts are these - the area was and is a tinderbox. Literally. Super dry forests and scrubland, high temperatures and high wind.
It’s like a defective bridge. Yes, the drunk driver in the truck who rammed into the abutment was the immediate cause of the collapse. But it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah you aren't stopping a fire spreading when conditions are like that. Which is why it is so important to properly evaluate risk when permitting building. i.e. Maybe don't live half-way up a mountain surrounded by kindling.
Choices
1) don’t live there 2) clear anything vaguely flammable back a mile. Literally. 3) build your house completely fireproof.
We are blaming these fires on climate change and our solutions have involved burning or removing all natural vegetation from the area.
The thing is most wildfires (particularly in California) are set off by lightning and are a natural part of the ecosystem. In Australia, many of the trees have adapted to survive such fires while simultaneously contributing to them by being highly flammable.
When those areas recover, they draw much of that carbon back into the new vegetation. Over the long term, the fires don't have much of an impact on the level of carbon in the atmosphere. Allowing these areas to burn periodically is probably the best solution.
One issue with climate change is if this process is not allowed to happen, with areas not recovering between fires due to drier/warmer/windier weather, or human intervention, and therefore become net contributors. This is one of those tipping points everyone is so worried about.
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
Wanted, one backbone. Please send to DCMS.
“deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”
Whilst it seems women in the country are denied even the right to stand by a window never mind open it.
Yet they were happy to deny us other opportunities, such as seeing South Africa play England for many years, and rightly so.
Sometimes you need to do what's right not what's expedient.
I have been a follower of Afghan cricket and it is a great story. They came from nowhere to be truly competitive, many learning the sport in Pakistan (ironic as they are not far off war now) as refugees.
What is going on there is wrong and as they used to say with the Saffers. No normal sport in an abnormal society (not sure they'd get away with "abnormal" now but you get the drift)
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
Don’t forget the other ingredient - that acceptance of failure - the social stigma and financial/legal consequences in the US of setting up a business, trying something new and failing are recoverable and “normal” whereas there seems to be a very different attitude to it in the UK and I guess the rest of Europe.
Yes.
Hence the stories about venture capital people asking prospective startups about previous failures, in Silicon Valley.
So the story goes, it’s assumed that your first attempts at startup(s) will be part of a learning curve.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
I can't decide what are the best types of UK snow scene. Several are equally pretty: London Georgian terraces, especially pre-Christmas with decorations in the windows (settling snow is sadly rare in London), Rural villages with churchyards and greens, open moorland, highlands with snowy tops in the sunshine, or Southern English downland.
All of these connect in the brain to reference points from childhood. Christmas cards for the first 2, trips out on cold days for the moorland or mountains, and The Snowman for the last one.
The motorbike scene in The Snowman - moonlit night on the white downs, various animals running past, wonderful music - is magical.
Some of the Snow Scenes in Box of Delights are magical.
Agree, and the music too.
Yes, I was most appreciative of BBC4 giving it a screening in December last year.
I’m trying to persuade someone I know to remake it. I quite like the idea of Hugh Grant playing Anne Brown and Lenny Henry as Cole Hawlings for some reason.
As former Dr Who Producer, the legendary Graham Williams said, "How do you improve on perfection ?"
(Abner BTW !!!)
Yes - I don’t think autocorrect had come across the name “Abner” before….
I would like to see what they could do to it with modern CGI though - would be pretty spectacular I think.
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
Wanted, one backbone. Please send to DCMS.
I can see this argument standing up for not boycotting the football world cup, though I wouldn't agree with it. There is quite a lot of desire by fans to watch the world cup even if its hosted by a regime whose values we disagree with.
And similarly, I can see the economic arguments for being friendly with the Qataris.
The clamour - even among cricket fans - to watch, specifically, matches against Afghanistan is less strong, and the economic imperative for trade links with them seems less obvious.
ICC rules require member nations to have a women’s team, but ICC members are reported to believe that allowing the men’s team to compete will help them influence the Taliban for good.
Wasn’t that the exact same argument used for touring South Africa, under Apartheid?
There were no official tours for nearly 20 years in cricket, either to South Africa or not, the only tours were rebel tours with participants banned for their trouble. The large cash payout for participation eased any concerns they had with regards to being banned.
Some people, like Tory MP John Carlisle, in the early eighties were very enthusiastic to get the MCC to send a tour there in its own right. Thankfully this was resisted. Would have caused a black/white split in the game it was feared.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
Don’t forget the other ingredient - that acceptance of failure - the social stigma and financial/legal consequences in the US of setting up a business, trying something new and failing are recoverable and “normal” whereas there seems to be a very different attitude to it in the UK and I guess the rest of Europe.
I'd say the only stigma to failing with a business is if you go bust leaving lots of people out of pocket. Otherwise it's fine and you'll be welcome to keep showing your face.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
Don’t forget the other ingredient - that acceptance of failure - the social stigma and financial/legal consequences in the US of setting up a business, trying something new and failing are recoverable and “normal” whereas there seems to be a very different attitude to it in the UK and I guess the rest of Europe.
As an American breeder once remarked of racehorses, in America we judge a horse by its best performance, in Europe you judge by its worst. Same with entrepreneurs.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
A friend on a project in the wilds of the Canadian Rockies told me the three months he had to put up with in a trailer out there would have been unendurable without the access to unlimited porn that Starlink gave him, though he complained that sometimes reception was so slow that reminded him of using dialup as a teenager in the 90s, when he would download one boob per minute ...
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
Wanted, one backbone. Please send to DCMS.
I can see this argument standing up for not boycotting the football world cup, though I wouldn't agree with it. There is quite a lot of desire by fans to watch the world cup even if its hosted by a regime whose values we disagree with.
And similarly, I can see the economic arguments for being friendly with the Qataris.
The clamour - even among cricket fans - to watch, specifically, matches against Afghanistan is less strong, and the economic imperative for trade links with them seems less obvious.
Plus the Afghan players are still free to ply their trade. Players like Rashid Khan can make a fortune (for a cricketer) touring the world playing T20's.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
Don’t forget the other ingredient - that acceptance of failure - the social stigma and financial/legal consequences in the US of setting up a business, trying something new and failing are recoverable and “normal” whereas there seems to be a very different attitude to it in the UK and I guess the rest of Europe.
As an American breeder once remarked of racehorses, in America we judge a horse by its best performance, in Europe you judge by its worst. Same with entrepreneurs.
There's a lot of American self-mythologising that we Brits seem to swallow hook line and sinker. They particularly like to use Europe and the UK as a foil. Understandable given the origins of their state, but to be taken with at least half a pinch of salt.
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
Wanted, one backbone. Please send to DCMS.
I can see this argument standing up for not boycotting the football world cup, though I wouldn't agree with it. There is quite a lot of desire by fans to watch the world cup even if its hosted by a regime whose values we disagree with.
And similarly, I can see the economic arguments for being friendly with the Qataris.
The clamour - even among cricket fans - to watch, specifically, matches against Afghanistan is less strong, and the economic imperative for trade links with them seems less obvious.
To my mind, you don't even have to consider whether the Afghani government is evil (of course, it is).
It's simply a matter of following the ICC's stated rules. If you wish to play at international level, you have to let the womens' team play. If you don't like those rules, don't play at international level.
Non-contentious post of the day: I absolutely bloody love England in the snow. Took half an hour after school drop-off for a walk across the recreation ground full of happy dogs gambolling through crunchy snow beneath a bright blue sky and through the park full of the icy forms of yesterday's snowmen - boots crunching satisfyingly all the way - then into town for a coffee and a bun, boots struggling slightly for purchase on the icy but beautifully sparkly pavements. I illustrate this not with the Brugellian snowscapes so described, but with the frozen Bridgewater Canal in the centre of town, just to illustrate how parky it is.
Ribblehead is still snowy and I wish I had the time this weekend to get up there.
I can't decide what are the best types of UK snow scene. Several are equally pretty: London Georgian terraces, especially pre-Christmas with decorations in the windows (settling snow is sadly rare in London), Rural villages with churchyards and greens, open moorland, highlands with snowy tops in the sunshine, or Southern English downland.
All of these connect in the brain to reference points from childhood. Christmas cards for the first 2, trips out on cold days for the moorland or mountains, and The Snowman for the last one.
The motorbike scene in The Snowman - moonlit night on the white downs, various animals running past, wonderful music - is magical.
Some of the Snow Scenes in Box of Delights are magical.
Agree, and the music too.
Yes, I was most appreciative of BBC4 giving it a screening in December last year.
I’m trying to persuade someone I know to remake it. I quite like the idea of Hugh Grant playing Anne Brown and Lenny Henry as Cole Hawlings for some reason.
As former Dr Who Producer, the legendary Graham Williams said, "How do you improve on perfection ?"
(Abner BTW !!!)
Yes - I don’t think autocorrect had come across the name “Abner” before….
I would like to see what they could do to it with modern CGI though - would be pretty spectacular I think.
Modern CGI would be a big improvement over the old CSO and other effects they did. Some BBC DVD releases of old sci fi classics have put in options for new effects. It is nice to see but I still prefer the old effects.
I saw an episode of Z Cars the other week where people were in an office in a factory and the factory behind it was in CSO. Looked terrible.
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
Wanted, one backbone. Please send to DCMS.
I can see this argument standing up for not boycotting the football world cup, though I wouldn't agree with it. There is quite a lot of desire by fans to watch the world cup even if its hosted by a regime whose values we disagree with.
And similarly, I can see the economic arguments for being friendly with the Qataris.
The clamour - even among cricket fans - to watch, specifically, matches against Afghanistan is less strong, and the economic imperative for trade links with them seems less obvious.
Rory made an interesting point on TRIP yesterday: if the West was that appalled by the rule of the Taliban then maybe they shouldn't have pulled out of Afghanistan and let them take over in the first place. The stuff about sporting boycotts is just virtue signalling through guilt. He may have a point.
I’m loving the revisionist history from PB Tories. Of course she didn’t crash the economy. And as a result she didn’t have to sack her chancellor and hire the guy to rip up and immediately reverse the things she had done to crash the economy. Because she hadn’t. So it didn’t happen. Indeed it’s such a lie because she’s still our PM. And she’ll sue anyone who claims that having crashed the economy, sacking her chancellor and having to scrap her entire programme to stop the crash being permanent that she then was forced to resign.
It’s defamation.
The difference in politics today is less between left and right and more between those who live in reality and those who live in fantasy. Truss didn’t crash the economy, Canada will join the US, threatening Greenland is a sensible policy, Russia only invaded Ukraine because they felt threatened by NATO expansion, Matt Gaetz would be a good Attorney General, etc.
What the Truss episode did usefully expose is how close the United Kingdom had got to the edge of what was acceptable to our near £2trn of creditors and how little autonomy the UK Chancellor in fact has. This remains the case and is why even the Guardian is forecasting sharp cuts in public spending by Reeves in her Spring budget.
The fantasists who believe all that is needed to trigger a burst of growth is tax cuts or additional capital spending funded by additional borrowing are those that refuse to learn that rather simple, clear and obvious lesson.
In your opinion what do we need to trigger a growth burst ?
something that forces the lazy , " I want everything for nothing", brigade in this country who think there is a magic money tree that they should be able to shake any time they wish. Previous generations had to get out and toil , no free housing , council tax, cars , etc. You reported to the buroo every day and you got bare minimum to buy food. Majority were happy to take jobs.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
Don’t forget the other ingredient - that acceptance of failure - the social stigma and financial/legal consequences in the US of setting up a business, trying something new and failing are recoverable and “normal” whereas there seems to be a very different attitude to it in the UK and I guess the rest of Europe.
I'd say the only stigma to failing with a business is if you go bust leaving lots of people out of pocket. Otherwise it's fine and you'll be welcome to keep showing your face.
The social stigma that can never be shed in the USA is being poor.
There's no future where Labour reduce the amount of regulation. The fact that they've gone and asked the regulators for growth ideas means that they intend to regulate their way to growth. It will go about as well as taxing their way to growth.
They have actually made some baby steps towards reducing the burden of building regs (and that might improve over the next year).
But other than that, you're possibly correct. Depends on how desperate they get.
The header acknowledges that the minibudget didn't crash the economy. Nor were the tax cuts contained therein particularly extreme or expensive. On the information we now have the 30% increase in Corporation Tax that she fought against has added 10% to CT receipts in the full year it has been in place. Yes there are some mitigating factors with expensing that would mean you wouldn't expect to get the full 30%, but the bottom line is if those trends continue, it will become revenue neutral and then actually cost the exchequer money in the coming years. As any idiot looking at Ireland could have predicted.
If CT at 25% with expensing becomes revenue negative vs CT at 15% with limited expensing then it's hugely beneficial to the economy because it's pushing corporate money into capital investment. If you look at the stats business investment is on a hot streak too since full expensing was introduced. I'd estimate it's raised growth by 0.3-0.5% per year so far vs the baseline before when business investment was absolutely terrible.
This is the intended result if having a higher rate with big reliefs/incentives to bring that rate down. You simply can't compare the UK to Ireland, Ireland works on the basis of 0.25-0.75% sweetheart rates for multinationals in exchange for a few thousand jobs. In small countries this might just about make sense because there's a low number of people and a few thousand jobs is enough to keep everyone employed and the state funded without any proper CT receipts. In the UK exchanging CT receipts for a few thousand jobs isn't viable our population is 10x larger. The multiplier that we get from those extra jobs is absolutely tiny compared to what we'd get with proper CT rates. You simply lack the understanding on this subject and by continually raising Ireland as a valid point of comparison and suggesting that a drop in CT receipts with full expensing is a bad outcome you show it time and again.
From my perspective what the previous government achieved with the new CT policy was getting money out of dividends and into capital growth and if the trend proves correct then out of government hands into capital growth too. Money has gone from two very low multiplier categories to the single highest multiplier category, I don't see how this is the huge negative you think it is?
Sorry but this is complete bollocks. How has Ireland sacrificed 'proper CT receipts' - they get higher corporation tax receipts than the UK. Significantly higher per capita, so your stuff about us 'needing to fund healthcare' and therefore needing higher CT rates is utter nonsense. We would get more Corporation Tax if the rate was lower.
To your point about businesses being forced to invest - sure, there's an effect of that which I highlighted. There's also a pronounced effect of businesses moving out of the UK completely, or declaring their profits in different territories, which is a highly damaging trend, and not one that's immediately reversible.
I see nothing in your rebukes about my Corporation Tax posts, or anyone elses moronic 'crashed the economy' crap but a pigheaded refusal to admit you were wrong, which you should try more often. It would show strength of character.
ICC rules require member nations to have a women’s team, but ICC members are reported to believe that allowing the men’s team to compete will help them influence the Taliban for good.
This is one of those "I have to make myself believe that in order to justify what I'm doing" things.
Look at all these sports people taking the Saudi $$$. I've heard some right old tripe there.
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
Wanted, one backbone. Please send to DCMS.
I can see this argument standing up for not boycotting the football world cup, though I wouldn't agree with it. There is quite a lot of desire by fans to watch the world cup even if its hosted by a regime whose values we disagree with.
And similarly, I can see the economic arguments for being friendly with the Qataris.
The clamour - even among cricket fans - to watch, specifically, matches against Afghanistan is less strong, and the economic imperative for trade links with them seems less obvious.
To my mind, you don't even have to consider whether the Afghani government is evil (of course, it is).
It's simply a matter of following the ICC's stated rules. If you wish to play at international level, you have to let the womens' team play. If you don't like those rules, don't play at international level.
I wonder if the govt intervened to prevent England Playing Afghanistan then England would be suspended by the ICC.
The ICC have previously suspended teams, like Zimbabwe, for govt interference. In this case when the govt dismissed the board of the ZCU.
I mean I know it's ( *checks* ) 34 degrees north, but that's still 11 degrees north of the tropic of cancer so I'd have thought we're closish to the coldest (normal) point of the year there. I presume if fires are happening now they can happen at literally any time of year ?
It seems wildfires are possible anytime from when the summer heat has finally dried out all the brush & foliage to the arrival of the first rains of the winter / spring.
IIRC I saw somewhere that it’s been an unusually dry winter in LA this year, which perhaps explains how a wildfire in the middle of January is possible.
“After a typically arid summer and fall, the Los Angeles area has also had a dry winter so far. December, January, February, and March are usually the wettest months in the region by far. More than 80 percent of Los Angeles' rain comes during these colder months. But this year, during December, the region received, on average, less than one-tenth of an inch of rainfall. Normal totals are on the order of 2.5 inches in December.
So, the foliage in the area was already very dry, effectively extending the region's wildfire season.”
Today had an interview with the former Fire chief for LA, he said that the fire risk was dependent on whether the rain or wind arrived first. He also said that, because it had been a few years since the last big wildfire, the authorities had lost focus on prevention measures.
Why is no-one mentioning the obvious? That these fires were probably deliberately started by a human. Is it a wildfire if it is arson? One man has already been arrested for starting one of them.
Citizen's arrest, and on suspicion ... and it may not have been deliberate. Idiot with barbecue syndrome is a thing.
But it could be a bit of broken glass, or a power line going sparky, or an old disposable vape lithium battery. The way the wider risk is, does it make much difference?
Or lightning. Wild fires have happened since forever, and long before any human habitation.
Literally the only good solution (short of complete deforestation) is controlled burns outside of the dry season.
Without them the burns will happen anyway, but in a devastating manner.
A bit of a problem doing planned burns though when the dry season doesn't end, such as LA in 2024..
they need to stop the environment facists stopping any rules if they are going to build houses cheek by jowl , given the climate it needs careful managemnet of the brush/trees and firebreaks etc.
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
I'd support a boycott led by the team or governing body but not one led by the government. The sports secretary should generally support whatever decision they make.
I agree with that.
There seems to be a belief among many that boycotting a single match will have profound political consequences. It won't.
Almost all sporting and other cultural and moral boycotts have been failures. The only one anyone can point to as a success - and the only one anyone ever does point to - is South Africa. But that took decades to work, was (eventually) comprehensive across all sports, and when change did finally come, it was driven much more by external changes to the world and by the difficulty of maintaining apartheid internally alongside order; sporting sanctions did play a part in the thinking of both government and (white) electorate but while a consideration, it was very much secondary.
Beyond that? How's the (comprehensive) sporting sanctioning of Russia going? How did any other one-off gesture boycott go? Anyone remember a previous cricket world up where England didn't play Zimbabwe?
In reality, few people will notice and far fewer still, who matter, will care. The zealots and bigots of the Taliban are not going to have a sudden conversion to the cause of Western rights because of a game of cricket. Which they won by default and may advance further in the tournament as a result. To the extent that they care about cricket, they probably dislike it as trivial and ungodly. However, even theocrats understand bread and circuses.
In reality, the ICC should suspend Afghanistan under their own rules. That is the level at which pressure should be applied, and at which officials should be called out.
ICC rules require member nations to have a women’s team, but ICC members are reported to believe that allowing the men’s team to compete will help them influence the Taliban for good.
This is one of those "I have to make myself believe that in order to justify what I'm doing" things.
Look at all these sports people taking the Saudi $$$. I've heard some right old tripe there.
If they'd simply said "We're a bunch of moral cowards", it would at least have had the virtue of honesty.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
Don’t forget the other ingredient - that acceptance of failure - the social stigma and financial/legal consequences in the US of setting up a business, trying something new and failing are recoverable and “normal” whereas there seems to be a very different attitude to it in the UK and I guess the rest of Europe.
As an American breeder once remarked of racehorses, in America we judge a horse by its best performance, in Europe you judge by its worst. Same with entrepreneurs.
There's a lot of American self-mythologising that we Brits seem to swallow hook line and sinker. They particularly like to use Europe and the UK as a foil. Understandable given the origins of their state, but to be taken with at least half a pinch of salt.
Americans are inveterate boosters and always have been - there's a nice Jeeves story where Bertie tries to get a business delegation visiting New York from some obscure backwater town to pay to meet a visiting British aristocrat (uncle to one of his indolent friends) which nicely skewers the contrasting American optimism and European cynicism. As you say we shouldn't get too carried away in believing their self-mythologising or in doing ourselves down. Pride comes before a fall, after all.
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
I'd support a boycott led by the team or governing body but not one led by the government. The sports secretary should generally support whatever decision they make.
I agree with that.
There seems to be a belief among many that boycotting a single match will have profound political consequences. It won't.
Almost all sporting and other cultural and moral boycotts have been failures. The only one anyone can point to as a success - and the only one anyone ever does point to - is South Africa. But that took decades to work, was (eventually) comprehensive across all sports, and when change did finally come, it was driven much more by external changes to the world and by the difficulty of maintaining apartheid internally alongside order; sporting sanctions did play a part in the thinking of both government and (white) electorate but while a consideration, it was very much secondary.
Beyond that? How's the (comprehensive) sporting sanctioning of Russia going? How did any other one-off gesture boycott go? Anyone remember a previous cricket world up where England didn't play Zimbabwe?
In reality, few people will notice and far fewer still, who matter, will care. The zealots and bigots of the Taliban are not going to have a sudden conversion to the cause of Western rights because of a game of cricket. Which they won by default and may advance further in the tournament as a result. To the extent that they care about cricket, they probably dislike it as trivial and ungodly. However, even theocrats understand bread and circuses.
In reality, the ICC should suspend Afghanistan under their own rules. That is the level at which pressure should be applied, and at which officials should be called out.
Agree with the last sentence. There's a world in which a group of teams forces the ICC to apply their own rules (the big cricket playing nations boycotting the tournament unless the ICC moves). But I don't think we live in that world
ICC rules require member nations to have a women’s team, but ICC members are reported to believe that allowing the men’s team to compete will help them influence the Taliban for good.
This is one of those "I have to make myself believe that in order to justify what I'm doing" things.
Look at all these sports people taking the Saudi $$$. I've heard some right old tripe there.
WWE are taking the Royal Rumble there in January 2026. One of their main PPV's. They have been there before but this is a step up.
They had been talking of stopping going there after the change at the top.
Barry Hearn wants to take the Greatest Show on Earth, the World Darts Championships there, as long as they can do a deal on allowing alcohol in the venue. For the players more than the spectators of course.
Starlink really is incredible. Currently hiding out in a bothy near Ben Alder following the catastrophic failure of my rogue lynx re-introduction programme and I can still post nonsense to PB.
Had it two years now. We were rather forced onto it when BAFTA stopped sending screeners and made the system downloads only. Previously it could take 4 or 5 hours for Wifey to download one movie - trying to get through the full roster ahead of voting was just impossible. Now? Seconds. (That said, The Brutalist might take a full minute...)
Starlink reminds me of other American tech stories. Satellite internet existed before, and quite a few people used it (my French neighbour was looking into Orange satellite broadband about a decade ago) but it was expensive and not commoditised. US tech comes along and does what it does: takes an existing technology - often pioneered in Europe, makes it more user friendly, scales it up massively thanks to bottomless pools of investment dollars, and achieves world dominance.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
Don’t forget the other ingredient - that acceptance of failure - the social stigma and financial/legal consequences in the US of setting up a business, trying something new and failing are recoverable and “normal” whereas there seems to be a very different attitude to it in the UK and I guess the rest of Europe.
I'd say the only stigma to failing with a business is if you go bust leaving lots of people out of pocket. Otherwise it's fine and you'll be welcome to keep showing your face.
That doesn't seem to be an issue in the USA, judging by the bankruptcy record of the President Elect.
Though there are significant differences in bankruptcy laws between UK and USA. The US laws are less creditors friendly, and not so long duration.
I don't understand all this "crisis in the markets" talk especially about gilts.
The market thinks there's more a little risk in lending to UK than there was a few days/weeks ago and is responding. is that a crisis?
The crisis would be in the government finances if they couldn't sell debt - but it was 3x subscribed on this week's auction apparently.
Isn't it mostly that we are adjusting to the norm of real positive gilt and interest rates? As indeed are other countries, hence the cost of debt goes up and up?
These have effectively been negative since the GFC, with a sea of cheap money washing around keeping zombie debtors afloat.
The header acknowledges that the minibudget didn't crash the economy. Nor were the tax cuts contained therein particularly extreme or expensive. On the information we now have the 30% increase in Corporation Tax that she fought against has added 10% to CT receipts in the full year it has been in place. Yes there are some mitigating factors with expensing that would mean you wouldn't expect to get the full 30%, but the bottom line is if those trends continue, it will become revenue neutral and then actually cost the exchequer money in the coming years. As any idiot looking at Ireland could have predicted.
If CT at 25% with expensing becomes revenue negative vs CT at 15% with limited expensing then it's hugely beneficial to the economy because it's pushing corporate money into capital investment. If you look at the stats business investment is on a hot streak too since full expensing was introduced. I'd estimate it's raised growth by 0.3-0.5% per year so far vs the baseline before when business investment was absolutely terrible.
This is the intended result if having a higher rate with big reliefs/incentives to bring that rate down. You simply can't compare the UK to Ireland, Ireland works on the basis of 0.25-0.75% sweetheart rates for multinationals in exchange for a few thousand jobs. In small countries this might just about make sense because there's a low number of people and a few thousand jobs is enough to keep everyone employed and the state funded without any proper CT receipts. In the UK exchanging CT receipts for a few thousand jobs isn't viable our population is 10x larger. The multiplier that we get from those extra jobs is absolutely tiny compared to what we'd get with proper CT rates. You simply lack the understanding on this subject and by continually raising Ireland as a valid point of comparison and suggesting that a drop in CT receipts with full expensing is a bad outcome you show it time and again.
From my perspective what the previous government achieved with the new CT policy was getting money out of dividends and into capital growth and if the trend proves correct then out of government hands into capital growth too. Money has gone from two very low multiplier categories to the single highest multiplier category, I don't see how this is the huge negative you think it is?
Sorry but this is complete bollocks. How has Ireland sacrificed 'proper CT receipts' - they get higher corporation tax receipts than the UK. Significantly higher per capita, so your stuff about us 'needing to fund healthcare' and therefore needing higher CT rates is utter nonsense. We would get more Corporation Tax if the rate was lower.
To your point about businesses being forced to invest - sure, there's an effect of that which I highlighted. There's also a pronounced effect of businesses moving out of the UK completely, or declaring their profits in different territories, which is a highly damaging trend, and not one that's immediately reversible.
I see nothing in your rebukes about my Corporation Tax posts, or anyone elses moronic 'crashed the economy' crap but a pigheaded refusal to admit you were wrong, which you should try more often. It would show strength of character.
The interplay between CT rate, incentives and behaviour is a painfully complex one. There are definitely industry sectors or players for which a lower headline tax rate would trigger more UK investment and substance, and more CT receipts. There are some for whom cashflow is more important than rate, who therefore love full expensing, and others who only care about accounting ETR, for whom full expensing is just a timing difference and of no use at all. There are companies - quite a few - who expect tax losses into the foreseeable future either because they are in investment phase or because their tax base is suppressed by finance costs, for whom tax is largely irrelevant. And others for whom CT should be important but where the decision makers don't give a damn because it's 'below the line' and their bonuses are based on pre-tax results.
Ireland has played things extremely well, arguably better than any other country bar Singapore. They had a stable, low tax rate for decades. It's simple to understand. And they did an excellent job of selling themselves to US advisers who could put in place structures to make use of Ireland over and over again for certain key industries.
The UK remains reasonably competitive too and we have probably the best treaty network in the world and one of the best regimes for holding companies, as well as our RDEC and Patent Box, but I think times are going to be hard for all the European entrepots in the next few years. Regimes have converged, and the US has used a mixture of carrot and stick to make it much less worthwhile for their multinationals to push IP and profit across the Atlantic. Inertia will help Ireland, the UK, Netherlands and others but if and when the flow does start to unwind Ireland will feel it quite severely.
Comments
Is there anything in this theory, IYO ?
Came across it today.
Nuclear Spin Attenuates the Anesthetic Potency of Xenon Isotopes in Mice: Implications for the Mechanisms of Anesthesia and Consciousness
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29642079/
Few days ago my feet were getting pretty cold towards the end of a walk. Rather disconcerting. I've got bad circulation but it's pretty minor and almost never has any actual effect, so when it does show up it's always a bit weird.
Isn't that what we voted for?
It was really just the rough and tumble of political debate
I'm not saying that all of the other issues should be ignored, far from it, just amazed that no-one cares how a 'wild fire' starts in pretty low temperatures.
Wind is 3.8gw right now, under almost entirely calm conditions. Solar is adding a useful 2gw, which isn't bad for midwinter. Wind should remain low through today and tomorrow then pick up overnight into Sunday and stay decent for the following week. (Continental high pressure but tighter isobars over the far North).
Why not just repeal the excessive regulation passed over the last decade?
Cancel the Second Staircase mandate*, shutter the 'Digital Markets Unit', and repeal the Online Safety Act.
https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1877663562170019894
*Makes the development of small apartment buildings uneconomic.
https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/against-banning-buildings-with-just
I was talking to a friend at school drop-off - he'd been skiing in the Pennines yesterday. Seemingly (I didn't know this) there is a ski centre (well, a slope with a button lift) near Alston. It was the best snow they'd had in 10 years, apparently. Looked absolutely superb from the photos he showed me - like being in Telemark or something.
Granted, it wouldn't be your first choice as a skiing holiday. The pistes are only about 600m long. But I find it remarkable that it's possible to ski less than two hours drive from Manchester.
Edit: found it. This is it: https://yadmoss.co.uk/
Exit is also controlled. If you try and leave without your payment clearing, one of the test designs implements the door locking. So you are stuck in a rotary door until the police arrive. So sorry.
This is the future. Enjoy.
How green are the connections ?
I suspect it's nonsense (note the anaesthetic effect is pretty small), but it was an intriguing idea.
But the underlying problem is climate variance leading to a catastrophic combination of lack of precipitation, low humidity, dryness of the combustiblke material, and wind.
All of these connect in the brain to reference points from childhood. Christmas cards for the first 2, trips out on cold days for the moorland or mountains, and The Snowman for the last one.
The motorbike scene in The Snowman - moonlit night on the white downs, various animals running past, wonderful music - is magical.
1) don’t live there
2) clear anything vaguely flammable back a mile. Literally.
3) build your house completely fireproof.
As have BA - 10k a month per connection per plane (a plane can have more than one connection)
Though as a less obvious counterpoint: Tegg's Nose, Macclesfield Forest: a view of snow coloured moorland: the sky is heavy with snowclouds, and the light fading from the early evening sky; the landscape is just the white of the land and the black of the millstone grit stone walls, and about a mile away there is a single dwelling, again built of millstone grit, a light in the window and smoke rising shyly from the chimney.
Like you, both link to memories from childhood, though it feels not necessarily my own.
Progress can definitely be two-edged ...
(If only for the shitz n gigglez...)
Production capacities for electricity
(billion kWh)
Type Amount
Fossil fuel 57.87
Wind power 34.84
Hydro 3.70
Biomass 3.60
Solar 0.20
Total 100.21
Moneypoint 0.9 GW of coal power
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
It's the story of the iPhone, Amazon marketplace, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb. The last is particularly annoying - private holiday letting has been a thing in Europe for decades but AirBnB made it seem like a new innovation.
It's the advantage you get from having deeper pockets than your competitors, a huge domestic market to launch in, and the ambition to go big.
Starlink happened because the cost of launch has collapsed - for one company. The reason that other companies are only now trying to catch up was the hardwiring of expensive launch into the socio-political structure.
Until quite recently, for example, ArianeSpace would get the French government to step on any attempt to start a private launch company in Europe. The quid pro quo is that Ariane provides lots of jobs in France
ICC rules require member nations to have a women’s team, but ICC members are reported to believe that allowing the men’s team to compete will help them influence the Taliban for good.
https://youtu.be/wmin5WkOuPw
Whilst it seems women in the country are denied even the right to stand by a window never mind open it.
That's not to say it's not there indirectly. Californian winter precipitation is heavily affected by the phase of ENSO and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which are partly correlated with each other: La Nina and negative PDO winters tend to be dry and El Nino / Positive PDO winters wet. But we've also had a repeating pattern in the past decade of a huge North East Pacific high pressure dome, which has been linked by scientists to modelled pattern changes. It's that which has produced summer "heat domes" in the PNW. We've also had Northward displacement of the polar front jet. Those can have an impact on dry winters on the West coast and the strength of the Santa Ana winds.
The point is that a tinder box situation is lethally unstable. Just as you can’t eliminate crime, you can’t eliminate sources of ignition.
(Abner BTW !!!)
In Europe you have to make a profit within a few years otherwise the money runs out. At which point you are objectively a failure, because you have to wind up the business. In US tech you can keep making losses for years and years - as long as you keep doubling down, the pockets keep being replenished. So the date at which you are officially a failure is much later.
This is why I find the quibbling over things like a 2030 target for stopping sales of ICE cars, or the continued wilful refusal to make use of Britain's tidal energy resources, or the foot-dragging over small modular nuclear reactors really bizarre. We're in a do everything as soon as possible sort of situation, in which every year of delay is another unknown amount of risk of catastrophe.
* By contrast, the largest impact from increasing temperatures - the increase in sea-levels due to thermal expansion and land ice melt - is pretty well bounded by the amount of ice in the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The only element of doubt is to do with timing and rate of change.
By all means, say that, but it's naïve in the extreme to think this makes any difference to what happens in Afghanistan.
on how the tech companies were uniquely well-placed in the post-2008 money environment in the U.S. to do so well.
It's not perfect, and has a few blind spots, but now, with the rise of the Musk-Trump alliance, it's looking like one of the most prophetic books of about the last twenty years. It was written about four years ago, I think, and alao already contains a much better understanding of Elon Musk's plans, than many more mainstream commentators had at that time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxHbSmSkIzA
Richard J Murphy blames the Bank's quantitative tightening for our current woes.
When those areas recover, they draw much of that carbon back into the new vegetation. Over the long term, the fires don't have much of an impact on the level of carbon in the atmosphere. Allowing these areas to burn periodically is probably the best solution.
One issue with climate change is if this process is not allowed to happen, with areas not recovering between fires due to drier/warmer/windier weather, or human intervention, and therefore become net contributors. This is one of those tipping points everyone is so worried about.
Sometimes you need to do what's right not what's expedient.
I have been a follower of Afghan cricket and it is a great story. They came from nowhere to be truly competitive, many learning the sport in Pakistan (ironic as they are not far off war now) as refugees.
What is going on there is wrong and as they used to say with the Saffers. No normal sport in an abnormal society (not sure they'd get away with "abnormal" now but you get the drift)
Hence the stories about venture capital people asking prospective startups about previous failures, in Silicon Valley.
So the story goes, it’s assumed that your first attempts at startup(s) will be part of a learning curve.
I would like to see what they could do to it with modern CGI though - would be pretty spectacular I think.
And similarly, I can see the economic arguments for being friendly with the Qataris.
The clamour - even among cricket fans - to watch, specifically, matches against Afghanistan is less strong, and the economic imperative for trade links with them seems less obvious.
Some people, like Tory MP John Carlisle, in the early eighties were very enthusiastic to get the MCC to send a tour there in its own right. Thankfully this was resisted. Would have caused a black/white split in the game it was feared.
It's simply a matter of following the ICC's stated rules. If you wish to play at international level, you have to let the womens' team play. If you don't like those rules, don't play at international level.
I saw an episode of Z Cars the other week where people were in an office in a factory and the factory behind it was in CSO. Looked terrible.
Previous generations had to get out and toil , no free housing , council tax, cars , etc. You reported to the buroo every day and you got bare minimum to buy food. Majority were happy to take jobs.
But other than that, you're possibly correct. Depends on how desperate they get.
To your point about businesses being forced to invest - sure, there's an effect of that which I highlighted. There's also a pronounced effect of businesses moving out of the UK completely, or declaring their profits in different territories, which is a highly damaging trend, and not one that's immediately reversible.
I see nothing in your rebukes about my Corporation Tax posts, or anyone elses moronic 'crashed the economy' crap but a pigheaded refusal to admit you were wrong, which you should try more often. It would show strength of character.
Look at all these sports people taking the Saudi $$$. I've heard some right old tripe there.
The ICC have previously suspended teams, like Zimbabwe, for govt interference. In this case when the govt dismissed the board of the ZCU.
There seems to be a belief among many that boycotting a single match will have profound political consequences. It won't.
Almost all sporting and other cultural and moral boycotts have been failures. The only one anyone can point to as a success - and the only one anyone ever does point to - is South Africa. But that took decades to work, was (eventually) comprehensive across all sports, and when change did finally come, it was driven much more by external changes to the world and by the difficulty of maintaining apartheid internally alongside order; sporting sanctions did play a part in the thinking of both government and (white) electorate but while a consideration, it was very much secondary.
Beyond that? How's the (comprehensive) sporting sanctioning of Russia going? How did any other one-off gesture boycott go? Anyone remember a previous cricket world up where England didn't play Zimbabwe?
In reality, few people will notice and far fewer still, who matter, will care. The zealots and bigots of the Taliban are not going to have a sudden conversion to the cause of Western rights because of a game of cricket. Which they won by default and may advance further in the tournament as a result. To the extent that they care about cricket, they probably dislike it as trivial and ungodly. However, even theocrats understand bread and circuses.
In reality, the ICC should suspend Afghanistan under their own rules. That is the level at which pressure should be applied, and at which officials should be called out.
The market thinks there's more a little risk in lending to UK than there was a few days/weeks ago and is responding. is that a crisis?
The crisis would be in the government finances if they couldn't sell debt - but it was 3x subscribed on this week's auction apparently.
They had been talking of stopping going there after the change at the top.
Barry Hearn wants to take the Greatest Show on Earth, the World Darts Championships there, as long as they can do a deal on allowing alcohol in the venue. For the players more than the spectators of course.
Though there are significant differences in bankruptcy laws between UK and USA. The US laws are less creditors friendly, and not so long duration.
33/30/15/33
22/18/9/18
4
0
1
3
175
4.2
122.5
0.7
3.8
0.5
72
1/1
These have effectively been negative since the GFC, with a sea of cheap money washing around keeping zombie debtors afloat.
Ireland has played things extremely well, arguably better than any other country bar Singapore. They had a stable, low tax rate for decades. It's simple to understand. And they did an excellent job of selling themselves to US advisers who could put in place structures to make use of Ireland over and over again for certain key industries.
The UK remains reasonably competitive too and we have probably the best treaty network in the world and one of the best regimes for holding companies, as well as our RDEC and Patent Box, but I think times are going to be hard for all the European entrepots in the next few years. Regimes have converged, and the US has used a mixture of carrot and stick to make it much less worthwhile for their multinationals to push IP and profit across the Atlantic. Inertia will help Ireland, the UK, Netherlands and others but if and when the flow does start to unwind Ireland will feel it quite severely.