Expand Heathrow by selling it RAF Northolt which is across the road. The government gets a big cheque, and there is no net increase in the number of runways.
"across the road" is somewhat of an understatement here...
Indeed. They are 8km apart.
Heathrow and RAF Northolt are both in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Across the road might have been an exaggeration but in airport terms, a slight one.
I’ve not heard that idea before but it has some intriguing logic to it. If you could link the 2 with a high speed underground link, with a sort of “B and C gates” set up in Northolt, then why not. Northolt is pretty underused. The RAF could still use it alongside the private jets.
I still think the right answer is Boris island though. His best idea. Or on land in Cliffe. Then LHR could be sold off for much needed property development.
Going to be a tight day on power generation. Demand high, but wind remains at only 1%. Solar 4% and dropping. Even got the OCGT out for 1%. Gas very high still, as it has been for days/weeks. Same with burning trees.
Demand will be very high on the continent, with low winds, so any imported electricity will be very expensive and restrictive.
Will be interesting to see how close we get to keeping the lights and at what price.
Can't we always import electricity from other countries, even if we have to pay a lot for it?
The UK has a about 6.4GW of interconnectors: 1.4GW to Norway 1GW to the Netherlands 1GW to Ireland 3GW to France
So, no we can't buy all the electricity we need from abroad, although we can buy a fair amount.
That being said, this is about as bad as it gets for UK electricity supply. There's little wind, and we have the combination of short days and cloud cover affecting solar electricity production.
To add to this, we have four nuclear reactors either offline, or running significantly below boiler plate capacity:
Two reactors at Heysham 2 are offline, one where summer maintenance needed to be brought forward and the other completely unscheduled and offline. Heysham 1 is also currently being refuelled and is therefore offline. And finally, Hartlepool is offline due to a condensate leak.
Of these four outages, only one was planned to happen over the winter period: Heysham 1 fueling. (And candidly, they should have done it earlier so it didn't coincide with peak electricity and trough insolation.)
Without the nuclear issues, we'd be doing fine. Even with them, we're OK. But I wouldn't want to see another nuclear plant go offline.
Just to add: Heysham 1 refuelling is due to complete tomorrow, and that's a 1.1GW plant, so when it comes back online that will make a big difference.
How would the layman find this news, Is there an aggregator for UK energy chat?
Wind is obviously totally unreliable - exactly what you don't need for electricity supply.
Coal is looking more and more attractive - abundant globally, cheap, proven and reliable. We should stop rigging the market in favour of renewables, or unreliables as I call them, and see what energy sources it chooses, as we did in the 90s. My guess would be some combination of gas, coal and nuclear.
That's simply not true.
The coal price fluctuates just as much as the gas price; plants are much more maintenance heavy; and they are very slow to spin up and slow down.
There's a reason why - even in red states in the US - coal plants are being retired.
You carefully omit mentioning that the Chinese are building around 200. Of course they are also building some unreliables - we might want to do the former without the latter.
I'm not saying that coal is necessarily 'the' answer, just that we should let the market decide and stop tilting the balance in favour of unreliables which have given us the most expensive energy in the world and brought us to a position, unthinkable in the 90s, where blackouts aren't just a remote, theoretical possibility.
Firstly, China absolutely dominates the building of "unreliables". They installed half of all the new solar in the world last year - a staggering 277 Gigawatts of capacity. They also installed a further 80GW of wind.
Secondly, yes China is building new coal plants. But China has lots of coal! The economics of coal are massively better if you don't have to move the stuff around, because what makes coal expensive (ignoring maintenance costs of power stations) is the need to get it from a mine to a power plant. (Which is also why it makes sense for Germany to build power plants at open pit lignite mines.)
It's also worth noting that while China is still building new coal fired plants that were approved and commissioned, the numbers of new permits has absolutely collapsed. In the first half of 2024, just 9GW of new coal plants were approved, down from about 80GW.
Those who are strongly opposed to assisted dying as a matter of principle will always find reasons why any legislation to enable it isn't fit for purpose. This would be the case however watertight the legislation was.
Although I'm personally in favour of it, I'm reasonably content to let our 650 MPs decide, in the end, if the final legislation is fit for purpose or not. That's democracy in action.
Do you trust 650 mp's to actually read the legislation.....damn sure I don't
You surprise me.
Points out caroline flint minister for europe admitting she had never read the lisbon treaty just before brown signed it.....I should have confidence they have read the legislation and thought about it because?
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
The two issues are separate. The process and the decision. I'm not going to change my mind that I am in favour of such a bill passing (not necessarily this one) but still think the process should be fair.
It would be good to hear from the other side to Cyclefree about the process to see if there are any justifications for what on the face of it, as described, seems quite wrong.
Yes I would agree.
But the point is that an impartial assessment of the process can only be made by someone with an impartial view of the merits of the Bill.
The concern is that @Cyclefree is very much not impartial about the merits of the Bill and that therefore needs to be taken into account when reading her opinions about the process.
Expand Heathrow by selling it RAF Northolt which is across the road. The government gets a big cheque, and there is no net increase in the number of runways.
"across the road" is somewhat of an understatement here...
Indeed. They are 8km apart.
Heathrow and RAF Northolt are both in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Across the road might have been an exaggeration but in airport terms, a slight one.
I’ve not heard that idea before but it has some intriguing logic to it. If you could link the 2 with a high speed underground link, with a sort of “B and C gates” set up in Northolt, then why not. Northolt is pretty underused. The RAF could still use it alongside the private jets.
I still think the right answer is Boris island though. His best idea. Or on land in Cliffe. Then LHR could be sold off for much needed property development.
Who owns LHR? I forget....
BAA (or Heathrow airport holdings as it’s now called)
Expand Heathrow by selling it RAF Northolt which is across the road. The government gets a big cheque, and there is no net increase in the number of runways.
"across the road" is somewhat of an understatement here...
Indeed. They are 8km apart.
Heathrow and RAF Northolt are both in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Across the road might have been an exaggeration but in airport terms, a slight one.
I’ve not heard that idea before but it has some intriguing logic to it. If you could link the 2 with a high speed underground link, with a sort of “B and C gates” set up in Northolt, then why not. Northolt is pretty underused. The RAF could still use it alongside the private jets.
I still think the right answer is Boris island though. His best idea. Or on land in Cliffe. Then LHR could be sold off for much needed property development.
Who owns LHR? I forget....
Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited is in turn owned by FGP Topco Limited, a consortium owned and led by Ardian (22.61%), Qatar Investment Authority (20.00%), Public Investment Fund (15.01%), GIC (11.20%), Australian Retirement Trust (11.18%), China Investment Corporation (10.00%), Ferrovial S.A. (5.25%), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) (2.65%), and Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) (2.10%).
Surely the point about the Committee Stage is that they are now looking at the detail of HOW to put the Bill into practice - the principle of the Bill having been agreed at Second Reading.
So is it appropriate to have people who are 100% opposed to the thing in principle just raising every possible objection under the sun to try to block it? That's not what the Committee Stage is about.
Now of course MPs can still vote it down at Third Reading if they are unhappy with how the BIll emerges from the Committee.
But Committee Stage is not meant to be about dealing with endless objections which are only being raised with the intention of trying to block the whole thing.
But will they miss valid objections because they don't want to deal with those perceived as intrinsically opposed?
Time will tell, as I don't think there's much prospect of it not passing into legislation at this point.
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, repeatedly warned about tariffs during President Trump’s first term…Now, two days into Mr. Trump’s second term, Mr. Dimon has called tariffs a valuable “economic weapon.”
“If it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security — so be it,” Mr. Dimon told CNBC on Wednesday from the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos, Switzerland. “Get over it,” he added.
As I keep saying with regards to Trump: in the end, everybody kneels.
Right now, business leaders are thinking "I need to deal with Trump for the next four years, and he's a vindictive bastard, so I need to show my support".
Going to be a tight day on power generation. Demand high, but wind remains at only 1%. Solar 4% and dropping. Even got the OCGT out for 1%. Gas very high still, as it has been for days/weeks. Same with burning trees.
Demand will be very high on the continent, with low winds, so any imported electricity will be very expensive and restrictive.
Will be interesting to see how close we get to keeping the lights and at what price.
Can't we always import electricity from other countries, even if we have to pay a lot for it?
The UK has a about 6.4GW of interconnectors: 1.4GW to Norway 1GW to the Netherlands 1GW to Ireland 3GW to France
So, no we can't buy all the electricity we need from abroad, although we can buy a fair amount.
That being said, this is about as bad as it gets for UK electricity supply. There's little wind, and we have the combination of short days and cloud cover affecting solar electricity production.
To add to this, we have four nuclear reactors either offline, or running significantly below boiler plate capacity:
Two reactors at Heysham 2 are offline, one where summer maintenance needed to be brought forward and the other completely unscheduled and offline. Heysham 1 is also currently being refuelled and is therefore offline. And finally, Hartlepool is offline due to a condensate leak.
Of these four outages, only one was planned to happen over the winter period: Heysham 1 fueling. (And candidly, they should have done it earlier so it didn't coincide with peak electricity and trough insolation.)
Without the nuclear issues, we'd be doing fine. Even with them, we're OK. But I wouldn't want to see another nuclear plant go offline.
Just to add: Heysham 1 refuelling is due to complete tomorrow, and that's a 1.1GW plant, so when it comes back online that will make a big difference.
How would the layman find this news, Is there an aggregator for UK energy chat?
Wind is obviously totally unreliable - exactly what you don't need for electricity supply.
Coal is looking more and more attractive - abundant globally, cheap, proven and reliable. We should stop rigging the market in favour of renewables, or unreliables as I call them, and see what energy sources it chooses, as we did in the 90s. My guess would be some combination of gas, coal and nuclear.
That's simply not true.
The coal price fluctuates just as much as the gas price; plants are much more maintenance heavy; and they are very slow to spin up and slow down.
There's a reason why - even in red states in the US - coal plants are being retired.
You carefully omit mentioning that the Chinese are building around 200. Of course they are also building some unreliables - we might want to do the former without the latter.
I'm not saying that coal is necessarily 'the' answer, just that we should let the market decide and stop tilting the balance in favour of unreliables which have given us the most expensive energy in the world and brought us to a position, unthinkable in the 90s, where blackouts aren't just a remote, theoretical possibility.
Firstly, China absolutely dominates the building of "unreliables". They installed half of all the new solar in the world last year - a staggering 277 Gigawatts of capacity. They also installed a further 80GW of wind.
Secondly, yes China is building new coal plants. But China has lots of coal! The economics of coal are massively better if you don't have to move the stuff around, because what makes coal expensive (ignoring maintenance costs of power stations) is the need to get it from a mine to a power plant. (Which is also why it makes sense for Germany to build power plants at open pit lignite mines.)
It's also worth noting that while China is still building new coal fired plants that were approved and commissioned, the numbers of new permits has absolutely collapsed. In the first half of 2024, just 9GW of new coal plants were approved, down from about 80GW.
The only conceivable rationale for a Western country to invest in coal generation now is some form of ideological contrarianism.
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Well said Barnesian.
Cyclefree is wrong to suggest that Canada is an example of it being "expanded". What happened in Canada is that new legislation was passed, as can happen in this nation, no Parliament can bind its successors. The new legislation that was passed in Canada passed all the checks, balances and hoops of democratic procedures that any other would have, it was not simply an expansion of prior legislation.
It was an expansion on who had the right to die and now they have people in their 20's with depression choosing it. Depression can be treated....
Not always. Life is difficult and can be unbearable. I would find it difficult to condemn somebody who decided death is better than life for themselves, although I would try hard to change their mind. Ultimately people are, or should be, the masters of their own fate.
Not saying it can always be ameliorated but for example one of my south african sisters tried to commit suicide for the 5th time a couple of years ago...spent a lot of time talking to her about what was the issue...mostly medical in a lot of pain and also her life seemed hopeless....cant fix the pain but taught her stuff now she is still in pain but working a good job and life feels better for her and she is glad she failed
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Cyclefree is no part of any campaign, she is expressing her sincerely held views.
I am more than happy to consider pieces from yourself or anyone else who is in favour of this bill for publication on PB.
It is clear that Cyclefree is against assisted dying full stop for her own personal reasons. I suspect she would be against it, whatever the process. It's her own campaign.
A large majority of the population, of all ages and parties, are in favour of assisted dying.
"Three-quarters (75%) of UK adults supported making it lawful for someone to seek assisted dying, while only 14% actively opposed such a change." Opinium.
Several posters on here, myself included, have said we are in favour of the principle of assisted dying but we have huge concerns about the approach being taken by Kim Leadbetter, that’s what you should be focussing on.
In my career the best way I have won people over is by showing my workings to them, not doing things hidden in the shadows.
See my post at 3.14pm.
How would you change the approach to bring in this proposed law?
By having a vigorous debate.
My concern is that people will go for assisted dying for financial reasons or that they are pressured into it.
Assisted dying should be safe, legal, and rare, with Kim Leadbetter’s approach it won’t be the third adjective.
Why should it be rare? In years to come, I hope it will be the norm. When you have no quality of life, blocking a bed, using up your kids inheritance, it will be natural, but not compulsory, to end your life.
And, there we have it.
Correct. It will be the decent thing to do. It will take quite a few years to become the norm, but it will be progress. It's hard to see it from this end of history's telescope.
I think we have very different notions of decency and progress.
Cultures change over time. Look back at attitudes to slavery, women's vote, gay rights.
I know I'm ahead of the curve. I'm surprised Leon isn't with me on this.
I’m not sure that encouraging people to die for the sake of one’s own financial gain quite matches the anti -slavery cause.
Seems to me there's an argument for putting the children's inheritance into circulation for everyone's benefit rather than all that money going to the privileged few.
Good evening, everybody.
That's a good argument for stipulating that the estate of anyone that chooses assisted dying goes to the state. It removes children's coercion but coerces in the opposite direction. Mmm.
Good PPB then from the Conservatives, an interview with Kemi in her kitchen setting out her history and values
Much as I understand the appeal, I don't want to know about Kemi Badenoch the person, I want to know about her plan. What are the problems the UK faces and how does she plan to deal with them? Are there SMART metrics which I can use to judge success? Does she have a timeframe in mind or are these just aspirations? I heartily dislike Trump but I acknowledge that he has identified problems, has a plan to overcome them, and is executing it. They're not the problems I would have picked, but that's not the point.
Cutting immigration and getting the economy going again were the mood music she got across, swing voters loathe Labour now but they still don't trust the Tories. Kemi just needs to come across as relatively normal (she mentioned her first job was at McDonalds) and someone you could chat to over coffee and who was not too associated with the last Conservative government.
If she does she has a chance of winning over the Conservative 2019 but Labour or LD 2024 voters who will decide the next general election, she is highly unlikely to out Farage Farage so there is little point making too much effort to win over Reform voters
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
The two issues are separate. The process and the decision. I'm not going to change my mind that I am in favour of such a bill passing (not necessarily this one) but still think the process should be fair.
It would be good to hear from the other side to Cyclefree about the process to see if there are any justifications for what on the face of it, as described, seems quite wrong.
Yes I would agree.
But the point is that an impartial assessment of the process can only be made by someone with an impartial view of the merits of the Bill.
The concern is that @Cyclefree is very much not impartial about the merits of the Bill and that therefore needs to be taken into account when reading her opinions about the process.
Yeah, but I think that can be read into it by the reader. I wasn't reading an impartial account but it was still informed and persuasive which is fine.
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Cyclefree is no part of any campaign, she is expressing her sincerely held views.
I am more than happy to consider pieces from yourself or anyone else who is in favour of this bill for publication on PB.
It is clear that Cyclefree is against assisted dying full stop for her own personal reasons. I suspect she would be against it, whatever the process. It's her own campaign.
A large majority of the population, of all ages and parties, are in favour of assisted dying.
"Three-quarters (75%) of UK adults supported making it lawful for someone to seek assisted dying, while only 14% actively opposed such a change." Opinium.
Several posters on here, myself included, have said we are in favour of the principle of assisted dying but we have huge concerns about the approach being taken by Kim Leadbetter, that’s what you should be focussing on.
In my career the best way I have won people over is by showing my workings to them, not doing things hidden in the shadows.
See my post at 3.14pm.
How would you change the approach to bring in this proposed law?
By having a vigorous debate.
My concern is that people will go for assisted dying for financial reasons or that they are pressured into it.
Assisted dying should be safe, legal, and rare, with Kim Leadbetter’s approach it won’t be the third adjective.
Why should it be rare? In years to come, I hope it will be the norm. When you have no quality of life, blocking a bed, using up your kids inheritance, it will be natural, but not compulsory, to end your life.
And, there we have it.
Correct. It will be the decent thing to do. It will take quite a few years to become the norm, but it will be progress. It's hard to see it from this end of history's telescope.
I think we have very different notions of decency and progress.
Cultures change over time. Look back at attitudes to slavery, women's vote, gay rights.
I know I'm ahead of the curve. I'm surprised Leon isn't with me on this.
I’m not sure that encouraging people to die for the sake of one’s own financial gain quite matches the anti -slavery cause.
Seems to me there's an argument for putting the children's inheritance into circulation for everyone's benefit rather than all that money going to the privileged few.
Good evening, everybody.
Yes, and interesting precondition would be that IHT is higher, perhaps even 100%, in cases of Euthanasia
100% in cases of euthanasia but 0% for those who helped with their parents care in their last years
Going to be a tight day on power generation. Demand high, but wind remains at only 1%. Solar 4% and dropping. Even got the OCGT out for 1%. Gas very high still, as it has been for days/weeks. Same with burning trees.
Demand will be very high on the continent, with low winds, so any imported electricity will be very expensive and restrictive.
Will be interesting to see how close we get to keeping the lights and at what price.
Can't we always import electricity from other countries, even if we have to pay a lot for it?
The UK has a about 6.4GW of interconnectors: 1.4GW to Norway 1GW to the Netherlands 1GW to Ireland 3GW to France
So, no we can't buy all the electricity we need from abroad, although we can buy a fair amount.
That being said, this is about as bad as it gets for UK electricity supply. There's little wind, and we have the combination of short days and cloud cover affecting solar electricity production.
To add to this, we have four nuclear reactors either offline, or running significantly below boiler plate capacity:
Two reactors at Heysham 2 are offline, one where summer maintenance needed to be brought forward and the other completely unscheduled and offline. Heysham 1 is also currently being refuelled and is therefore offline. And finally, Hartlepool is offline due to a condensate leak.
Of these four outages, only one was planned to happen over the winter period: Heysham 1 fueling. (And candidly, they should have done it earlier so it didn't coincide with peak electricity and trough insolation.)
Without the nuclear issues, we'd be doing fine. Even with them, we're OK. But I wouldn't want to see another nuclear plant go offline.
Just to add: Heysham 1 refuelling is due to complete tomorrow, and that's a 1.1GW plant, so when it comes back online that will make a big difference.
How would the layman find this news, Is there an aggregator for UK energy chat?
Wind is obviously totally unreliable - exactly what you don't need for electricity supply.
Coal is looking more and more attractive - abundant globally, cheap, proven and reliable. We should stop rigging the market in favour of renewables, or unreliables as I call them, and see what energy sources it chooses, as we did in the 90s. My guess would be some combination of gas, coal and nuclear.
That's simply not true.
The coal price fluctuates just as much as the gas price; plants are much more maintenance heavy; and they are very slow to spin up and slow down.
There's a reason why - even in red states in the US - coal plants are being retired.
You carefully omit mentioning that the Chinese are building around 200. Of course they are also building some unreliables - we might want to do the former without the latter.
I'm not saying that coal is necessarily 'the' answer, just that we should let the market decide and stop tilting the balance in favour of unreliables which have given us the most expensive energy in the world and brought us to a position, unthinkable in the 90s, where blackouts aren't just a remote, theoretical possibility.
Firstly, China absolutely dominates the building of "unreliables". They installed half of all the new solar in the world last year - a staggering 277 Gigawatts of capacity. They also installed a further 80GW of wind.
Secondly, yes China is building new coal plants. But China has lots of coal! The economics of coal are massively better if you don't have to move the stuff around, because what makes coal expensive (ignoring maintenance costs of power stations) is the need to get it from a mine to a power plant. (Which is also why it makes sense for Germany to build power plants at open pit lignite mines.)
It's also worth noting that while China is still building new coal fired plants that were approved and commissioned, the numbers of new permits has absolutely collapsed. In the first half of 2024, just 9GW of new coal plants were approved, down from about 80GW.
Surely the point about the Committee Stage is that they are now looking at the detail of HOW to put the Bill into practice - the principle of the Bill having been agreed at Second Reading.
So is it appropriate to have people who are 100% opposed to the thing in principle just raising every possible objection under the sun to try to block it? That's not what the Committee Stage is about.
Now of course MPs can still vote it down at Third Reading if they are unhappy with how the BIll emerges from the Committee.
But Committee Stage is not meant to be about dealing with endless objections which are only being raised with the intention of trying to block the whole thing.
But will they miss valid objections because they don't want to deal with those perceived as intrinsically opposed?
Time will tell, as I don't think there's much prospect of it not passing into legislation at this point.
Yes, I think that's entirely fair - but the objections need to come with solutions to make it better rather than outright opposition.
And solutions that don't slow the whole thing down unnecessarily or make it too complicated for ordinary people.
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Cyclefree is no part of any campaign, she is expressing her sincerely held views.
I am more than happy to consider pieces from yourself or anyone else who is in favour of this bill for publication on PB.
It is clear that Cyclefree is against assisted dying full stop for her own personal reasons. I suspect she would be against it, whatever the process. It's her own campaign.
A large majority of the population, of all ages and parties, are in favour of assisted dying.
"Three-quarters (75%) of UK adults supported making it lawful for someone to seek assisted dying, while only 14% actively opposed such a change." Opinium.
Several posters on here, myself included, have said we are in favour of the principle of assisted dying but we have huge concerns about the approach being taken by Kim Leadbetter, that’s what you should be focussing on.
In my career the best way I have won people over is by showing my workings to them, not doing things hidden in the shadows.
See my post at 3.14pm.
How would you change the approach to bring in this proposed law?
By having a vigorous debate.
My concern is that people will go for assisted dying for financial reasons or that they are pressured into it.
Assisted dying should be safe, legal, and rare, with Kim Leadbetter’s approach it won’t be the third adjective.
Why should it be rare? In years to come, I hope it will be the norm. When you have no quality of life, blocking a bed, using up your kids inheritance, it will be natural, but not compulsory, to end your life.
And, there we have it.
Correct. It will be the decent thing to do. It will take quite a few years to become the norm, but it will be progress. It's hard to see it from this end of history's telescope.
I think we have very different notions of decency and progress.
Cultures change over time. Look back at attitudes to slavery, women's vote, gay rights.
I know I'm ahead of the curve. I'm surprised Leon isn't with me on this.
I’m not sure that encouraging people to die for the sake of one’s own financial gain quite matches the anti -slavery cause.
Seems to me there's an argument for putting the children's inheritance into circulation for everyone's benefit rather than all that money going to the privileged few.
Good evening, everybody.
Yes, and interesting precondition would be that IHT is higher, perhaps even 100%, in cases of Euthanasia
100% in cases of euthanasia but 0% for those who helped with their parents care in their last years
Good PPB then from the Conservatives, an interview with Kemi in her kitchen setting out her history and values
Much as I understand the appeal, I don't want to know about Kemi Badenoch the person, I want to know about her plan. What are the problems the UK faces and how does she plan to deal with them? Are there SMART metrics which I can use to judge success? Does she have a timeframe in mind or are these just aspirations? I heartily dislike Trump but I acknowledge that he has identified problems, has a plan to overcome them, and is executing it. They're not the problems I would have picked, but that's not the point.
Cutting immigration and getting the economy going again were the mood music she got across, swing voters loathe Labour now but they still don't trust the Tories. Kemi just needs to come across as relatively normal (she mentioned her first job was at McDonalds) and someone you could chat to over coffee and who was not too associated with the last Conservative government.
If she does she has a chance of winning over the Conservative 2019 but Labour or LD 2024 voters who will decide the next general election, she is highly unlikely to out Farage Farage so there is little point making too much effort to win over Reform voters
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Well said Barnesian.
Cyclefree is wrong to suggest that Canada is an example of it being "expanded". What happened in Canada is that new legislation was passed, as can happen in this nation, no Parliament can bind its successors. The new legislation that was passed in Canada passed all the checks, balances and hoops of democratic procedures that any other would have, it was not simply an expansion of prior legislation.
It was an expansion on who had the right to die and now they have people in their 20's with depression choosing it. Depression can be treated. People with untreatable stuff is one thing...people with treatable shit not so sure....bizarre example maybe but had bad covid in 2020 when it was first a thing.....at times I just wanted it over with and at that time didn't know how bad it was after 2 weeks of it I could imagine saying just let me go.....you think that a good reason to supply assisted dying?
It was new primary legislation, it was not an expansion of the old legislation via the old legislation without going through Parliament.
If that's their choice, that's their choice, and there should be a process for people to go through if they want it. For me it doesn't go far enough, I would expand it to people with nothing wrong with themselves whatsoever but simply don't want to live anymore, not just "shit" whether treatable or untreatable, but and this is the big but, with safeguards that they need to go see a professional first.
Critics of assisted dying seem to love to conflate it with suicide, which is not typically the final step after a lengthy, professional process having seen medical professionals. If you want to compare suicide rates in the UK or Canada you can do so, and I don't see any significant difference, or that Canada has a worsening problem.
If people with depression are going to get help and get treatment, that's a good thing not a bad one. If a few extreme edge cases want to end their life and they go through all due diligence and meetings with doctors etc to get signed off, then they've made their choice and so be it. That's on them. Its not a spur of the moment decision like you're drawing a false comparison with Covid with, nor is it anything but a rounding error compared to the far greater problem of unregulated suicide which is just as big a problem in this country.
Surely the point about the Committee Stage is that they are now looking at the detail of HOW to put the Bill into practice - the principle of the Bill having been agreed at Second Reading.
So is it appropriate to have people who are 100% opposed to the thing in principle just raising every possible objection under the sun to try to block it? That's not what the Committee Stage is about.
Now of course MPs can still vote it down at Third Reading if they are unhappy with how the BIll emerges from the Committee.
But Committee Stage is not meant to be about dealing with endless objections which are only being raised with the intention of trying to block the whole thing.
But will they miss valid objections because they don't want to deal with those perceived as intrinsically opposed?
Time will tell, as I don't think there's much prospect of it not passing into legislation at this point.
Yes, I think that's entirely fair - but the objections need to come with solutions to make it better rather than outright opposition.
And solutions that don't slow the whole thing down unnecessarily or make it too complicated for ordinary people.
As Mill put it “he who knows his side only of the argument knows not the half of it.”
Any robust process of scrutiny should certainly involve objectors.
A slightly different aspect to the debate as published in the BMJ some time ago, titled "The gift of death"
“I dreamed that I was dead last night. Then I woke up and found I was still here. It was such a disappointment.”
My 98 year old mother surprised us with this comment, for she rarely talked about dying and death during her decline from advanced frailty, although she repeatedly said, “I never thought it would go on so long.”
Her final months were harrowing to witness. But how much harder must they have been to bear? It's left me wondering if she, and we, her children, could have made any different decisions.
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Cyclefree is no part of any campaign, she is expressing her sincerely held views.
I am more than happy to consider pieces from yourself or anyone else who is in favour of this bill for publication on PB.
It is clear that Cyclefree is against assisted dying full stop for her own personal reasons. I suspect she would be against it, whatever the process. It's her own campaign.
A large majority of the population, of all ages and parties, are in favour of assisted dying.
"Three-quarters (75%) of UK adults supported making it lawful for someone to seek assisted dying, while only 14% actively opposed such a change." Opinium.
Several posters on here, myself included, have said we are in favour of the principle of assisted dying but we have huge concerns about the approach being taken by Kim Leadbetter, that’s what you should be focussing on.
In my career the best way I have won people over is by showing my workings to them, not doing things hidden in the shadows.
See my post at 3.14pm.
How would you change the approach to bring in this proposed law?
By having a vigorous debate.
My concern is that people will go for assisted dying for financial reasons or that they are pressured into it.
Assisted dying should be safe, legal, and rare, with Kim Leadbetter’s approach it won’t be the third adjective.
Why should it be rare? In years to come, I hope it will be the norm. When you have no quality of life, blocking a bed, using up your kids inheritance, it will be natural, but not compulsory, to end your life.
I'm surprised to read this.
When a nurse refused to follow the posted hygiene rules outside my mothers room, on the grounds that “she was dying*, wasting resources and better dead”, I explained some philosophy to her.
*pain free(ish), mentally composed, telling jokes, laughing etc.
Whilst plenty of people have accused @Cyclefree of making her argument in bad faith, nobody has attempted to refute the substance of her header.
From which I conclude that her argument is substantially correct.
Well I have specifically refused the substance in the header that claims falsely that Canada shows an expansion in the legislation. It does not, Canada passed new legislation following its own democatic processes, the existing legislation was not expanded without democratic procedures.
No Parliament can bind its successors, any future Parliament can always pass new legislation, potential future legislation that may or may not be passed by a future Parliament following all correct democratic procedures is not a reason to reject good legislation currently before Parliament.
Others have rejected other parts of the article too.
Surely the point about the Committee Stage is that they are now looking at the detail of HOW to put the Bill into practice - the principle of the Bill having been agreed at Second Reading.
So is it appropriate to have people who are 100% opposed to the thing in principle just raising every possible objection under the sun to try to block it? That's not what the Committee Stage is about.
Now of course MPs can still vote it down at Third Reading if they are unhappy with how the BIll emerges from the Committee.
But Committee Stage is not meant to be about dealing with endless objections which are only being raised with the intention of trying to block the whole thing.
But will they miss valid objections because they don't want to deal with those perceived as intrinsically opposed?
Time will tell, as I don't think there's much prospect of it not passing into legislation at this point.
Yes, I think that's entirely fair - but the objections need to come with solutions to make it better rather than outright opposition.
And solutions that don't slow the whole thing down unnecessarily or make it too complicated for ordinary people.
As Mill put it “he who knows his side only of the argument knows not the half of it.”
Any robust process of scrutiny should certainly involve objectors.
It's probably the objectors who will come up with the edge cases that need particularly careful handling.
Going to be a tight day on power generation. Demand high, but wind remains at only 1%. Solar 4% and dropping. Even got the OCGT out for 1%. Gas very high still, as it has been for days/weeks. Same with burning trees.
Demand will be very high on the continent, with low winds, so any imported electricity will be very expensive and restrictive.
Will be interesting to see how close we get to keeping the lights and at what price.
Can't we always import electricity from other countries, even if we have to pay a lot for it?
The UK has a about 6.4GW of interconnectors: 1.4GW to Norway 1GW to the Netherlands 1GW to Ireland 3GW to France
So, no we can't buy all the electricity we need from abroad, although we can buy a fair amount.
That being said, this is about as bad as it gets for UK electricity supply. There's little wind, and we have the combination of short days and cloud cover affecting solar electricity production.
To add to this, we have four nuclear reactors either offline, or running significantly below boiler plate capacity:
Two reactors at Heysham 2 are offline, one where summer maintenance needed to be brought forward and the other completely unscheduled and offline. Heysham 1 is also currently being refuelled and is therefore offline. And finally, Hartlepool is offline due to a condensate leak.
Of these four outages, only one was planned to happen over the winter period: Heysham 1 fueling. (And candidly, they should have done it earlier so it didn't coincide with peak electricity and trough insolation.)
Without the nuclear issues, we'd be doing fine. Even with them, we're OK. But I wouldn't want to see another nuclear plant go offline.
Just to add: Heysham 1 refuelling is due to complete tomorrow, and that's a 1.1GW plant, so when it comes back online that will make a big difference.
How would the layman find this news, Is there an aggregator for UK energy chat?
Wind is obviously totally unreliable - exactly what you don't need for electricity supply.
Coal is looking more and more attractive - abundant globally, cheap, proven and reliable. We should stop rigging the market in favour of renewables, or unreliables as I call them, and see what energy sources it chooses, as we did in the 90s. My guess would be some combination of gas, coal and nuclear.
That's simply not true.
The coal price fluctuates just as much as the gas price; plants are much more maintenance heavy; and they are very slow to spin up and slow down.
There's a reason why - even in red states in the US - coal plants are being retired.
You carefully omit mentioning that the Chinese are building around 200. Of course they are also building some unreliables - we might want to do the former without the latter.
I'm not saying that coal is necessarily 'the' answer, just that we should let the market decide and stop tilting the balance in favour of unreliables which have given us the most expensive energy in the world and brought us to a position, unthinkable in the 90s, where blackouts aren't just a remote, theoretical possibility.
Firstly, China absolutely dominates the building of "unreliables". They installed half of all the new solar in the world last year - a staggering 277 Gigawatts of capacity. They also installed a further 80GW of wind.
Secondly, yes China is building new coal plants. But China has lots of coal! The economics of coal are massively better if you don't have to move the stuff around, because what makes coal expensive (ignoring maintenance costs of power stations) is the need to get it from a mine to a power plant. (Which is also why it makes sense for Germany to build power plants at open pit lignite mines.)
It's also worth noting that while China is still building new coal fired plants that were approved and commissioned, the numbers of new permits has absolutely collapsed. In the first half of 2024, just 9GW of new coal plants were approved, down from about 80GW.
The only conceivable rationale for a Western country to invest in coal generation now is some form of ideological contrarianism.
There might be national security argument. A strategic reserve of coal + some mothballed power stations might be sensible in the event subsea cables get knocked out or there is an issue with gas storage/supply.
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Well said Barnesian.
Cyclefree is wrong to suggest that Canada is an example of it being "expanded". What happened in Canada is that new legislation was passed, as can happen in this nation, no Parliament can bind its successors. The new legislation that was passed in Canada passed all the checks, balances and hoops of democratic procedures that any other would have, it was not simply an expansion of prior legislation.
It's naive to think that expansion doesn't proceed according to its own logic. People turn cases into causes celebres and use them to argue that it's not fair that person A is denied the rights of person B. You might also get an activist Director of Public Prosecutions deciding to ignore the law in an attempt to force the hand of parliament.
What a pathetic argument.
People are entitled to make whatever damned arguments they want. That's free speech.
We should not reject good laws to prevent people from making arguments or speaking.
It is up to a hypothetical future Parliament if it wants to pass a hypothetical future law. If it does, that's its choice. That's democracy.
Expand Heathrow by selling it RAF Northolt which is across the road. The government gets a big cheque, and there is no net increase in the number of runways.
"across the road" is somewhat of an understatement here...
Indeed. They are 8km apart.
Heathrow and RAF Northolt are both in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Across the road might have been an exaggeration but in airport terms, a slight one.
I’ve not heard that idea before but it has some intriguing logic to it. If you could link the 2 with a high speed underground link, with a sort of “B and C gates” set up in Northolt, then why not. Northolt is pretty underused. The RAF could still use it alongside the private jets.
I still think the right answer is Boris island though. His best idea. Or on land in Cliffe. Then LHR could be sold off for much needed property development.
Who owns LHR? I forget....
Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited is in turn owned by FGP Topco Limited, a consortium owned and led by Ardian (22.61%), Qatar Investment Authority (20.00%), Public Investment Fund (15.01%), GIC (11.20%), Australian Retirement Trust (11.18%), China Investment Corporation (10.00%), Ferrovial S.A. (5.25%), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) (2.65%), and Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) (2.10%).
A bit like a UK Government budget, it might be one of the more innocuous executive orders that sets things off. Abolishing the $35 cap on insulin... and after Luigi?
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Well said Barnesian.
Cyclefree is wrong to suggest that Canada is an example of it being "expanded". What happened in Canada is that new legislation was passed, as can happen in this nation, no Parliament can bind its successors. The new legislation that was passed in Canada passed all the checks, balances and hoops of democratic procedures that any other would have, it was not simply an expansion of prior legislation.
It's naive to think that expansion doesn't proceed according to its own logic. People turn cases into causes celebres and use them to argue that it's not fair that person A is denied the rights of person B. You might also get an activist Director of Public Prosecutions deciding to ignore the law in an attempt to force the hand of parliament.
What a pathetic argument.
People are entitled to make whatever damned arguments they want. That's free speech.
We should not reject good laws to prevent people from making arguments or speaking.
It is up to a hypothetical future Parliament if it wants to pass a hypothetical future law. If it does, that's its choice. That's democracy.
Was it democracy when Keir Starmer took it upon himself to decide not to prosecute people for mercy killing as DPP?
Going to be a tight day on power generation. Demand high, but wind remains at only 1%. Solar 4% and dropping. Even got the OCGT out for 1%. Gas very high still, as it has been for days/weeks. Same with burning trees.
Demand will be very high on the continent, with low winds, so any imported electricity will be very expensive and restrictive.
Will be interesting to see how close we get to keeping the lights and at what price.
Can't we always import electricity from other countries, even if we have to pay a lot for it?
The UK has a about 6.4GW of interconnectors: 1.4GW to Norway 1GW to the Netherlands 1GW to Ireland 3GW to France
So, no we can't buy all the electricity we need from abroad, although we can buy a fair amount.
That being said, this is about as bad as it gets for UK electricity supply. There's little wind, and we have the combination of short days and cloud cover affecting solar electricity production.
To add to this, we have four nuclear reactors either offline, or running significantly below boiler plate capacity:
Two reactors at Heysham 2 are offline, one where summer maintenance needed to be brought forward and the other completely unscheduled and offline. Heysham 1 is also currently being refuelled and is therefore offline. And finally, Hartlepool is offline due to a condensate leak.
Of these four outages, only one was planned to happen over the winter period: Heysham 1 fueling. (And candidly, they should have done it earlier so it didn't coincide with peak electricity and trough insolation.)
Without the nuclear issues, we'd be doing fine. Even with them, we're OK. But I wouldn't want to see another nuclear plant go offline.
Just to add: Heysham 1 refuelling is due to complete tomorrow, and that's a 1.1GW plant, so when it comes back online that will make a big difference.
How would the layman find this news, Is there an aggregator for UK energy chat?
Wind is obviously totally unreliable - exactly what you don't need for electricity supply.
Coal is looking more and more attractive - abundant globally, cheap, proven and reliable. We should stop rigging the market in favour of renewables, or unreliables as I call them, and see what energy sources it chooses, as we did in the 90s. My guess would be some combination of gas, coal and nuclear.
That's simply not true.
The coal price fluctuates just as much as the gas price; plants are much more maintenance heavy; and they are very slow to spin up and slow down.
There's a reason why - even in red states in the US - coal plants are being retired.
You carefully omit mentioning that the Chinese are building around 200. Of course they are also building some unreliables - we might want to do the former without the latter.
I'm not saying that coal is necessarily 'the' answer, just that we should let the market decide and stop tilting the balance in favour of unreliables which have given us the most expensive energy in the world and brought us to a position, unthinkable in the 90s, where blackouts aren't just a remote, theoretical possibility.
Firstly, China absolutely dominates the building of "unreliables". They installed half of all the new solar in the world last year - a staggering 277 Gigawatts of capacity. They also installed a further 80GW of wind.
Secondly, yes China is building new coal plants. But China has lots of coal! The economics of coal are massively better if you don't have to move the stuff around, because what makes coal expensive (ignoring maintenance costs of power stations) is the need to get it from a mine to a power plant. (Which is also why it makes sense for Germany to build power plants at open pit lignite mines.)
It's also worth noting that while China is still building new coal fired plants that were approved and commissioned, the numbers of new permits has absolutely collapsed. In the first half of 2024, just 9GW of new coal plants were approved, down from about 80GW.
The only conceivable rationale for a Western country to invest in coal generation now is some form of ideological contrarianism.
There might be national security argument. A strategic reserve of coal + some mothballed power stations might be sensible in the event subsea cables get knocked out or there is an issue with gas storage/supply.
I think there's a much better argument for having a decent amount of natural gas storage.
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Well said Barnesian.
Cyclefree is wrong to suggest that Canada is an example of it being "expanded". What happened in Canada is that new legislation was passed, as can happen in this nation, no Parliament can bind its successors. The new legislation that was passed in Canada passed all the checks, balances and hoops of democratic procedures that any other would have, it was not simply an expansion of prior legislation.
It's naive to think that expansion doesn't proceed according to its own logic. People turn cases into causes celebres and use them to argue that it's not fair that person A is denied the rights of person B. You might also get an activist Director of Public Prosecutions deciding to ignore the law in an attempt to force the hand of parliament.
What a pathetic argument.
People are entitled to make whatever damned arguments they want. That's free speech.
We should not reject good laws to prevent people from making arguments or speaking.
It is up to a hypothetical future Parliament if it wants to pass a hypothetical future law. If it does, that's its choice. That's democracy.
Was it democracy when Keir Starmer took it upon himself to decide not to prosecute people for mercy killing as DPP?
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Well said Barnesian.
Cyclefree is wrong to suggest that Canada is an example of it being "expanded". What happened in Canada is that new legislation was passed, as can happen in this nation, no Parliament can bind its successors. The new legislation that was passed in Canada passed all the checks, balances and hoops of democratic procedures that any other would have, it was not simply an expansion of prior legislation.
It's naive to think that expansion doesn't proceed according to its own logic. People turn cases into causes celebres and use them to argue that it's not fair that person A is denied the rights of person B. You might also get an activist Director of Public Prosecutions deciding to ignore the law in an attempt to force the hand of parliament.
What a pathetic argument.
People are entitled to make whatever damned arguments they want. That's free speech.
We should not reject good laws to prevent people from making arguments or speaking.
It is up to a hypothetical future Parliament if it wants to pass a hypothetical future law. If it does, that's its choice. That's democracy.
Was it democracy when Keir Starmer took it upon himself to decide not to prosecute people for mercy killing as DPP?
Does whatabouttery really add to the discussion?
It's not whatabouttery to point out that the law in areas like this is often stretched by non-democratic means.
She devoted hundreds of posts, and several headers skewering the last government for showing the same lack of respect for due process, evidence-gathering, and Parliamentary procedure that Kim Ledbetter is displaying.
Going to be a tight day on power generation. Demand high, but wind remains at only 1%. Solar 4% and dropping. Even got the OCGT out for 1%. Gas very high still, as it has been for days/weeks. Same with burning trees.
Demand will be very high on the continent, with low winds, so any imported electricity will be very expensive and restrictive.
Will be interesting to see how close we get to keeping the lights and at what price.
Can't we always import electricity from other countries, even if we have to pay a lot for it?
The UK has a about 6.4GW of interconnectors: 1.4GW to Norway 1GW to the Netherlands 1GW to Ireland 3GW to France
So, no we can't buy all the electricity we need from abroad, although we can buy a fair amount.
That being said, this is about as bad as it gets for UK electricity supply. There's little wind, and we have the combination of short days and cloud cover affecting solar electricity production.
To add to this, we have four nuclear reactors either offline, or running significantly below boiler plate capacity:
Two reactors at Heysham 2 are offline, one where summer maintenance needed to be brought forward and the other completely unscheduled and offline. Heysham 1 is also currently being refuelled and is therefore offline. And finally, Hartlepool is offline due to a condensate leak.
Of these four outages, only one was planned to happen over the winter period: Heysham 1 fueling. (And candidly, they should have done it earlier so it didn't coincide with peak electricity and trough insolation.)
Without the nuclear issues, we'd be doing fine. Even with them, we're OK. But I wouldn't want to see another nuclear plant go offline.
Just to add: Heysham 1 refuelling is due to complete tomorrow, and that's a 1.1GW plant, so when it comes back online that will make a big difference.
How would the layman find this news, Is there an aggregator for UK energy chat?
Wind is obviously totally unreliable - exactly what you don't need for electricity supply.
Coal is looking more and more attractive - abundant globally, cheap, proven and reliable. We should stop rigging the market in favour of renewables, or unreliables as I call them, and see what energy sources it chooses, as we did in the 90s. My guess would be some combination of gas, coal and nuclear.
That's simply not true.
The coal price fluctuates just as much as the gas price; plants are much more maintenance heavy; and they are very slow to spin up and slow down.
There's a reason why - even in red states in the US - coal plants are being retired.
You carefully omit mentioning that the Chinese are building around 200. Of course they are also building some unreliables - we might want to do the former without the latter.
I'm not saying that coal is necessarily 'the' answer, just that we should let the market decide and stop tilting the balance in favour of unreliables which have given us the most expensive energy in the world and brought us to a position, unthinkable in the 90s, where blackouts aren't just a remote, theoretical possibility.
Firstly, China absolutely dominates the building of "unreliables". They installed half of all the new solar in the world last year - a staggering 277 Gigawatts of capacity. They also installed a further 80GW of wind.
Secondly, yes China is building new coal plants. But China has lots of coal! The economics of coal are massively better if you don't have to move the stuff around, because what makes coal expensive (ignoring maintenance costs of power stations) is the need to get it from a mine to a power plant. (Which is also why it makes sense for Germany to build power plants at open pit lignite mines.)
It's also worth noting that while China is still building new coal fired plants that were approved and commissioned, the numbers of new permits has absolutely collapsed. In the first half of 2024, just 9GW of new coal plants were approved, down from about 80GW.
Something else to consider about China.
When they turned from Communism to State Capitalism, the various sectors of the economy were carved up between the oligarchy. Pretty much, they got what they were running.
So the coal mines and coal fire power stations are owned by various factions.
Other factions (some overlapping, some not) run cities etc - and see the pollution from coal as a menace. China has serious air quality problems - that threaten the smooth running of lots of stuff.
So a dispute in the oligarchy.
A struggle between the people trying to monetise the coal they own wit the people who find coal burning fucks up their stuff.
Vaguely similar to the holdouts in the US for coal.
OK so Cyclefree is against assisted dying and is part of the campaign to kick it into the long grass and kill it.
I have been to meet with my MP, who is on the Committee and is against the Bill, to change her mind.
I don't think the Bill goes far enough and is far too restrictive. Hopefully, once it is passed, its scope can be further expanded by further legislation in the years to come. A progressive ladder not a slippery slope.
In a generation of so, people will look back in amazement that it took so long to give people the right to manage their own death. Just as we now look back in amazement at the time it took to give women the right to vote or gays the righ to marry.
Fingers crossed this bill will pass.
Well said Barnesian.
Cyclefree is wrong to suggest that Canada is an example of it being "expanded". What happened in Canada is that new legislation was passed, as can happen in this nation, no Parliament can bind its successors. The new legislation that was passed in Canada passed all the checks, balances and hoops of democratic procedures that any other would have, it was not simply an expansion of prior legislation.
It's naive to think that expansion doesn't proceed according to its own logic. People turn cases into causes celebres and use them to argue that it's not fair that person A is denied the rights of person B. You might also get an activist Director of Public Prosecutions deciding to ignore the law in an attempt to force the hand of parliament.
What a pathetic argument.
People are entitled to make whatever damned arguments they want. That's free speech.
We should not reject good laws to prevent people from making arguments or speaking.
It is up to a hypothetical future Parliament if it wants to pass a hypothetical future law. If it does, that's its choice. That's democracy.
Was it democracy when Keir Starmer took it upon himself to decide not to prosecute people for mercy killing as DPP?
Considering Parliament has created the post of DPP, given the Director the authority to make that judgment, and is able to hold him to account - yes.
If you don't like what any of our nu10k or whatever you want to call them public bodies are doing, Parliament is responsible for creating them.
Anyway, its neither here nor there, nor relevant. Canada passed primary legislation following its democratic procedures, so it is not an unauthorised expansion.
This assisted Dying Bill is going to get much more debate and attention that a typical Government Bill that is whipped through.
It has to go through a long Committee stage with dozens of expert witnesses of all types. Then 3rd Reading and then on to the Lords. There is a lot of emotion on both sides. MPs are really engaged unlike most Government Bills.
To say that it will lack scrutiny is ridiculous.
The committee stage has as has been noted stacked with supporters
Have you checked? We've already unearthed on error about Barbara Rich. A lot of the 17 witnesses are from other countries who have introduced similar legislation to hear their experiences and advice. That is surely a good thing.
Whilst plenty of people have accused @Cyclefree of making her argument in bad faith, nobody has attempted to refute the substance of her header.
From which I conclude that her argument is substantially correct.
There is more than one argument in the header.
She has raised ten numbered points, which have gone unchallenged, by her critics. Tacitly, those points seem to be accepted.
At best, the argument seems to be, let’s get a bill, any bill passed, and worry about the details later.
I've seen multiple people challenging those points.
Will you only be satisfied if someone responds bullet-point style to each and every point in one go?
That is generally how one goes about refuting an argument.
No its not, we've had a lengthy discussion within many posts, many of which have been lengthy, or short and snappy.
The points have been challenged. Any post refuting all the points in one go would be unreasonably large, the same size as the thread header or longer in fact. Doesn't negate the fact the challenges have been made because they're not in the format you want.
Those who are strongly opposed to assisted dying as a matter of principle will always find reasons why any legislation to enable it isn't fit for purpose. This would be the case however watertight the legislation was.
Although I'm personally in favour of it, I'm reasonably content to let our 650 MPs decide, in the end, if the final legislation is fit for purpose or not. That's democracy in action.
Do you trust 650 mp's to actually read the legislation.....damn sure I don't
They are more likely to read this legislation than Government Bills that they automatically vote for or against.
Good PPB then from the Conservatives, an interview with Kemi in her kitchen setting out her history and values
Much as I understand the appeal, I don't want to know about Kemi Badenoch the person, I want to know about her plan. What are the problems the UK faces and how does she plan to deal with them? Are there SMART metrics which I can use to judge success? Does she have a timeframe in mind or are these just aspirations? I heartily dislike Trump but I acknowledge that he has identified problems, has a plan to overcome them, and is executing it. They're not the problems I would have picked, but that's not the point.
Cutting immigration and getting the economy going again were the mood music she got across, swing voters loathe Labour now but they still don't trust the Tories. Kemi just needs to come across as relatively normal (she mentioned her first job was at McDonalds) and someone you could chat to over coffee and who was not too associated with the last Conservative government.
If she does she has a chance of winning over the Conservative 2019 but Labour or LD 2024 voters who will decide the next general election, she is highly unlikely to out Farage Farage so there is little point making too much effort to win over Reform voters
Immigration is out of control. In other news, the demand for health care, social care and pension payments driven by a relentlessly ageing population is also out of control.
It would be fascinating to observe the effect of a genuine attempt to end mass net immigration upon all the other out of control things. But it won't happen, of course. The political argument about immigration is all about who can do the best job of getting the (tiny but very visible) boat people problem to go away, but there's no more interest in the Conservative high command in stopping immigration than there is in Labour's (or else they would've done something useful about it under at least one of their revolving door Prime Ministers at some point over the last fourteen years.)
The importation of workers will continue unchecked, because otherwise there would be labour shortages in critical sectors, wage inflation across the board, and considerable tax hikes to pump cash into decent wages for unglamorous roles (e.g. wiping the bottoms of the decrepit,) and thus tempt workers away from stacking shelves in Tesco. In short: mass immigration is unpopular, but the alternatives would result in even more voter screaming so nothing meaningful will be done about it.
I am in the yes in principle but no to this particular bill camp. So what would I say yes to?
We should have the right to write living wills, wills that stipulate that we receive nothing but pain relief if certain criteria are met in advance unless we give clear instructions to the contrary at the time. These should be binding on doctors and indeed families as @Barnesian illustrates.
We should facilitate access to drugs for patients that will shorten life and their application by anyone who is deemed mentally competent. No silly time limits and no nonsense about courts.
We should ensure that these options are discussed humanely, openly and clearly whenever a fatal diagnosis is given, whether of inoperable cancer or other conditions that are inevitably fatal in their effect.
So my ideal Act would go a lot further than the current bill but not have these absurd "safeguards" which have been sown into it. The underlying principle is that this is the choice of the patient, not society, not religion and not family. Those incapable of making that choice, whether through dementia or otherwise, would, of course, fall outwith those provisions which is why we should all be writing our living wills now.
I am in the yes in principle but no to this particular bill camp. So what would I say yes to?
We should have the right to write living wills, wills that stipulate that we receive nothing but pain relief if certain criteria are met in advance unless we give clear instructions to the contrary at the time. These should be binding on doctors and indeed families as @Barnesian illustrates.
We should facilitate access to drugs for patients that will shorten life and their application by anyone who is deemed mentally competent. No silly time limits and no nonsense about courts.
We should ensure that these options are discussed humanely, openly and clearly whenever a fatal diagnosis is given, whether of inoperable cancer or other conditions that are inevitably fatal in their effect.
So my ideal Act would go a lot further than the current bill but not have these absurd "safeguards" which have been sown into it. The underlying principle is that this is the choice of the patient, not society, not religion and not family. Those incapable of making that choice, whether through dementia or otherwise, would, of course, fall outwith those provisions which is why we should all be writing our living wills now.
Well said.
I will support this Act as better than the status quo, but not remotely far enough and I would want to abolish most of the "safeguards" in it through legislation at a future date, or during the passage of this Act via amendments, to make a cleaner Act along the lines of what you are suggesting.
But my attitude is don't let the perfect be the enemy of what is already an improvement. If the choice is this Act with its absurd safeguards or no choice at all, then this Act is by far the lesser evil.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
Has Trump realised that Russia is in a weaker position to be pressured into a peace deal than Ukraine?
Putin's starting terms are so unreasonable to Ukraine (the ceding of more territory not won on the battlefield), and previous US and ongoing European support of Ukraine sufficiently strong, that there's no leverage for Trump to force them to take such a deal. Even if he suspends all aid - Ukraine can keep fighting without him.
In contrast, one thing I've found incredible is that sanctions have not been tightened over time. Europe banning Russian LNG and oil. The US banning any affiliates US-listed companies from working in Russia. And lots of other things I've not thought of.
Maybe Trump sees that weakness and will turn the screws? Complements well with his wishes to sell more oil and gas to Europe.
I'm not optimistic given his history with Putin. But it's a possibility.
Going to be a tight day on power generation. Demand high, but wind remains at only 1%. Solar 4% and dropping. Even got the OCGT out for 1%. Gas very high still, as it has been for days/weeks. Same with burning trees.
Demand will be very high on the continent, with low winds, so any imported electricity will be very expensive and restrictive.
Will be interesting to see how close we get to keeping the lights and at what price.
Can't we always import electricity from other countries, even if we have to pay a lot for it?
The UK has a about 6.4GW of interconnectors: 1.4GW to Norway 1GW to the Netherlands 1GW to Ireland 3GW to France
So, no we can't buy all the electricity we need from abroad, although we can buy a fair amount.
That being said, this is about as bad as it gets for UK electricity supply. There's little wind, and we have the combination of short days and cloud cover affecting solar electricity production.
To add to this, we have four nuclear reactors either offline, or running significantly below boiler plate capacity:
Two reactors at Heysham 2 are offline, one where summer maintenance needed to be brought forward and the other completely unscheduled and offline. Heysham 1 is also currently being refuelled and is therefore offline. And finally, Hartlepool is offline due to a condensate leak.
Of these four outages, only one was planned to happen over the winter period: Heysham 1 fueling. (And candidly, they should have done it earlier so it didn't coincide with peak electricity and trough insolation.)
Without the nuclear issues, we'd be doing fine. Even with them, we're OK. But I wouldn't want to see another nuclear plant go offline.
Just to add: Heysham 1 refuelling is due to complete tomorrow, and that's a 1.1GW plant, so when it comes back online that will make a big difference.
How would the layman find this news, Is there an aggregator for UK energy chat?
Wind is obviously totally unreliable - exactly what you don't need for electricity supply.
Coal is looking more and more attractive - abundant globally, cheap, proven and reliable. We should stop rigging the market in favour of renewables, or unreliables as I call them, and see what energy sources it chooses, as we did in the 90s. My guess would be some combination of gas, coal and nuclear.
That's simply not true.
The coal price fluctuates just as much as the gas price; plants are much more maintenance heavy; and they are very slow to spin up and slow down.
There's a reason why - even in red states in the US - coal plants are being retired.
You carefully omit mentioning that the Chinese are building around 200. Of course they are also building some unreliables - we might want to do the former without the latter.
I'm not saying that coal is necessarily 'the' answer, just that we should let the market decide and stop tilting the balance in favour of unreliables which have given us the most expensive energy in the world and brought us to a position, unthinkable in the 90s, where blackouts aren't just a remote, theoretical possibility.
Firstly, China absolutely dominates the building of "unreliables". They installed half of all the new solar in the world last year - a staggering 277 Gigawatts of capacity. They also installed a further 80GW of wind.
Secondly, yes China is building new coal plants. But China has lots of coal! The economics of coal are massively better if you don't have to move the stuff around, because what makes coal expensive (ignoring maintenance costs of power stations) is the need to get it from a mine to a power plant. (Which is also why it makes sense for Germany to build power plants at open pit lignite mines.)
It's also worth noting that while China is still building new coal fired plants that were approved and commissioned, the numbers of new permits has absolutely collapsed. In the first half of 2024, just 9GW of new coal plants were approved, down from about 80GW.
The only conceivable rationale for a Western country to invest in coal generation now is some form of ideological contrarianism.
There might be national security argument. A strategic reserve of coal + some mothballed power stations might be sensible in the event subsea cables get knocked out or there is an issue with gas storage/supply.
Coal would be very poor for that. Coal fired power stations have lots and lots of mechanical complexity that doesn’t like being turned on and off.
Gas on the other hand means pretty much derated jet engines. Which are far more tolerant of stop start.
Indeed, IIRC, *before* Whittle, people were using “internal combustion turbines” in a small number of power stations. While less efficient, thermodynamically, they minded stop/start much less.
Whittle’s contribution was massively increased efficiency and reduced weight at the same time.
Has Trump realised that Russia is in a weaker position to be pressured into a peace deal than Ukraine?
Putin's starting terms are so unreasonable to Ukraine (the ceding of more territory not won on the battlefield), and previous US and ongoing European support of Ukraine sufficiently strong, that there's no leverage for Trump to force them to take such a deal. Even if he suspends all aid - Ukraine can keep fighting without him.
In contrast, one thing I've found incredible is that sanctions have not been tightened over time. Europe banning Russian LNG and oil. The US banning any affiliates US-listed companies from working in Russia. And lots of other things I've not thought of.
Maybe Trump sees that weakness and will turn the screws? Complements well with his wishes to sell more oil and gas to Europe.
I'm not optimistic given his history with Putin. But it's a possibility.
Europe hasn't banned LNG. They're still buying vast amounts of it. Frankly, going after that is probably an easy way for Trump to slap both the EU and Russia around, up US gas exports, and to do so from something that might actually look like a moral high ground.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
And, it’s a way of trying to turn the argument into a discussion about assisted dying in general, rather than about the lack of proper scrutiny to which this bill is subject.
Going to be a tight day on power generation. Demand high, but wind remains at only 1%. Solar 4% and dropping. Even got the OCGT out for 1%. Gas very high still, as it has been for days/weeks. Same with burning trees.
Demand will be very high on the continent, with low winds, so any imported electricity will be very expensive and restrictive.
Will be interesting to see how close we get to keeping the lights and at what price.
Can't we always import electricity from other countries, even if we have to pay a lot for it?
The UK has a about 6.4GW of interconnectors: 1.4GW to Norway 1GW to the Netherlands 1GW to Ireland 3GW to France
So, no we can't buy all the electricity we need from abroad, although we can buy a fair amount.
That being said, this is about as bad as it gets for UK electricity supply. There's little wind, and we have the combination of short days and cloud cover affecting solar electricity production.
To add to this, we have four nuclear reactors either offline, or running significantly below boiler plate capacity:
Two reactors at Heysham 2 are offline, one where summer maintenance needed to be brought forward and the other completely unscheduled and offline. Heysham 1 is also currently being refuelled and is therefore offline. And finally, Hartlepool is offline due to a condensate leak.
Of these four outages, only one was planned to happen over the winter period: Heysham 1 fueling. (And candidly, they should have done it earlier so it didn't coincide with peak electricity and trough insolation.)
Without the nuclear issues, we'd be doing fine. Even with them, we're OK. But I wouldn't want to see another nuclear plant go offline.
Just to add: Heysham 1 refuelling is due to complete tomorrow, and that's a 1.1GW plant, so when it comes back online that will make a big difference.
How would the layman find this news, Is there an aggregator for UK energy chat?
Wind is obviously totally unreliable - exactly what you don't need for electricity supply.
Coal is looking more and more attractive - abundant globally, cheap, proven and reliable. We should stop rigging the market in favour of renewables, or unreliables as I call them, and see what energy sources it chooses, as we did in the 90s. My guess would be some combination of gas, coal and nuclear.
That's simply not true.
The coal price fluctuates just as much as the gas price; plants are much more maintenance heavy; and they are very slow to spin up and slow down.
There's a reason why - even in red states in the US - coal plants are being retired.
You carefully omit mentioning that the Chinese are building around 200. Of course they are also building some unreliables - we might want to do the former without the latter.
I'm not saying that coal is necessarily 'the' answer, just that we should let the market decide and stop tilting the balance in favour of unreliables which have given us the most expensive energy in the world and brought us to a position, unthinkable in the 90s, where blackouts aren't just a remote, theoretical possibility.
Firstly, China absolutely dominates the building of "unreliables". They installed half of all the new solar in the world last year - a staggering 277 Gigawatts of capacity. They also installed a further 80GW of wind.
Secondly, yes China is building new coal plants. But China has lots of coal! The economics of coal are massively better if you don't have to move the stuff around, because what makes coal expensive (ignoring maintenance costs of power stations) is the need to get it from a mine to a power plant. (Which is also why it makes sense for Germany to build power plants at open pit lignite mines.)
It's also worth noting that while China is still building new coal fired plants that were approved and commissioned, the numbers of new permits has absolutely collapsed. In the first half of 2024, just 9GW of new coal plants were approved, down from about 80GW.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
Going to be a tight day on power generation. Demand high, but wind remains at only 1%. Solar 4% and dropping. Even got the OCGT out for 1%. Gas very high still, as it has been for days/weeks. Same with burning trees.
Demand will be very high on the continent, with low winds, so any imported electricity will be very expensive and restrictive.
Will be interesting to see how close we get to keeping the lights and at what price.
Can't we always import electricity from other countries, even if we have to pay a lot for it?
The UK has a about 6.4GW of interconnectors: 1.4GW to Norway 1GW to the Netherlands 1GW to Ireland 3GW to France
So, no we can't buy all the electricity we need from abroad, although we can buy a fair amount.
That being said, this is about as bad as it gets for UK electricity supply. There's little wind, and we have the combination of short days and cloud cover affecting solar electricity production.
To add to this, we have four nuclear reactors either offline, or running significantly below boiler plate capacity:
Two reactors at Heysham 2 are offline, one where summer maintenance needed to be brought forward and the other completely unscheduled and offline. Heysham 1 is also currently being refuelled and is therefore offline. And finally, Hartlepool is offline due to a condensate leak.
Of these four outages, only one was planned to happen over the winter period: Heysham 1 fueling. (And candidly, they should have done it earlier so it didn't coincide with peak electricity and trough insolation.)
Without the nuclear issues, we'd be doing fine. Even with them, we're OK. But I wouldn't want to see another nuclear plant go offline.
Just to add: Heysham 1 refuelling is due to complete tomorrow, and that's a 1.1GW plant, so when it comes back online that will make a big difference.
How would the layman find this news, Is there an aggregator for UK energy chat?
Wind is obviously totally unreliable - exactly what you don't need for electricity supply.
Coal is looking more and more attractive - abundant globally, cheap, proven and reliable. We should stop rigging the market in favour of renewables, or unreliables as I call them, and see what energy sources it chooses, as we did in the 90s. My guess would be some combination of gas, coal and nuclear.
That's simply not true.
The coal price fluctuates just as much as the gas price; plants are much more maintenance heavy; and they are very slow to spin up and slow down.
There's a reason why - even in red states in the US - coal plants are being retired.
You carefully omit mentioning that the Chinese are building around 200. Of course they are also building some unreliables - we might want to do the former without the latter.
I'm not saying that coal is necessarily 'the' answer, just that we should let the market decide and stop tilting the balance in favour of unreliables which have given us the most expensive energy in the world and brought us to a position, unthinkable in the 90s, where blackouts aren't just a remote, theoretical possibility.
Firstly, China absolutely dominates the building of "unreliables". They installed half of all the new solar in the world last year - a staggering 277 Gigawatts of capacity. They also installed a further 80GW of wind.
Secondly, yes China is building new coal plants. But China has lots of coal! The economics of coal are massively better if you don't have to move the stuff around, because what makes coal expensive (ignoring maintenance costs of power stations) is the need to get it from a mine to a power plant. (Which is also why it makes sense for Germany to build power plants at open pit lignite mines.)
It's also worth noting that while China is still building new coal fired plants that were approved and commissioned, the numbers of new permits has absolutely collapsed. In the first half of 2024, just 9GW of new coal plants were approved, down from about 80GW.
The only conceivable rationale for a Western country to invest in coal generation now is some form of ideological contrarianism.
There might be national security argument. A strategic reserve of coal + some mothballed power stations might be sensible in the event subsea cables get knocked out or there is an issue with gas storage/supply.
Coal would be very poor for that. Coal fired power stations have lots and lots of mechanical complexity that doesn’t like being turned on and off.
Gas on the other hand means pretty much derated jet engines. Which are far more tolerant of stop start.
Indeed, IIRC, *before* Whittle, people were using “internal combustion turbines” in a small number of power stations. While less efficient, thermodynamically, they minded stop/start much less.
Whittle’s contribution was massively increased efficiency and reduced weight at the same time.
Yes, the Swiss had practical gas turbines for electricity generation prior to the Second World War. See Alfred Büchi (who also invented the car turbocharger)... which is why it's perfectly OK for Porsche to label its electric cars as Turbo's.
Has Trump realised that Russia is in a weaker position to be pressured into a peace deal than Ukraine?
Putin's starting terms are so unreasonable to Ukraine (the ceding of more territory not won on the battlefield), and previous US and ongoing European support of Ukraine sufficiently strong, that there's no leverage for Trump to force them to take such a deal. Even if he suspends all aid - Ukraine can keep fighting without him.
In contrast, one thing I've found incredible is that sanctions have not been tightened over time. Europe banning Russian LNG and oil. The US banning any affiliates US-listed companies from working in Russia. And lots of other things I've not thought of.
Maybe Trump sees that weakness and will turn the screws? Complements well with his wishes to sell more oil and gas to Europe.
I'm not optimistic given his history with Putin. But it's a possibility.
i don't think Putin can accept what Trump is willing to offer. IMO Ukraine will be getting more US support from an antagonised Trump as supporting the US arms industry hits his industrial, technological and military erogenous zones.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
Has Trump realised that Russia is in a weaker position to be pressured into a peace deal than Ukraine?
Putin's starting terms are so unreasonable to Ukraine (the ceding of more territory not won on the battlefield), and previous US and ongoing European support of Ukraine sufficiently strong, that there's no leverage for Trump to force them to take such a deal. Even if he suspends all aid - Ukraine can keep fighting without him.
In contrast, one thing I've found incredible is that sanctions have not been tightened over time. Europe banning Russian LNG and oil. The US banning any affiliates US-listed companies from working in Russia. And lots of other things I've not thought of.
Maybe Trump sees that weakness and will turn the screws? Complements well with his wishes to sell more oil and gas to Europe.
I'm not optimistic given his history with Putin. But it's a possibility.
Europe hasn't banned LNG. They're still buying vast amounts of it. Frankly, going after that is probably an easy way for Trump to slap both the EU and Russia around, up US gas exports, and to do so from something that might actually look like a moral high ground.
While that article is quite right, Russian LNG is a tiny fraction of Europe's gas supply.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
Holyrood - "Watch us screw up introduction of controversial legislation by only consulting those who agree with us"
Westminster - "Hold my beer"
Not including any disability groups here feels uncannily like the decision to exclude victims of male sexual violence as a witnesses from the GRR Bill at Holyrood. It suggests a majority of members pre-emptively deciding that they will have nothing relevant (“valid”) to say...
That turned out to be a bad decision on the part of the Scottish committee. Rightly,it dogged them. It led to a weaker process in terms of unearthing and exploring questions which subsequently became very prominent. So this feels like a strange decision, just politically.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I have no problem with this being a PMB. I do object to the slanting of the evidence in the way @Cyclefree has described. I don't agree that there has been a proper debate on this. My suggestion is that this is either given to the Law Commission or a Royal Commission that can come back with a bill that addresses the underlying issues in a coherent way.
Has Trump realised that Russia is in a weaker position to be pressured into a peace deal than Ukraine?
Putin's starting terms are so unreasonable to Ukraine (the ceding of more territory not won on the battlefield), and previous US and ongoing European support of Ukraine sufficiently strong, that there's no leverage for Trump to force them to take such a deal. Even if he suspends all aid - Ukraine can keep fighting without him.
In contrast, one thing I've found incredible is that sanctions have not been tightened over time. Europe banning Russian LNG and oil. The US banning any affiliates US-listed companies from working in Russia. And lots of other things I've not thought of.
Maybe Trump sees that weakness and will turn the screws? Complements well with his wishes to sell more oil and gas to Europe.
I'm not optimistic given his history with Putin. But it's a possibility.
Europe hasn't banned LNG. They're still buying vast amounts of it. Frankly, going after that is probably an easy way for Trump to slap both the EU and Russia around, up US gas exports, and to do so from something that might actually look like a moral high ground.
That's what I meant. It was a list of things that could have been tightened, but haven't been.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
Thanks, the difference being what would/might happen before the bill was submitted. However, from this point on the procedure for getting it approved is surely the same as a government bill? If not perhaps parliamentary procedure should be reviewed to ensure they are aligned.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
But it still needs proper scrutiny and opposing arguments to be heard, not just railroaded through as "being on the right side of history". I agree we need to have assisted dying in this country for the terminally ill who have no life quality and need and escape from pain and suffering. I also think that putting such a law on the statute book needs the highest level of scrutiny and safeguarding, not what is currently happening with opposing voices being disinvited or ignored, that's just not right. We need to move very carefully as a country so we don't become a death tourism destination like Belgium.
Good PPB then from the Conservatives, an interview with Kemi in her kitchen setting out her history and values
Much as I understand the appeal, I don't want to know about Kemi Badenoch the person, I want to know about her plan. What are the problems the UK faces and how does she plan to deal with them? Are there SMART metrics which I can use to judge success? Does she have a timeframe in mind or are these just aspirations? I heartily dislike Trump but I acknowledge that he has identified problems, has a plan to overcome them, and is executing it. They're not the problems I would have picked, but that's not the point.
Cutting immigration and getting the economy going again were the mood music she got across, swing voters loathe Labour now but they still don't trust the Tories. Kemi just needs to come across as relatively normal (she mentioned her first job was at McDonalds) and someone you could chat to over coffee and who was not too associated with the last Conservative government.
If she does she has a chance of winning over the Conservative 2019 but Labour or LD 2024 voters who will decide the next general election, she is highly unlikely to out Farage Farage so there is little point making too much effort to win over Reform voters
Immigration is out of control. In other news, the demand for health care, social care and pension payments driven by a relentlessly ageing population is also out of control.
It would be fascinating to observe the effect of a genuine attempt to end mass net immigration upon all the other out of control things. But it won't happen, of course. The political argument about immigration is all about who can do the best job of getting the (tiny but very visible) boat people problem to go away, but there's no more interest in the Conservative high command in stopping immigration than there is in Labour's (or else they would've done something useful about it under at least one of their revolving door Prime Ministers at some point over the last fourteen years.)
The importation of workers will continue unchecked, because otherwise there would be labour shortages in critical sectors, wage inflation across the board, and considerable tax hikes to pump cash into decent wages for unglamorous roles (e.g. wiping the bottoms of the decrepit,) and thus tempt workers away from stacking shelves in Tesco. In short: mass immigration is unpopular, but the alternatives would result in even more voter screaming so nothing meaningful will be done about it.
Except the last Conservative government ended EU free movement and Rishi raised the wage requirement for immigrants to get visas too
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
Don't be a total banhammer....her objection isn't particulary its a pmb her objection is the refusal to publish the bill till forced to, the objection to holding the committee stage in public and the stacking of the committee stage....all reasonable objections and one I as a supporter of assisted dying think perfectly reasonable where as you seem to support from what you have said for assisted dying on demand
I am in the yes in principle but no to this particular bill camp. So what would I say yes to?
We should have the right to write living wills, wills that stipulate that we receive nothing but pain relief if certain criteria are met in advance unless we give clear instructions to the contrary at the time. These should be binding on doctors and indeed families as @Barnesian illustrates.
We should facilitate access to drugs for patients that will shorten life and their application by anyone who is deemed mentally competent. No silly time limits and no nonsense about courts.
We should ensure that these options are discussed humanely, openly and clearly whenever a fatal diagnosis is given, whether of inoperable cancer or other conditions that are inevitably fatal in their effect.
So my ideal Act would go a lot further than the current bill but not have these absurd "safeguards" which have been sown into it. The underlying principle is that this is the choice of the patient, not society, not religion and not family. Those incapable of making that choice, whether through dementia or otherwise, would, of course, fall outwith those provisions which is why we should all be writing our living wills now.
Posted my Lasting Power of Attorney today (after I missed one signature on the first submission). In it I have been clear as to what I wish for end of life care.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
This is a PMB in form only. Its passage is being choreographed from the very top.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
Thanks, the difference being what would/might happen before the bill was submitted. However, from this point on the procedure for getting it approved is surely the same as a government bill? If not perhaps parliamentary procedure should be reviewed to ensure they are aligned.
Indeed and it takes a majority from the entire House to pass it. This isn't and can't be "stacked".
I'd like to see some objective contrast with how this committee is operating to how any other comparable committee does, but there's no hint of that just a complaint from a vested interest in killing the bill.
Parliamentary procedures are being followed.
I'd have no objection to this Act being amended once it is on the books, hopefully by removing most of the absurd "safeguards" that have no business being there, though that will take Parliamentary time and would need to follow Parliamentary procedures too.
Holyrood - "Watch us screw up introduction of controversial legislation by only consulting those who agree with us"
Westminster - "Hold my beer"
Not including any disability groups here feels uncannily like the decision to exclude victims of male sexual violence as a witnesses from the GRR Bill at Holyrood. It suggests a majority of members pre-emptively deciding that they will have nothing relevant (“valid”) to say...
That turned out to be a bad decision on the part of the Scottish committee. Rightly,it dogged them. It led to a weaker process in terms of unearthing and exploring questions which subsequently became very prominent. So this feels like a strange decision, just politically.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
This is a PMB in form only. Its passage is being choreographed from the very top.
As have been many prior conscience votes. So what?
Would you rather this was passed by three line whip? Or are you just looking for any excuse to moan?
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I have no problem with this being a PMB. I do object to the slanting of the evidence in the way @Cyclefree has described. I don't agree that there has been a proper debate on this. My suggestion is that this is either given to the Law Commission or a Royal Commission that can come back with a bill that addresses the underlying issues in a coherent way.
Likewise.
Mary Warnock, you are sorely missed. We need another of your reports.
Has Trump realised that Russia is in a weaker position to be pressured into a peace deal than Ukraine?
Putin's starting terms are so unreasonable to Ukraine (the ceding of more territory not won on the battlefield), and previous US and ongoing European support of Ukraine sufficiently strong, that there's no leverage for Trump to force them to take such a deal. Even if he suspends all aid - Ukraine can keep fighting without him.
In contrast, one thing I've found incredible is that sanctions have not been tightened over time. Europe banning Russian LNG and oil. The US banning any affiliates US-listed companies from working in Russia. And lots of other things I've not thought of.
Maybe Trump sees that weakness and will turn the screws? Complements well with his wishes to sell more oil and gas to Europe.
I'm not optimistic given his history with Putin. But it's a possibility.
Europe hasn't banned LNG. They're still buying vast amounts of it. Frankly, going after that is probably an easy way for Trump to slap both the EU and Russia around, up US gas exports, and to do so from something that might actually look like a moral high ground.
While that article is quite right, Russian LNG is a tiny fraction of Europe's gas supply.
While we’re on this subject, I’m relieved to see that we’re finally exiting what looks like being the worse sustained period of calm dull conditions combined with high winter demand for years.
It’s dead calm over almost the entirety of British Isles and the near continent and has been for days. Wind should start picking up by midnight and come tomorrow rush hour we’ll be nudging record wind generation. Quite a rapid turnaround.
EDIT: and will almost certainly smash the record on Friday.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
Thanks, the difference being what would/might happen before the bill was submitted. However, from this point on the procedure for getting it approved is surely the same as a government bill? If not perhaps parliamentary procedure should be reviewed to ensure they are aligned.
Indeed and it takes a majority from the entire House to pass it. This isn't and can't be "stacked".
I'd like to see some objective contrast with how this committee is operating to how any other comparable committee does, but there's no hint of that just a complaint from a vested interest in killing the bill.
Parliamentary procedures are being followed.
I'd have no objection to this Act being amended once it is on the books, hopefully by removing most of the absurd "safeguards" that have no business being there, though that will take Parliamentary time and would need to follow Parliamentary procedures too.
well as long as one of the safeguards is to assist you dying thats removed
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
Thanks, the difference being what would/might happen before the bill was submitted. However, from this point on the procedure for getting it approved is surely the same as a government bill? If not perhaps parliamentary procedure should be reviewed to ensure they are aligned.
Indeed and it takes a majority from the entire House to pass it. This isn't and can't be "stacked".
I'd like to see some objective contrast with how this committee is operating to how any other comparable committee does, but there's no hint of that just a complaint from a vested interest in killing the bill.
Parliamentary procedures are being followed.
I'd have no objection to this Act being amended once it is on the books, hopefully by removing most of the absurd "safeguards" that have no business being there, though that will take Parliamentary time and would need to follow Parliamentary procedures too.
well as long as one of the safeguards is to assist you dying thats removed
If I want to die it should be my choice and no other buggers.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
But it still needs proper scrutiny and opposing arguments to be heard, not just railroaded through as "being on the right side of history". I agree we need to have assisted dying in this country for the terminally ill who have no life quality and need and escape from pain and suffering. I also think that putting such a law on the statute book needs the highest level of scrutiny and safeguarding, not what is currently happening with opposing voices being disinvited or ignored, that's just not right. We need to move very carefully as a country so we don't become a death tourism destination like Belgium.
Opposing voices are not being disinvited or ignored. That's not true.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
Thanks, the difference being what would/might happen before the bill was submitted. However, from this point on the procedure for getting it approved is surely the same as a government bill? If not perhaps parliamentary procedure should be reviewed to ensure they are aligned.
Indeed and it takes a majority from the entire House to pass it. This isn't and can't be "stacked".
I'd like to see some objective contrast with how this committee is operating to how any other comparable committee does, but there's no hint of that just a complaint from a vested interest in killing the bill.
Parliamentary procedures are being followed.
I'd have no objection to this Act being amended once it is on the books, hopefully by removing most of the absurd "safeguards" that have no business being there, though that will take Parliamentary time and would need to follow Parliamentary procedures too.
well as long as one of the safeguards is to assist you dying thats removed
If I want to die it should be my choice and no other buggers.
Precisely and your wanting to remove safeguards is exactly going to remove that choice....dont want to have the choice removed from you dont fucking advocate removing safeguards for that from others as has happened in canada
A slightly different aspect to the debate as published in the BMJ some time ago, titled "The gift of death"
“I dreamed that I was dead last night. Then I woke up and found I was still here. It was such a disappointment.”
My 98 year old mother surprised us with this comment, for she rarely talked about dying and death during her decline from advanced frailty, although she repeatedly said, “I never thought it would go on so long.”
Her final months were harrowing to witness. But how much harder must they have been to bear? It's left me wondering if she, and we, her children, could have made any different decisions.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
Thanks, the difference being what would/might happen before the bill was submitted. However, from this point on the procedure for getting it approved is surely the same as a government bill? If not perhaps parliamentary procedure should be reviewed to ensure they are aligned.
Indeed and it takes a majority from the entire House to pass it. This isn't and can't be "stacked".
I'd like to see some objective contrast with how this committee is operating to how any other comparable committee does, but there's no hint of that just a complaint from a vested interest in killing the bill.
Parliamentary procedures are being followed.
I'd have no objection to this Act being amended once it is on the books, hopefully by removing most of the absurd "safeguards" that have no business being there, though that will take Parliamentary time and would need to follow Parliamentary procedures too.
well as long as one of the safeguards is to assist you dying thats removed
If I want to die it should be my choice and no other buggers.
Precisely and your wanting to remove safeguards is exactly going to remove that choice....dont want to have the choice removed from you dont fucking advocate removing safeguards for that from others as has happened in canada
What are you talking about?
Canada has a far superior system where people can choose far more liberally than they can with what's proposed here.
A slightly different aspect to the debate as published in the BMJ some time ago, titled "The gift of death"
“I dreamed that I was dead last night. Then I woke up and found I was still here. It was such a disappointment.”
My 98 year old mother surprised us with this comment, for she rarely talked about dying and death during her decline from advanced frailty, although she repeatedly said, “I never thought it would go on so long.”
Her final months were harrowing to witness. But how much harder must they have been to bear? It's left me wondering if she, and we, her children, could have made any different decisions.
A slightly different aspect to the debate as published in the BMJ some time ago, titled "The gift of death"
“I dreamed that I was dead last night. Then I woke up and found I was still here. It was such a disappointment.”
My 98 year old mother surprised us with this comment, for she rarely talked about dying and death during her decline from advanced frailty, although she repeatedly said, “I never thought it would go on so long.”
Her final months were harrowing to witness. But how much harder must they have been to bear? It's left me wondering if she, and we, her children, could have made any different decisions.
Yes - though of course he has a left wing spin on it that the BOE wants to force Reeves to implement austerity. The Trussite view is that the BOE is part of a social democratic blob that wants to prevent growth measures such as tax cuts.
Either way, it is a fact that the cost of indemnifying the Bank against its QT losses is significant in the overall Government budget, and the Bank has been accused of exercising "fiscal dominance" from more than one quarter over the Government by adjusting its QT programme to give the Government more or less as desired when they've finished. As they are a Government agency, it's very much the case of the tail wagging the dog.
It is rotten and needs dealing with - as does the entire system of democratically-unaccountable 'independent' arms length bodies that are running the country into the ground.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
This is a PMB in form only. Its passage is being choreographed from the very top.
A slightly different aspect to the debate as published in the BMJ some time ago, titled "The gift of death"
“I dreamed that I was dead last night. Then I woke up and found I was still here. It was such a disappointment.”
My 98 year old mother surprised us with this comment, for she rarely talked about dying and death during her decline from advanced frailty, although she repeatedly said, “I never thought it would go on so long.”
Her final months were harrowing to witness. But how much harder must they have been to bear? It's left me wondering if she, and we, her children, could have made any different decisions.
My father's last comprehensible words were, "Please, just let me go."
My father's last words were, 'I'm fine.'
Which was entirely typical of him.
I hope mine will be i am going afk for a bit
My mother in law's was to my wife, "let me look at you one more time". She collapsed 24 hours later and never recovered consciousness. Its a bit weird, like she knew it was coming.
@Cyclefree has written many brilliant articles on this website over a long period of time. In these articles a common theme has been the need for complete transparency.
So I'm very concerned about something. @Cyclefree was asked a very simple question very early in the comments to this thread - ie does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she would support it given the right safeguards?
From my reading of the comments, she does not appear to have answered this very simple question. Why not?
I guess she might say it's irrelevant and we must just deal with the points she has made in isolation. But in my view that's not reasonable.
If someone opposes something in principle but instead raises a whole pile of practical objections that suggests to me that they know their opposition in principle is not something the public will support - so instead they raise a whole pile of other objections in the hope of confusing the issue and scaring people off.
So can we have an honest answer to the very simple question raised:
Does she oppose this Bill in principle or would there be circumstances where she
would support it given the right safeguards?
But it would divert the point of the article
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
I agree with this and it is why I ultimately disagree with @BartholomewRoberts, despite his kind comments. As @Cyclefree has pointed out this bill is being driven through with dishonesty, without a proper or informed debate of the issues, without proper consideration of the knock on consequences of the proposal and with "safeguards" that are frankly there to win votes rather than being thought through. It is being driven by celebrity and emotion. We need a cool, clear look at this. Voting down this bill is not making the good the enemy of the perfect. It is recognising that this is too serious an issue to be dealt with in this way.
I think there's been plenty of debate on this and it is following Parliamentary procedures.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
I thought the objection was the functioning of the committee that is supposed to scrutinise it, not that it is being done via a private member’s bill (for which the overall procedure is the same as a government bill).
"A Private Member’s Bill is precisely the wrong route ..."
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
Thanks, the difference being what would/might happen before the bill was submitted. However, from this point on the procedure for getting it approved is surely the same as a government bill? If not perhaps parliamentary procedure should be reviewed to ensure they are aligned.
Indeed and it takes a majority from the entire House to pass it. This isn't and can't be "stacked".
I'd like to see some objective contrast with how this committee is operating to how any other comparable committee does, but there's no hint of that just a complaint from a vested interest in killing the bill.
Parliamentary procedures are being followed.
I'd have no objection to this Act being amended once it is on the books, hopefully by removing most of the absurd "safeguards" that have no business being there, though that will take Parliamentary time and would need to follow Parliamentary procedures too.
well as long as one of the safeguards is to assist you dying thats removed
If I want to die it should be my choice and no other buggers.
Nobody is stopping you. It's getting somebody else to do it for you that is the problem.
A slightly different aspect to the debate as published in the BMJ some time ago, titled "The gift of death"
“I dreamed that I was dead last night. Then I woke up and found I was still here. It was such a disappointment.”
My 98 year old mother surprised us with this comment, for she rarely talked about dying and death during her decline from advanced frailty, although she repeatedly said, “I never thought it would go on so long.”
Her final months were harrowing to witness. But how much harder must they have been to bear? It's left me wondering if she, and we, her children, could have made any different decisions.
A slightly different aspect to the debate as published in the BMJ some time ago, titled "The gift of death"
“I dreamed that I was dead last night. Then I woke up and found I was still here. It was such a disappointment.”
My 98 year old mother surprised us with this comment, for she rarely talked about dying and death during her decline from advanced frailty, although she repeatedly said, “I never thought it would go on so long.”
Her final months were harrowing to witness. But how much harder must they have been to bear? It's left me wondering if she, and we, her children, could have made any different decisions.
A slightly different aspect to the debate as published in the BMJ some time ago, titled "The gift of death"
“I dreamed that I was dead last night. Then I woke up and found I was still here. It was such a disappointment.”
My 98 year old mother surprised us with this comment, for she rarely talked about dying and death during her decline from advanced frailty, although she repeatedly said, “I never thought it would go on so long.”
Her final months were harrowing to witness. But how much harder must they have been to bear? It's left me wondering if she, and we, her children, could have made any different decisions.
A slightly different aspect to the debate as published in the BMJ some time ago, titled "The gift of death"
“I dreamed that I was dead last night. Then I woke up and found I was still here. It was such a disappointment.”
My 98 year old mother surprised us with this comment, for she rarely talked about dying and death during her decline from advanced frailty, although she repeatedly said, “I never thought it would go on so long.”
Her final months were harrowing to witness. But how much harder must they have been to bear? It's left me wondering if she, and we, her children, could have made any different decisions.
A slightly different aspect to the debate as published in the BMJ some time ago, titled "The gift of death"
“I dreamed that I was dead last night. Then I woke up and found I was still here. It was such a disappointment.”
My 98 year old mother surprised us with this comment, for she rarely talked about dying and death during her decline from advanced frailty, although she repeatedly said, “I never thought it would go on so long.”
Her final months were harrowing to witness. But how much harder must they have been to bear? It's left me wondering if she, and we, her children, could have made any different decisions.
Comments
Secondly, yes China is building new coal plants. But China has lots of coal! The economics of coal are massively better if you don't have to move the stuff around, because what makes coal expensive (ignoring maintenance costs of power stations) is the need to get it from a mine to a power plant. (Which is also why it makes sense for Germany to build power plants at open pit lignite mines.)
It's also worth noting that while China is still building new coal fired plants that were approved and commissioned, the numbers of new permits has absolutely collapsed. In the first half of 2024, just 9GW of new coal plants were approved, down from about 80GW.
But the point is that an impartial assessment of the process can only be made by someone with an impartial view of the merits of the Bill.
The concern is that @Cyclefree is very much not impartial about the merits of the Bill and that therefore needs to be taken into account when reading her opinions about the process.
https://www.heathrow.com/company/about-heathrow
Time will tell, as I don't think there's much prospect of it not passing into legislation at this point.
That equation will change as time goes on.
From which I conclude that her argument is substantially correct.
If she does she has a chance of winning over the Conservative 2019 but Labour or LD 2024 voters who will decide the next general election, she is highly unlikely to out Farage Farage so there is little point making too much effort to win over Reform voters
And solutions that don't slow the whole thing down unnecessarily or make it too complicated for ordinary people.
If that's their choice, that's their choice, and there should be a process for people to go through if they want it. For me it doesn't go far enough, I would expand it to people with nothing wrong with themselves whatsoever but simply don't want to live anymore, not just "shit" whether treatable or untreatable, but and this is the big but, with safeguards that they need to go see a professional first.
Critics of assisted dying seem to love to conflate it with suicide, which is not typically the final step after a lengthy, professional process having seen medical professionals. If you want to compare suicide rates in the UK or Canada you can do so, and I don't see any significant difference, or that Canada has a worsening problem.
If people with depression are going to get help and get treatment, that's a good thing not a bad one. If a few extreme edge cases want to end their life and they go through all due diligence and meetings with doctors etc to get signed off, then they've made their choice and so be it. That's on them. Its not a spur of the moment decision like you're drawing a false comparison with Covid with, nor is it anything but a rounding error compared to the far greater problem of unregulated suicide which is just as big a problem in this country.
Any robust process of scrutiny should certainly involve objectors.
*pain free(ish), mentally composed, telling jokes, laughing etc.
No Parliament can bind its successors, any future Parliament can always pass new legislation, potential future legislation that may or may not be passed by a future Parliament following all correct democratic procedures is not a reason to reject good legislation currently before Parliament.
Others have rejected other parts of the article too.
At best, the argument seems to be, let’s get a bill, any bill passed, and worry about the details later.
‘We define terror round here mate’.
People are entitled to make whatever damned arguments they want. That's free speech.
We should not reject good laws to prevent people from making arguments or speaking.
It is up to a hypothetical future Parliament if it wants to pass a hypothetical future law. If it does, that's its choice. That's democracy.
Typical tories who have spent 15 years playing winner takes all politics and then crying when the boot is on the other foot.
Will you only be satisfied if someone responds bullet-point style to each and every point in one go?
So If Heathrow is sold off for development, who are the winners?
She devoted hundreds of posts, and several headers skewering the last government for showing the same lack of respect for due process, evidence-gathering, and Parliamentary procedure that Kim Ledbetter is displaying.
When they turned from Communism to State Capitalism, the various sectors of the economy were carved up between the oligarchy. Pretty much, they got what they were running.
So the coal mines and coal fire power stations are owned by various factions.
Other factions (some overlapping, some not) run cities etc - and see the pollution from coal as a menace. China has serious air quality problems - that threaten the smooth running of lots of stuff.
So a dispute in the oligarchy.
A struggle between the people trying to monetise the coal they own wit the people who find coal burning fucks up their stuff.
Vaguely similar to the holdouts in the US for coal.
If you don't like what any of our nu10k or whatever you want to call them public bodies are doing, Parliament is responsible for creating them.
Anyway, its neither here nor there, nor relevant. Canada passed primary legislation following its democratic procedures, so it is not an unauthorised expansion.
The points have been challenged. Any post refuting all the points in one go would be unreasonably large, the same size as the thread header or longer in fact. Doesn't negate the fact the challenges have been made because they're not in the format you want.
It would be fascinating to observe the effect of a genuine attempt to end mass net immigration upon all the other out of control things. But it won't happen, of course. The political argument about immigration is all about who can do the best job of getting the (tiny but very visible) boat people problem to go away, but there's no more interest in the Conservative high command in stopping immigration than there is in Labour's (or else they would've done something useful about it under at least one of their revolving door Prime Ministers at some point over the last fourteen years.)
The importation of workers will continue unchecked, because otherwise there would be labour shortages in critical sectors, wage inflation across the board, and considerable tax hikes to pump cash into decent wages for unglamorous roles (e.g. wiping the bottoms of the decrepit,) and thus tempt workers away from stacking shelves in Tesco. In short: mass immigration is unpopular, but the alternatives would result in even more voter screaming so nothing meaningful will be done about it.
We should have the right to write living wills, wills that stipulate that we receive nothing but pain relief if certain criteria are met in advance unless we give clear instructions to the contrary at the time. These should be binding on doctors and indeed families as @Barnesian illustrates.
We should facilitate access to drugs for patients that will shorten life and their application by anyone who is deemed mentally competent. No silly time limits and no nonsense about courts.
We should ensure that these options are discussed humanely, openly and clearly whenever a fatal diagnosis is given, whether of inoperable cancer or other conditions that are inevitably fatal in their effect.
So my ideal Act would go a lot further than the current bill but not have these absurd "safeguards" which have been sown into it. The underlying principle is that this is the choice of the patient, not society, not religion and not family. Those incapable of making that choice, whether through dementia or otherwise, would, of course, fall outwith those provisions which is why we should all be writing our living wills now.
I will support this Act as better than the status quo, but not remotely far enough and I would want to abolish most of the "safeguards" in it through legislation at a future date, or during the passage of this Act via amendments, to make a cleaner Act along the lines of what you are suggesting.
But my attitude is don't let the perfect be the enemy of what is already an improvement. If the choice is this Act with its absurd safeguards or no choice at all, then this Act is by far the lesser evil.
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right
Putin's starting terms are so unreasonable to Ukraine (the ceding of more territory not won on the battlefield), and previous US and ongoing European support of Ukraine sufficiently strong, that there's no leverage for Trump to force them to take such a deal. Even if he suspends all aid - Ukraine can keep fighting without him.
In contrast, one thing I've found incredible is that sanctions have not been tightened over time. Europe banning Russian LNG and oil. The US banning any affiliates US-listed companies from working in Russia. And lots of other things I've not thought of.
Maybe Trump sees that weakness and will turn the screws? Complements well with his wishes to sell more oil and gas to Europe.
I'm not optimistic given his history with Putin. But it's a possibility.
Gas on the other hand means pretty much derated jet engines. Which are far more tolerant of stop start.
Indeed, IIRC, *before* Whittle, people were using “internal combustion turbines” in a small number of power stations. While less efficient, thermodynamically, they minded stop/start much less.
Whittle’s contribution was massively increased efficiency and reduced weight at the same time.
Cyclefree objects to this being done via PMB rather than as a Government Bill while turning a blind eye to the fact that (A) PMB are a legitimate Parliamentary procedure and (B) they've been frequently used not for years or decades but for generations now for matters of conscience, which this patently is and is recognised as such on a cross-party basis.
That objection is in my opinion being made in bad faith turning a blind eye to prior precedence in how comparable conscience matters were decided.
... except for every other matter of conscience that has passed via PMB in the past for some reason.
Westminster - "Hold my beer"
Not including any disability groups here feels uncannily like the decision to exclude victims of male sexual violence as a witnesses from the GRR Bill at Holyrood. It suggests a majority of members pre-emptively deciding that they will have nothing relevant (“valid”) to say...
That turned out to be a bad decision on the part of the Scottish committee. Rightly,it dogged them. It led to a weaker process in terms of unearthing and exploring questions which subsequently became very prominent. So this feels like a strange decision, just politically.
https://x.com/LucyHunterB/status/1882136925366255950
This opposition to him is completely demoralised rather than energised in the way it was in 2016.
Though I take issue with her stats on the accuracy of doctors' prediction of the life expectancy of the terminally ill.
I'd like to see some objective contrast with how this committee is operating to how any other comparable committee does, but there's no hint of that just a complaint from a vested interest in killing the bill.
Parliamentary procedures are being followed.
I'd have no objection to this Act being amended once it is on the books, hopefully by removing most of the absurd "safeguards" that have no business being there, though that will take Parliamentary time and would need to follow Parliamentary procedures too.
Would you rather this was passed by three line whip? Or are you just looking for any excuse to moan?
Mary Warnock, you are sorely missed. We need another of your reports.
for years.
It’s dead calm over almost the entirety of British Isles and the near continent and has been for days. Wind should start picking up by midnight and come tomorrow rush hour we’ll be nudging record wind generation. Quite a rapid turnaround.
EDIT: and will almost certainly smash the record on Friday.
Which was entirely typical of him.
Canada has a far superior system where people can choose far more liberally than they can with what's proposed here.
Who has had a choice removed from them in Canada?
Either way, it is a fact that the cost of indemnifying the Bank against its QT losses is significant in the overall Government budget, and the Bank has been accused of exercising "fiscal dominance" from more than one quarter over the Government by adjusting its QT programme to give the Government more or less as desired when they've finished. As they are a Government agency, it's very much the case of the tail wagging the dog.
It is rotten and needs dealing with - as does the entire system of democratically-unaccountable 'independent' arms length bodies that are running the country into the ground.
Good performance again from Kemi at PMQ's today. Sir Kier was properly rattled by the end...
It is being choreographed by Kim Leadbeater, who only reluctantly entered parliament because her sister, Jo Cox, was murdered.
Kim has consulted widely and conscientiously.
Listen to her on the Rest is Politics if you want to judge her.
https://therestispolitics.supportingcast.fm/listen/leading/109-is-it-time-to-legalise-assisted-dying-kim-leadbeater
My view remains that the assisted dying bill is a can of worms we'd be far off not opening.
That's the way to go.
Bit of a shock for my grandmother when she took him a cup of tea an hour later, but apart from that.
She didn't follow his funeral instructions though. No "Roll out the Barrel" and Greek dancing girls. Shame