Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
Objecting to runway 3 at Heathrow and airport expansion, stopping the mine in Cumbria, stopping new oil and gas in the North sea is hardly the act of a man embracing opportunities for growth.
I am all in favour of renewables but for the foreseeable future we will need oil and gas and we will also need oil for the other by products that come from it.
I think it's important to seperate oil and gas.
Gas: New licences would have an immaterial impact on North Sea production, which will fall precipitously over the next 10 years regardless of your policy. We will continue to import a very large proportion from friendly countries like Norway.
Oil: The inverse. New licenses would have a material impact on the amount extracted (though it will still fall off like gas) , but the UK has roughly balanced imports/exports (£30 billion each way).
I think we could have an interesting debate about oil, particularly given it's non-energy uses. But gas is a fantasy, and therefore electricity generation and heating is going to have to be primarily renewables/heat pumps.
The bizarre assumption in the header that membership of the SM would magically create growth here is just irritating. Membership did not increase our growth, it increased our trade deficit. That meant the benefits of our (excessive) consumption were felt elsewhere, not here. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
So why does anyone think that membership of the SM would increase growth? What is the evidence that we are more competitive than when we left the SM? What new opportunities are available to us that would improve our export capacity? I am seeing the reverse. Germany is really struggling at the moment, on the edge of recession, and has been for a few years now. I don't see additional demand for UK products or services there. France is not much better. Overall the EU is growing quite slowly, dragged down by German underperformance.
If we were to make a go of the SM we would need years and years of major investment in our industry to boost productivity. We might, arguably, have started that thanks to Hunt's more generous write off provisions but we need to do so much more. We need to boost our skills levels. We need to think about how it could be made more attractive to employ people in the UK rather than elsewhere in the SM. Reeves' NI changes, of course, had the opposite effect.
Membership of the SM can be a good or a bad but it is not a given benefit. It is only a benefit if we can make it work for us. If we can reduce our trade deficit and, in fantasy land, even generate a surplus it would be a boost to growth. When we have economic policies, taxation policies and the skills base to compete we can think about it. Right now it seems a continuation of the same policies that have impoverished this country over the last 30 years, turning us into a net debtor country with much of our remaining capacity owned by others.
The impact of Brexit on the UK economy will be worse than that caused by the pandemic, according to the chairman of the UK fiscal watchdog.
Richard Hughes said the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had assumed leaving the EU would “reduce our long run GDP by around 4%”, adding in comments to the BBC: “We think that the effect of the pandemic will reduce that (GDP) output by a further 2%.”
The Single Market was one of Thatcher’s many fine achievements, it helps grow the economy.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
My personal view is that small scale reactors will have the same issues as large scale ones (hello NuScale !).
While solar panel costs continue to fall , nuclear costs only ever go one way - and then some, regardless of size or technology.
We might as well bite the bullet and spunk £20 billion on some massive inter-connectors & storage from Morocco.
The big cost in solar is *everything* but the panels - converters and other power electronics, grid connection, batteries etc. the panels are already extremely cheap. And falling in price.
Increasing the area of the panels because of northerly position and weather has little cost - a solar farm in Northumberland would have the same as Morocco, apart from more panels per watt.
So spending £20bn on solar from Morocco might well be a waste of money.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
which airlines are these ?
I'm sure they will all crib about Heathrow trying to inflate the cost, but no country the size of the UK is going to have 2 hub and spoke airports within 40 miles of each other.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
David Ricardo's ideas worked brilliantly for the UK when we were the workhouse of the world and had enormous competitive advantages over most of our markets. Not so sure they did much for India, for example. The overall net increase in production achieved by comparative advantage came here. The boot is now on the other foot.
I am not saying that we should be self sufficient in making goods or services. What I am saying is that the trade deficit that we have run continuously since 1998 (when Brown decided excess demand in our economy was a good thing) has resulted in this country becoming comparatively poorer than many others, struggling to fund investment, struggling to generate a tax base sufficient to pay for our services and struggling to provide gainful employment for our young. It is not true that our surplus on services "largely offsets" our deficit in goods. Our deficit is running at about £50bn a year. That's £50bn of UK assets that have to be sold each year to cover our consumption.
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
David Ricardo's ideas worked brilliantly for the UK when we were the workhouse of the world and had enormous competitive advantages over most of our markets. Not so sure they did much for India, for example. The overall net increase in production achieved by comparative advantage came here. The boot is now on the other foot.
I am not saying that we should be self sufficient in making goods or services. What I am saying is that the trade deficit that we have run continuously since 1998 (when Brown decided excess demand in our economy was a good thing) has resulted in this country becoming comparatively poorer than many others, struggling to fund investment, struggling to generate a tax base sufficient to pay for our services and struggling to provide gainful employment for our young. It is not true that our surplus on services "largely offsets" our deficit in goods. Our deficit is running at about £50bn a year. That's £50bn of UK assets that have to be sold each year to cover our consumption.
Comparative advantage is fine providing that both the partner countries and the overall trading framework are reliable. That particularly matters for essentials. Ultra-low cost clothing is something the country can do without, if it has to. Food, energy, critical raw materials and the like are not - so therefore the UK must retain a minimum secure supply, either internally, or, if externally, from countries who can both be relied on to continue producing and supplying the UK, and from whom trade will not be disrupted by the actions of hostile powers.
“The Department of Homeland Security has terminated all members of advisory committees, including one that has been investigating a major Chinese hack of large US telecom firms.
“"The Cyber Safety Review Board—a Department of Homeland Security investigatory body stood up under a Biden-era cybersecurity executive order to probe major cybersecurity incidents—has been cleared of non-government members as part of a DHS-wide push to cut costs under the Trump administration, according to three people familiar with the matter," NextGov/FCW reported yesterday.”
This is Trump being “tough” on China.
It's worth noting that the incident discussed, Salt Typhoon, may be the worst cyber attack against the US ever discovered. So it's not some trival thing to disband a group investigating it.
Mind you given that Trump is thinking of abolishing FEMA there are even crazier plans afoot.
I think that there is a lot still buried in the initial blizzard of Executive Orders that has not been noticed yet. One of them revoked about 80 Biden initiatives.
I have seen eg only marginal commentary on his rolling back of the reduced cost medicine programme - I haven't even seen anything myself beyond one or two mentions.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
The SNP were initially in favour of Heathrow 3. From my correspondence with SNP MPs: "Airports Limited estimate the runway will create up to 16,000 new Scottish jobs and, during construction on Heathrow Terminal 2, Scottish firms received an estimated £36m of contracts, creating 600 jobs.
The Scottish Government secured key commitments from Heathrow Airport Limited to deliver Scottish jobs and investment including 100 jobs at its Business Support Centre in Renfrew, £200m of construction-related spend in Scotland and £1.5m investment by the firm in a marketing campaign to promote Scotland." A bit of a sweetener there! And then: "As you will be aware, this week Parliament voted 415 to 119 in support of the UK Conservative Government’s planning policy which would permit construction of a third runway at Heathrow. I and my SNP colleagues could not support the proposals, and did not take part in the vote after the UK Government failed to provide key protections for Scottish airports and flight routes."
I lobbied every one of the SNP MPs at the time, and like to feel I had some part in them changing their stance on this.
One of the climate models is suggesting a low pressure of 932mb might reach the UK by Friday - this would be the lowest air pressure ever recorded here, if it comes to pass. A serious storm is incoming.
The bizarre assumption in the header that membership of the SM would magically create growth here is just irritating. Membership did not increase our growth, it increased our trade deficit. That meant the benefits of our (excessive) consumption were felt elsewhere, not here. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
So why does anyone think that membership of the SM would increase growth? What is the evidence that we are more competitive than when we left the SM? What new opportunities are available to us that would improve our export capacity? I am seeing the reverse. Germany is really struggling at the moment, on the edge of recession, and has been for a few years now. I don't see additional demand for UK products or services there. France is not much better. Overall the EU is growing quite slowly, dragged down by German underperformance.
If we were to make a go of the SM we would need years and years of major investment in our industry to boost productivity. We might, arguably, have started that thanks to Hunt's more generous write off provisions but we need to do so much more. We need to boost our skills levels. We need to think about how it could be made more attractive to employ people in the UK rather than elsewhere in the SM. Reeves' NI changes, of course, had the opposite effect.
Membership of the SM can be a good or a bad but it is not a given benefit. It is only a benefit if we can make it work for us. If we can reduce our trade deficit and, in fantasy land, even generate a surplus it would be a boost to growth. When we have economic policies, taxation policies and the skills base to compete we can think about it. Right now it seems a continuation of the same policies that have impoverished this country over the last 30 years, turning us into a net debtor country with much of our remaining capacity owned by others.
The impact of Brexit on the UK economy will be worse than that caused by the pandemic, according to the chairman of the UK fiscal watchdog.
Richard Hughes said the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had assumed leaving the EU would “reduce our long run GDP by around 4%”, adding in comments to the BBC: “We think that the effect of the pandemic will reduce that (GDP) output by a further 2%.”
The Single Market was one of Thatcher’s many fine achievements, it helps grow the economy.
The evidence to date does not support that proposition.
As far as the SM is concerned that was built into the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and enforced with a series of EEC court judgements in 1962 and following. Thatcher's ideas were to expand the free trade from goods into services where we had a competitive advantage. That gave a lot of opportunities for London in particular. That part of free trade very definitely worked for us but much of the rest of the UK lost jobs as our manufacturing base was not competitive and was eliminated.
As the Proclaimers put it, Bathgate no more, Linwood no more, Methil no more, Irvine no more...That is where we are.
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
David Ricardo's ideas worked brilliantly for the UK when we were the workhouse of the world and had enormous competitive advantages over most of our markets. Not so sure they did much for India, for example. The overall net increase in production achieved by comparative advantage came here. The boot is now on the other foot.
I am not saying that we should be self sufficient in making goods or services. What I am saying is that the trade deficit that we have run continuously since 1998 (when Brown decided excess demand in our economy was a good thing) has resulted in this country becoming comparatively poorer than many others, struggling to fund investment, struggling to generate a tax base sufficient to pay for our services and struggling to provide gainful employment for our young. It is not true that our surplus on services "largely offsets" our deficit in goods. Our deficit is running at about £50bn a year. That's £50bn of UK assets that have to be sold each year to cover our consumption.
Comparative advantage is fine providing that both the partner countries and the overall trading framework are reliable. That particularly matters for essentials. Ultra-low cost clothing is something the country can do without, if it has to. Food, energy, critical raw materials and the like are not - so therefore the UK must retain a minimum secure supply, either internally, or, if externally, from countries who can both be relied on to continue producing and supplying the UK, and from whom trade will not be disrupted by the actions of hostile powers.
As we saw in 2020, many things can be scaled up rapidly at a time of need, even weapons production. And even in the more goods-based economy of the 1940s, rationing was required. So there is flexibility to ensure vital goods supply that doesn't require capacity in normal times.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
It is certainly more likely the UK rejoins the EEA or a customs union than gets a trade deal with the USA in the next few years. Especially with Trump imposing 10% tariffs on foreign imports to the USA with more for China, Mexico and Canada.
The most likely outcome of the next general election on current polls is a Labour minority government supported by the LDs which would make a closer trading relationship with the EU inevitable. Note the vast majority of both Labour and LDs, 75%, want a closer relationship with the EU over the USA on that Yougov poll.
Interestingly a narrow plurality of Tory voters now prefer a closer trading relationship with the EU too, 37% to 35%. Reform voters though still the outlier with the majority, 56%, wanting a closer trading relationship with Trump's USA to just 20% for the EU
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
My personal view is that small scale reactors will have the same issues as large scale ones (hello NuScale !).
While solar panel costs continue to fall , nuclear costs only ever go one way - and then some, regardless of size or technology.
We might as well bite the bullet and spunk £20 billion on some massive inter-connectors & storage from Morocco.
The big cost in solar is *everything* but the panels - converters and other power electronics, grid connection, batteries etc. the panels are already extremely cheap. And falling in price.
Increasing the area of the panels because of northerly position and weather has little cost - a solar farm in Northumberland would have the same as Morocco, apart from more panels per watt.
So spending £20bn on solar from Morocco might well be a waste of money.
You'd need nearly three times the number of panels, and the intermittency problems would be much larger - and more correlated with the UK's existing intermittency problems. Therefore more storage, which is very expensive.
I wasn't aware of this: ..The PV component will generate electricity during daylight hours, and the PV panels will move to track the sun to increase output in the morning and the evening. In Morocco, the prevailing winds blow most strongly in the afternoon and early evening, driven by the temperature difference between the Sahara Desert and the cooler Atlantic Ocean. These generating characteristics, combined with battery back-up, should allow the cable to run at full capacity for more than 19 hours a day on average...
There is, of course, an energy security downside to Morocco, as that length of interconnect would be quite hard to protect against bad actors.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
Transport from LHR to Westminster is 60 minutes according to Google Maps. Check it. Transport from Gatwick to Westminster is 50 minutes.
Fly to Gatwick. There is a strong case for expanding Gatwick capacity.
All those media wh*res ramping Farage as the next PM or some such rubbish could well be totally missing the direction of travel. Ed Davey's decent, intelligent moderation is finally getting the attention it deserves. His piece in the Guardian yesterday is a thoughtful dissection of the threat of Musk and the other tech cronies. The mood music across Europe concerning the new Trump order is strongly negative, and the bombastic, tawdry style of the new administration unlikely to improve Trump's already low popularity here. Trump scepticism has a solid franchise with the voters- Sir Ed could well gain massively by expressing this.
Trump is America first. He is unlikely to care a great deal about what people in Europe think of him. Improving his popularity in the US is what matters to him not in the EU.
You missed the point- it's what the negative view of Trump does in UK and European politics that I'm talking about. In any event the best way to get any kind of deal with a grifter like Trump is to be fully prepared to walk away.
The best way to get any kind of deal with anyone is to be fully prepared to walk away. Some of us knew this in 2016.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
Yes. Ricardo is a genius, but as with Adam Smith sometimes you wonder to what extent their principle would survive intact if they were economic philosophers of the modern world.
Ricardo works brilliantly for nation A and B needing products X and Y and all gaining by specialisation and trade.
But suppose, applying Ricardo, nation UK is so good at financial services, IT tech, law, insurance, tourism, media and culture it has no need for industry, manufacturing, ag and fish and so on. Perhaps when taken to extremes the social consequences are grave because human nature being what it is, you have millions of people who are no good at these jobs, and are on the scrap heap, and need to import millions of others who are good at sums and IT.
I suspect this is partly why we have millions of people of working age on benefits.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
We were due to go to Australia last December and flying BA from Newcastle to Heathrow as the first leg.
The Flight check in for the BA flight to Heathrow was due to open 24 hours beforehand at 5PM. When I went to check in online the flight had just been cancelled.
So we spent a fraught 2 hours trying to get rebooked on a different flight made all the more difficult by BA not having put some notification or other to the travel agent the flight was cancelled. Eventually managed to get on the first flight to London the following morning which worked out fine in the end as we had a nice day but BA are shit. Cancelling 24 hours before the flight was due. Poor. Would never book them again.
All those media wh*res ramping Farage as the next PM or some such rubbish could well be totally missing the direction of travel. Ed Davey's decent, intelligent moderation is finally getting the attention it deserves. His piece in the Guardian yesterday is a thoughtful dissection of the threat of Musk and the other tech cronies. The mood music across Europe concerning the new Trump order is strongly negative, and the bombastic, tawdry style of the new administration unlikely to improve Trump's already low popularity here. Trump scepticism has a solid franchise with the voters- Sir Ed could well gain massively by expressing this.
Trump is America first. He is unlikely to care a great deal about what people in Europe think of him. Improving his popularity in the US is what matters to him not in the EU.
You missed the point- it's what the negative view of Trump does in UK and European politics that I'm talking about. In any event the best way to get any kind of deal with a grifter like Trump is to be fully prepared to walk away.
The best way to get any kind of deal with anyone is to be fully prepared to walk away. Some of us knew this in 2016.
I actually laughed. How did that turn out?
In general the best deals are the ones where you get the most of what you want for the fewest concessions on the stuff you really don't want.
All those media wh*res ramping Farage as the next PM or some such rubbish could well be totally missing the direction of travel. Ed Davey's decent, intelligent moderation is finally getting the attention it deserves. His piece in the Guardian yesterday is a thoughtful dissection of the threat of Musk and the other tech cronies. The mood music across Europe concerning the new Trump order is strongly negative, and the bombastic, tawdry style of the new administration unlikely to improve Trump's already low popularity here. Trump scepticism has a solid franchise with the voters- Sir Ed could well gain massively by expressing this.
Trump is America first. He is unlikely to care a great deal about what people in Europe think of him. Improving his popularity in the US is what matters to him not in the EU.
You missed the point- it's what the negative view of Trump does in UK and European politics that I'm talking about. In any event the best way to get any kind of deal with a grifter like Trump is to be fully prepared to walk away.
The best way to get any kind of deal with anyone is to be fully prepared to walk away. Some of us knew this in 2016.
You are absolutely right.
Number of times I have had a negotiation where the other party has said this is the lowest they can do or the best they can do even though you know there is more to come only for them to come back and offer a better deal when you walk away.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
Its a special kind of idiocy that leads people to claim that not being totally dependent on imports for strategic industries requires total self-sufficiency in everything.
A European country struggling for growth should be looking to join the Single Market, you'd have thought.
Are we a European country struggling for growth?
Well then.
Well why are France, Germany and Italy struggling for growth if that's the case ?
Many reasons. But they'd be struggling more without the Single Market. You're not seriously suggesting the Single Market doesn't aid growth for its members, I hope. No, you can't be. That would be a bizarre thing to say.
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
Yes. Ricardo is a genius, but as with Adam Smith sometimes you wonder to what extent their principle would survive intact if they were economic philosophers of the modern world.
Ricardo works brilliantly for nation A and B needing products X and Y and all gaining by specialisation and trade.
But suppose, applying Ricardo, nation UK is so good at financial services, IT tech, law, insurance, tourism, media and culture it has no need for industry, manufacturing, ag and fish and so on. Perhaps when taken to extremes the social consequences are grave because human nature being what it is, you have millions of people who are no good at these jobs, and are on the scrap heap, and need to import millions of others who are good at sums and IT.
I suspect this is partly why we have millions of people of working age on benefits.
It also creates a serious vulnerability to any change in that comparative advantage. As AI is likely to do with the knowledge economy*.
(*The same probably applies to manufacturing, but that will probably take longer.)
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
My personal view is that small scale reactors will have the same issues as large scale ones (hello NuScale !).
While solar panel costs continue to fall , nuclear costs only ever go one way - and then some, regardless of size or technology.
We might as well bite the bullet and spunk £20 billion on some massive inter-connectors & storage from Morocco.
The big cost in solar is *everything* but the panels - converters and other power electronics, grid connection, batteries etc. the panels are already extremely cheap. And falling in price.
Increasing the area of the panels because of northerly position and weather has little cost - a solar farm in Northumberland would have the same as Morocco, apart from more panels per watt.
So spending £20bn on solar from Morocco might well be a waste of money.
You'd need nearly three times the number of panels, and the intermittency problems would be much larger - and more correlated with the UK's existing intermittency problems. Therefore more storage, which is very expensive.
I wasn't aware of this: ..The PV component will generate electricity during daylight hours, and the PV panels will move to track the sun to increase output in the morning and the evening. In Morocco, the prevailing winds blow most strongly in the afternoon and early evening, driven by the temperature difference between the Sahara Desert and the cooler Atlantic Ocean. These generating characteristics, combined with battery back-up, should allow the cable to run at full capacity for more than 19 hours a day on average...
There is, of course, an energy security downside to Morocco, as that length of interconnect would be quite hard to protect against bad actors.
The cost of connector vs storage - which drops further, first?
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
One of very few government agencies that operates in a nonpartisan way, and one of very few government departments that has to deal cordially with Russia and China.
The bizarre assumption in the header that membership of the SM would magically create growth here is just irritating. Membership did not increase our growth, it increased our trade deficit. That meant the benefits of our (excessive) consumption were felt elsewhere, not here. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
So why does anyone think that membership of the SM would increase growth? What is the evidence that we are more competitive than when we left the SM? What new opportunities are available to us that would improve our export capacity? I am seeing the reverse. Germany is really struggling at the moment, on the edge of recession, and has been for a few years now. I don't see additional demand for UK products or services there. France is not much better. Overall the EU is growing quite slowly, dragged down by German underperformance.
If we were to make a go of the SM we would need years and years of major investment in our industry to boost productivity. We might, arguably, have started that thanks to Hunt's more generous write off provisions but we need to do so much more. We need to boost our skills levels. We need to think about how it could be made more attractive to employ people in the UK rather than elsewhere in the SM. Reeves' NI changes, of course, had the opposite effect.
Membership of the SM can be a good or a bad but it is not a given benefit. It is only a benefit if we can make it work for us. If we can reduce our trade deficit and, in fantasy land, even generate a surplus it would be a boost to growth. When we have economic policies, taxation policies and the skills base to compete we can think about it. Right now it seems a continuation of the same policies that have impoverished this country over the last 30 years, turning us into a net debtor country with much of our remaining capacity owned by others.
The impact of Brexit on the UK economy will be worse than that caused by the pandemic, according to the chairman of the UK fiscal watchdog.
Richard Hughes said the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had assumed leaving the EU would “reduce our long run GDP by around 4%”, adding in comments to the BBC: “We think that the effect of the pandemic will reduce that (GDP) output by a further 2%.”
The Single Market was one of Thatcher’s many fine achievements, it helps grow the economy.
When Thatcher was prime minister the UK had a trade surplus.
Thatcher also believed in living within your means and the UK often had a trade surplus when she was prime minister.
Perhaps you could tell us what the trade balance has been with the EU since then.
All those media wh*res ramping Farage as the next PM or some such rubbish could well be totally missing the direction of travel. Ed Davey's decent, intelligent moderation is finally getting the attention it deserves. His piece in the Guardian yesterday is a thoughtful dissection of the threat of Musk and the other tech cronies. The mood music across Europe concerning the new Trump order is strongly negative, and the bombastic, tawdry style of the new administration unlikely to improve Trump's already low popularity here. Trump scepticism has a solid franchise with the voters- Sir Ed could well gain massively by expressing this.
Trump is America first. He is unlikely to care a great deal about what people in Europe think of him. Improving his popularity in the US is what matters to him not in the EU.
You missed the point- it's what the negative view of Trump does in UK and European politics that I'm talking about. In any event the best way to get any kind of deal with a grifter like Trump is to be fully prepared to walk away.
The best way to get any kind of deal with anyone is to be fully prepared to walk away. Some of us knew this in 2016.
You are absolutely right.
Number of times I have had a negotiation where the other party has said this is the lowest they can do or the best they can do even though you know there is more to come only for them to come back and offer a better deal when you walk away.
That doesn't work when you need the deal more than they do.
Just a question - I understand joining the Single Market but wouldn’t that restore Freedom of Movement unless we went down the Swiss route and negotiated a series of bilateral treaties with the EU which would, inter alia, define the extent to which the Four Freedoms would be followed?
Had we renegotiated our membership on the Swiss model of bilateral treaties, we might have saved ourselves a lot of time and anguish.
The question of ties involves linked contingencies, and this is becoming clearer.
So the question of who the UK would like to be closely linked with in trade blocs is not unrelated to who western Europe expects to give them a hand against the Russians and any other enemies that popped up.
A few moments ago our world was this: The EU was free Europe economically; and militarily that free Europe was the same outfits extended to friendly USA and Canada, without which everyone knew that free Europe had limited fire power with the joker in the pack being France and UK's nuclear threat.
We can place no reliance on that old picture. To the question in the YouGov survey could be added: 'In the event of a Russian invasion of a further free European country would you prefer (1) the USA army or (2) the EU army to be on your side'.
Militarily our closest relationship is with the USA and NATO even if economically it is with the EU.
It is Trump threatening to withdraw from NATO though not us
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
It is certainly more likely the UK rejoins the EEA or a customs union than gets a trade deal with the USA in the next few years. Especially with Trump imposing 10% tariffs on foreign imports to the USA with more for China, Mexico and Canada.
The most likely outcome of the next general election on current polls is a Labour minority government supported by the LDs which would make a closer trading relationship with the EU inevitable. Note the vast majority of both Labour and LDs, 75%, want a closer relationship with the EU over the USA on that Yougov poll.
Interestingly a narrow plurality of Tory voters now prefer a closer trading relationship with the EU too, 37% to 35%. Reform voters though still the outlier with the majority, 56%, wanting a closer trading relationship with Trump's USA to just 20% for the EU
It is interesting to see that Ed Davey is calling for the UK to push for entry into a Single Market with the EU, while poor old Starmer is left trying to strike a balance between the EU and the USA. And Top Tories are still sucking up to Trump.
When are you coming over to the Lib Dems, young HY?
One of the climate models is suggesting a low pressure of 932mb might reach the UK by Friday - this would be the lowest air pressure ever recorded here, if it comes to pass. A serious storm is incoming.
Our vehicles are definitely getting parked in the garage over the next few days.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
Transport from LHR to Westminster is 60 minutes according to Google Maps. Check it. Transport from Gatwick to Westminster is 50 minutes.
Fly to Gatwick. There is a strong case for expanding Gatwick capacity.
To be honest , our years of worldwide international travel was always out of Heathrow and I simply do not understand why anyone would promote Gatwick over Heathrow
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
Transport from LHR to Westminster is 60 minutes according to Google Maps. Check it. Transport from Gatwick to Westminster is 50 minutes.
Fly to Gatwick. There is a strong case for expanding Gatwick capacity.
To be honest , our years of worldwide international travel was always out of Heathrow and I simply do not understand why anyone would promote Gatwick over Heathrow
Gatwick is much cheaper and quicker to get into London.
One of very few government agencies that operates in a nonpartisan way, and one of very few government departments that has to deal cordially with Russia and China.
By US law, NASA can barely acknowledge the existence of the Chinese space program.
THis is one for @Malmesbury or @Dura_Ace , I think, about rules of engagement around NATO/Russia borders for military aircraft.
I picked up an observation yesterday (not sure where - maybe Times Radio) that our Rules of Engagement for patrolling aircraft are *far* weaker than in the Cold War, and needed strengthening.
That is, in the Cold War a targeting "radar lock on" (as opposed to a "find it" radar) would be answered with a missile aimed at the source, where as now it would get a "you naughty boy" message.
Is this true, and to what extent?
I'm aware are of various military aircraft being shot down when they strayed into the wrong bit of airspace in the early Cold War (~1950s-60s), but nothing post-1970 or so.
One of the climate models is suggesting a low pressure of 932mb might reach the UK by Friday - this would be the lowest air pressure ever recorded here, if it comes to pass. A serious storm is incoming.
Currently a red warning for Northern Ireland. Amber and yellow for the rest of us.
It is certainly more likely the UK rejoins the EEA or a customs union than gets a trade deal with the USA in the next few years. Especially with Trump imposing 10% tariffs on foreign imports to the USA with more for China, Mexico and Canada.
The most likely outcome of the next general election on current polls is a Labour minority government supported by the LDs which would make a closer trading relationship with the EU inevitable. Note the vast majority of both Labour and LDs, 75%, want a closer relationship with the EU over the USA on that Yougov poll.
Interestingly a narrow plurality of Tory voters now prefer a closer trading relationship with the EU too, 37% to 35%. Reform voters though still the outlier with the majority, 56%, wanting a closer trading relationship with Trump's USA to just 20% for the EU
It is interesting to see that Ed Davey is calling for the UK to push for entry into a Single Market with the EU, while poor old Starmer is left trying to strike a balance between the EU and the USA. And Top Tories are still sucking up to Trump.
When are you coming over to the Lib Dems, young HY?
The difference between Ed Davey and Starmer is that Ed Davey is not in government whilst Starmer has to deal with the real politic
The 'join the single market to boost growth' mantra is a mirror image to 'sign a trade deal with the USA to boost growth'.
And equally deluded.
There are no quick fixes if economic growth is to be boosted.
Better training, welfare reform, taxation reform, regulation reform, improved transport, cheaper energy, affordable housing are some of the things required.
All of which will take years to implement and further years to have an effect.
Ugh, the Luddites are in control at The Telegraph, don’t these bellends realise you can control the settings on the steering wheel for nearly everything even before touchscreen dashboards
Touchscreen dashboards have finally taken over and ruined driving
Physical buttons are being consigned to history – but trying to prod a screen while navigating our famously poor road surfaces isn’t easy
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
Transport from LHR to Westminster is 60 minutes according to Google Maps. Check it. Transport from Gatwick to Westminster is 50 minutes.
Fly to Gatwick. There is a strong case for expanding Gatwick capacity.
To be honest , our years of worldwide international travel was always out of Heathrow and I simply do not understand why anyone would promote Gatwick over Heathrow
Gatwick is much cheaper and quicker to get into London.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
We were due to go to Australia last December and flying BA from Newcastle to Heathrow as the first leg.
The Flight check in for the BA flight to Heathrow was due to open 24 hours beforehand at 5PM. When I went to check in online the flight had just been cancelled.
So we spent a fraught 2 hours trying to get rebooked on a different flight made all the more difficult by BA not having put some notification or other to the travel agent the flight was cancelled. Eventually managed to get on the first flight to London the following morning which worked out fine in the end as we had a nice day but BA are shit. Cancelling 24 hours before the flight was due. Poor. Would never book them again.
Yeah that sucks, and is a good example of the problems.
Heathrow is so far over capacity that they developed a complicated way to get the planes closer to each other on approach to land, but that only works when they can see each other, so in poor weather they have to keep them further apart and can land fewer planes. Which then leaves planes, crews, and passengers, all in the wrong places, and ruins everyone’s day.
KLM, Lufthansa, and Emirates on long-haul, provide a more reliable service from regional airports like Newcastle, I guess you’ll be taking one of those to Australia next time.
I picked up an observation yesterday (not sure where - maybe Times Radio) that our Rules of Engagement for patrolling aircraft are *far* weaker than in the Cold War, and needed strengthening.
That is, in the Cold War a targeting "radar lock on" (as opposed to a "find it" radar) would be answered with a missile aimed at the source, where as now it would get a "you naughty boy".
Is this true, and to what extent? I'm aware are various aircraft being shot down when they strayed into the wrong bit of airspace in the early Cold War (~1950s-60s), but nothing post-1970 or so.
During the Cold War, a "radar lock on" was not answered with firing a weapon, generally. At least in the West.
NATO forces in general din't fire on Warsaw Pact aircraft. Warsaw Pact aircraft had much more aggressive rules of engagement.
First you have to define a "lock on" - for many systems, there was a general search radar. Which could have a lock/tracking mode. Then there would be separate targeting radars - which would lock on. Modern systems often get rid of a separate targeting system and the different modes in terms of search radar.
Secondly, provoking a "lock on" was a way of gathering electronic intelligence on the opponents systems.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
Ugh, the Luddites are in control at The Telegraph, don’t these bellends realise you can control the settings on the steering wheel for nearly everything even before touchscreen dashboards
Touchscreen dashboards have finally taken over and ruined driving
Physical buttons are being consigned to history – but trying to prod a screen while navigating our famously poor road surfaces isn’t easy
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
My personal view is that small scale reactors will have the same issues as large scale ones (hello NuScale !).
While solar panel costs continue to fall , nuclear costs only ever go one way - and then some, regardless of size or technology.
We might as well bite the bullet and spunk £20 billion on some massive inter-connectors & storage from Morocco.
The big cost in solar is *everything* but the panels - converters and other power electronics, grid connection, batteries etc. the panels are already extremely cheap. And falling in price.
Increasing the area of the panels because of northerly position and weather has little cost - a solar farm in Northumberland would have the same as Morocco, apart from more panels per watt.
So spending £20bn on solar from Morocco might well be a waste of money.
You'd need nearly three times the number of panels, and the intermittency problems would be much larger - and more correlated with the UK's existing intermittency problems. Therefore more storage, which is very expensive.
I wasn't aware of this: ..The PV component will generate electricity during daylight hours, and the PV panels will move to track the sun to increase output in the morning and the evening. In Morocco, the prevailing winds blow most strongly in the afternoon and early evening, driven by the temperature difference between the Sahara Desert and the cooler Atlantic Ocean. These generating characteristics, combined with battery back-up, should allow the cable to run at full capacity for more than 19 hours a day on average...
There is, of course, an energy security downside to Morocco, as that length of interconnect would be quite hard to protect against bad actors.
The cost of connector vs storage - which drops further, first?
It's a good question. I agree that the Morocco project is looking shakier economically than it was a few years back. And my fag packet calculation is that the cable is a pretty big percentage of the total cost. We might just be better off doing it as an investment in Morocco - that much cheap power would turbocharge their economy.
That is, in the Cold War a targeting "radar lock on" (as opposed to a "find it" radar) would be answered with a missile aimed at the source, where as now it would get a "you naughty boy" message.
Absolutely not. Weapons Tight until explicitly authorised to go Hold or Free.
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
Yes. Ricardo is a genius, but as with Adam Smith sometimes you wonder to what extent their principle would survive intact if they were economic philosophers of the modern world.
Ricardo works brilliantly for nation A and B needing products X and Y and all gaining by specialisation and trade.
But suppose, applying Ricardo, nation UK is so good at financial services, IT tech, law, insurance, tourism, media and culture it has no need for industry, manufacturing, ag and fish and so on. Perhaps when taken to extremes the social consequences are grave because human nature being what it is, you have millions of people who are no good at these jobs, and are on the scrap heap, and need to import millions of others who are good at sums and IT.
I suspect this is partly why we have millions of people of working age on benefits.
Complex economic theory doesn’t always work perfectly when up against an actual country’s economy, with actual people working in it rather than divisible “labour units”. Who’d have guessed that?
Yes, these theories often hold up to a point, when the negative externalities of a policy start to outweigh the benefits.
A European country struggling for growth should be looking to join the Single Market, you'd have thought.
Are we a European country struggling for growth?
Well then.
Well why are France, Germany and Italy struggling for growth if that's the case ?
Many reasons. But they'd be struggling more without the Single Market. You're not seriously suggesting the Single Market doesn't aid growth for its members, I hope. No, you can't be. That would be a bizarre thing to say.
The single market affects different areas in different ways.
Some areas will be affected negatively overall.
Clearly as you believe that free trade is so beneficial then you must logically believe that a free trade deal with the USA is preferable to joining the EU single market as that would result in more trade barriers being reduced and with a larger and richer economy.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
My personal view is that small scale reactors will have the same issues as large scale ones (hello NuScale !).
While solar panel costs continue to fall , nuclear costs only ever go one way - and then some, regardless of size or technology.
We might as well bite the bullet and spunk £20 billion on some massive inter-connectors & storage from Morocco.
The big cost in solar is *everything* but the panels - converters and other power electronics, grid connection, batteries etc. the panels are already extremely cheap. And falling in price.
Increasing the area of the panels because of northerly position and weather has little cost - a solar farm in Northumberland would have the same as Morocco, apart from more panels per watt.
So spending £20bn on solar from Morocco might well be a waste of money.
You'd need nearly three times the number of panels, and the intermittency problems would be much larger - and more correlated with the UK's existing intermittency problems. Therefore more storage, which is very expensive.
I wasn't aware of this: ..The PV component will generate electricity during daylight hours, and the PV panels will move to track the sun to increase output in the morning and the evening. In Morocco, the prevailing winds blow most strongly in the afternoon and early evening, driven by the temperature difference between the Sahara Desert and the cooler Atlantic Ocean. These generating characteristics, combined with battery back-up, should allow the cable to run at full capacity for more than 19 hours a day on average...
There is, of course, an energy security downside to Morocco, as that length of interconnect would be quite hard to protect against bad actors.
There's an aspect of undersea cabling that I don't understand. If different operators between numerous destinations lay down cables and pipes for communications, power, gas and oil, don't they end up in a giant tangle? If the comms cable laid down ten years ago needs repair, how do you get to it if there are half a dozen others on top? Not to mention the 'accidental' anchor-dragging problem.
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
David Ricardo's ideas worked brilliantly for the UK when we were the workhouse of the world and had enormous competitive advantages over most of our markets. Not so sure they did much for India, for example. The overall net increase in production achieved by comparative advantage came here. The boot is now on the other foot.
I am not saying that we should be self sufficient in making goods or services. What I am saying is that the trade deficit that we have run continuously since 1998 (when Brown decided excess demand in our economy was a good thing) has resulted in this country becoming comparatively poorer than many others, struggling to fund investment, struggling to generate a tax base sufficient to pay for our services and struggling to provide gainful employment for our young. It is not true that our surplus on services "largely offsets" our deficit in goods. Our deficit is running at about £50bn a year. That's £50bn of UK assets that have to be sold each year to cover our consumption.
Comparative advantage is fine providing that both the partner countries and the overall trading framework are reliable. That particularly matters for essentials. Ultra-low cost clothing is something the country can do without, if it has to. Food, energy, critical raw materials and the like are not - so therefore the UK must retain a minimum secure supply, either internally, or, if externally, from countries who can both be relied on to continue producing and supplying the UK, and from whom trade will not be disrupted by the actions of hostile powers.
Because in cash terms agriculture is such a tiny part of our economy - about the size of toy plastic duck manufacture - it is hard to remember the necessary scale required for food security. The BBC R4 farming prog was talking recently to a big farming outfit harvesting 30,000 tonnes of carrots a year. Which is a lot. But only enough to provide a single 1kg bag of carrots per UK household per year.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
That's based on the calculation that the longest power connector yet built is cheaper than power storage/more panels, essentially.
Both are dropping in cost. It's a tough bet at the moment.
(Morocco)
complemented by a 22.5 GWh / 5 GW battery
That is some battery !
7500 shipping containers worth.... which at current prices is $9Bn or so.
I think you'd get a discount on an order that size.
If the project were to go ahead we should do a deal with one of the better manufacturers (either CATL of one of the Koreans) to build a plant in the UK to supply them. That large an order ought to be a sufficient incentive. We should do such a deal anyway, as we're going to need such capacity in the UK, Xlinks or not.
Just a question - I understand joining the Single Market but wouldn’t that restore Freedom of Movement unless we went down the Swiss route and negotiated a series of bilateral treaties with the EU which would, inter alia, define the extent to which the Four Freedoms would be followed?
Had we renegotiated our membership on the Swiss model of bilateral treaties, we might have saved ourselves a lot of time and anguish.
Yes, it would mean freedom of movement, which is another reason why it's unlikely to happen openly, though it may by stealth.
The EU have always hated the Swiss model, essentially because it requires them to treat the Swiss as equals they have to negotiate with, not as supplicants they can bully, so they made it very clear it wasn't on the table for us.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
My personal view is that small scale reactors will have the same issues as large scale ones (hello NuScale !).
While solar panel costs continue to fall , nuclear costs only ever go one way - and then some, regardless of size or technology.
We might as well bite the bullet and spunk £20 billion on some massive inter-connectors & storage from Morocco.
The big cost in solar is *everything* but the panels - converters and other power electronics, grid connection, batteries etc. the panels are already extremely cheap. And falling in price.
Increasing the area of the panels because of northerly position and weather has little cost - a solar farm in Northumberland would have the same as Morocco, apart from more panels per watt.
So spending £20bn on solar from Morocco might well be a waste of money.
You'd need nearly three times the number of panels, and the intermittency problems would be much larger - and more correlated with the UK's existing intermittency problems. Therefore more storage, which is very expensive.
I wasn't aware of this: ..The PV component will generate electricity during daylight hours, and the PV panels will move to track the sun to increase output in the morning and the evening. In Morocco, the prevailing winds blow most strongly in the afternoon and early evening, driven by the temperature difference between the Sahara Desert and the cooler Atlantic Ocean. These generating characteristics, combined with battery back-up, should allow the cable to run at full capacity for more than 19 hours a day on average...
There is, of course, an energy security downside to Morocco, as that length of interconnect would be quite hard to protect against bad actors.
There's an aspect of undersea cabling that I don't understand. If different operators between numerous destinations lay down cables and pipes for communications, power, gas and oil, don't they end up in a giant tangle? If the comms cable laid down ten years ago needs repair, how do you get to it if there are half a dozen others on top? Not to mention the 'accidental' anchor-dragging problem.
That's why you keep maps, and have planning. The sabotage problem has yet to be satisfactorily addressed, I think. (Speaking of which, what's happening with the Black Sea HVDC cable project ?)
A European country struggling for growth should be looking to join the Single Market, you'd have thought.
Are we a European country struggling for growth?
Well then.
Well why are France, Germany and Italy struggling for growth if that's the case ?
Many reasons. But they'd be struggling more without the Single Market. You're not seriously suggesting the Single Market doesn't aid growth for its members, I hope. No, you can't be. That would be a bizarre thing to say.
The single market affects different areas in different ways.
Some areas will be affected negatively overall.
Clearly as you believe that free trade is so beneficial then you must logically believe that a free trade deal with the USA is preferable to joining the EU single market as that would result in more trade barriers being reduced and with a larger and richer economy.
That relies on maintaining the fallacy that a trade deal with the US would be on anything like favourable terms for Britain.
Put simply, we export services to them and buy goods. And we have near-zero opportunity to become a hub in Pan-North American supply chains, as we were (and still are to some extent) in Europe.
The main beneficiaries would be US agricultural exporters.
Just a question - I understand joining the Single Market but wouldn’t that restore Freedom of Movement unless we went down the Swiss route and negotiated a series of bilateral treaties with the EU which would, inter alia, define the extent to which the Four Freedoms would be followed?
Had we renegotiated our membership on the Swiss model of bilateral treaties, we might have saved ourselves a lot of time and anguish.
Yes, it would mean freedom of movement, which is another reason why it's unlikely to happen openly, though it may by stealth.
The EU have always hated the Swiss model, essentially because it requires them to treat the Swiss as equals they have to negotiate with, not as supplicants they can bully, so they made it very clear it wasn't on the table for us.
And very clear it's not the future for Switzerland either, hence the failed and now reborn "framework agreement".
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
My personal view is that small scale reactors will have the same issues as large scale ones (hello NuScale !).
While solar panel costs continue to fall , nuclear costs only ever go one way - and then some, regardless of size or technology.
We might as well bite the bullet and spunk £20 billion on some massive inter-connectors & storage from Morocco.
The big cost in solar is *everything* but the panels - converters and other power electronics, grid connection, batteries etc. the panels are already extremely cheap. And falling in price.
Increasing the area of the panels because of northerly position and weather has little cost - a solar farm in Northumberland would have the same as Morocco, apart from more panels per watt.
So spending £20bn on solar from Morocco might well be a waste of money.
You'd need nearly three times the number of panels, and the intermittency problems would be much larger - and more correlated with the UK's existing intermittency problems. Therefore more storage, which is very expensive.
I wasn't aware of this: ..The PV component will generate electricity during daylight hours, and the PV panels will move to track the sun to increase output in the morning and the evening. In Morocco, the prevailing winds blow most strongly in the afternoon and early evening, driven by the temperature difference between the Sahara Desert and the cooler Atlantic Ocean. These generating characteristics, combined with battery back-up, should allow the cable to run at full capacity for more than 19 hours a day on average...
There is, of course, an energy security downside to Morocco, as that length of interconnect would be quite hard to protect against bad actors.
There's an aspect of undersea cabling that I don't understand. If different operators between numerous destinations lay down cables and pipes for communications, power, gas and oil, don't they end up in a giant tangle? If the comms cable laid down ten years ago needs repair, how do you get to it if there are half a dozen others on top? Not to mention the 'accidental' anchor-dragging problem.
That's why you keep maps, and have planning. The sabotage problem has yet to be satisfactorily addressed, I think. (Speaking of which, what's happening with the Black Sea HVDC cable project ?)
If the map shows your cable is buried under several others how does that help?
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
David Ricardo's ideas worked brilliantly for the UK when we were the workhouse of the world and had enormous competitive advantages over most of our markets. Not so sure they did much for India, for example. The overall net increase in production achieved by comparative advantage came here. The boot is now on the other foot.
I am not saying that we should be self sufficient in making goods or services. What I am saying is that the trade deficit that we have run continuously since 1998 (when Brown decided excess demand in our economy was a good thing) has resulted in this country becoming comparatively poorer than many others, struggling to fund investment, struggling to generate a tax base sufficient to pay for our services and struggling to provide gainful employment for our young. It is not true that our surplus on services "largely offsets" our deficit in goods. Our deficit is running at about £50bn a year. That's £50bn of UK assets that have to be sold each year to cover our consumption.
Comparative advantage is fine providing that both the partner countries and the overall trading framework are reliable. That particularly matters for essentials. Ultra-low cost clothing is something the country can do without, if it has to. Food, energy, critical raw materials and the like are not - so therefore the UK must retain a minimum secure supply, either internally, or, if externally, from countries who can both be relied on to continue producing and supplying the UK, and from whom trade will not be disrupted by the actions of hostile powers.
That didn't stop France designating yogurt as a "strategic" good.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
My personal view is that small scale reactors will have the same issues as large scale ones (hello NuScale !).
While solar panel costs continue to fall , nuclear costs only ever go one way - and then some, regardless of size or technology.
We might as well bite the bullet and spunk £20 billion on some massive inter-connectors & storage from Morocco.
The big cost in solar is *everything* but the panels - converters and other power electronics, grid connection, batteries etc. the panels are already extremely cheap. And falling in price.
Increasing the area of the panels because of northerly position and weather has little cost - a solar farm in Northumberland would have the same as Morocco, apart from more panels per watt.
So spending £20bn on solar from Morocco might well be a waste of money.
You'd need nearly three times the number of panels, and the intermittency problems would be much larger - and more correlated with the UK's existing intermittency problems. Therefore more storage, which is very expensive.
I wasn't aware of this: ..The PV component will generate electricity during daylight hours, and the PV panels will move to track the sun to increase output in the morning and the evening. In Morocco, the prevailing winds blow most strongly in the afternoon and early evening, driven by the temperature difference between the Sahara Desert and the cooler Atlantic Ocean. These generating characteristics, combined with battery back-up, should allow the cable to run at full capacity for more than 19 hours a day on average...
There is, of course, an energy security downside to Morocco, as that length of interconnect would be quite hard to protect against bad actors.
There's an aspect of undersea cabling that I don't understand. If different operators between numerous destinations lay down cables and pipes for communications, power, gas and oil, don't they end up in a giant tangle? If the comms cable laid down ten years ago needs repair, how do you get to it if there are half a dozen others on top? Not to mention the 'accidental' anchor-dragging problem.
Do the Moroccan interconnector plans envisage it being mainly undersea or transiting via Spain and France? With the latter there’s just the straits of Gibraltar and Dover to negotiate.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
We were due to go to Australia last December and flying BA from Newcastle to Heathrow as the first leg.
The Flight check in for the BA flight to Heathrow was due to open 24 hours beforehand at 5PM. When I went to check in online the flight had just been cancelled.
So we spent a fraught 2 hours trying to get rebooked on a different flight made all the more difficult by BA not having put some notification or other to the travel agent the flight was cancelled. Eventually managed to get on the first flight to London the following morning which worked out fine in the end as we had a nice day but BA are shit. Cancelling 24 hours before the flight was due. Poor. Would never book them again.
Yeah that sucks, and is a good example of the problems.
Heathrow is so far over capacity that they developed a complicated way to get the planes closer to each other on approach to land, but that only works when they can see each other, so in poor weather they have to keep them further apart and can land fewer planes. Which then leaves planes, crews, and passengers, all in the wrong places, and ruins everyone’s day.
KLM, Lufthansa, and Emirates on long-haul, provide a more reliable service from regional airports like Newcastle, I guess you’ll be taking one of those to Australia next time.
Yes we will, Emirates to Dubai or KLM into Amsterdam.
We went via London this time as we wanted to stop off at Malaysia on the way back. However KLM into Amsterdam would give us that. Flown KLM loads of times and never been let down.
Ugh, the Luddites are in control at The Telegraph, don’t these bellends realise you can control the settings on the steering wheel for nearly everything even before touchscreen dashboards
Touchscreen dashboards have finally taken over and ruined driving
Physical buttons are being consigned to history – but trying to prod a screen while navigating our famously poor road surfaces isn’t easy
The 'join the single market to boost growth' mantra is a mirror image to 'sign a trade deal with the USA to boost growth'.
And equally deluded.
There are no quick fixes if economic growth is to be boosted.
Better training, welfare reform, taxation reform, regulation reform, improved transport, cheaper energy, affordable housing are some of the things required.
All of which will take years to implement and further years to have an effect.
That was deployed as an argument against HS2, tidal powe, new nuclear, etc. With the result that we didn't do infrastructure projects at a time when we might have afforded them.
It's actually an argument to do something sooner rather than later, if it's justified. But it's always used as an argument for delay.
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
If comparative advantage leads to a de-industrialised state, then it's wrong. We need an industrial base to build weapons to defend the state. Nail bars do not deter Russian bombs
On Heathrow we travelled to Euston, then taxi to Paddington, then Heathrow express to Heathrow
Only 15 minutes to and from Airport from London
The strategic decision on whether to expand Heathrow or Gatwick shouldn't really be based on your own personal convenience! I'm sure you'll agree.
No, it should be based on my personal convenience, which means a new airport in the estuary reachable with ease from SE London. The people of West and North London have had things their way for far too long.
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
That's based on the calculation that the longest power connector yet built is cheaper than power storage/more panels, essentially.
Both are dropping in cost. It's a tough bet at the moment.
(Morocco)
complemented by a 22.5 GWh / 5 GW battery
That is some battery !
7500 shipping containers worth.... which at current prices is $9Bn or so.
I think you'd get a discount on an order that size.
If the project were to go ahead we should do a deal with one of the better manufacturers (either CATL of one of the Koreans) to build a plant in the UK to supply them. That large an order ought to be a sufficient incentive. We should do such a deal anyway, as we're going to need such capacity in the UK, Xlinks or not.
Indeed - such an order would require the whole output of a serious factory.
Ugh, the Luddites are in control at The Telegraph, don’t these bellends realise you can control the settings on the steering wheel for nearly everything even before touchscreen dashboards
Touchscreen dashboards have finally taken over and ruined driving
Physical buttons are being consigned to history – but trying to prod a screen while navigating our famously poor road surfaces isn’t easy
Most of the public prefer us to be shackled to an economic bloc that is currently in decline rather than one that is motoring ahead by comparison.
Taz, we are adrift and going under, hard to see how we ever get out of the downward spiral when you see the dross that run the country. It is hard to conceive how so many talentless people are politician's.
Indeed and they all, or mainly, seem to come from the same route. Via NGO's, Charities or former SPAD's. No real life experience. We have a business department where the ministers have no real life experience of running a business.
At least Rachel Reeves now seems to get the need you actually have to do something to get growth rather than just speak about it. However there are too many like Ed Miliband in the govt who will stymie growth.
The same Ed Miliband who is steam rolling through solar farms, on shore wind and pylons ?
I think some of his ideas are crackers (carbon capture, 5% reliance on gas also seems a bit low) but he seems one of the few who actually had a plan for when in government and is cracking on with it.
My personal view is that small scale reactors will have the same issues as large scale ones (hello NuScale !).
While solar panel costs continue to fall , nuclear costs only ever go one way - and then some, regardless of size or technology.
We might as well bite the bullet and spunk £20 billion on some massive inter-connectors & storage from Morocco.
The big cost in solar is *everything* but the panels - converters and other power electronics, grid connection, batteries etc. the panels are already extremely cheap. And falling in price.
Increasing the area of the panels because of northerly position and weather has little cost - a solar farm in Northumberland would have the same as Morocco, apart from more panels per watt.
So spending £20bn on solar from Morocco might well be a waste of money.
You'd need nearly three times the number of panels, and the intermittency problems would be much larger - and more correlated with the UK's existing intermittency problems. Therefore more storage, which is very expensive.
I wasn't aware of this: ..The PV component will generate electricity during daylight hours, and the PV panels will move to track the sun to increase output in the morning and the evening. In Morocco, the prevailing winds blow most strongly in the afternoon and early evening, driven by the temperature difference between the Sahara Desert and the cooler Atlantic Ocean. These generating characteristics, combined with battery back-up, should allow the cable to run at full capacity for more than 19 hours a day on average...
There is, of course, an energy security downside to Morocco, as that length of interconnect would be quite hard to protect against bad actors.
There's an aspect of undersea cabling that I don't understand. If different operators between numerous destinations lay down cables and pipes for communications, power, gas and oil, don't they end up in a giant tangle? If the comms cable laid down ten years ago needs repair, how do you get to it if there are half a dozen others on top? Not to mention the 'accidental' anchor-dragging problem.
That's why you keep maps, and have planning. The sabotage problem has yet to be satisfactorily addressed, I think. (Speaking of which, what's happening with the Black Sea HVDC cable project ?)
If the map shows your cable is buried under several others how does that help?
The plan is usually to have a look at the maps before you build something. "Under several others" is unlikely to be a problem - and you can plan for unavoidable crossing points to mitigate the problems.
“The Department of Homeland Security has terminated all members of advisory committees, including one that has been investigating a major Chinese hack of large US telecom firms.
“"The Cyber Safety Review Board—a Department of Homeland Security investigatory body stood up under a Biden-era cybersecurity executive order to probe major cybersecurity incidents—has been cleared of non-government members as part of a DHS-wide push to cut costs under the Trump administration, according to three people familiar with the matter," NextGov/FCW reported yesterday.”
This is Trump being “tough” on China.
It's worth noting that the incident discussed, Salt Typhoon, may be the worst cyber attack against the US ever discovered. So it's not some trival thing to disband a group investigating it.
Mind you given that Trump is thinking of abolishing FEMA there are even crazier plans afoot.
I think that there is a lot still buried in the initial blizzard of Executive Orders that has not been noticed yet. One of them revoked about 80 Biden initiatives.
I have seen eg only marginal commentary on his rolling back of the reduced cost medicine programme - I haven't even seen anything myself beyond one or two mentions.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
Transport from LHR to Westminster is 60 minutes according to Google Maps. Check it. Transport from Gatwick to Westminster is 50 minutes.
Fly to Gatwick. There is a strong case for expanding Gatwick capacity.
Especially as it would enable the return of flights from NCL which were discontinued....
A European country struggling for growth should be looking to join the Single Market, you'd have thought.
Are we a European country struggling for growth?
Well then.
Well why are France, Germany and Italy struggling for growth if that's the case ?
Many reasons. But they'd be struggling more without the Single Market. You're not seriously suggesting the Single Market doesn't aid growth for its members, I hope. No, you can't be. That would be a bizarre thing to say.
The single market affects different areas in different ways.
Some areas will be affected negatively overall.
Clearly as you believe that free trade is so beneficial then you must logically believe that a free trade deal with the USA is preferable to joining the EU single market as that would result in more trade barriers being reduced and with a larger and richer economy.
That relies on maintaining the fallacy that a trade deal with the US would be on anything like favourable terms for Britain.
Put simply, we export services to them and buy goods. And we have near-zero opportunity to become a hub in Pan-North American supply chains, as we were (and still are to some extent) in Europe.
The main beneficiaries would be US agricultural exporters.
Given that food seems to be more expensive in the USA I have some doubts about that.
Likewise though joining the EU single market would be on terms favourable terms for the EU with free movement of people being far more beneficial for the EU to export its unemployed once again.
The people pushing either for joining the EU single market or a trade deal with the USA are doing so for political reasons rather than economic.
Just a question - I understand joining the Single Market but wouldn’t that restore Freedom of Movement unless we went down the Swiss route and negotiated a series of bilateral treaties with the EU which would, inter alia, define the extent to which the Four Freedoms would be followed?
Had we renegotiated our membership on the Swiss model of bilateral treaties, we might have saved ourselves a lot of time and anguish.
Careful, you'll be suggesting next that the Tories completely f*cked up the Brexit negotiations.
Just a question - I understand joining the Single Market but wouldn’t that restore Freedom of Movement unless we went down the Swiss route and negotiated a series of bilateral treaties with the EU which would, inter alia, define the extent to which the Four Freedoms would be followed?
Had we renegotiated our membership on the Swiss model of bilateral treaties, we might have saved ourselves a lot of time and anguish.
Careful, you'll be suggesting next that the Tories completely f*cked up the Brexit negotiations.
They could have done better, they might have done worse.
Overall they were still a long way ahead of what Blair, Brown and Cameron managed.
. To be absolutely clear about it a trade deficit is measured as a negative when assessing growth. The larger the deficit the more it negatively impacts on growth.
++Donald Trump has joined the conversation++
The UK's trade deficit in goods is largely offset by a surplus in services. The overall deficit isn't large compared with the size of the economy.
It's this kind of idiocy that leads to people claiming we must be self sufficient in making / producing their pet hobby horse. If you think having a deficit in making ultra cheap clothes or shoes is a bad thing (or "bad for growth") you are deluded.
It seems David Ricardo's ideas were wasted on the country of his birth.
David Ricardo's ideas worked brilliantly for the UK when we were the workhouse of the world and had enormous competitive advantages over most of our markets. Not so sure they did much for India, for example. The overall net increase in production achieved by comparative advantage came here. The boot is now on the other foot.
I am not saying that we should be self sufficient in making goods or services. What I am saying is that the trade deficit that we have run continuously since 1998 (when Brown decided excess demand in our economy was a good thing) has resulted in this country becoming comparatively poorer than many others, struggling to fund investment, struggling to generate a tax base sufficient to pay for our services and struggling to provide gainful employment for our young. It is not true that our surplus on services "largely offsets" our deficit in goods. Our deficit is running at about £50bn a year. That's £50bn of UK assets that have to be sold each year to cover our consumption.
Comparative advantage is fine providing that both the partner countries and the overall trading framework are reliable. That particularly matters for essentials. Ultra-low cost clothing is something the country can do without, if it has to. Food, energy, critical raw materials and the like are not - so therefore the UK must retain a minimum secure supply, either internally, or, if externally, from countries who can both be relied on to continue producing and supplying the UK, and from whom trade will not be disrupted by the actions of hostile powers.
That didn't stop France designating yogurt as a "strategic" good.
The weakness of running a large trade deficit was seen in COVID and is potentially going to reappear with global trade wars. We assume that we can buy what we need with money but what happens if money becomes worthless. Then we need to start trading. I will give you a car if you give me some oil. The UK has been very poor at keeping hold of strategic assets that produce things that the world needs. I dont think that our Government even understands the problem let alone start thinking about a solution.
On energy storage. If batteries for energy storage are now really cheap, as I keep reading here, why don't we all have one installed at our individual homes and then the national grid can download all the excess energy to our homes when its windy or the sun is shining - which we then use when it's not windy or sunny?
“The Department of Homeland Security has terminated all members of advisory committees, including one that has been investigating a major Chinese hack of large US telecom firms.
“"The Cyber Safety Review Board—a Department of Homeland Security investigatory body stood up under a Biden-era cybersecurity executive order to probe major cybersecurity incidents—has been cleared of non-government members as part of a DHS-wide push to cut costs under the Trump administration, according to three people familiar with the matter," NextGov/FCW reported yesterday.”
This is Trump being “tough” on China.
It's worth noting that the incident discussed, Salt Typhoon, may be the worst cyber attack against the US ever discovered. So it's not some trival thing to disband a group investigating it.
Mind you given that Trump is thinking of abolishing FEMA there are even crazier plans afoot.
I think that there is a lot still buried in the initial blizzard of Executive Orders that has not been noticed yet. One of them revoked about 80 Biden initiatives.
I have seen eg only marginal commentary on his rolling back of the reduced cost medicine programme - I haven't even seen anything myself beyond one or two mentions.
The one you refer to is EO 14145 Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions. It revokes lots of previous EOs. I'll list them in the next post.
I see there's yet more economically illiterate rubbish fixating on the trade deficit on here today.
I've explained on here several times why a trade deficit doesn't matter if you've got a floating exchange rate, but evidently the economic reasoning involved goes over some people's heads.
Here's something that might cause even the blindest Trumpian obsessive to pause though.
Angola has a surplus of about 18% of GDP.
The United States has a deficit of around 3.2% of GDP.
Which is the better economy?
IT IS PRODUCTIVITY THAT MATTERS, NOT THE TRADE BALANCE.
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
Transport from LHR to Westminster is 60 minutes according to Google Maps. Check it. Transport from Gatwick to Westminster is 50 minutes.
Fly to Gatwick. There is a strong case for expanding Gatwick capacity.
To be honest , our years of worldwide international travel was always out of Heathrow and I simply do not understand why anyone would promote Gatwick over Heathrow
Gatwick is much cheaper and quicker to get into London.
On Heathrow we travelled to Euston, then taxi to Paddington, then Heathrow express to Heathrow
Only 15 minutes to and from Airport from London
The strategic decision on whether to expand Heathrow or Gatwick shouldn't really be based on your own personal convenience! I'm sure you'll agree.
No of course not
But I haven't experienced anyone locally or indeed within our family who have ever used Gatwick
Manchester or Heathrow are the principle airports, together with Birmingham for North Wales
Gatwick is as easy to get to from London as Heathrow, in the above example you would have got a taxi to Victoria and a Gatwick Express to Gatwick. Or the perfectly serviceable, and cheaper, regular train. Until they recently introduced the airport bus from Frimley and Camberley, Heathrow was probably the hardest to get to of the London airports for me (on the Surrey/Hants border) despite being closest. Unless I want to spend a fortune on parking or a taxi
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
Transport from LHR to Westminster is 60 minutes according to Google Maps. Check it. Transport from Gatwick to Westminster is 50 minutes.
Fly to Gatwick. There is a strong case for expanding Gatwick capacity.
To be honest , our years of worldwide international travel was always out of Heathrow and I simply do not understand why anyone would promote Gatwick over Heathrow
Perhaps you haven't travelled through Gatwick?
It's less crowded an security is much quicker. It's also the second busiest single runway airport in the world.
Friends in the north avoid LHR like the plague - for Europe its AMS, for points east DUB/DOH, for points west DUB., only if none of those work is LHR on the table.
My recent flight to the Far East I happily made my way to LCY.
I picked up an observation yesterday (not sure where - maybe Times Radio) that our Rules of Engagement for patrolling aircraft are *far* weaker than in the Cold War, and needed strengthening.
That is, in the Cold War a targeting "radar lock on" (as opposed to a "find it" radar) would be answered with a missile aimed at the source, where as now it would get a "you naughty boy".
Is this true, and to what extent? I'm aware are various aircraft being shot down when they strayed into the wrong bit of airspace in the early Cold War (~1950s-60s), but nothing post-1970 or so.
During the Cold War, a "radar lock on" was not answered with firing a weapon, generally. At least in the West.
NATO forces in general din't fire on Warsaw Pact aircraft. Warsaw Pact aircraft had much more aggressive rules of engagement.
First you have to define a "lock on" - for many systems, there was a general search radar. Which could have a lock/tracking mode. Then there would be separate targeting radars - which would lock on. Modern systems often get rid of a separate targeting system and the different modes in terms of search radar.
Secondly, provoking a "lock on" was a way of gathering electronic intelligence on the opponents systems.
Pretty much all 6am weather models showing Eowyn central pressure bottoming out at 936hpa tomorrow, except the Icon model which takes the storm a tad further South over Ireland.
But that Southerly track means worse gusts. Touching 200kph (125mph) on the County Clare coast in ICON vs “only” 175 (109mph) in GFS. The worst is Arpege: similar gusts to Icon but a wider and deeper area of peak winds.
Cloud modelling suggests a classic sting-jet forming.
Hopefully will stop the political bickering in the Dail. (Which autocomplete wanted to change to Daily Mail).
On energy storage. If batteries for energy storage are now really cheap, as I keep reading here, why don't we all have one installed at our individual homes and then the national grid can download all the excess energy to our homes when its windy or the sun is shining - which we then use when it's not windy or sunny?
A European country struggling for growth should be looking to join the Single Market, you'd have thought.
Are we a European country struggling for growth?
Well then.
Well why are France, Germany and Italy struggling for growth if that's the case ?
Many reasons. But they'd be struggling more without the Single Market. You're not seriously suggesting the Single Market doesn't aid growth for its members, I hope. No, you can't be. That would be a bizarre thing to say.
The single market affects different areas in different ways.
Some areas will be affected negatively overall.
Clearly as you believe that free trade is so beneficial then you must logically believe that a free trade deal with the USA is preferable to joining the EU single market as that would result in more trade barriers being reduced and with a larger and richer economy.
That relies on maintaining the fallacy that a trade deal with the US would be on anything like favourable terms for Britain.
Put simply, we export services to them and buy goods. And we have near-zero opportunity to become a hub in Pan-North American supply chains, as we were (and still are to some extent) in Europe.
The main beneficiaries would be US agricultural exporters.
Given that food seems to be more expensive in the USA I have some doubts about that.
Likewise though joining the EU single market would be on terms favourable terms for the EU with free movement of people being far more beneficial for the EU to export its unemployed once again.
The people pushing either for joining the EU single market or a trade deal with the USA are doing so for political reasons rather than economic.
That is true of politicians and political commentators. Not true of businesses.
On Heathrow we travelled to Euston, then taxi to Paddington, then Heathrow express to Heathrow
Only 15 minutes to and from Airport from London
The strategic decision on whether to expand Heathrow or Gatwick shouldn't really be based on your own personal convenience! I'm sure you'll agree.
The cab from Euston to Paddington could take quite a while now all the rat-runs have been blocked.
There is something called the Tube though, just don't take too much luggage (and with respect to BGNW's age as I recall he's getting on a bit and may not be up to fighting with the Tube)
Reeves wants a third runway at Heathrow and Kemi needs to support this 100%
It is exactly what should be at the forefront of any growth agenda
Mind you, Khan and Burnham with others will be furious but the interesting one is Starmer who has opposed this as well, but with Starmer he will just change his position once again which would be no surprise
Gatwick can be expanded to the same extent for an estimated £2b - 10% of the cost of a third runway at Heathrow and far quicker. That is why airlines are opposed to a third runway at Heathrow. And they aren't Nimbys.
It is argued that Gatwick isn't a hub airport but the strong trend is to point to point. A third runway at Heathrow wouldn't be operational until the mid 2030s.
I think there is a knee jerk anti London reaction in some places.
I don't, I have seen some comments asking what is there for the North but that is hardly being anti London.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
My sister-in-law lives in Newcastle but often has to travel to London for meetings.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
Transport from LHR to Westminster is 60 minutes according to Google Maps. Check it. Transport from Gatwick to Westminster is 50 minutes.
Fly to Gatwick. There is a strong case for expanding Gatwick capacity.
To be honest , our years of worldwide international travel was always out of Heathrow and I simply do not understand why anyone would promote Gatwick over Heathrow
Perhaps you haven't travelled through Gatwick?
It's less crowded an security is much quicker. It's also the second busiest single runway airport in the world.
Friends in the north avoid LHR like the plague - for Europe its AMS, for points east DUB/DOH, for points west DUB., only if none of those work is LHR on the table.
My recent flight to the Far East I happily made my way to LCY.
For me, LCY is half an hour, LGW an hour, Stansted an hour, LHR and Luton an hour and a half. Though Gatwick requires more planning as the trains are less frequent.
Ugh, the Luddites are in control at The Telegraph, don’t these bellends realise you can control the settings on the steering wheel for nearly everything even before touchscreen dashboards
Touchscreen dashboards have finally taken over and ruined driving
Physical buttons are being consigned to history – but trying to prod a screen while navigating our famously poor road surfaces isn’t easy
What a fucking shit article. Just about everything is voice controlled on modern BMWs so you don't have to dick around with the touchscreen.
I'm dailying a 4Motion V6 2004 Phaeton (remember them?) at the moment. The interior is a retro button-fest and it's a fucking ergonomic nightmare. Solid car otherwise.
Comments
Gas: New licences would have an immaterial impact on North Sea production, which will fall precipitously over the next 10 years regardless of your policy. We will continue to import a very large proportion from friendly countries like Norway.
Oil: The inverse. New licenses would have a material impact on the amount extracted (though it will still fall off like gas) , but the UK has roughly balanced imports/exports (£30 billion each way).
I think we could have an interesting debate about oil, particularly given it's non-energy uses. But gas is a fantasy, and therefore electricity generation and heating is going to have to be primarily renewables/heat pumps.
Richard Hughes said the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had assumed leaving the EU would “reduce our long run GDP by around 4%”, adding in comments to the BBC: “We think that the effect of the pandemic will reduce that (GDP) output by a further 2%.”
The Single Market was one of Thatcher’s many fine achievements, it helps grow the economy.
Some MP's are in favour of Heathrow 3, Like Cat McKinnell in Newcastle, as they see it as helping growth in the regions.
Increasing the area of the panels because of northerly position and weather has little cost - a solar farm in Northumberland would have the same as Morocco, apart from more panels per watt.
So spending £20bn on solar from Morocco might well be a waste of money.
https://www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/bas-owner-warns-would-not-30842036
BA doesn't want to contribute to the very high cost. Neither does LHR.
They want the taxpayer to pay.
NB BA and LHR are majority foreign owned.
I'm not sure when it is due to come on stream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco–UK_Power_Project
I am not saying that we should be self sufficient in making goods or services. What I am saying is that the trade deficit that we have run continuously since 1998 (when Brown decided excess demand in our economy was a good thing) has resulted in this country becoming comparatively poorer than many others, struggling to fund investment, struggling to generate a tax base sufficient to pay for our services and struggling to provide gainful employment for our young. It is not true that our surplus on services "largely offsets" our deficit in goods. Our deficit is running at about £50bn a year. That's £50bn of UK assets that have to be sold each year to cover our consumption.
I have seen eg only marginal commentary on his rolling back of the reduced cost medicine programme - I haven't even seen anything myself beyond one or two mentions.
From my correspondence with SNP MPs:
"Airports Limited estimate the runway will create up to 16,000 new Scottish jobs and, during construction on Heathrow Terminal 2, Scottish firms received an estimated £36m of contracts, creating 600 jobs.
The Scottish Government secured key commitments from Heathrow Airport Limited to deliver Scottish jobs and investment including 100 jobs at its Business Support Centre in Renfrew, £200m of construction-related spend in Scotland and £1.5m investment by the firm in a marketing campaign to promote Scotland."
A bit of a sweetener there!
And then:
"As you will be aware, this week Parliament voted 415 to 119 in support of the UK Conservative Government’s planning policy which would permit construction of a third runway at Heathrow. I and my SNP colleagues could not support the proposals, and did not take part in the vote after the UK Government failed to provide key protections for Scottish airports and flight routes."
I lobbied every one of the SNP MPs at the time, and like to feel I had some part in them changing their stance on this.
As far as the SM is concerned that was built into the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and enforced with a series of EEC court judgements in 1962 and following. Thatcher's ideas were to expand the free trade from goods into services where we had a competitive advantage. That gave a lot of opportunities for London in particular. That part of free trade very definitely worked for us but much of the rest of the UK lost jobs as our manufacturing base was not competitive and was eliminated.
As the Proclaimers put it, Bathgate no more, Linwood no more, Methil no more, Irvine no more...That is where we are.
The BA domestic and short-haul operation is the first to get binned in poor weather, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the operation, connecting flights etc.
With the third runway more cities would become daily commutable to London, and there would be many more connection opportunities to regional airports especially at the margins. Places like Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, could all have half-hourly services to LHR at peak hours, as smaller planes could be used that don’t go to Heathrow at the moment because the landing slots are too expensive.
At the moment a lot of this regional connecting traffic goes out via Amsterdam on KLM, so the Dutch get the money.
Both are dropping in cost. It's a tough bet at the moment.
The most likely outcome of the next general election on current polls is a Labour minority government supported by the LDs which would make a closer trading relationship with the EU inevitable. Note the vast majority of both Labour and LDs, 75%, want a closer relationship with the EU over the USA on that Yougov poll.
Interestingly a narrow plurality of Tory voters now prefer a closer trading relationship with the EU too, 37% to 35%. Reform voters though still the outlier with the majority, 56%, wanting a closer trading relationship with Trump's USA to just 20% for the EU
I wasn't aware of this:
..The PV component will generate electricity during daylight hours, and the PV panels will move to track the sun to increase output in the morning and the evening. In Morocco, the prevailing winds blow most strongly in the afternoon and early evening, driven by the temperature difference between the Sahara Desert and the cooler Atlantic Ocean. These generating characteristics, combined with battery back-up, should allow the cable to run at full capacity for more than 19 hours a day on average...
There is, of course, an energy security downside to Morocco, as that length of interconnect would be quite hard to protect against bad actors.
Transport from Gatwick to Westminster is 50 minutes.
Fly to Gatwick. There is a strong case for expanding Gatwick capacity.
Are we a European country struggling for growth?
Well then.
complemented by a 22.5 GWh / 5 GW battery
That is some battery !
Ricardo works brilliantly for nation A and B needing products X and Y and all gaining by specialisation and trade.
But suppose, applying Ricardo, nation UK is so good at financial services, IT tech, law, insurance, tourism, media and culture it has no need for industry, manufacturing, ag and fish and so on. Perhaps when taken to extremes the social consequences are grave because human nature being what it is, you have millions of people who are no good at these jobs, and are on the scrap heap, and need to import millions of others who are good at sums and IT.
I suspect this is partly why we have millions of people of working age on benefits.
The Flight check in for the BA flight to Heathrow was due to open 24 hours beforehand at 5PM. When I went to check in online the flight had just been cancelled.
So we spent a fraught 2 hours trying to get rebooked on a different flight made all the more difficult by BA not having put some notification or other to the travel agent the flight was cancelled. Eventually managed to get on the first flight to London the following morning which worked out fine in the end as we had a nice day but BA are shit. Cancelling 24 hours before the flight was due. Poor. Would never book them again.
In general the best deals are the ones where you get the most of what you want for the fewest concessions on the stuff you really don't want.
Number of times I have had a negotiation where the other party has said this is the lowest they can do or the best they can do even though you know there is more to come only for them to come back and offer a better deal when you walk away.
(*The same probably applies to manufacturing, but that will probably take longer.)
https://x.com/senbillnelson/status/1881749943234556165
One of very few government agencies that operates in a nonpartisan way, and one of very few government departments that has to deal cordially with Russia and China.
Thatcher also believed in living within your means and the UK often had a trade surplus when she was prime minister.
Perhaps you could tell us what the trade balance has been with the EU since then.
Had we renegotiated our membership on the Swiss model of bilateral treaties, we might have saved ourselves a lot of time and anguish.
It is Trump threatening to withdraw from NATO though not us
When are you coming over to the Lib Dems, young HY?
You can also fly to 85 international destinations with Emirates.
https://www.emirates.com/uk/english/destinations/flights-from-london-gatwick/
I picked up an observation yesterday (not sure where - maybe Times Radio) that our Rules of Engagement for patrolling aircraft are *far* weaker than in the Cold War, and needed strengthening.
That is, in the Cold War a targeting "radar lock on" (as opposed to a "find it" radar) would be answered with a missile aimed at the source, where as now it would get a "you naughty boy" message.
Is this true, and to what extent?
I'm aware are of various military aircraft being shot down when they strayed into the wrong bit of airspace in the early Cold War (~1950s-60s), but nothing post-1970 or so.
And equally deluded.
There are no quick fixes if economic growth is to be boosted.
Better training, welfare reform, taxation reform, regulation reform, improved transport, cheaper energy, affordable housing are some of the things required.
All of which will take years to implement and further years to have an effect.
Touchscreen dashboards have finally taken over and ruined driving
Physical buttons are being consigned to history – but trying to prod a screen while navigating our famously poor road surfaces isn’t easy
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/touchscreen-dashboards-have-taken-over/
However Heathrow is the only international airport we would use, though our flying days are over
Heathrow is so far over capacity that they developed a complicated way to get the planes closer to each other on approach to land, but that only works when they can see each other, so in poor weather they have to keep them further apart and can land fewer planes. Which then leaves planes, crews, and passengers, all in the wrong places, and ruins everyone’s day.
KLM, Lufthansa, and Emirates on long-haul, provide a more reliable service from regional airports like Newcastle, I guess you’ll be taking one of those to Australia next time.
NATO forces in general din't fire on Warsaw Pact aircraft. Warsaw Pact aircraft had much more aggressive rules of engagement.
First you have to define a "lock on" - for many systems, there was a general search radar. Which could have a lock/tracking mode. Then there would be separate targeting radars - which would lock on. Modern systems often get rid of a separate targeting system and the different modes in terms of search radar.
Secondly, provoking a "lock on" was a way of gathering electronic intelligence on the opponents systems.
I agree that the Morocco project is looking shakier economically than it was a few years back. And my fag packet calculation is that the cable is a pretty big percentage of the total cost.
We might just be better off doing it as an investment in Morocco - that much cheap power would turbocharge their economy.
Yes, these theories often hold up to a point, when the negative externalities of a policy start to outweigh the benefits.
Some areas will be affected negatively overall.
Clearly as you believe that free trade is so beneficial then you must logically believe that a free trade deal with the USA is preferable to joining the EU single market as that would result in more trade barriers being reduced and with a larger and richer economy.
Only 15 minutes to or from Airport from London
If the project were to go ahead we should do a deal with one of the better manufacturers (either CATL of one of the Koreans) to build a plant in the UK to supply them. That large an order ought to be a sufficient incentive.
We should do such a deal anyway, as we're going to need such capacity in the UK, Xlinks or not.
The EU have always hated the Swiss model, essentially because it requires them to treat the Swiss as equals they have to negotiate with, not as supplicants they can bully, so they made it very clear it wasn't on the table for us.
The sabotage problem has yet to be satisfactorily addressed, I think.
(Speaking of which, what's happening with the Black Sea HVDC cable project ?)
Put simply, we export services to them and buy goods. And we have near-zero opportunity to become a hub in Pan-North American supply chains, as we were (and still are to some extent) in Europe.
The main beneficiaries would be US agricultural exporters.
We went via London this time as we wanted to stop off at Malaysia on the way back. However KLM into Amsterdam would give us that. Flown KLM loads of times and never been let down.
Not all of them techno-luddites.
With the result that we didn't do infrastructure projects at a time when we might have afforded them.
It's actually an argument to do something sooner rather than later, if it's justified. But it's always used as an argument for delay.
But I haven't experienced anyone locally or indeed within our family who have ever used Gatwick
Manchester or Heathrow are the principle airports, together with Birmingham for North Wales
Likewise though joining the EU single market would be on terms favourable terms for the EU with free movement of people being far more beneficial for the EU to export its unemployed once again.
The people pushing either for joining the EU single market or a trade deal with the USA are doing so for political reasons rather than economic.
Overall they were still a long way ahead of what Blair, Brown and Cameron managed.
The weakness of running a large trade deficit was seen in COVID and is potentially going to reappear with global trade wars. We assume that we can buy what we need with money but what happens if money becomes worthless. Then we need to start trading. I will give you a car if you give me some oil. The UK has been very poor at keeping hold of strategic assets that produce things that the world needs. I dont think that our Government even understands the problem let alone start thinking about a solution.
Trump did 26 Executive Orders (EOs) in his first day. The list is here. The ones that have been discussed on PB are:
14150 Withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization
14166 Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
14171 Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity
The one you refer to is EO 14145 Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions. It revokes lots of previous EOs. I'll list them in the next post.
I've explained on here several times why a trade deficit doesn't matter if you've got a floating exchange rate, but evidently the economic reasoning involved goes over some people's heads.
Here's something that might cause even the blindest Trumpian obsessive to pause though.
Angola has a surplus of about 18% of GDP.
The United States has a deficit of around 3.2% of GDP.
Which is the better economy?
IT IS PRODUCTIVITY THAT MATTERS, NOT THE TRADE BALANCE.
It's less crowded an security is much quicker. It's also the second busiest single runway airport in the world.
Friends in the north avoid LHR like the plague - for Europe its AMS, for points east DUB/DOH, for points west DUB., only if none of those work is LHR on the table.
My recent flight to the Far East I happily made my way to LCY.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArdTyqjcfC0
The remarks I allude to are from ~1:35 on.
But that Southerly track means worse gusts. Touching 200kph (125mph) on the County Clare coast in ICON vs “only” 175 (109mph) in GFS. The worst is Arpege: similar gusts to Icon but a wider and deeper area of peak winds.
Cloud modelling suggests a classic sting-jet forming.
Hopefully will stop the political bickering in the Dail. (Which autocomplete wanted to change to Daily Mail).
I'm dailying a 4Motion V6 2004 Phaeton (remember them?) at the moment. The interior is a retro button-fest and it's a fucking ergonomic nightmare. Solid car otherwise.