Actually Tony Blair shows how lots of money from Saudi Arabia to his institute leads to a conclusion we need more fossil fuels.
Nah, I think that's a conspiracy theory. A fair few people are quizzing if this is possible, now, or if we're just fruitlessly beggaring ourselves.
The catch with that question is that solar/wind/battery are cheaper than fossil fuels + CCS right now and have the massive advantage of already existing at scale. The price factor has changed a lot in recent years, as OGH Jr points out; and lots of people haven't noticed yet.
The main downside is the balance of initial and ongoing costs. Gas is like an inkjet printer; cheap upfront but expensive to run (which is why it's OK to keep them as backup for a few days a year). Renewable + storage is a laser printer- more expensive upfront, but cheaper over the lifetime.
Getting that sort of decision right is something humans find hard and British humans almost impossible. Hence the scrambling by some for other reasons not to do this.
Sorry but that is simply not true. The strike price of gas is artificially elevated by being on constant stop start due to the intermittency of shite renewables of the type you describe. You don't do your side any favours when you speciously omit key facts because the don't support 'the transition'.
Are you saying if we used more gas the gas would be cheaper?
I am saying that if we used gas consistently it would be cheaper. The cost of constantly restarting gas plants is high, and that cost is placed artificially on the strike price of gas.
If we got rid of "shite renewables" we'd have to produce that electricity in another way. Suggestions?
Also - do you have a citation for how much restarting gas plants adds to the cost of gas?
Dependable renewables like tidal. SMR nuclear. UK produced oil, gas, and potentially coal. And ensure that unreliable intermittent sources (which are a feature now whether I would like it or not) are incentivised to store energy to even out their supply.
No, I don't have prices figures on what percent of the gas price is due to renewable intermittency, but I will try to get some later.
"Public should hoard cash in case of blackouts, Treasury told Decline of physical money could leave Britain vulnerable to power cuts or cyber attacks, warn MPs"
Cardinal Becciu bows out of Vatican conclave after Pope’s letter Reports of a request made by Francis for the scandal-hit Becciu not to vote echo the plot of the recent film Conclave https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/cardinal-becciu-vatican-conclave-klgt09rhp ...Becciu is not the only cardinal at the conclave with a questionable CV. The Peruvian cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, 81, the former archbishop of Lima, has been spotted at meetings in his cardinal’s outfit despite being told by Pope Francis to never wear it again after he was accused of sex abuse...
"Public should hoard cash in case of blackouts, Treasury told Decline of physical money could leave Britain vulnerable to power cuts or cyber attacks, warn MPs"
As we saw from the chaos in Spain and Portugal you still need cash. I always keep some for emergencies and never leave home without a 100 quid. Also I always tip with cash .
A few links around activism against anti-wheelchair and other barriers, that may interest one or two. @Eabhal , and perhaps people in Manchester - @JosiasJessop . Maybe @eek .
This is flagging up a couple of stories that might be of interest, around antisocial behaviour on paths using motorbikes.
These are largely around the problem that there are many 10s of thousands of barriers preventing access to Rights of Way and other paths (eg multiuser trails) for lawful users, in claimed attempts, which are illegal, to prevent motorcycle access.
! - A strategic campaign and possible legal action against Greater Manchester. Leigh Day are leading a campaign against anti-disabled barriers in Manchester. It is aiming also to change the climate around barriers.
2 - A research project in Greater Manchester looking at whether "anti-motorbike ASB" barriers, which also block lawful path users such as pedestrians using wheelchairs or mobility scooter riders, and parents with double buggies, actually reduce antisocial behaviour.
Their method is long term monitoring of a set of barriers before and after removal, for use level and interviewing local people to get an understanding of ASB.
3 - A Court finding, which where a Supreme Court Judge found that denying lawful users (cyclists in this case) access to a bridleway is not acceptable as a means to deter undesirable motorbike users.
Mr Salaman's second point was that in practice motorcycles use the route, notwithstanding that they are not entitled to do so, and that they are a menace to pedestrians. I have considerable sympathy with this complaint but the motorcycles are not lawfully there and their presence raises an issue of law enforcement. It is difficult to see how denying bicycles the right to use the route would stop motorcycles, unless the argument is that if bicycles are forbidden to use the track, there is less chance that motorcycles will do so. Even if that is true, however, it cannot possibly be justified to prevent bicycles from taking advantage of what would otherwise be a lawful use of the track in order to inhibit the unlawful use by motorcycles.
This might all become very relevant to me as the council are about to put some measures in place to prevent cars accessing our local path network. I'll keep an eye on just how tight the bollards are.
At the weekend I had to scale a new deer fence on the way to a reasonably popular hill. That's sent me down a MattW-type rabbit hole on access rights and responsibilities.
Try scaling a deer fence with a bicycle...
Been there, done that [Ardverikie]. At least there were two of us, which reduced it to merely difficult.
Locked deer gate on an estate track. Again, not entirely sure of rights and responsibilities. Was many km from the house.
Probably still my favourite video on YouTube. Have covered the same ground but on foot, occasionally on all fours...
One modest problem I have with Danny Macaskill is that he's really telling fairy tales - analogous to the Parcours videos of Dominic Di Tommaso *, that then get mistaken for "they are ALL like that".
It's performance art that can too easily be merged into perceptions of reality, which can then be leveraged by trolls to create a false version of reality. That is not a problem unless we have an ignorant public, which is (to an extent) not the case for driving or walking, but is for cycling.
We see it more sharply with "alleycat" type vidoes. Here's one from last week that was being cited as 'typical cyclist behaviour' on twatter, which sentiments then reach the heads of Telegraph readers. The comments (and the critical ones deleted) are instructive. I've had stuff like this cited at me as a reason for preventing disabled people using their hand-cycles in town centres. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FGDzAlcdQ
Actually Tony Blair shows how lots of money from Saudi Arabia to his institute leads to a conclusion we need more fossil fuels.
Nah, I think that's a conspiracy theory. A fair few people are quizzing if this is possible, now, or if we're just fruitlessly beggaring ourselves.
The catch with that question is that solar/wind/battery are cheaper than fossil fuels + CCS right now and have the massive advantage of already existing at scale. The price factor has changed a lot in recent years, as OGH Jr points out; and lots of people haven't noticed yet.
The main downside is the balance of initial and ongoing costs. Gas is like an inkjet printer; cheap upfront but expensive to run (which is why it's OK to keep them as backup for a few days a year). Renewable + storage is a laser printer- more expensive upfront, but cheaper over the lifetime.
Getting that sort of decision right is something humans find hard and British humans almost impossible. Hence the scrambling by some for other reasons not to do this.
Sorry but that is simply not true. The strike price of gas is artificially elevated by being on constant stop start due to the intermittency of shite renewables of the type you describe. You don't do your side any favours when you speciously omit key facts because the don't support 'the transition'.
Are you saying if we used more gas the gas would be cheaper?
I am saying that if we used gas consistently it would be cheaper. The cost of constantly restarting gas plants is high, and that cost is placed artificially on the strike price of gas.
If we got rid of "shite renewables" we'd have to produce that electricity in another way. Suggestions?
Also - do you have a citation for how much restarting gas plants adds to the cost of gas?
Dependable renewables like tidal. SMR nuclear. UK produced oil, gas, and potentially coal. And ensure that unreliable intermittent sources (which are a feature now whether I would like it or not) are incentivised to store energy to even out their supply.
No, I don't have prices figures on what percent of the gas price is due to renewable intermittency, but I will try to get some later.
Nuclear is unreliably intermittent...
"The outages of four reactors - two at Heysham and two in Hartlepool - were unplanned, prompted by a part failure in the boiler pipework at Heysham 1 in Lancashire."
I'm in favour of nuclear. I'm in favour of O&G. I'm in favour of renewables. We need a mix, not one thing, all working together to get us security of supply.
And O&G does *not* give us security of supply, and AIUI will automagically not even if we maximise North Sea output. And the thought of going back to coal is laughable.
I’ve just seen a BBC headline that the government may mandate the use of cash.
How absolutely idiotic. Cash is increasingly irrelevant and as the last few users die out in the next decade or two its usage will go to zero.
Apple Pay and similar technologies are superior in every way. The amount of time spent on this is stupid.
My bankrupt acquaintance can only use cash and is unlikely to die within 3 decades or more.
Good morning, everyone.
Sorry, but without commenting on the wider merits of the cash/cashless debate, it just isn't correct to say that bankrupts "can only use cash". What they may struggle with is accounts that offer a line of credit/the ability to go overdrawn. But they can certainly get pre-paid debit cards etc - plenty of products out there. Quite apart from the fact he/she would have the bankruptcy discharged after a period - they aren't going to be an undischarged bankrupt for three decades!
I think Reform will win the by-election, as they currently have enthusiasm on their side. I doubt the voters of Runcorn are that enthusiastic about Labour (hence the opposite of a squeeze on the Greens and LDs) and they would have to have a cracking PV and ground campaign to get out their vote.
I regularly meet people who seem enthusiastic about wanting to vote Reform, and while most of them are down below the median with Leon in terms of insight, there are a lot of them about.
It is beautiful here in south Cambridgeshire. I went out for a pre-dawn walk, and unusually encountered no wildlife, though I was not on my usual route.
I'm going for a long swim in the pool; I'm tempted to go for my first open water swim of the year this evening, but I've a race in the river on Sunday and Mrs J may not be back from a trip in time. So I'll be jumping into the Ouse on Sunday remarkably unprepared.
Oh, and naturally enough, the weather's forecast to be much cooler on Sunday...
My current winner for "most conspiracy theories in a small space":
https://x.com/eyepodster/status/1917431003397906674 The new pope will be just like Francis, a globalist, world government-promoting socialist, probably a Jesuit, in league with the secular rulers: the banks, industrialists, technocrats, politicians, bureaucrats, social engineers, royal families, and new age occultists building the New World Order, the New World Religion, and appointing the New World Leader. Antichrist would be an apt term for the next pope. At least as far back as the 16th century, this is how popes were viewed by Protestants.
He's a Trumpvangelical of sorts, and revealed his level of MAGA logic:
Quite an interesting response from a fairly crusty Roman Catholic, positioning 'Jesus is my personal saviour' Evangelicals as a subset of individualists:
Next time you infallibly read your Bible and wait for your Sola Scriptura dogma of personal interpretation to guide you in understanding the Word, I want you to remember that you’re not actually anti-papist, you’d just rather yourself be in the throne instead. https://x.com/Justherefo18062/status/1917455570787000333
“Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations.”
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
It is beautiful here in south Cambridgeshire. I went out for a pre-dawn walk, and unusually encountered no wildlife, though I was not on my usual route.
I'm going for a long swim in the pool; I'm tempted to go for my first open water swim of the year this evening, but I've a race in the river on Sunday and Mrs J may not be back from a trip in time. So I'll be jumping into the Ouse on Sunday remarkably unprepared.
Oh, and naturally enough, the weather's forecast to be much cooler on Sunday...
Where do you swim on the Ouse? I used to go canoeing out of St Ives (down by the church) when I was young.
It is beautiful here in south Cambridgeshire. I went out for a pre-dawn walk, and unusually encountered no wildlife, though I was not on my usual route.
I'm going for a long swim in the pool; I'm tempted to go for my first open water swim of the year this evening, but I've a race in the river on Sunday and Mrs J may not be back from a trip in time. So I'll be jumping into the Ouse on Sunday remarkably unprepared.
Oh, and naturally enough, the weather's forecast to be much cooler on Sunday...
Where do you swim on the Ouse? I used to go canoeing out of St Ives (down by the church) when I was young.
There are quite a few weirs, iirc.
Just a short section in St Neots. The first 750m is fine, with the current; coming back against the current is much slower. Good fun though. I've seen people wild swimming in St Ives before.
And I also swim at an old quarry lake in St Neots. There's a good crowd there, which makes it more fun.
Imagine how much more chance Mr Trump's much vaunted American Auto Industry would stand had they had fuel 3x more expensive for the last generation.
They also use more fuel generally. The fuel is lower octane than ours and the gallons are smaller, so the mpg numbers are horrible. My Jeep had a 4.0l engine in it. Gutless.
The interesting thing about hosting a social media community is that you get all kinds of people. Some of the Americans are mind-boggling in their lack of understanding about anything outside America.
There are countless videos on YouTube making fun of the ignorant comments of americans on reddit or whatever. Everywhere has stupid people but you really hope many of the examples of arrogant assumption of american universalism are parody or less common than it appears (since non americans love reading them).
I don't and won't stereotype anyone - not seriously. The same is true with Americans even though many of them self-stereotype themselves in an unknowing parody. Much to the embarrassment of Americans who have a brain.
A few links around activism against anti-wheelchair and other barriers, that may interest one or two. @Eabhal , and perhaps people in Manchester - @JosiasJessop . Maybe @eek .
This is flagging up a couple of stories that might be of interest, around antisocial behaviour on paths using motorbikes.
These are largely around the problem that there are many 10s of thousands of barriers preventing access to Rights of Way and other paths (eg multiuser trails) for lawful users, in claimed attempts, which are illegal, to prevent motorcycle access.
! - A strategic campaign and possible legal action against Greater Manchester. Leigh Day are leading a campaign against anti-disabled barriers in Manchester. It is aiming also to change the climate around barriers.
2 - A research project in Greater Manchester looking at whether "anti-motorbike ASB" barriers, which also block lawful path users such as pedestrians using wheelchairs or mobility scooter riders, and parents with double buggies, actually reduce antisocial behaviour.
Their method is long term monitoring of a set of barriers before and after removal, for use level and interviewing local people to get an understanding of ASB.
3 - A Court finding, which where a Supreme Court Judge found that denying lawful users (cyclists in this case) access to a bridleway is not acceptable as a means to deter undesirable motorbike users.
Mr Salaman's second point was that in practice motorcycles use the route, notwithstanding that they are not entitled to do so, and that they are a menace to pedestrians. I have considerable sympathy with this complaint but the motorcycles are not lawfully there and their presence raises an issue of law enforcement. It is difficult to see how denying bicycles the right to use the route would stop motorcycles, unless the argument is that if bicycles are forbidden to use the track, there is less chance that motorcycles will do so. Even if that is true, however, it cannot possibly be justified to prevent bicycles from taking advantage of what would otherwise be a lawful use of the track in order to inhibit the unlawful use by motorcycles.
This might all become very relevant to me as the council are about to put some measures in place to prevent cars accessing our local path network. I'll keep an eye on just how tight the bollards are.
At the weekend I had to scale a new deer fence on the way to a reasonably popular hill. That's sent me down a MattW-type rabbit hole on access rights and responsibilities.
Try scaling a deer fence with a bicycle...
Been there, done that [Ardverikie]. At least there were two of us, which reduced it to merely difficult.
Locked deer gate on an estate track. Again, not entirely sure of rights and responsibilities. Was many km from the house.
Probably still my favourite video on YouTube. Have covered the same ground but on foot, occasionally on all fours...
One modest problem I have with Danny Macaskill is that he's really telling fairy tales - analogous to the Parcours videos of Dominic Di Tommaso *, that then get mistaken for "they are ALL like that".
It's performance art that can too easily be merged into perceptions of reality, which can then be leveraged by trolls to create a false version of reality. That is not a problem unless we have an ignorant public, which is (to an extent) not the case for driving or walking, but is for cycling.
We see it more sharply with "alleycat" type vidoes. Here's one from last week that was being cited as 'typical cyclist behaviour' on twatter, which sentiments then reach the heads of Telegraph readers. The comments (and the critical ones deleted) are instructive. I've had stuff like this cited at me as a reason for preventing disabled people using their hand-cycles in town centres. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FGDzAlcdQ
As we saw from the chaos in Spain and Portugal you still need cash. I always keep some for emergencies and never leave home without a 100 quid. Also I always tip with cash .
People paying with cash are far more likely to tip.
It is beautiful here in south Cambridgeshire. I went out for a pre-dawn walk, and unusually encountered no wildlife, though I was not on my usual route.
I'm going for a long swim in the pool; I'm tempted to go for my first open water swim of the year this evening, but I've a race in the river on Sunday and Mrs J may not be back from a trip in time. So I'll be jumping into the Ouse on Sunday remarkably unprepared.
Oh, and naturally enough, the weather's forecast to be much cooler on Sunday...
Did a double take there - I'd forgotten there's also a (well, several) southern Ouses, not just the one in God's Own County! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouse
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
Apologies my previous post I realise now wasn’t quite accurate . It was Kelvin Mackenzie from GB News saying this is what Reform should do and push the government in that direction. Still he was an ardent Brexit pusher and is now moaning about a consequence of Brexit .
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
People who went to state school in the UK are often compared unfavourably to immigrants in arguments over who has been a net contributor. Obviously schooling/being born/using GP as a child costs a lot so it can be used in bad faith to make it look as though a 30yr old born & bred here is a scrounger compared to someone of the same age who arrived 3-4 years ago
As we saw from the chaos in Spain and Portugal you still need cash. I always keep some for emergencies and never leave home without a 100 quid. Also I always tip with cash .
People paying with cash are far more likely to tip.
I'm not sure. I discovered in Germany last year restaurants and bars had finally, largely, gone contactless. When you paid, you were asked if you wanted to leave a tip and offered three options at 5%, 10% and 15%. As Germans traditionally only round up to the nearest round number the servers were probably quids in even if customers generally selected the lowest number.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
People who went to state school in the UK are often compared unfavourably to immigrants in arguments over who has been a net contributor. Obviously schooling/being born/using GP as a child costs a lot so it can be used in bad faith to make it look as though a 30yr old born & bred here is a scrounger compared to someone of the same age who arrived 3-4 years ago
The ideal citizen is someone who arrives here for university, pays a fortune for tuition, works for 40 years and then retires to Spain as their health declines.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
No. That would be people from anywhere who meet appropriate criteria. The very opposite of FoM.
A few links around activism against anti-wheelchair and other barriers, that may interest one or two. @Eabhal , and perhaps people in Manchester - @JosiasJessop . Maybe @eek .
This is flagging up a couple of stories that might be of interest, around antisocial behaviour on paths using motorbikes.
These are largely around the problem that there are many 10s of thousands of barriers preventing access to Rights of Way and other paths (eg multiuser trails) for lawful users, in claimed attempts, which are illegal, to prevent motorcycle access.
! - A strategic campaign and possible legal action against Greater Manchester. Leigh Day are leading a campaign against anti-disabled barriers in Manchester. It is aiming also to change the climate around barriers.
2 - A research project in Greater Manchester looking at whether "anti-motorbike ASB" barriers, which also block lawful path users such as pedestrians using wheelchairs or mobility scooter riders, and parents with double buggies, actually reduce antisocial behaviour.
Their method is long term monitoring of a set of barriers before and after removal, for use level and interviewing local people to get an understanding of ASB.
3 - A Court finding, which where a Supreme Court Judge found that denying lawful users (cyclists in this case) access to a bridleway is not acceptable as a means to deter undesirable motorbike users.
Mr Salaman's second point was that in practice motorcycles use the route, notwithstanding that they are not entitled to do so, and that they are a menace to pedestrians. I have considerable sympathy with this complaint but the motorcycles are not lawfully there and their presence raises an issue of law enforcement. It is difficult to see how denying bicycles the right to use the route would stop motorcycles, unless the argument is that if bicycles are forbidden to use the track, there is less chance that motorcycles will do so. Even if that is true, however, it cannot possibly be justified to prevent bicycles from taking advantage of what would otherwise be a lawful use of the track in order to inhibit the unlawful use by motorcycles.
This might all become very relevant to me as the council are about to put some measures in place to prevent cars accessing our local path network. I'll keep an eye on just how tight the bollards are.
At the weekend I had to scale a new deer fence on the way to a reasonably popular hill. That's sent me down a MattW-type rabbit hole on access rights and responsibilities.
Try scaling a deer fence with a bicycle...
Been there, done that [Ardverikie]. At least there were two of us, which reduced it to merely difficult.
Locked deer gate on an estate track. Again, not entirely sure of rights and responsibilities. Was many km from the house.
Probably still my favourite video on YouTube. Have covered the same ground but on foot, occasionally on all fours...
I've had stuff like this cited at me as a reason for preventing disabled people using their hand-cycles in town centres.
Reflecting on this, we will see some interesting results if Reform get control of Councils around PSPOs.
As we know, PSPOs are designed repidly to criminalise activities by a target group with little process, checks and balances or evidence. That gives very poor quality PSPOs.
Abuse of these to ban cycling is significantly an artefact of places like - to quote 2 examples - Scunthorpe and Mansfield. These are very much Reform-target type places. There are others, from all parties - often due to local populist politics.
The usual process afaics is that there is an incident or two (Mansfield was a couple of lads doing wheelies in the open market on about 2 occasions), followed by a populist over-reaction, followed by the Enforcement Officers discovering they can't catch the alleged miscreants or there are problems dealing with minors, followed by disabled people, mums with 3-4 year olds, and pensioners being targeted because they are easy to catch.
If Reform go nuts with the things in towns they control, and they seem to me to be most prone of all the parties to the ritual jerking of the knee, it could encourage much needed reform to PSPOs.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
People who went to state school in the UK are often compared unfavourably to immigrants in arguments over who has been a net contributor. Obviously schooling/being born/using GP as a child costs a lot so it can be used in bad faith to make it look as though a 30yr old born & bred here is a scrounger compared to someone of the same age who arrived 3-4 years ago
AIUI it's generational, as benefits, pensions, healthcare etc are paid out of current receipts. So, Net recipients - Babyboomer generation - far more of them sharing the costs of healthcare and pensions for previous less numerous generations with a lower life expectancy Net donors - everybody else as they have to pay for the babyboomers.
It is beautiful here in south Cambridgeshire. I went out for a pre-dawn walk, and unusually encountered no wildlife, though I was not on my usual route.
I'm going for a long swim in the pool; I'm tempted to go for my first open water swim of the year this evening, but I've a race in the river on Sunday and Mrs J may not be back from a trip in time. So I'll be jumping into the Ouse on Sunday remarkably unprepared.
Oh, and naturally enough, the weather's forecast to be much cooler on Sunday...
Where do you swim on the Ouse? I used to go canoeing out of St Ives (down by the church) when I was young.
There are quite a few weirs, iirc.
Just a short section in St Neots. The first 750m is fine, with the current; coming back against the current is much slower. Good fun though. I've seen people wild swimming in St Ives before.
And I also swim at an old quarry lake in St Neots. There's a good crowd there, which makes it more fun.
St Ives would be OK in the backwater, but the weirs are quite close.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
People who went to state school in the UK are often compared unfavourably to immigrants in arguments over who has been a net contributor. Obviously schooling/being born/using GP as a child costs a lot so it can be used in bad faith to make it look as though a 30yr old born & bred here is a scrounger compared to someone of the same age who arrived 3-4 years ago
AIUI it's generational, as benefits, pensions, healthcare etc are paid out of current receipts. So, Net recipients - Babyboomer generation - far more of them sharing the costs of healthcare and pensions for previous less numerous generations with a lower life expectancy Net donors - everybody else as they have to pay for the babyboomers.
Amusing summary of Reform voters from Reform campaign worker in Runcorn, they fall into 2 groups “those who set their alarm for work in the morning and are angry at those who don’t – and those who don’t”
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
People who went to state school in the UK are often compared unfavourably to immigrants in arguments over who has been a net contributor. Obviously schooling/being born/using GP as a child costs a lot so it can be used in bad faith to make it look as though a 30yr old born & bred here is a scrounger compared to someone of the same age who arrived 3-4 years ago
The ideal citizen is someone who arrives here for university, pays a fortune for tuition, works for 40 years and then retires to Spain as their health declines.
You remain eligible for the state pension whilst living in Spain. The economically optimal citizen dies of a massive, instantaneous stoke the day after they retire.
An Off Topic question: FPTP is associated with a stable party system in the UK and the US where parties turn over more frequently under other systems. However, someone elsewhere pointed out to me that Canada has had a reasonable turnover among parties, even though it's FPTP. Does anyone have an idea how? (Or indeed if it's true).
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
An Off Topic question: FPTP is associated with a stable party system in the UK and the US where parties turn over more frequently under other systems. However, someone elsewhere pointed out to me that Canada has had a reasonable turnover among parties, even though it's FPTP. Does anyone have an idea how? (Or indeed if it's true).
I think Fptp systems are relevant to 2 party systems and it will produce regular turnovers unless a 3rd or 4 th party is established. In the 1800s there were only 2 parties and plenty of turnover. Less regionalisation also helps.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
People who went to state school in the UK are often compared unfavourably to immigrants in arguments over who has been a net contributor. Obviously schooling/being born/using GP as a child costs a lot so it can be used in bad faith to make it look as though a 30yr old born & bred here is a scrounger compared to someone of the same age who arrived 3-4 years ago
The ideal citizen is someone who arrives here for university, pays a fortune for tuition, works for 40 years and then retires to Spain as their health declines.
You remain eligible for the state pension whilst living in Spain. The economically optimal citizen dies of a massive, instantaneous stoke the day after they retire.
Needs to be single, otherwise spouse benefits from the contributions.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
It would be interesting. But absent bringing back Transportation to Australia it hardly matters. Being born here, or born with a right to live here, gives one the right to be net burden.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
Net contributors to the Treasury is a dodgy measure anyway. Far more men will qualify than women, but (imo) women are bigger net contributors to the country generally, or perhaps less controversially make at least as big a contribution.
I realise it’s the early hours in Britain so I get to comment with no comeback.
I decided to have dinner this evening in a “British pub” called the Elephant and Castle. It’s the first time I’ve tried one of these. British pubs used to be very rare abroad outside certain Med resorts - it was a category dominated by the Irish - but they’ve been burgeoning in the US and elsewhere since the advent of craft beer and microbreweries.
It’s always interesting to see what other cultures think of ours when we’re an ethnic minority. When we are, to coin a Leon term, interesting diversity.
The answer:
- The Queen: in one of two guises, either as the demure former head of state in a grainy photo, or Sex Pistols cover art - The Sex Pistols, as font and design style - David Bowie: he’s everywhere in the decor of any self-respecting ethnic Brit establishment. He is to British iconography what Frida Kahlo is to Mexico - Red things found in London: phone boxes, horse guards in busbees, London buses - London generally: British pubs are almost all urban so they reflect a sort of urban (London) image of Britain, including in their decor. But it’s a 60s version. Carnaby St. Bowler hats. Piccadilly Circus. They are also chain-coded. The Elephant & Castle is a bit Wetherspoonsy. - David Beckham. He’s up there with Bowie. The Roger Federer or Bjork of national character - Club Football. Particularly Arsenal, for some reason - The Union Jack - Fish and chips, pies, roast, puddings, curry - Occasional nods to Scotland
What are they missing?
- Cricket. Nowhere to be seen - English or Welsh wine. An entire wine list of American and Italian products. The shame - Country pubs: beer gardens, hops on the ceiling, low beams, horseshoes, fox hunting scenes, log fires. None of that. - England flags. - King Charles. They’ve not yet caught up - Game: pheasant, grouse, partridge, bread sauce. - Any suggestion that Wales exists as a place, concept or even a word - Beer that tastes like beer you get in an actual pub
That's well worth an FPT. Thank-you.
So that's a caricature almost straight out of Al Murray's The Pub Landlord - which is perhaps where most have seen "the British Pub", with a nod to the Home Counties "food pub", as seen Chez Jeremy Clarkson * or in Top Gear.
* But Clarkson's comes with a hint of Colonel Blimp. "Coffee is not English, so we don't serve it." Or, presumably, tea. @Leon would be at home, as they have a wine called Chateau Newent.
Three Choirs or Saint Anne's Vineyard, at a guess?
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
Net contributors to the Treasury is a dodgy measure anyway. Far more men will qualify than women, but (imo) women are bigger net contributors to the country generally, or perhaps less controversially make at least as big a contribution.
In addition, an immigrant might fill a shortage role whilst being a net burden. And that's ok, so long as long-term efforts are made to avoid such shortages in the future.
Hah! Long term efforts. British governments. Good one.
Trump repeatedly claims the photoshopped MS-13 on Kilmar Abrego Garcia's knuckles is real, Terry Moran keeps telling him it isn't, prompting Trump to say this:
"I never heard of you. I picked you. You’re not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed... Just say yes!"
I think the same media that is falling all over itself to apologize about not covering Biden's age harder should focus some energy on the fact that the President, whose brains are leaking out his ears, appears to be completely convinced by obvious photoshops
And can post something so obviously indicating serious cognitive problems as "I never heard of you. I picked you."
I disagree with that
“I never heard of you. I picked you” is a power play - it’s essentially “you’re not important but I’m giving you a chance don’t mess with me”
And on the photoshops it’s more that Trump is a blatant liar who will say what he wants people to believe. You can’t conclude that he is convinced or not by the photoshop. But it does demonstrate his way of dealing with things
The thing about cognitive decline is that it can reveal underlying personality; the mental power to keep up the mask is one of the things that goes first.
In Trump's case, he has always been a liar, but he used to do it with style and verve and va va voom. Which sort of worked.
Now, all that is left is the lies, and it's kind of pathetic. Biden was also mentally past it, but his underlying instincts were much more wholesome.
"advancing years, without in any way impairing his verbal fluency, disengaged the operation of his mind from the content of his speech,"
On topic: I think Britain Elects are building a decent record on by-elections, and their numbers match my expectations, in that I had this down as a few % Labour victory when the election was called, but the direction of the polls since then leaves it too close to call. The wildcard is first by-election of a new parliament, with very different politics from when a by-election prediction was last made, so does their model hold up?
The New Statesman's commentary points to a couple of Reform by-election successes in WWC wards, but this is a bit selective and a WWC ward can be very WWC compared to a WWC larger division.
On the other hand, if Reform could perform like the LDs, they'd be a shoe in - in North Shropshire the LDs provoked a 50% reduction in the Tory vote share (60->30) when proportional swing from polling suggested only a 33% drop, and hoovered around 60% of the Labour vote.
I don't think Reform have quite that wherewithal even with Labour approval as deep in the mire, perhaps deeper.
I've not spoken to the family who live in a genuinely nice bit of Runcorn itself, but the constituency as a whole sits deeply in the middle on all the Electoral Calculus measures.
I think my summary is: it's going to be pretty tight. I have some hope, but am not at all confident of, Labour edging it.
On topic, I think Labour are probably value in Runcorn. They’re defending a big majority, there might be a decent stop Reform vote. I do think it will be close though, I could see it going either way.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
Would be interesting to see the same criteria applied to Reform voters. How many of them have been net contributors?
People who went to state school in the UK are often compared unfavourably to immigrants in arguments over who has been a net contributor. Obviously schooling/being born/using GP as a child costs a lot so it can be used in bad faith to make it look as though a 30yr old born & bred here is a scrounger compared to someone of the same age who arrived 3-4 years ago
The ideal citizen is someone who arrives here for university, pays a fortune for tuition, works for 40 years and then retires to Spain as their health declines.
You remain eligible for the state pension whilst living in Spain. The economically optimal citizen dies of a massive, instantaneous stoke the day after they retire.
Essentially this was likely to happen with pre WW1 and to a lesser degree pre-WW2 generations so the state pension was affordable.
Farage's long history of repeating Kremlin talking points, and lack of seriousness in respect to governing, are key weaknesses which should resonate with Tories. They missed a trick by not electing Cleverly who could much better have exploited that than Kemi who, in the eyes of too many voters, doesn't look "prime ministerial" yet. That may possibly change, particularly if the slow-moving policy review yields a serious programme which can be contrasted with Reform's lack of one. Ultimately it depends on how long it takes the public to start paying any attention to the Tories and whether they can ride out the next year or two. Will take a lot of nerve.
An Off Topic question: FPTP is associated with a stable party system in the UK and the US where parties turn over more frequently under other systems. However, someone elsewhere pointed out to me that Canada has had a reasonable turnover among parties, even though it's FPTP. Does anyone have an idea how? (Or indeed if it's true).
I think Fptp systems are relevant to 2 party systems and it will produce regular turnovers unless a 3rd or 4 th party is established. In the 1800s there were only 2 parties and plenty of turnover. Less regionalisation also helps.
Hmm - by turnover are you talking about switching who is in government? I meant old parties being replaced by new ones.
Farage's long history of repeating Kremlin talking points, and lack of seriousness in respect to governing, are key weaknesses which should resonate with Tories. They missed a trick by not electing Cleverly who could much better have exploited that than Kemi who, in the eyes of too many voters, doesn't look "prime ministerial" yet. That may possibly change, particularly if the slow-moving policy review yields a serious programme which can be contrasted with Reform's lack of one. Ultimately it depends on how long it takes the public to start paying any attention to the Tories and whether they can ride out the next year or two. Will take a lot of nerve.
The Tories could have elected Churchill or Thatcher to replace Rishi and the voters would have been uninterested. Terrible time for an individual to take over, though also an opportunity.
As we saw from the chaos in Spain and Portugal you still need cash. I always keep some for emergencies and never leave home without a 100 quid. Also I always tip with cash .
A lot of people don’t have £100 to even withdraw from their bank account!
On the cash debate, supermarkets would not be able to take cash in a power outage as they wouldn’t know the price of anything - that’s all done electronically and not all items are marked with the price.
This is a message to the fly-tippers blighting our towns and villages:
For too long, your actions have gone unpunished. That ends now.
We'll use drones and new tech to identify your vehicle. Then we'll crush it.
Why crush rather than send to Ukraine or sell to buy more drones?
This is the impotent government's road to populism. Crime's out of control so we'll threaten ever more blood-curdling punishments – from small boats to shoplifting, and just a couple of days ago with bad cyclists. It didn't work the last 17 times we tried it but this time, things are different.
I realise it’s the early hours in Britain so I get to comment with no comeback.
I decided to have dinner this evening in a “British pub” called the Elephant and Castle. It’s the first time I’ve tried one of these. British pubs used to be very rare abroad outside certain Med resorts - it was a category dominated by the Irish - but they’ve been burgeoning in the US and elsewhere since the advent of craft beer and microbreweries.
It’s always interesting to see what other cultures think of ours when we’re an ethnic minority. When we are, to coin a Leon term, interesting diversity.
The answer:
- The Queen: in one of two guises, either as the demure former head of state in a grainy photo, or Sex Pistols cover art - The Sex Pistols, as font and design style - David Bowie: he’s everywhere in the decor of any self-respecting ethnic Brit establishment. He is to British iconography what Frida Kahlo is to Mexico - Red things found in London: phone boxes, horse guards in busbees, London buses - London generally: British pubs are almost all urban so they reflect a sort of urban (London) image of Britain, including in their decor. But it’s a 60s version. Carnaby St. Bowler hats. Piccadilly Circus. They are also chain-coded. The Elephant & Castle is a bit Wetherspoonsy. - David Beckham. He’s up there with Bowie. The Roger Federer or Bjork of national character - Club Football. Particularly Arsenal, for some reason - The Union Jack - Fish and chips, pies, roast, puddings, curry - Occasional nods to Scotland
What are they missing?
- Cricket. Nowhere to be seen - English or Welsh wine. An entire wine list of American and Italian products. The shame - Country pubs: beer gardens, hops on the ceiling, low beams, horseshoes, fox hunting scenes, log fires. None of that. - England flags. - King Charles. They’ve not yet caught up - Game: pheasant, grouse, partridge, bread sauce. - Any suggestion that Wales exists as a place, concept or even a word - Beer that tastes like beer you get in an actual pub
That's well worth an FPT. Thank-you.
So that's a caricature almost straight out of Al Murray's The Pub Landlord - which is perhaps where most have seen "the British Pub", with a nod to the Home Counties "food pub", as seen Chez Jeremy Clarkson * or in Top Gear.
* But Clarkson's comes with a hint of Colonel Blimp. "Coffee is not English, so we don't serve it." Or, presumably, tea. @Leon would be at home, as they have a wine called Chateau Newent.
Three Choirs or Saint Anne's Vineyard, at a guess?
Remarkably the Libs still not completely out of majority territory in Canada. Winning the Overseas and special ballots bigly. Now on 168 seats. Second in 11 close ones. Need 4 for a majority...
On the cash debate, supermarkets would not be able to take cash in a power outage as they wouldn’t know the price of anything - that’s all done electronically and not all items are marked with the price.
Back in the day (70s), when Kwik Save started, the cashiers had to memorise the prices. (Yeah, they had a printed list, too, as a backup)
Bloody gorgeous morning, taking the train along the Exe estuary.
Thinking hot London may not be so gorgeous...
I am heading north for 4 days , trip planned on The Jacobite Express, looks like weather will be nice. Beautiful here at present
The Mallaig extension is a beautiful line! But I'm much happier doing it on a Scotrail train where you can open the window...
Is there no sticking your head out the doors like old times
No sir. West Coast Railways have had a long-running public spat with the ORR over windows and doors. ORR says the rules apply, WCR claim they don't. ORR win in court, they get a brief stay providing they marshall the doors. ORR do a mystery shopper and find no marshals in place.
WCR assemble a crusty rake of aircon mk2 stock whilst still advertising the mk1s you're not allowed to travel in. I believe they now have a very limited number of mk1s with the doors locked out of use, but most of the stock is coffins. Which isn't exactly what the tourists want hence the abusive reviews on Trip pilot for the last year or so.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
If only we had an unbiased media that explained those figures.
We need to go cashless to save the children, why won’t anybody think of the children?
Decline of cash credited for drop in NHS surgery for children swallowing objects
Figures reveal 29% fall in operations in England to remove foreign bodies from children’s airways, noses and throats
Cashless societies may be a sad fact of modern life for those with a nostalgic attachment to the pound in their pocket, but doctors have discovered one unexpected benefit of the decline of coins.
Far fewer children are having surgery after swallowing small items that could choke or kill them, and the scarcity of loose change is likely to be the reason.
The number of children in England needing an operation to remove a foreign body from their nose, throat or airway fell significantly between 2012 and 2022, NHS figures show.
The fall has been greeted with relief by doctors and surgeons, who for years have been warning of the dangers posed by young children ingesting magnets, tiny batteries and other risky objects.
The number of under-18s undergoing surgery on their nose, airway or throat for that reason has declined from 2,405 in 2012 to 1,716 in 2022 – a fall of 29% or 689 cases in the year.
The Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCSE), which obtained the figures, collated from hospital admission data, identified the rise of the cashless society as the main reason.
One theory is that they are trying to create circumstances where a member of the public in a concealed-carry state with "stand your ground" laws shoots one, so that harsher measures can be "justified".
And a question is whether these are real ICE agents, or MAGA people who have been deputised.
How long before 1) Criminal gangs kidnap people using this model, impersonating ICE (leaving aside that the description applied to Trump's goons), 2) Some are detained by real police officers.
I'm quite surprised how relatively relaxed the commentators are about it.
This is a message to the fly-tippers blighting our towns and villages:
For too long, your actions have gone unpunished. That ends now.
We'll use drones and new tech to identify your vehicle. Then we'll crush it.
Good. Fly-tipping is an absolute scourge and fly-tippers are scum.
Our local council has just introduced an appointment system for the recycling centres. I expect that to increase fly tipping by people who can’t or won’t make an appointment.
A few links around activism against anti-wheelchair and other barriers, that may interest one or two. @Eabhal , and perhaps people in Manchester - @JosiasJessop . Maybe @eek .
This is flagging up a couple of stories that might be of interest, around antisocial behaviour on paths using motorbikes.
These are largely around the problem that there are many 10s of thousands of barriers preventing access to Rights of Way and other paths (eg multiuser trails) for lawful users, in claimed attempts, which are illegal, to prevent motorcycle access.
! - A strategic campaign and possible legal action against Greater Manchester. Leigh Day are leading a campaign against anti-disabled barriers in Manchester. It is aiming also to change the climate around barriers.
2 - A research project in Greater Manchester looking at whether "anti-motorbike ASB" barriers, which also block lawful path users such as pedestrians using wheelchairs or mobility scooter riders, and parents with double buggies, actually reduce antisocial behaviour.
Their method is long term monitoring of a set of barriers before and after removal, for use level and interviewing local people to get an understanding of ASB.
3 - A Court finding, which where a Supreme Court Judge found that denying lawful users (cyclists in this case) access to a bridleway is not acceptable as a means to deter undesirable motorbike users.
Mr Salaman's second point was that in practice motorcycles use the route, notwithstanding that they are not entitled to do so, and that they are a menace to pedestrians. I have considerable sympathy with this complaint but the motorcycles are not lawfully there and their presence raises an issue of law enforcement. It is difficult to see how denying bicycles the right to use the route would stop motorcycles, unless the argument is that if bicycles are forbidden to use the track, there is less chance that motorcycles will do so. Even if that is true, however, it cannot possibly be justified to prevent bicycles from taking advantage of what would otherwise be a lawful use of the track in order to inhibit the unlawful use by motorcycles.
This might all become very relevant to me as the council are about to put some measures in place to prevent cars accessing our local path network. I'll keep an eye on just how tight the bollards are.
At the weekend I had to scale a new deer fence on the way to a reasonably popular hill. That's sent me down a MattW-type rabbit hole on access rights and responsibilities.
Try scaling a deer fence with a bicycle...
Been there, done that [Ardverikie]. At least there were two of us, which reduced it to merely difficult.
Locked deer gate on an estate track. Again, not entirely sure of rights and responsibilities. Was many km from the house.
Probably still my favourite video on YouTube. Have covered the same ground but on foot, occasionally on all fours...
One modest problem I have with Danny Macaskill is that he's really telling fairy tales - analogous to the Parcours videos of Dominic Di Tommaso *, that then get mistaken for "they are ALL like that".
It's performance art that can too easily be merged into perceptions of reality, which can then be leveraged by trolls to create a false version of reality. That is not a problem unless we have an ignorant public, which is (to an extent) not the case for driving or walking, but is for cycling.
We see it more sharply with "alleycat" type vidoes. Here's one from last week that was being cited as 'typical cyclist behaviour' on twatter, which sentiments then reach the heads of Telegraph readers. The comments (and the critical ones deleted) are instructive. I've had stuff like this cited at me as a reason for preventing disabled people using their hand-cycles in town centres. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FGDzAlcdQ
Re the cycling video, has he been prosecuted? If not, why not? What a twat.
I have no idea. It comes imo under ASB as well as a dozen or more traffic offences, including Dangerous Cycling. It's the equivalent for a driver of a hoon doing donuts in the High Street.
His "justification" is a combination of fake-libertarian and fake-anarchist.
I would hope that current laws would allow that to be used as evidence; it is different from a normal submission in that under Operation SNAP you also fill in a witness statement when uploading a video.
This is a message to the fly-tippers blighting our towns and villages:
For too long, your actions have gone unpunished. That ends now.
We'll use drones and new tech to identify your vehicle. Then we'll crush it.
Is that even legal? What if you are still in the vehicle at the time they've identified it?
Not legal as stated. You can't lawfully destroy the property of another (overlooking necessity, emergency etc) without a specific lawful authority to do so. In general that requires 'due process'.
The general evidence principle generally holds: You are not the judge of the evidence in your own cause. We live, thankfully, in a country where it is expected and required that governments obey their own laws. Like USA until last January.
Shein, AliExpress and Temu just shat themselves. The US has already done this, we're implementing it now and the EU proposing it next. China's business model of exporting shite to the west and avoiding import duties is finally coming to an end.
This is a message to the fly-tippers blighting our towns and villages:
For too long, your actions have gone unpunished. That ends now.
We'll use drones and new tech to identify your vehicle. Then we'll crush it.
Good. Fly-tipping is an absolute scourge and fly-tippers are scum.
Our local council has just introduced an appointment system for the recycling centres. I expect that to increase fly tipping by people who can’t or won’t make an appointment.
My local council has always had really good recycling centres. As in - you rock up, dump your stuff and go, no questions asked. Even in a commercialish vehicle.
Strangely, we have almost zero fly tipping.
The local council idiots are threatening a permit system to save costs - I will almost guarantee that it will cost more to clear up the resultant fly tipping than they save.
Ironically, we're in a part of the country with cement kilms and loads of quarrying - it's only stupid government taxes on landfill and co2 that make our waste cost us money, otherwise we'd just fire it all through the cement kilm burners to recover the energy then dump the ash and residue into one of the umpteen worked out quarrys, job done.
This is a message to the fly-tippers blighting our towns and villages:
For too long, your actions have gone unpunished. That ends now.
We'll use drones and new tech to identify your vehicle. Then we'll crush it.
Is that even legal? What if you are still in the vehicle at the time they've identified it?
That lily livered pinko @Leon was suggesting the use of tasers on those who litter our fair land. Crushing them inside the vehicle they littered from seems a much more proportionate response.
This is a message to the fly-tippers blighting our towns and villages:
For too long, your actions have gone unpunished. That ends now.
We'll use drones and new tech to identify your vehicle. Then we'll crush it.
Is that even legal? What if you are still in the vehicle at the time they've identified it?
That lily livered pinko @Leon was suggesting the use of tasers on those who litter our fair land. Crushing them inside the vehicle they littered from seems a much more proportionate response.
I think everyone over 50 should be issued by the Government with a taser, and allowed to use it at will on anyone who pisses them off.
This is a message to the fly-tippers blighting our towns and villages:
For too long, your actions have gone unpunished. That ends now.
We'll use drones and new tech to identify your vehicle. Then we'll crush it.
Is that even legal? What if you are still in the vehicle at the time they've identified it?
That lily livered pinko @Leon was suggesting the use of tasers on those who litter our fair land. Crushing them inside the vehicle they littered from seems a much more proportionate response.
Can't we just impose 100hrs community service picking up litter ?
Add a sufficiently large fine for those who can afford it, and the scheme might even pay for itself.
I thought it was traditional for the Pope to be a Catholic.
oh... and celibate.
It's definitional, is it not? The Pope is a Catholic and the Pope defines what Catholicism is. So Pope Donald could adjust Catholic doctrine to be compatible with his lifestyle, if required?
I am with postgrad students today. One of them is behind on his research because he is having to help his family out, who are back in the US. Both parents worked providing mental health services for the VA (Veterans' Affair). They've been fired as part of the Trump/Musk/Republican cuts and face financial problems. Is this what conservative voters actually wanted?
Comments
No, I don't have prices figures on what percent of the gas price is due to renewable intermittency, but I will try to get some later.
“As local elections loom, it’s clear that years of agreeing with the Reform leader have failed to discourage people from voting for him.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/30/tories-labour-fight-farage-local-elections
https://www.stepchange.org/debt-info/bank-accounts-after-bankruptcy.aspx
Cardinal Becciu bows out of Vatican conclave after Pope’s letter
Reports of a request made by Francis for the scandal-hit Becciu not to vote echo the plot of the recent film Conclave
https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/cardinal-becciu-vatican-conclave-klgt09rhp
...Becciu is not the only cardinal at the conclave with a questionable CV. The Peruvian cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, 81, the former archbishop of Lima, has been spotted at meetings in his cardinal’s outfit despite being told by Pope Francis to never wear it again after he was accused of sex abuse...
It's performance art that can too easily be merged into perceptions of reality, which can then be leveraged by trolls to create a false version of reality. That is not a problem unless we have an ignorant public, which is (to an extent) not the case for driving or walking, but is for cycling.
We see it more sharply with "alleycat" type vidoes. Here's one from last week that was being cited as 'typical cyclist behaviour' on twatter, which sentiments then reach the heads of Telegraph readers. The comments (and the critical ones deleted) are instructive. I've had stuff like this cited at me as a reason for preventing disabled people using their hand-cycles in town centres.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FGDzAlcdQ
* eg https://youtu.be/m5zBlSvtIKQ?t=92
"The outages of four reactors - two at Heysham and two in Hartlepool - were unplanned, prompted by a part failure in the boiler pipework at Heysham 1 in Lancashire."
https://news.sky.com/story/six-of-uks-nine-nuclear-reactors-taken-offline-13050222
I'm in favour of nuclear. I'm in favour of O&G. I'm in favour of renewables. We need a mix, not one thing, all working together to get us security of supply.
And O&G does *not* give us security of supply, and AIUI will automagically not even if we maximise North Sea output. And the thought of going back to coal is laughable.
https://x.com/bazzamarama/status/1917327745568165892
I regularly meet people who seem enthusiastic about wanting to vote Reform, and while most of them are down below the median with Leon in terms of insight, there are a lot of them about.
I'm going for a long swim in the pool; I'm tempted to go for my first open water swim of the year this evening, but I've a race in the river on Sunday and Mrs J may not be back from a trip in time. So I'll be jumping into the Ouse on Sunday remarkably unprepared.
Oh, and naturally enough, the weather's forecast to be much cooler on Sunday...
So basically that would be people from Europe !
There are quite a few weirs, iirc.
And I also swim at an old quarry lake in St Neots. There's a good crowd there, which makes it more fun.
Now we get to the real questions - are Autobots allowed to use Decepticon bathrooms?
Not sure that will pass Parliamentary scrutiny, though.
As we know, PSPOs are designed repidly to criminalise activities by a target group with little process, checks and balances or evidence. That gives very poor quality PSPOs.
Abuse of these to ban cycling is significantly an artefact of places like - to quote 2 examples - Scunthorpe and Mansfield. These are very much Reform-target type places. There are others, from all parties - often due to local populist politics.
The usual process afaics is that there is an incident or two (Mansfield was a couple of lads doing wheelies in the open market on about 2 occasions), followed by a populist over-reaction, followed by the Enforcement Officers discovering they can't catch the alleged miscreants or there are problems dealing with minors, followed by disabled people, mums with 3-4 year olds, and pensioners being targeted because they are easy to catch.
If Reform go nuts with the things in towns they control, and they seem to me to be most prone of all the parties to the ritual jerking of the knee, it could encourage much needed reform to PSPOs.
So,
Net recipients - Babyboomer generation - far more of them sharing the costs of healthcare and pensions for previous less numerous generations with a lower life expectancy
Net donors - everybody else as they have to pay for the babyboomers.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes.
They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years.
They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents.
They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
I'll use every means at my disposal to identify such comments. Then I'll crush them.
My government will come up with new eyecatching initiatives with which I can be personally associated. Then we will crush the opposition.”
Hah! Long term efforts. British governments. Good one.
The New Statesman's commentary points to a couple of Reform by-election successes in WWC wards, but this is a bit selective and a WWC ward can be very WWC compared to a WWC larger division.
On the other hand, if Reform could perform like the LDs, they'd be a shoe in - in North Shropshire the LDs provoked a 50% reduction in the Tory vote share (60->30) when proportional swing from polling suggested only a 33% drop, and hoovered around 60% of the Labour vote.
I don't think Reform have quite that wherewithal even with Labour approval as deep in the mire, perhaps deeper.
I've not spoken to the family who live in a genuinely nice bit of Runcorn itself, but the constituency as a whole sits deeply in the middle on all the Electoral Calculus measures.
I think my summary is: it's going to be pretty tight. I have some hope, but am not at all confident of, Labour edging it.
https://x.com/lindseygrahamsc/status/1917331380297478530?s=46&t=fJymV-V84rexmlQMLXHHJQ
This is the impotent government's road to populism. Crime's out of control so we'll threaten ever more blood-curdling punishments – from small boats to shoplifting, and just a couple of days ago with bad cyclists. It didn't work the last 17 times we tried it but this time, things are different.
Also interesting that thye have Bacchus Ortega.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0858/8692/7185/files/B5_Drinks_List_19.2.25.pdf?v=1742811793
Winning the Overseas and special ballots bigly.
Now on 168 seats. Second in 11 close ones. Need 4 for a majority...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/livestory/recap-everything-that-unfolded-on-canadas-election-night-and-the-day-after-9.6738893
(Yeah, they had a printed list, too, as a backup)
WCR assemble a crusty rake of aircon mk2 stock whilst still advertising the mk1s you're not allowed to travel in. I believe they now have a very limited number of mk1s with the doors locked out of use, but most of the stock is coffins. Which isn't exactly what the tourists want hence the abusive reviews on Trip pilot for the last year or so.
Sorry...
Decline of cash credited for drop in NHS surgery for children swallowing objects
Figures reveal 29% fall in operations in England to remove foreign bodies from children’s airways, noses and throats
Cashless societies may be a sad fact of modern life for those with a nostalgic attachment to the pound in their pocket, but doctors have discovered one unexpected benefit of the decline of coins.
Far fewer children are having surgery after swallowing small items that could choke or kill them, and the scarcity of loose change is likely to be the reason.
The number of children in England needing an operation to remove a foreign body from their nose, throat or airway fell significantly between 2012 and 2022, NHS figures show.
The fall has been greeted with relief by doctors and surgeons, who for years have been warning of the dangers posed by young children ingesting magnets, tiny batteries and other risky objects.
The number of under-18s undergoing surgery on their nose, airway or throat for that reason has declined from 2,405 in 2012 to 1,716 in 2022 – a fall of 29% or 689 cases in the year.
The Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCSE), which obtained the figures, collated from hospital admission data, identified the rise of the cashless society as the main reason.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/28/decline-of-cash-credited-for-drop-in-nhs-surgery-for-children-swallowing-objects
Trump's ICE operating as a secret police. Plain clothes, no badges, point-blank refusal to show an identity card, and one of them wearing a balaclava.
https://youtu.be/Fl6IGsLe6Ec?t=113
One theory is that they are trying to create circumstances where a member of the public in a concealed-carry state with "stand your ground" laws shoots one, so that harsher measures can be "justified".
And a question is whether these are real ICE agents, or MAGA people who have been deputised.
How long before 1) Criminal gangs kidnap people using this model, impersonating ICE (leaving aside that the description applied to Trump's goons), 2) Some are detained by real police officers.
I'm quite surprised how relatively relaxed the commentators are about it.
His "justification" is a combination of fake-libertarian and fake-anarchist.
I would hope that current laws would allow that to be used as evidence; it is different from a normal submission in that under Operation SNAP you also fill in a witness statement when uploading a video.
https://x.com/bfmtv/status/1917187877357703602
The general evidence principle generally holds: You are not the judge of the evidence in your own cause. We live, thankfully, in a country where it is expected and required that governments obey their own laws. Like USA until last January.
oh... and celibate.
@IAPolls2022
What do you think is President Trump's biggest mistake in the first 100 days?
https://x.com/IAPolls2022/status/1917231752172441865
Strangely, we have almost zero fly tipping.
The local council idiots are threatening a permit system to save costs - I will almost guarantee that it will cost more to clear up the resultant fly tipping than they save.
Ironically, we're in a part of the country with cement kilms and loads of quarrying - it's only stupid government taxes on landfill and co2 that make our waste cost us money, otherwise we'd just fire it all through the cement kilm burners to recover the energy then dump the ash and residue into one of the umpteen worked out quarrys, job done.
Add a sufficiently large fine for those who can afford it, and the scheme might even pay for itself.