"Trump’s revolution is the only way to save America, says the architect of Project 2025 Paul Dans argues that the system needed smashing and rebuilding"
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
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.
Large nuclear plants going offline is going to cause an issue (though it's nothing like as intermittent as wind or solar). Many more smaller SMR stations would provide a far more even supply not affected catastrophically by outages (would be my surmise). We need to pivot toward SMRs and away from costly too-big-to-fail nuclear projects with France and China.
I agree we need a mix.
I disagree. There are huge reserves in the North Sea - we need to properly incentivise getting it out. We also need to progress with fracking.
Coal is not 'laughable' when the world's biggest industrial economy is opening coal stations at a rate of knots to supply our windmills. And when even Germany has added more coal to its mix. Neither have particularly laughable approaches to their needs. The only laughable energy policy is our energy policy.
Coal is laughable for a number of reasons: We have zero mines, and they are massively costly to open (and controversial...) we have zero coal-fire power stations left. We have zero coal-handling infrastructure left (even the old MGR trains...)
I'd strongly argue that money spent correcting these would be much better spent elsewhere; even nuclear.
But my main reason is environmental, but not the gasses. I was born and raised a couple of miles from a large coal-fired power station, and it was impossible to hang washing out if the wind was blowing from that direction, as it would get covered in particles from the coal burning. IMV one of the best pieces of post-war legislation were the various clean air acts, and burning coal - even in power stations - is bad for air quality. (*)
You appear to hate renewables; but going back to coal would be the worst of all worlds.
(*) Orders of magnitude more radiation is released into the environment from burning coal than from nuclear power stations, for the same power generated...
Things not existing doesn't make them laughable - otherwise anything new would be laughable. There was a big plan for a large clean coal power station 15 years or so ago. Alec Salmond was interested for Scotland.
Clearly I don't hate renewables, because tidal is included in my list. I hate undependable, intermittent, and unsuitable renewables whose primary purpose is to farm subsidies.
Tidal is predictable. It's still super intermittent; you have slack tides that change time during the week, and the difference in generation between a spring and neap tide is over 50%. There is very little scope for storage even with lagoons, and utilising the Severn estuary to its full extent would only generate about 10 GW.
To put that into perspective, Scotland alone currently has nearly 50 GW of renewables operating, under construction or in planning. Only 5% of UK households have solar, yet we're generating 12 GW right now.
Perhaps my understanding of this is flawed, and @MarqueeMark may wish to weigh in, but don't the lagoons create electricity both when the water is flooding into it, and when it's flooding out of it? To me that doesn't leave a huge gap in service, and it is, as you say, utterly predictable. There really is no case against it, except that there's little subsidy cash to be spaffed around, due to the inherent workability of the concept. It is certainly nothing like the intermittency, unreliability and unsuitability (solar power at its highest when it's least needed/wind dropping down when it's cold) of wind and solar.
As for that 50GW, how much is actually providing power, not being constrained, or becalmed because the weather isn't right? We have abundant oil and gas, we have coal, we have tides for days. So we're using solar and wind.
The lagoons spread the generation a fair bit. Depends on capacity, but most design don’t actually merge high and low generation - there is a gap.
But the offset between locations is pretty much fixed. So you can site your lagoons around the coast to “fill in” each others generating gaps.
Does nothing for the very large monthly variation, though. To provide reliable power from tidal, you need a crapload of battery storage.. though that's slowly becoming feasible.
There's a very good argument for building tidal now (better still a decade or two back), and waiting for the storage economics to catch up.
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
The three groups with a will for going it alone are:
a) People who are making obscene amounts of money from 'the transition' b) People who are taking obscene amounts of money from the people making onscene amounts of money from 'the transition' c) Real hardcore nutters who would like us to re-enter the stone age
The last time we really did a 'go it alone' was under Elizabeth I maybe? That worked out rather well.
(And if you argue it was under Cromwell, then that also finished up as not so bad)
We are not talking about an independent foreign policy (if only), we are talking about unilateral economic self-mutilation when nobody else can be arsed. No other countries are opposing our Net Zero plans, they are simply looking on with pitying bemusement.
That’s a complete myth. Nearly every country in the world has a net zero goal, generally in a similar time frame.
There is a difference between
having a net zero policy you are actually trying to implement
and
having a net zero policy you agreed to in order to get a photo op signing up for a climate accord that you have no intention of seriously trying for.
I would suggest most countries fall into the latter category
You are a cynic and wouldn't believe it, whatever those countries actually did.
The first COP meeting was in 1995, 30 years ago, and CO2 levels are rising faster than ever, (and Trump is the POTUS). It is not unrealistic to have a degree of scepticism about the 2050 target, regardless of personal views about what would be good for the planet.
Trump, by crashing the US economy and radically reducing international trade, is doing a great job at reducing US carbon emissions. I mean, I prefer the UK approach of reducing carbon emissions and having a growing economy, but Trump has his own way of doing things...
Have we done this?
Trump on China: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
The three groups with a will for going it alone are:
a) People who are making obscene amounts of money from 'the transition' b) People who are taking obscene amounts of money from the people making onscene amounts of money from 'the transition' c) Real hardcore nutters who would like us to re-enter the stone age
The last time we really did a 'go it alone' was under Elizabeth I maybe? That worked out rather well.
(And if you argue it was under Cromwell, then that also finished up as not so bad)
We are not talking about an independent foreign policy (if only), we are talking about unilateral economic self-mutilation when nobody else can be arsed. No other countries are opposing our Net Zero plans, they are simply looking on with pitying bemusement.
That’s a complete myth. Nearly every country in the world has a net zero goal, generally in a similar time frame.
There is a difference between
having a net zero policy you are actually trying to implement
and
having a net zero policy you agreed to in order to get a photo op signing up for a climate accord that you have no intention of seriously trying for.
I would suggest most countries fall into the latter category
You are a cynic and wouldn't believe it, whatever those countries actually did.
The first COP meeting was in 1995, 30 years ago, and CO2 levels are rising faster than ever, (and Trump is the POTUS). It is not unrealistic to have a degree of scepticism about the 2050 target, regardless of personal views about what would be good for the planet.
Trump, by crashing the US economy and radically reducing international trade, is doing a great job at reducing US carbon emissions. I mean, I prefer the UK approach of reducing carbon emissions and having a growing economy, but Trump has his own way of doing things...
Have we done this?
Trump on China: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
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.
Large nuclear plants going offline is going to cause an issue (though it's nothing like as intermittent as wind or solar). Many more smaller SMR stations would provide a far more even supply not affected catastrophically by outages (would be my surmise). We need to pivot toward SMRs and away from costly too-big-to-fail nuclear projects with France and China.
I agree we need a mix.
I disagree. There are huge reserves in the North Sea - we need to properly incentivise getting it out. We also need to progress with fracking.
Coal is not 'laughable' when the world's biggest industrial economy is opening coal stations at a rate of knots to supply our windmills. And when even Germany has added more coal to its mix. Neither have particularly laughable approaches to their needs. The only laughable energy policy is our energy policy.
Coal is laughable for a number of reasons: We have zero mines, and they are massively costly to open (and controversial...) we have zero coal-fire power stations left. We have zero coal-handling infrastructure left (even the old MGR trains...)
I'd strongly argue that money spent correcting these would be much better spent elsewhere; even nuclear.
But my main reason is environmental, but not the gasses. I was born and raised a couple of miles from a large coal-fired power station, and it was impossible to hang washing out if the wind was blowing from that direction, as it would get covered in particles from the coal burning. IMV one of the best pieces of post-war legislation were the various clean air acts, and burning coal - even in power stations - is bad for air quality. (*)
You appear to hate renewables; but going back to coal would be the worst of all worlds.
(*) Orders of magnitude more radiation is released into the environment from burning coal than from nuclear power stations, for the same power generated...
Things not existing doesn't make them laughable - otherwise anything new would be laughable. There was a big plan for a large clean coal power station 15 years or so ago. Alec Salmond was interested for Scotland.
Clearly I don't hate renewables, because tidal is included in my list. I hate undependable, intermittent, and unsuitable renewables whose primary purpose is to farm subsidies.
Tidal is predictable. It's still super intermittent; you have slack tides that change time during the week, and the difference in generation between a spring and neap tide is over 50%. There is very little scope for storage even with lagoons, and utilising the Severn estuary to its full extent would only generate about 10 GW.
To put that into perspective, Scotland alone currently has nearly 50 GW of renewables operating, under construction or in planning. Only 5% of UK households have solar, yet we're generating 12 GW right now.
Perhaps my understanding of this is flawed, and @MarqueeMark may wish to weigh in, but don't the lagoons create electricity both when the water is flooding into it, and when it's flooding out of it? To me that doesn't leave a huge gap in service, and it is, as you say, utterly predictable. There really is no case against it, except that there's little subsidy cash to be spaffed around, due to the inherent workability of the concept. It is certainly nothing like the intermittency, unreliability and unsuitability (solar power at its highest when it's least needed/wind dropping down when it's cold) of wind and solar.
As for that 50GW, how much is actually providing power, not being constrained, or becalmed because the weather isn't right? We have abundant oil and gas, we have coal, we have tides for days. So we're using solar and wind.
The lagoons spread the generation a fair bit. Depends on capacity, but most design don’t actually merge high and low generation - there is a gap.
But the offset between locations is pretty much fixed. So you can site your lagoons around the coast to “fill in” each others generating gaps.
Does nothing for the very large monthly variation, though. To provide reliable power from tidal, you need a crapload of battery storage.. though that's slowly becoming feasible.
There's a very good argument for building tidal now (better still a decade or two back), and waiting for the storage economics to catch up.
Spring and neap tides however happen on different dates around the coast, build 20 or so round the coast line and you can get a fairly good average output
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
Next you'll be wanting most amenities accessible within a 15 minute walk. Commie.
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
The three groups with a will for going it alone are:
a) People who are making obscene amounts of money from 'the transition' b) People who are taking obscene amounts of money from the people making onscene amounts of money from 'the transition' c) Real hardcore nutters who would like us to re-enter the stone age
The last time we really did a 'go it alone' was under Elizabeth I maybe? That worked out rather well.
(And if you argue it was under Cromwell, then that also finished up as not so bad)
We are not talking about an independent foreign policy (if only), we are talking about unilateral economic self-mutilation when nobody else can be arsed. No other countries are opposing our Net Zero plans, they are simply looking on with pitying bemusement.
That’s a complete myth. Nearly every country in the world has a net zero goal, generally in a similar time frame.
There is a difference between
having a net zero policy you are actually trying to implement
and
having a net zero policy you agreed to in order to get a photo op signing up for a climate accord that you have no intention of seriously trying for.
I would suggest most countries fall into the latter category
You are a cynic and wouldn't believe it, whatever those countries actually did.
The first COP meeting was in 1995, 30 years ago, and CO2 levels are rising faster than ever, (and Trump is the POTUS). It is not unrealistic to have a degree of scepticism about the 2050 target, regardless of personal views about what would be good for the planet.
Trump, by crashing the US economy and radically reducing international trade, is doing a great job at reducing US carbon emissions. I mean, I prefer the UK approach of reducing carbon emissions and having a growing economy, but Trump has his own way of doing things...
Have we done this?
Trump on China: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
Except the twats will still have three cars and park them down a side road or on the pavement somewhere.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Hydrogen requires more than just a new boiler though, due to its small size it is a leaky gas and would require upgrading a lot of pipe work
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
The fronts of the trains in Leeds station were completely covered in insect remains.
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
The fronts of the trains in Leeds station were completely covered in insect remains.
Then they should stop running till they have spent lots of money on insect tunnels
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
The three groups with a will for going it alone are:
a) People who are making obscene amounts of money from 'the transition' b) People who are taking obscene amounts of money from the people making onscene amounts of money from 'the transition' c) Real hardcore nutters who would like us to re-enter the stone age
The last time we really did a 'go it alone' was under Elizabeth I maybe? That worked out rather well.
(And if you argue it was under Cromwell, then that also finished up as not so bad)
We are not talking about an independent foreign policy (if only), we are talking about unilateral economic self-mutilation when nobody else can be arsed. No other countries are opposing our Net Zero plans, they are simply looking on with pitying bemusement.
That’s a complete myth. Nearly every country in the world has a net zero goal, generally in a similar time frame.
There is a difference between
having a net zero policy you are actually trying to implement
and
having a net zero policy you agreed to in order to get a photo op signing up for a climate accord that you have no intention of seriously trying for.
I would suggest most countries fall into the latter category
You are a cynic and wouldn't believe it, whatever those countries actually did.
Cynic is not a dirty word. Healthy scepticism and cynicism is a very good thing.
We should be cynical about the motives of people with a vested interest, and judge people on their actions and not just their words.
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
At some points, some of those squares were co-opted for cars. Here's the now leafy, flower-strewn regency New Square in Cambridge in the 1970s:
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
People want different lifestyles shock.
The Tories poured more money than ever into the NHS and it still wasn't enough because we are older, fatter, lazier, sicker than ever and there are more of us. No-one asked the country if they wanted us to have immigration running at the rates it is now. The Tories promised to cut it to the tens of thousands. Its this kind of dishonesty that leads to the rise of reform. Don't get me wrong - Reform are a bunch of racist fuckwits with no answers to the countries problems, but they will still get votes because the common people of the country have had enough of the main parties (and that includes the Lib Dems).
It remains one of the great mysteries in political history why the Conservatives campaigned on bringing immigration down while greatly increasing immigration. Whether you think immigration should be higher or lower, it makes no sense. Either argue it's a good thing and have it higher, or argue it should be lower and make it lower. But why did they make it higher while saying it needed to be lower?
PS: Healthcare funding rose much lower under the Tories than under the previous Labour government.
I know that healthcare funding rose more slowly - it still increased though. In reality there will never be enough funding for the NHS.
I also cannot understand why the Tories did what they did with immigration other than sheer incompetence. Its electoral suicide - its partly what has enabled Reform to thrive. And its just so stupid. Make the case for it and say how you will welcome people to the UK and what will be done for housing and services. Or say it will be less than 100,000 a year and deliver that.
I am stuck in the locals. The Greens have a candidate who did not turn up to hustings, nor have they given any information on what they would do. Literally an empty space in the paper. The Tories are idiots nationally, and need to look at why they lost. Labour are not even standing and that leaves Reform and the Lib Dems, who haven't bothered to leaflet us. I genuinely might spoil my ballot.
A number of people on PB have suggested that they, or spouses, won't vote for a party that hasn't leafletted them. It's good if a party does leaflet you, but that leafletting is done by volunteers. It seems to me overly harsh to rule out a party that hasn't managed to leaflet you.
You as a voter don't have to be passive and await leaflets. I'm sure your local Reform UK and LibDem parties have some sort of web presence. The national parties have websites with their general principles. Even without a leaflet through the door (or hustings appearance), you can work out what candidates believe in.
I won't vote for a party that knocks on my door as its a major irritation and interruption making me answer the door to be lied blatantly too.
I thought you never voted anyway.
Not since 2010 before that I voted in every election. I merely gave up in disgust at the absolute clueless mediocrities all parties tried foisting on us
That’s simply you getting older.
You’re supposed to simply vote for the least clueless, and hope for the best.
It doesn't really matter they are all equally crap, only the lib dems are the worst which is why I will vote anyone to keep one out
That's quite unusual, voting tactically against the Lib Dems.
I also have a "Never kissed a lib dem " T shirt
By the sound of it, there was never going to be that much of a queue.
One interesting part of Trump so far is how little legislative reform he's passed or attempted.
Best estimate is he's got 21 months left to pass anything.
Why not use this time to make changes that are hard to reverse rather than rely on executive orders that won't outlast his Presidency by more than a few months?
Because the plan of those behind Trump does not rely on current legislation, nor a fully legislated framework. The plan is to first subvert, intimidate and control the state processes so that either elections won't happen, or they will be rigged/propagandised in favour of the 2025 plan and Trumpism. This cannot be overtly legislated for as too many people would notice and it might lose in congress.
Once you are past the 'Reichstag Fire' moment either by a single event or a process of attrition you can legislate at your leisure.
IMO the plan will probably fail, though not without huge damage. If it succeeds, a new dark age awaits. While views about 'succeed' or 'fail' will be subjective and therefore a bit vague, I would put it at: Trumpism succeed: 30%, fail 70%. Huge damage approx 100%.
The courts are doing their bit. When congress does as well the tide may turn.
He is turning on media outlets that don't support him and law firms that bring suits against his administration so I wouldn't count on the plan not working. Courts cant work if no law firm will oppose the administration and media won't report
So far there have been lots of lawyers very keen to get their teeth into anti Trump cases, and it is contrary to all known American lawyer nature to hold back from plaintiff led litigation and robust defence of those challenged by the state. Lots doing OK so far, and a good number of judges up to SCOTUS level holding firm.
Reporting has been thin in the UK, but in USA both MSM and a good number of well informed new media outlets have been excellent and vigilant.
Some of the new media outlets are getting ready for the day if and when You Tube will not be available to them.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
The three groups with a will for going it alone are:
a) People who are making obscene amounts of money from 'the transition' b) People who are taking obscene amounts of money from the people making onscene amounts of money from 'the transition' c) Real hardcore nutters who would like us to re-enter the stone age
The last time we really did a 'go it alone' was under Elizabeth I maybe? That worked out rather well.
(And if you argue it was under Cromwell, then that also finished up as not so bad)
We are not talking about an independent foreign policy (if only), we are talking about unilateral economic self-mutilation when nobody else can be arsed. No other countries are opposing our Net Zero plans, they are simply looking on with pitying bemusement.
That’s a complete myth. Nearly every country in the world has a net zero goal, generally in a similar time frame.
There is a difference between
having a net zero policy you are actually trying to implement
and
having a net zero policy you agreed to in order to get a photo op signing up for a climate accord that you have no intention of seriously trying for.
I would suggest most countries fall into the latter category
You are a cynic and wouldn't believe it, whatever those countries actually did.
The first COP meeting was in 1995, 30 years ago, and CO2 levels are rising faster than ever, (and Trump is the POTUS). It is not unrealistic to have a degree of scepticism about the 2050 target, regardless of personal views about what would be good for the planet.
Trump, by crashing the US economy and radically reducing international trade, is doing a great job at reducing US carbon emissions. I mean, I prefer the UK approach of reducing carbon emissions and having a growing economy, but Trump has his own way of doing things...
Have we done this?
Trump on China: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
The three groups with a will for going it alone are:
a) People who are making obscene amounts of money from 'the transition' b) People who are taking obscene amounts of money from the people making onscene amounts of money from 'the transition' c) Real hardcore nutters who would like us to re-enter the stone age
The last time we really did a 'go it alone' was under Elizabeth I maybe? That worked out rather well.
(And if you argue it was under Cromwell, then that also finished up as not so bad)
We are not talking about an independent foreign policy (if only), we are talking about unilateral economic self-mutilation when nobody else can be arsed. No other countries are opposing our Net Zero plans, they are simply looking on with pitying bemusement.
That’s a complete myth. Nearly every country in the world has a net zero goal, generally in a similar time frame.
There is a difference between
having a net zero policy you are actually trying to implement
and
having a net zero policy you agreed to in order to get a photo op signing up for a climate accord that you have no intention of seriously trying for.
I would suggest most countries fall into the latter category
You are a cynic and wouldn't believe it, whatever those countries actually did.
The first COP meeting was in 1995, 30 years ago, and CO2 levels are rising faster than ever, (and Trump is the POTUS). It is not unrealistic to have a degree of scepticism about the 2050 target, regardless of personal views about what would be good for the planet.
Trump, by crashing the US economy and radically reducing international trade, is doing a great job at reducing US carbon emissions. I mean, I prefer the UK approach of reducing carbon emissions and having a growing economy, but Trump has his own way of doing things...
Have we done this?
Trump on China: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
The three groups with a will for going it alone are:
a) People who are making obscene amounts of money from 'the transition' b) People who are taking obscene amounts of money from the people making onscene amounts of money from 'the transition' c) Real hardcore nutters who would like us to re-enter the stone age
The last time we really did a 'go it alone' was under Elizabeth I maybe? That worked out rather well.
(And if you argue it was under Cromwell, then that also finished up as not so bad)
We are not talking about an independent foreign policy (if only), we are talking about unilateral economic self-mutilation when nobody else can be arsed. No other countries are opposing our Net Zero plans, they are simply looking on with pitying bemusement.
That’s a complete myth. Nearly every country in the world has a net zero goal, generally in a similar time frame.
There is a difference between
having a net zero policy you are actually trying to implement
and
having a net zero policy you agreed to in order to get a photo op signing up for a climate accord that you have no intention of seriously trying for.
I would suggest most countries fall into the latter category
You are a cynic and wouldn't believe it, whatever those countries actually did.
The first COP meeting was in 1995, 30 years ago, and CO2 levels are rising faster than ever, (and Trump is the POTUS). It is not unrealistic to have a degree of scepticism about the 2050 target, regardless of personal views about what would be good for the planet.
Trump, by crashing the US economy and radically reducing international trade, is doing a great job at reducing US carbon emissions. I mean, I prefer the UK approach of reducing carbon emissions and having a growing economy, but Trump has his own way of doing things...
Have we done this?
Trump on China: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
People want different lifestyles shock.
The Tories poured more money than ever into the NHS and it still wasn't enough because we are older, fatter, lazier, sicker than ever and there are more of us. No-one asked the country if they wanted us to have immigration running at the rates it is now. The Tories promised to cut it to the tens of thousands. Its this kind of dishonesty that leads to the rise of reform. Don't get me wrong - Reform are a bunch of racist fuckwits with no answers to the countries problems, but they will still get votes because the common people of the country have had enough of the main parties (and that includes the Lib Dems).
It remains one of the great mysteries in political history why the Conservatives campaigned on bringing immigration down while greatly increasing immigration. Whether you think immigration should be higher or lower, it makes no sense. Either argue it's a good thing and have it higher, or argue it should be lower and make it lower. But why did they make it higher while saying it needed to be lower?
PS: Healthcare funding rose much lower under the Tories than under the previous Labour government.
I know that healthcare funding rose more slowly - it still increased though. In reality there will never be enough funding for the NHS.
I also cannot understand why the Tories did what they did with immigration other than sheer incompetence. Its electoral suicide - its partly what has enabled Reform to thrive. And its just so stupid. Make the case for it and say how you will welcome people to the UK and what will be done for housing and services. Or say it will be less than 100,000 a year and deliver that.
I am stuck in the locals. The Greens have a candidate who did not turn up to hustings, nor have they given any information on what they would do. Literally an empty space in the paper. The Tories are idiots nationally, and need to look at why they lost. Labour are not even standing and that leaves Reform and the Lib Dems, who haven't bothered to leaflet us. I genuinely might spoil my ballot.
A number of people on PB have suggested that they, or spouses, won't vote for a party that hasn't leafletted them. It's good if a party does leaflet you, but that leafletting is done by volunteers. It seems to me overly harsh to rule out a party that hasn't managed to leaflet you.
You as a voter don't have to be passive and await leaflets. I'm sure your local Reform UK and LibDem parties have some sort of web presence. The national parties have websites with their general principles. Even without a leaflet through the door (or hustings appearance), you can work out what candidates believe in.
I won't vote for a party that knocks on my door as its a major irritation and interruption making me answer the door to be lied blatantly too.
I thought you never voted anyway.
Not since 2010 before that I voted in every election. I merely gave up in disgust at the absolute clueless mediocrities all parties tried foisting on us
That’s simply you getting older.
You’re supposed to simply vote for the least clueless, and hope for the best.
It doesn't really matter they are all equally crap, only the lib dems are the worst which is why I will vote anyone to keep one out
That's quite unusual, voting tactically against the Lib Dems.
I also have a "Never kissed a lib dem " T shirt
By the sound of it, there was never going to be that much of a queue.
How would you know? You do realise the majority of the populace doesn't have lib demesque sexual kinks such as messrs Oaten,Smith and Opik....I don't mind those sort not queuing up
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.
Large nuclear plants going offline is going to cause an issue (though it's nothing like as intermittent as wind or solar). Many more smaller SMR stations would provide a far more even supply not affected catastrophically by outages (would be my surmise). We need to pivot toward SMRs and away from costly too-big-to-fail nuclear projects with France and China.
I agree we need a mix.
I disagree. There are huge reserves in the North Sea - we need to properly incentivise getting it out. We also need to progress with fracking.
Coal is not 'laughable' when the world's biggest industrial economy is opening coal stations at a rate of knots to supply our windmills. And when even Germany has added more coal to its mix. Neither have particularly laughable approaches to their needs. The only laughable energy policy is our energy policy.
Coal is laughable for a number of reasons: We have zero mines, and they are massively costly to open (and controversial...) we have zero coal-fire power stations left. We have zero coal-handling infrastructure left (even the old MGR trains...)
I'd strongly argue that money spent correcting these would be much better spent elsewhere; even nuclear.
But my main reason is environmental, but not the gasses. I was born and raised a couple of miles from a large coal-fired power station, and it was impossible to hang washing out if the wind was blowing from that direction, as it would get covered in particles from the coal burning. IMV one of the best pieces of post-war legislation were the various clean air acts, and burning coal - even in power stations - is bad for air quality. (*)
You appear to hate renewables; but going back to coal would be the worst of all worlds.
(*) Orders of magnitude more radiation is released into the environment from burning coal than from nuclear power stations, for the same power generated...
Things not existing doesn't make them laughable - otherwise anything new would be laughable. There was a big plan for a large clean coal power station 15 years or so ago. Alec Salmond was interested for Scotland.
Clearly I don't hate renewables, because tidal is included in my list. I hate undependable, intermittent, and unsuitable renewables whose primary purpose is to farm subsidies.
Tidal is predictable. It's still super intermittent; you have slack tides that change time during the week, and the difference in generation between a spring and neap tide is over 50%. There is very little scope for storage even with lagoons, and utilising the Severn estuary to its full extent would only generate about 10 GW.
To put that into perspective, Scotland alone currently has nearly 50 GW of renewables operating, under construction or in planning. Only 5% of UK households have solar, yet we're generating 12 GW right now.
Perhaps my understanding of this is flawed, and @MarqueeMark may wish to weigh in, but don't the lagoons create electricity both when the water is flooding into it, and when it's flooding out of it? To me that doesn't leave a huge gap in service, and it is, as you say, utterly predictable. There really is no case against it, except that there's little subsidy cash to be spaffed around, due to the inherent workability of the concept. It is certainly nothing like the intermittency, unreliability and unsuitability (solar power at its highest when it's least needed/wind dropping down when it's cold) of wind and solar.
As for that 50GW, how much is actually providing power, not being constrained, or becalmed because the weather isn't right? We have abundant oil and gas, we have coal, we have tides for days. So we're using solar and wind.
The lagoons spread the generation a fair bit. Depends on capacity, but most design don’t actually merge high and low generation - there is a gap.
But the offset between locations is pretty much fixed. So you can site your lagoons around the coast to “fill in” each others generating gaps.
Does nothing for the very large monthly variation, though. To provide reliable power from tidal, you need a crapload of battery storage.. though that's slowly becoming feasible.
There's a very good argument for building tidal now (better still a decade or two back), and waiting for the storage economics to catch up.
Spring and neap tides however happen on different dates around the coast, build 20 or so round the coast line and you can get a fairly good average output
Only by a few hours. The large monthly variation between the energy available from a spring and a neap tide is the problem.
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
People want different lifestyles shock.
The Tories poured more money than ever into the NHS and it still wasn't enough because we are older, fatter, lazier, sicker than ever and there are more of us. No-one asked the country if they wanted us to have immigration running at the rates it is now. The Tories promised to cut it to the tens of thousands. Its this kind of dishonesty that leads to the rise of reform. Don't get me wrong - Reform are a bunch of racist fuckwits with no answers to the countries problems, but they will still get votes because the common people of the country have had enough of the main parties (and that includes the Lib Dems).
It remains one of the great mysteries in political history why the Conservatives campaigned on bringing immigration down while greatly increasing immigration. Whether you think immigration should be higher or lower, it makes no sense. Either argue it's a good thing and have it higher, or argue it should be lower and make it lower. But why did they make it higher while saying it needed to be lower?
PS: Healthcare funding rose much lower under the Tories than under the previous Labour government.
I know that healthcare funding rose more slowly - it still increased though. In reality there will never be enough funding for the NHS.
I also cannot understand why the Tories did what they did with immigration other than sheer incompetence. Its electoral suicide - its partly what has enabled Reform to thrive. And its just so stupid. Make the case for it and say how you will welcome people to the UK and what will be done for housing and services. Or say it will be less than 100,000 a year and deliver that.
I am stuck in the locals. The Greens have a candidate who did not turn up to hustings, nor have they given any information on what they would do. Literally an empty space in the paper. The Tories are idiots nationally, and need to look at why they lost. Labour are not even standing and that leaves Reform and the Lib Dems, who haven't bothered to leaflet us. I genuinely might spoil my ballot.
A number of people on PB have suggested that they, or spouses, won't vote for a party that hasn't leafletted them. It's good if a party does leaflet you, but that leafletting is done by volunteers. It seems to me overly harsh to rule out a party that hasn't managed to leaflet you.
You as a voter don't have to be passive and await leaflets. I'm sure your local Reform UK and LibDem parties have some sort of web presence. The national parties have websites with their general principles. Even without a leaflet through the door (or hustings appearance), you can work out what candidates believe in.
I won't vote for a party that knocks on my door as its a major irritation and interruption making me answer the door to be lied blatantly too.
I thought you never voted anyway.
Not since 2010 before that I voted in every election. I merely gave up in disgust at the absolute clueless mediocrities all parties tried foisting on us
That’s simply you getting older.
You’re supposed to simply vote for the least clueless, and hope for the best.
It doesn't really matter they are all equally crap, only the lib dems are the worst which is why I will vote anyone to keep one out
That's quite unusual, voting tactically against the Lib Dems.
I also have a "Never kissed a lib dem " T shirt
By the sound of it, there was never going to be that much of a queue.
Umm, is there an "I lost my virginity to a Lib Dem" T shirt? Asking for a friend...
One interesting part of Trump so far is how little legislative reform he's passed or attempted.
Best estimate is he's got 21 months left to pass anything.
Why not use this time to make changes that are hard to reverse rather than rely on executive orders that won't outlast his Presidency by more than a few months?
Because the plan of those behind Trump does not rely on current legislation, nor a fully legislated framework. The plan is to first subvert, intimidate and control the state processes so that either elections won't happen, or they will be rigged/propagandised in favour of the 2025 plan and Trumpism. This cannot be overtly legislated for as too many people would notice and it might lose in congress.
Once you are past the 'Reichstag Fire' moment either by a single event or a process of attrition you can legislate at your leisure.
IMO the plan will probably fail, though not without huge damage. If it succeeds, a new dark age awaits. While views about 'succeed' or 'fail' will be subjective and therefore a bit vague, I would put it at: Trumpism succeed: 30%, fail 70%. Huge damage approx 100%.
The courts are doing their bit. When congress does as well the tide may turn.
He is turning on media outlets that don't support him and law firms that bring suits against his administration so I wouldn't count on the plan not working. Courts cant work if no law firm will oppose the administration and media won't report
So far there have been lots of lawyers very keen to get their teeth into anti Trump cases, and it is contrary to all known American lawyer nature to hold back from plaintiff led litigation and robust defence of those challenged by the state. Lots doing OK so far, and a good number of judges up to SCOTUS level holding firm.
Reporting has been thin in the UK, but in USA both MSM and a good number of well informed new media outlets have been excellent and vigilant.
Some of the new media outlets are getting ready for the day if and when You Tube will not be available to them.
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
At some points, some of those squares were co-opted for cars. Here's the now leafy, flower-strewn regency New Square in Cambridge in the 1970s:
That was my second year lodgings, in the middle of that terrace on the left hand side. The year I was there was the year they dug up and removed the car park, hence much of the time the square echoed with endless pneumatic drilling.
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
The three groups with a will for going it alone are:
a) People who are making obscene amounts of money from 'the transition' b) People who are taking obscene amounts of money from the people making onscene amounts of money from 'the transition' c) Real hardcore nutters who would like us to re-enter the stone age
The last time we really did a 'go it alone' was under Elizabeth I maybe? That worked out rather well.
(And if you argue it was under Cromwell, then that also finished up as not so bad)
We are not talking about an independent foreign policy (if only), we are talking about unilateral economic self-mutilation when nobody else can be arsed. No other countries are opposing our Net Zero plans, they are simply looking on with pitying bemusement.
That’s a complete myth. Nearly every country in the world has a net zero goal, generally in a similar time frame.
There is a difference between
having a net zero policy you are actually trying to implement
and
having a net zero policy you agreed to in order to get a photo op signing up for a climate accord that you have no intention of seriously trying for.
I would suggest most countries fall into the latter category
You are a cynic and wouldn't believe it, whatever those countries actually did.
The first COP meeting was in 1995, 30 years ago, and CO2 levels are rising faster than ever, (and Trump is the POTUS). It is not unrealistic to have a degree of scepticism about the 2050 target, regardless of personal views about what would be good for the planet.
Trump, by crashing the US economy and radically reducing international trade, is doing a great job at reducing US carbon emissions. I mean, I prefer the UK approach of reducing carbon emissions and having a growing economy, but Trump has his own way of doing things...
Have we done this?
Trump on China: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
People want different lifestyles shock.
The Tories poured more money than ever into the NHS and it still wasn't enough because we are older, fatter, lazier, sicker than ever and there are more of us. No-one asked the country if they wanted us to have immigration running at the rates it is now. The Tories promised to cut it to the tens of thousands. Its this kind of dishonesty that leads to the rise of reform. Don't get me wrong - Reform are a bunch of racist fuckwits with no answers to the countries problems, but they will still get votes because the common people of the country have had enough of the main parties (and that includes the Lib Dems).
It remains one of the great mysteries in political history why the Conservatives campaigned on bringing immigration down while greatly increasing immigration. Whether you think immigration should be higher or lower, it makes no sense. Either argue it's a good thing and have it higher, or argue it should be lower and make it lower. But why did they make it higher while saying it needed to be lower?
PS: Healthcare funding rose much lower under the Tories than under the previous Labour government.
I know that healthcare funding rose more slowly - it still increased though. In reality there will never be enough funding for the NHS.
I also cannot understand why the Tories did what they did with immigration other than sheer incompetence. Its electoral suicide - its partly what has enabled Reform to thrive. And its just so stupid. Make the case for it and say how you will welcome people to the UK and what will be done for housing and services. Or say it will be less than 100,000 a year and deliver that.
I am stuck in the locals. The Greens have a candidate who did not turn up to hustings, nor have they given any information on what they would do. Literally an empty space in the paper. The Tories are idiots nationally, and need to look at why they lost. Labour are not even standing and that leaves Reform and the Lib Dems, who haven't bothered to leaflet us. I genuinely might spoil my ballot.
A number of people on PB have suggested that they, or spouses, won't vote for a party that hasn't leafletted them. It's good if a party does leaflet you, but that leafletting is done by volunteers. It seems to me overly harsh to rule out a party that hasn't managed to leaflet you.
You as a voter don't have to be passive and await leaflets. I'm sure your local Reform UK and LibDem parties have some sort of web presence. The national parties have websites with their general principles. Even without a leaflet through the door (or hustings appearance), you can work out what candidates believe in.
I won't vote for a party that knocks on my door as its a major irritation and interruption making me answer the door to be lied blatantly too.
I thought you never voted anyway.
Not since 2010 before that I voted in every election. I merely gave up in disgust at the absolute clueless mediocrities all parties tried foisting on us
That’s simply you getting older.
You’re supposed to simply vote for the least clueless, and hope for the best.
It doesn't really matter they are all equally crap, only the lib dems are the worst which is why I will vote anyone to keep one out
That's quite unusual, voting tactically against the Lib Dems.
I also have a "Never kissed a lib dem " T shirt
By the sound of it, there was never going to be that much of a queue.
How would you know? You do realise the majority of the populace doesn't have lib demesque sexual kinks such as messrs Oaten,Smith and Opik....I don't mind those sort not queuing up
What did Öpik do? I only know that he cheated on Siân Lloyd with one of the Cheeky Girls.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
Heat pumps are fairly shitty if you live 2+ stories up in a Victorian flat.
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
The three groups with a will for going it alone are:
a) People who are making obscene amounts of money from 'the transition' b) People who are taking obscene amounts of money from the people making onscene amounts of money from 'the transition' c) Real hardcore nutters who would like us to re-enter the stone age
The last time we really did a 'go it alone' was under Elizabeth I maybe? That worked out rather well.
(And if you argue it was under Cromwell, then that also finished up as not so bad)
We are not talking about an independent foreign policy (if only), we are talking about unilateral economic self-mutilation when nobody else can be arsed. No other countries are opposing our Net Zero plans, they are simply looking on with pitying bemusement.
That’s a complete myth. Nearly every country in the world has a net zero goal, generally in a similar time frame.
There is a difference between
having a net zero policy you are actually trying to implement
and
having a net zero policy you agreed to in order to get a photo op signing up for a climate accord that you have no intention of seriously trying for.
I would suggest most countries fall into the latter category
You are a cynic and wouldn't believe it, whatever those countries actually did.
The first COP meeting was in 1995, 30 years ago, and CO2 levels are rising faster than ever, (and Trump is the POTUS). It is not unrealistic to have a degree of scepticism about the 2050 target, regardless of personal views about what would be good for the planet.
Trump, by crashing the US economy and radically reducing international trade, is doing a great job at reducing US carbon emissions. I mean, I prefer the UK approach of reducing carbon emissions and having a growing economy, but Trump has his own way of doing things...
Have we done this?
Trump on China: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
Maybe he's right, but it's a brave statement, Mr President.
"We shall have a harder Christmas than we have known since the war."
Not known as a winning statement.
Unless DJT is getting dolls (on which case, pass the mind bleach), it's more "you shall have a harder Christmas."
I'm reminded now of Melania's description of her first night with Donald as being "A mixture of business and pleasure". He knew how to pay for dolls at one point in his life I guess...
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
Barrats et al beg to differ on "all new ones should be s well built as possible"
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
Barrats et al beg to differ on "all new ones should be s well built as possible"
Then government should mandate and enforce. Of course some companies will try to ge5 away with stuff. Don’t let them. We regulate cars, planes trains safety well enough. Why not housing standards?
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
We almost had a nasty accident at work when a tank that had held twenty tons of hydrofluoric acid the day before was being flushed out with water and the valve failed and we luckily only got 20 tons of water flooding out
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
Barrats et al beg to differ on "all new ones should be s well built as possible"
Then government should mandate and enforce. Of course some companies will try to ge5 away with stuff. Don’t let them. We regulate cars, planes trains safety well enough. Why not housing standards?
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
We almost had a nasty accident at work when a tank that had held twenty tons of hydrofluoric acid the day before was being flushed out with water and the valve failed and we luckily only got 20 tons of water flooding out
In my 30 plus years doing chemistry I think HF is about the only thing I am scared of. (Obviously diemethyl mercury too, but I’ve never been near a lab using that). HF on the other hand, a post doc I knew back at UEA was sealing HF in pressure tubes and heating to 150 deg C… Not a project I fancied.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
We almost had a nasty accident at work when a tank that had held twenty tons of hydrofluoric acid the day before was being flushed out with water and the valve failed and we luckily only got 20 tons of water flooding out
Our health & safety rep once left quite a lot of fairly explosive chemicals ontop of the radiator in his room. Luckily a passing technician spotted it in time. We do a lot of work with other fairly dodgy chemicals - a lot of arsenic for one. If it had blown up it would have been A Bad Time(TM) for a fairly large section of the city.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
We almost had a nasty accident at work when a tank that had held twenty tons of hydrofluoric acid the day before was being flushed out with water and the valve failed and we luckily only got 20 tons of water flooding out
In my 30 plus years doing chemistry I think HF is about the only thing I am scared of. (Obviously diemethyl mercury too, but I’ve never been near a lab using that). HF on the other hand, a post doc I knew back at UEA was sealing HF in pressure tubes and heating to 150 deg C… Not a project I fancied.
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.
Large nuclear plants going offline is going to cause an issue (though it's nothing like as intermittent as wind or solar). Many more smaller SMR stations would provide a far more even supply not affected catastrophically by outages (would be my surmise). We need to pivot toward SMRs and away from costly too-big-to-fail nuclear projects with France and China.
I agree we need a mix.
I disagree. There are huge reserves in the North Sea - we need to properly incentivise getting it out. We also need to progress with fracking.
Coal is not 'laughable' when the world's biggest industrial economy is opening coal stations at a rate of knots to supply our windmills. And when even Germany has added more coal to its mix. Neither have particularly laughable approaches to their needs. The only laughable energy policy is our energy policy.
Coal is laughable for a number of reasons: We have zero mines, and they are massively costly to open (and controversial...) we have zero coal-fire power stations left. We have zero coal-handling infrastructure left (even the old MGR trains...)
I'd strongly argue that money spent correcting these would be much better spent elsewhere; even nuclear.
But my main reason is environmental, but not the gasses. I was born and raised a couple of miles from a large coal-fired power station, and it was impossible to hang washing out if the wind was blowing from that direction, as it would get covered in particles from the coal burning. IMV one of the best pieces of post-war legislation were the various clean air acts, and burning coal - even in power stations - is bad for air quality. (*)
You appear to hate renewables; but going back to coal would be the worst of all worlds.
(*) Orders of magnitude more radiation is released into the environment from burning coal than from nuclear power stations, for the same power generated...
Things not existing doesn't make them laughable - otherwise anything new would be laughable. There was a big plan for a large clean coal power station 15 years or so ago. Alec Salmond was interested for Scotland.
Clearly I don't hate renewables, because tidal is included in my list. I hate undependable, intermittent, and unsuitable renewables whose primary purpose is to farm subsidies.
Tidal is predictable. It's still super intermittent; you have slack tides that change time during the week, and the difference in generation between a spring and neap tide is over 50%. There is very little scope for storage even with lagoons, and utilising the Severn estuary to its full extent would only generate about 10 GW.
To put that into perspective, Scotland alone currently has nearly 50 GW of renewables operating, under construction or in planning. Only 5% of UK households have solar, yet we're generating 12 GW right now.
Perhaps my understanding of this is flawed, and @MarqueeMark may wish to weigh in, but don't the lagoons create electricity both when the water is flooding into it, and when it's flooding out of it? To me that doesn't leave a huge gap in service, and it is, as you say, utterly predictable. There really is no case against it, except that there's little subsidy cash to be spaffed around, due to the inherent workability of the concept. It is certainly nothing like the intermittency, unreliability and unsuitability (solar power at its highest when it's least needed/wind dropping down when it's cold) of wind and solar.
As for that 50GW, how much is actually providing power, not being constrained, or becalmed because the weather isn't right? We have abundant oil and gas, we have coal, we have tides for days. So we're using solar and wind.
The lagoons spread the generation a fair bit. Depends on capacity, but most design don’t actually merge high and low generation - there is a gap.
But the offset between locations is pretty much fixed. So you can site your lagoons around the coast to “fill in” each others generating gaps.
Does nothing for the very large monthly variation, though. To provide reliable power from tidal, you need a crapload of battery storage.. though that's slowly becoming feasible.
There's a very good argument for building tidal now (better still a decade or two back), and waiting for the storage economics to catch up.
Spring and neap tides however happen on different dates around the coast, build 20 or so round the coast line and you can get a fairly good average output
Only by a few hours. The large monthly variation between the energy available from a spring and a neap tide is the problem.
Someone had better tell the French before they waste their time then and the Koreans.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station completed 1966, estimated to have paid off construction after 20 years, so just maintenance for the last almost 40 years. There's information online about the generating / non-generating windows, depending on neap / spring the non-generational windows vary. Though you are correct that spring and neap tides vary with the moon, not geographical location. We could have put some turbines in the Thames barrier, perhaps someone with more vision will insist on them when it has to be replaced.
Doesn't require 200+ years of decommissioning contract or toxic waste storage to be ignored in the costings either.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
Barrats et al beg to differ on "all new ones should be s well built as possible"
Then government should mandate and enforce. Of course some companies will try to ge5 away with stuff. Don’t let them. We regulate cars, planes trains safety well enough. Why not housing standards?
Last time I got chatting to my boiler inspection guy - he was telling me about some new-build 'eco houses' (his words) he'd been working at. The developers had to provide photographic evidence they'd fitted Ultra++ insulation. So dutifully they fitted it to a bit of wall, took the photo, ... then took it off again. Pinned it up to the next bit of wall and took the photo.
Repeat for every bit of wall, in every house in the development.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
We almost had a nasty accident at work when a tank that had held twenty tons of hydrofluoric acid the day before was being flushed out with water and the valve failed and we luckily only got 20 tons of water flooding out
Our health & safety rep once left quite a lot of fairly explosive chemicals ontop of the radiator in his room. Luckily a passing technician spotted it in time. We do a lot of work with other fairly dodgy chemicals - a lot of arsenic for one. If it had blown up it would have been A Bad Time(TM) for a fairly large section of the city.
On a plus note you would probably not have had time to experience the angst of dying if it went up
Reeves under investigation over 'registration of interests'
Why do you sensationalise like this!!!!
For context.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being investigated by the parliamentary standards watchdog over one of her registrations of interest.
Sky News understands the probe relates to the receipt of tickets from the National Theatre, which were declared late on the MPs register.
It is understood they were declared on time on a separate register for government ministers.
An investigation being launched does not necessarily mean rules have been broken, and a spokesperson for Reeves said: "The chancellor's interests are fully declared and up to date."
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
We almost had a nasty accident at work when a tank that had held twenty tons of hydrofluoric acid the day before was being flushed out with water and the valve failed and we luckily only got 20 tons of water flooding out
Our health & safety rep once left quite a lot of fairly explosive chemicals ontop of the radiator in his room. Luckily a passing technician spotted it in time. We do a lot of work with other fairly dodgy chemicals - a lot of arsenic for one. If it had blown up it would have been A Bad Time(TM) for a fairly large section of the city.
On a plus note you would probably not have had time to experience the angst of dying if it went up
Best one though was our safety officer who decided to do a proper fire safety training so rather than just sounding the fire alarm he place a smoke machine with a heating element......in the low flash solvent store
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
People want different lifestyles shock.
The Tories poured more money than ever into the NHS and it still wasn't enough because we are older, fatter, lazier, sicker than ever and there are more of us. No-one asked the country if they wanted us to have immigration running at the rates it is now. The Tories promised to cut it to the tens of thousands. Its this kind of dishonesty that leads to the rise of reform. Don't get me wrong - Reform are a bunch of racist fuckwits with no answers to the countries problems, but they will still get votes because the common people of the country have had enough of the main parties (and that includes the Lib Dems).
It remains one of the great mysteries in political history why the Conservatives campaigned on bringing immigration down while greatly increasing immigration. Whether you think immigration should be higher or lower, it makes no sense. Either argue it's a good thing and have it higher, or argue it should be lower and make it lower. But why did they make it higher while saying it needed to be lower?
PS: Healthcare funding rose much lower under the Tories than under the previous Labour government.
I know that healthcare funding rose more slowly - it still increased though. In reality there will never be enough funding for the NHS.
I also cannot understand why the Tories did what they did with immigration other than sheer incompetence. Its electoral suicide - its partly what has enabled Reform to thrive. And its just so stupid. Make the case for it and say how you will welcome people to the UK and what will be done for housing and services. Or say it will be less than 100,000 a year and deliver that.
I am stuck in the locals. The Greens have a candidate who did not turn up to hustings, nor have they given any information on what they would do. Literally an empty space in the paper. The Tories are idiots nationally, and need to look at why they lost. Labour are not even standing and that leaves Reform and the Lib Dems, who haven't bothered to leaflet us. I genuinely might spoil my ballot.
A number of people on PB have suggested that they, or spouses, won't vote for a party that hasn't leafletted them. It's good if a party does leaflet you, but that leafletting is done by volunteers. It seems to me overly harsh to rule out a party that hasn't managed to leaflet you.
You as a voter don't have to be passive and await leaflets. I'm sure your local Reform UK and LibDem parties have some sort of web presence. The national parties have websites with their general principles. Even without a leaflet through the door (or hustings appearance), you can work out what candidates believe in.
I won't vote for a party that knocks on my door as its a major irritation and interruption making me answer the door to be lied blatantly too.
I thought you never voted anyway.
Not since 2010 before that I voted in every election. I merely gave up in disgust at the absolute clueless mediocrities all parties tried foisting on us
That’s simply you getting older.
You’re supposed to simply vote for the least clueless, and hope for the best.
It doesn't really matter they are all equally crap, only the lib dems are the worst which is why I will vote anyone to keep one out
That's quite unusual, voting tactically against the Lib Dems.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
We almost had a nasty accident at work when a tank that had held twenty tons of hydrofluoric acid the day before was being flushed out with water and the valve failed and we luckily only got 20 tons of water flooding out
Semiconductors?
20 tons of HF. I think 15 miles upwind would be about right.
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
People want different lifestyles shock.
The Tories poured more money than ever into the NHS and it still wasn't enough because we are older, fatter, lazier, sicker than ever and there are more of us. No-one asked the country if they wanted us to have immigration running at the rates it is now. The Tories promised to cut it to the tens of thousands. Its this kind of dishonesty that leads to the rise of reform. Don't get me wrong - Reform are a bunch of racist fuckwits with no answers to the countries problems, but they will still get votes because the common people of the country have had enough of the main parties (and that includes the Lib Dems).
It remains one of the great mysteries in political history why the Conservatives campaigned on bringing immigration down while greatly increasing immigration. Whether you think immigration should be higher or lower, it makes no sense. Either argue it's a good thing and have it higher, or argue it should be lower and make it lower. But why did they make it higher while saying it needed to be lower?
PS: Healthcare funding rose much lower under the Tories than under the previous Labour government.
I know that healthcare funding rose more slowly - it still increased though. In reality there will never be enough funding for the NHS.
I also cannot understand why the Tories did what they did with immigration other than sheer incompetence. Its electoral suicide - its partly what has enabled Reform to thrive. And its just so stupid. Make the case for it and say how you will welcome people to the UK and what will be done for housing and services. Or say it will be less than 100,000 a year and deliver that.
I am stuck in the locals. The Greens have a candidate who did not turn up to hustings, nor have they given any information on what they would do. Literally an empty space in the paper. The Tories are idiots nationally, and need to look at why they lost. Labour are not even standing and that leaves Reform and the Lib Dems, who haven't bothered to leaflet us. I genuinely might spoil my ballot.
A number of people on PB have suggested that they, or spouses, won't vote for a party that hasn't leafletted them. It's good if a party does leaflet you, but that leafletting is done by volunteers. It seems to me overly harsh to rule out a party that hasn't managed to leaflet you.
You as a voter don't have to be passive and await leaflets. I'm sure your local Reform UK and LibDem parties have some sort of web presence. The national parties have websites with their general principles. Even without a leaflet through the door (or hustings appearance), you can work out what candidates believe in.
I won't vote for a party that knocks on my door as its a major irritation and interruption making me answer the door to be lied blatantly too.
I thought you never voted anyway.
Not since 2010 before that I voted in every election. I merely gave up in disgust at the absolute clueless mediocrities all parties tried foisting on us
That’s simply you getting older.
You’re supposed to simply vote for the least clueless, and hope for the best.
It doesn't really matter they are all equally crap, only the lib dems are the worst which is why I will vote anyone to keep one out
That's quite unusual, voting tactically against the Lib Dems.
I also have a "Never kissed a lib dem " T shirt
Never *knowingly*.
"Never knowingly undersexed"
I admit I may be biassed but when I think of a lib dem I think dwayne dibley
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
We almost had a nasty accident at work when a tank that had held twenty tons of hydrofluoric acid the day before was being flushed out with water and the valve failed and we luckily only got 20 tons of water flooding out
Semiconductors?
20 tons of HF. I think 15 miles upwind would be about right.
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
At some points, some of those squares were co-opted for cars. Here's the now leafy, flower-strewn regency New Square in Cambridge in the 1970s:
Even as late as the mid 80s there were cars in New Square and I seem to recall it was only when the Grafton centre opened that the cars were cleared away, around 1984- I think that was a condition of the construction of the centre.
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
At some points, some of those squares were co-opted for cars. Here's the now leafy, flower-strewn regency New Square in Cambridge in the 1970s:
Even as late as the mid 80s there were cars in New Square and I seem to recall it was only when the Grafton centre opened that the cars were cleared away, around 1984- I think that was a condition of the construction of the centre.
The car park was dug up during 1982-3. Probably mostly 1983. I was Bunnco, there on the spot. The leafiness was planted the year after.
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
The fronts of the trains in Leeds station were completely covered in insect remains.
My drive back to Durham from Tamworth on Monday saw the front of my car pebbledashed with little flies. Poor things. At least it would be quick.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
We almost had a nasty accident at work when a tank that had held twenty tons of hydrofluoric acid the day before was being flushed out with water and the valve failed and we luckily only got 20 tons of water flooding out
In my 30 plus years doing chemistry I think HF is about the only thing I am scared of. (Obviously diemethyl mercury too, but I’ve never been near a lab using that). HF on the other hand, a post doc I knew back at UEA was sealing HF in pressure tubes and heating to 150 deg C… Not a project I fancied.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
We almost had a nasty accident at work when a tank that had held twenty tons of hydrofluoric acid the day before was being flushed out with water and the valve failed and we luckily only got 20 tons of water flooding out
In my 30 plus years doing chemistry I think HF is about the only thing I am scared of. (Obviously diemethyl mercury too, but I’ve never been near a lab using that). HF on the other hand, a post doc I knew back at UEA was sealing HF in pressure tubes and heating to 150 deg C… Not a project I fancied.
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
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.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
People want different lifestyles shock.
The Tories poured more money than ever into the NHS and it still wasn't enough because we are older, fatter, lazier, sicker than ever and there are more of us. No-one asked the country if they wanted us to have immigration running at the rates it is now. The Tories promised to cut it to the tens of thousands. Its this kind of dishonesty that leads to the rise of reform. Don't get me wrong - Reform are a bunch of racist fuckwits with no answers to the countries problems, but they will still get votes because the common people of the country have had enough of the main parties (and that includes the Lib Dems).
It remains one of the great mysteries in political history why the Conservatives campaigned on bringing immigration down while greatly increasing immigration. Whether you think immigration should be higher or lower, it makes no sense. Either argue it's a good thing and have it higher, or argue it should be lower and make it lower. But why did they make it higher while saying it needed to be lower?
PS: Healthcare funding rose much lower under the Tories than under the previous Labour government.
I know that healthcare funding rose more slowly - it still increased though. In reality there will never be enough funding for the NHS.
I also cannot understand why the Tories did what they did with immigration other than sheer incompetence. Its electoral suicide - its partly what has enabled Reform to thrive. And its just so stupid. Make the case for it and say how you will welcome people to the UK and what will be done for housing and services. Or say it will be less than 100,000 a year and deliver that.
I am stuck in the locals. The Greens have a candidate who did not turn up to hustings, nor have they given any information on what they would do. Literally an empty space in the paper. The Tories are idiots nationally, and need to look at why they lost. Labour are not even standing and that leaves Reform and the Lib Dems, who haven't bothered to leaflet us. I genuinely might spoil my ballot.
A number of people on PB have suggested that they, or spouses, won't vote for a party that hasn't leafletted them. It's good if a party does leaflet you, but that leafletting is done by volunteers. It seems to me overly harsh to rule out a party that hasn't managed to leaflet you.
You as a voter don't have to be passive and await leaflets. I'm sure your local Reform UK and LibDem parties have some sort of web presence. The national parties have websites with their general principles. Even without a leaflet through the door (or hustings appearance), you can work out what candidates believe in.
I won't vote for a party that knocks on my door as its a major irritation and interruption making me answer the door to be lied blatantly too.
I thought you never voted anyway.
Not since 2010 before that I voted in every election. I merely gave up in disgust at the absolute clueless mediocrities all parties tried foisting on us
That’s simply you getting older.
You’re supposed to simply vote for the least clueless, and hope for the best.
It doesn't really matter they are all equally crap, only the lib dems are the worst which is why I will vote anyone to keep one out
That's quite unusual, voting tactically against the Lib Dems.
I also have a "Never kissed a lib dem " T shirt
By the sound of it, there was never going to be that much of a queue.
How would you know? You do realise the majority of the populace doesn't have lib demesque sexual kinks such as messrs Oaten,Smith and Opik....I don't mind those sort not queuing up
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
I noticed it on the French autoroutes a few weeks ago. After years of fly splats seeming to decline alongside birdsong, with only the wasps bucking the trend, insects do seem to be a bit back this season.
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
Next you'll be wanting most amenities accessible within a 15 minute walk. Commie.
No, I've always been anti-car. That is to say, I love cars and the freedom they bring, but that freedom can - and will - be delivered in the future by FSD auto e-cars which park themselves overnight in huge underground bunkers, freeing up our town and cities for human beings that WALK and RUN and CYCLE and PLAY and HAVE SEX IN BEAUTIFUL ORCHARDS THAT USED TO BE CAR PARKS
We shall grow thin and slender from all our walking and jogging and laughing and shagging. Our servile automobiles will live in dungeons as they should aways have done
Bring it on. And build like the Georgians again. Garden squares for all
Senior No 10 officials called TBI after Tony Blair claimed govt’s net zero plans were “doomed to fail” to urge it to address fallout. But Keir Starmer hasn’t spoken to ex-PM directly.
Labour insiders *very* annoyed with Blair over his comments, saying it undermined PM on key issue, at crucial moment, and was “disloyal” to party.
One Downing Street insider told me: “Tony fucked up.” Another said: “He has completely lost his touch.”
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 4h Bondi: "President, you first 100 days has far exceeded that of ANY other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you."
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
Next you'll be wanting most amenities accessible within a 15 minute walk. Commie.
No, I've always been anti-car. That is to say, I love cars and the freedom they bring, but that freedom can - and will - be delivered in the future by FSD auto e-cars which park themselves overnight in huge underground bunkers, freeing up our town and cities for human beings that WALK and RUN and CYCLE and PLAY and HAVE SEX IN BEAUTIFUL ORCHARDS THAT USED TO BE CAR PARKS
We shall grow thin and slender from all our walking and jogging and laughing and shagging. Our servile automobiles will live in dungeons as they should aways have done
Bring it on. And build like the Georgians again. Garden squares for all
Eastenders was set in a garden square....seemed somewhat dystopian to me at least
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 4h Bondi: "President, you first 100 days has far exceeded that of ANY other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you."
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 4h Bondi: "President, you first 100 days has far exceeded that of ANY other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you."
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 4h Bondi: "President, you first 100 days has far exceeded that of ANY other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you."
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
At some points, some of those squares were co-opted for cars. Here's the now leafy, flower-strewn regency New Square in Cambridge in the 1970s:
Even as late as the mid 80s there were cars in New Square and I seem to recall it was only when the Grafton centre opened that the cars were cleared away, around 1984- I think that was a condition of the construction of the centre.
Elderly friends in Cambridge continue to be angry about the streets bulldozed for the grafton.
Some poor bugger paid £100m for it about 10 years ago. Currently trying to recoup the money by converting part of it to offices and homes.
Senior No 10 officials called TBI after Tony Blair claimed govt’s net zero plans were “doomed to fail” to urge it to address fallout. But Keir Starmer hasn’t spoken to ex-PM directly.
Labour insiders *very* annoyed with Blair over his comments, saying it undermined PM on key issue, at crucial moment, and was “disloyal” to party.
One Downing Street insider told me: “Tony fucked up.” Another said: “He has completely lost his touch.”
The timing certainly seemed v odd no matter what the merits of the case either way. Why weigh in two days before local elections?
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
I had a massive honey bee swarm land on my house for a few hours, which was a new one for me. Moved on now to do their important pollination work.
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
Next you'll be wanting most amenities accessible within a 15 minute walk. Commie.
No, I've always been anti-car. That is to say, I love cars and the freedom they bring, but that freedom can - and will - be delivered in the future by FSD auto e-cars which park themselves overnight in huge underground bunkers, freeing up our town and cities for human beings that WALK and RUN and CYCLE and PLAY and HAVE SEX IN BEAUTIFUL ORCHARDS THAT USED TO BE CAR PARKS
We shall grow thin and slender from all our walking and jogging and laughing and shagging. Our servile automobiles will live in dungeons as they should aways have done
Bring it on. And build like the Georgians again. Garden squares for all
Eastenders was set in a garden square....seemed somewhat dystopian to me at least
There is a real, genuine Albert Square near Stratford. But it only has two sides!
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
I had a massive honey bee swarm land on my house for a few hours, which was a new one for me. Moved on now to do their important pollination work.
My friend who is an amateur beekeeper (typically has four hives on the go) has had a nightmare with swarming this year. Not a really hard winter and now excellent weather has got them fired up and looking for new homes.
OK having been horribly mean about London for the last six weeks (years?) I have to confess, nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of Georgian/early Victorian townhouse architecture, as six weeks spent in the largely Soviet and post Soviet buildings of Central Asia (the odd bit of Samarkand and Astana excepted)
My God, London can be lovely. Especially in warm late April sun. Especially around Primrose Hill, it is sublime
But why the F can't we build like that, any more?
We can, and Welborne in southern Hampshire looks like showing that you don't even need royal involvement.
But doing it and making space for three cars per household is blooming difficult.
Tell these twats that if they want THREE cars they can fuck off. Then build these beautiful Georgian terraces and squares with enough parking for one car at most. And then: let the market decide
I suspect the people moaning about their stupid cars will suddenly forget their gripes and go for the beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood
Next you'll be wanting most amenities accessible within a 15 minute walk. Commie.
No, I've always been anti-car. That is to say, I love cars and the freedom they bring, but that freedom can - and will - be delivered in the future by FSD auto e-cars which park themselves overnight in huge underground bunkers, freeing up our town and cities for human beings that WALK and RUN and CYCLE and PLAY and HAVE SEX IN BEAUTIFUL ORCHARDS THAT USED TO BE CAR PARKS
We shall grow thin and slender from all our walking and jogging and laughing and shagging. Our servile automobiles will live in dungeons as they should aways have done
Bring it on. And build like the Georgians again. Garden squares for all
Eastenders was set in a garden square....seemed somewhat dystopian to me at least
There is a real, genuine Albert Square near Stratford. But it only has two sides!
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
I had a massive honey bee swarm land on my house for a few hours, which was a new one for me. Moved on now to do their important pollination work.
Senior No 10 officials called TBI after Tony Blair claimed govt’s net zero plans were “doomed to fail” to urge it to address fallout. But Keir Starmer hasn’t spoken to ex-PM directly.
Labour insiders *very* annoyed with Blair over his comments, saying it undermined PM on key issue, at crucial moment, and was “disloyal” to party.
One Downing Street insider told me: “Tony fucked up.” Another said: “He has completely lost his touch.”
At least, unlike our current rulers, he had a touch to lose.
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
I had a massive honey bee swarm land on my house for a few hours, which was a new one for me. Moved on now to do their important pollination work.
I was worried the ceramics I bought in Uzbekistan might not make it home - after 6 weeks on the road. They made it back to London. Most importantly this bowl made it back to NW1
Handmade in Gidjuvon, Uzbekistan, a famous old Silk Road Sufi mystic Town which has been making and painting ceramics exactly like this - crafted by the very same family, in the very same kilns - for at least three centuries, as part of a tradition which probably stretches back 3000 years
Senior No 10 officials called TBI after Tony Blair claimed govt’s net zero plans were “doomed to fail” to urge it to address fallout. But Keir Starmer hasn’t spoken to ex-PM directly.
Labour insiders *very* annoyed with Blair over his comments, saying it undermined PM on key issue, at crucial moment, and was “disloyal” to party.
One Downing Street insider told me: “Tony fucked up.” Another said: “He has completely lost his touch.”
One of the labour rising stars has gone one step further and basically accusing him of shilling for big oil. Surprised she could tear herself away from the tiresome trans debate.
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
I had a massive honey bee swarm land on my house for a few hours, which was a new one for me. Moved on now to do their important pollination work.
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
I had a massive honey bee swarm land on my house for a few hours, which was a new one for me. Moved on now to do their important pollination work.
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
I had a massive honey bee swarm land on my house for a few hours, which was a new one for me. Moved on now to do their important pollination work.
Drove to and from Edinburgh today, as others have similarly noted a pleasing number of mashed insects on the front of car (pleasing only by their presence, not because I enjoy killing tiny organisms). Is this only down to a very warm late spring?
I had a massive honey bee swarm land on my house for a few hours, which was a new one for me. Moved on now to do their important pollination work.
Decarbonising leccy generation is the easy bit. And can be achieved without CCS on CCGT plants, but DESNZ has other ideas.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
Heat pumps aren’t shitty.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
We had a nasty hydrogen explosion at work last summer. Main thing - no one hurt but luck only. We believe a faulty regulator allowed a leak of hydrogen which pooled in the ceiling void before finding an ignition source - boom. I am not sanguine that hydrogen is a good idea in existing homes with retro fitting, but maybe in new built with appropriate regulation?
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
Barrats et al beg to differ on "all new ones should be s well built as possible"
Then government should mandate and enforce. Of course some companies will try to ge5 away with stuff. Don’t let them. We regulate cars, planes trains safety well enough. Why not housing standards?
Last time I got chatting to my boiler inspection guy - he was telling me about some new-build 'eco houses' (his words) he'd been working at. The developers had to provide photographic evidence they'd fitted Ultra++ insulation. So dutifully they fitted it to a bit of wall, took the photo, ... then took it off again. Pinned it up to the next bit of wall and took the photo.
Repeat for every bit of wall, in every house in the development.
So let me get this straight: Trump genuinely believes the guy had “M S 1 3” tattooed on his knuckles. Not that they had been photoshopped on to illustrate the pictograph meanings. That the letters and numbers were tattooed.
Trump on China: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
Maybe he's right, but it's a brave statement, Mr President.
So he's acknowledging that they expect goods to become scarcer and cost more as as consequence of his tariffs, but I expect that if you said "will goods be scarcer and cost more?" That Trump would call the questioner a liar and deny what he has in effect conceded.
So let me get this straight: Trump genuinely believes the guy had “M S 1 3” tattooed on his knuckles. Not that they had been photoshopped on to illustrate the pictograph meanings. That the letters and numbers were tattooed.
He’s off the scale crazy
While not making excuses for Trump I wonder how much of the crazy is as far as I can tell people all his life have confirmed his view of reality is correct and everyone else is to stupid....after a time it sets in stone
So let me get this straight: Trump genuinely believes the guy had “M S 1 3” tattooed on his knuckles. Not that they had been photoshopped on to illustrate the pictograph meanings. That the letters and numbers were tattooed.
He’s off the scale crazy
People insisting that the image was photoshopped are on the losing side in this debate. Adding obviously 2D label text to an image is not by any stretch of the imagination photoshopping it.
My browser still seems to be struggling to view the politicsuk ward level forecast for tomorrow. It looks like it is predicting a good result for the Tories in Wiltshire, with around 10 Reform seats albeit some of them look to be pretty randomly placed.
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 4h Bondi: "President, you first 100 days has far exceeded that of ANY other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you."
They're everywhere in America, he can throw a rock and find a dozen of them.
I get the impression he doesn't care if people are sincere or not, in fact he might prefer insincere, since it is a demonstration of power. Even if they believe he is indeed great they are forced to lay it on incredibly thickly to please him.
So let me get this straight: Trump genuinely believes the guy had “M S 1 3” tattooed on his knuckles. Not that they had been photoshopped on to illustrate the pictograph meanings. That the letters and numbers were tattooed.
He’s off the scale crazy
He is. I also think he might be more stupid that I previously thought, and I already thought he was dumber than anyone I personally know.
The more this nonsense goes on though I do gain a bit more respect for his last administration, who must have been working around the clock to prevent Trump from wrecking things.
Comments
There's a very good argument for building tidal now (better still a decade or two back), and waiting for the storage economics to catch up.
Not known as a winning statement.
The hard bit includes domestic heating. Here, we have two options. Option 1, turn off the gas supply and force everyone to have a shitty air source heat pump, necessitating ripping out your entire heating system. Option 2, switch the gas network to hydrogen, which just requires a new boiler, but triggers a load of fuckwits to shout "Hindenburg" until they are blue in the face. Both options require a load more low carbon power generation, either to supply the shitty heat pumps or to make electrolytic hydrogen. Big investment required, which will find its way onto gas and leccy bills, and capital cost to every household that is impacted.
We should be cynical about the motives of people with a vested interest, and judge people on their actions and not just their words.
Reporting has been thin in the UK, but in USA both MSM and a good number of well informed new media outlets have been excellent and vigilant.
Some of the new media outlets are getting ready for the day if and when You Tube will not be available to them.
The issues with hydrogen in a domestic setting include needing to replace all the existing pipework, leaks and detection and observing the safety rules for hydrogen. Which are extensive and carefully created over decades of practise in handling hydrogen.
Unlike yourself, I’ve actually handled hydrogen in serious quantities. It is completely safe, if you keep to the safety rules. If you don’t, it bites.
➡️ REF: 522 cllrs
🔵 CON: 452 cllrs
🟡 LIB: 414 cllrs
🔴LAB: 101 cllrs
🟢 GREEN: 79 cllrs
Telling Americans that they don’t need to be buying so much stuff is a brave stance indeed.
You do realise the majority of the populace doesn't have lib demesque sexual kinks such as messrs Oaten,Smith and Opik....I don't mind those sort not queuing up
The large monthly variation between the energy available from a spring and a neap tide is the problem.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/30/cbs-folds-like-a-moist-flushable-towelette-in-response-to-baseless-trump-threats/
you were saying?
± would be good too
My other takeaway comes from extending our 1970s house. Not much insulation in the old wooden clad upper story. The new bit is massively well built and does not get cold. It’s hard to modernise every shitty house but all new ones should be s well built as possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station completed 1966, estimated to have paid off construction after 20 years, so just maintenance for the last almost 40 years.
There's information online about the generating / non-generating windows, depending on neap / spring the non-generational windows vary.
Though you are correct that spring and neap tides vary with the moon, not geographical location.
We could have put some turbines in the Thames barrier, perhaps someone with more vision will insist on them when it has to be replaced.
Doesn't require 200+ years of decommissioning contract or toxic waste storage to be ignored in the costings either.
Repeat for every bit of wall, in every house in the development.
20 tons of HF. I think 15 miles upwind would be about right.
And I’m sure there’s going to be more goals .
Although my MPs social media is full of campaigning in what were once very safe wards and they haven’t even bothered where I am.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Freud#Child_sexual_abuse_allegations
https://bsky.app/profile/emptywheel.bsky.social/post/3lo2fym2ups2q
We shall grow thin and slender from all our walking and jogging and laughing and shagging. Our servile automobiles will live in dungeons as they should aways have done
Bring it on. And build like the Georgians again. Garden squares for all
Senior No 10 officials called TBI after Tony Blair claimed govt’s net zero plans were “doomed to fail” to urge it to address fallout. But Keir Starmer hasn’t spoken to ex-PM directly.
Labour insiders *very* annoyed with Blair over his comments, saying it undermined PM on key issue, at crucial moment, and was “disloyal” to party.
One Downing Street insider told me: “Tony fucked up.” Another said: “He has completely lost his touch.”
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
·
4h
Bondi: "President, you first 100 days has far exceeded that of ANY other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you."
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1917616879054537074
How does he find these people?
Some poor bugger paid £100m for it about 10 years ago. Currently trying to recoup the money by converting part of it to offices and homes.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Albert+Square,+London/@51.5477557,0.007076,447m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x47d8a7850e1775cf:0xc66089e6621ebc1d!8m2!3d51.5477557!4d0.0096509!16s/g/1tk1y9f0?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDQyOC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw==
I was worried the ceramics I bought in Uzbekistan might not make it home - after 6 weeks on the road. They made it back to London. Most importantly this bowl made it back to NW1
Handmade in Gidjuvon, Uzbekistan, a famous old Silk Road Sufi mystic Town which has been making and painting ceramics exactly like this - crafted by the very same family, in the very same kilns - for at least three centuries, as part of a tradition which probably stretches back 3000 years
Awwwww
https://x.com/nadiawhittomemp/status/1917616550984429604?s=61
He’s off the scale crazy
I get the impression he doesn't care if people are sincere or not, in fact he might prefer insincere, since it is a demonstration of power. Even if they believe he is indeed great they are forced to lay it on incredibly thickly to please him.
The more this nonsense goes on though I do gain a bit more respect for his last administration, who must have been working around the clock to prevent Trump from wrecking things.